Yesterday’s progress turned out to be a lot more work than it should have been, but the job got done. Rather than try and post pictures through Instagram, I decided to take them and make a vlog, instead.
It’s coming up on 1am as I post this. Time to go to bed and, hopefully, the old bod won’t stiffen up and break down too badly overnight!
The Re-Farmer
Today, finally, we planted the German Butterball potatoes.
Orders of perishables like this get sent out in time for planting, which means we could have planted them weeks ago. The Purple Caribe had to wait until the bed they were intended for was redone. We hadn’t quite decided where to plant the German Butterballs, but today we decided to use one of the prepared raised beds in the West yard, where we also needed to tend to the bed with peas, carrots and spinach planted in it.
The first thing we did was weed the bed, again. My daughter went digging around with the garden fork first, pulling out the bigger stuff she found, while I followed along and dug deep with my hands and pulled out the smaller stuff. Once again, we were finding lots of tree roots from the nearby Chinese elm. We went over the bed twice, finding more roots, each time!
I did remember to use the pH meter to see if there was any change, before we topped up the bed. At this point, the bed was amended only with the sulfur granules. I was thrilled to see the needle was actually, ever so slightly, moved. It’s still pretty much at 8, but the needle is now just barely touching the green colour at the 8, instead of about as far as it could possibly go on the alkaline side.
We then added a wheelbarrow load of soil left over from amending the previous beds. This soil has more sulfur granules in it, plus peat. Once that was spread out, we worked it into the bed with our hands – and pulled out more roots. Then, while my daughter went to fill watering cans from the rain barrel, I used the stirrup hoe to stir and level the soil – and pull out more roots – before using my hands to create a broad trench down the middle.
There turned out to be exactly 32 potatoes, so we laid them out evenly in two rows. Yes, they are probably being planted too close together, but this is the space we have available, so it’ll have to do.
Once we had the potatoes set out where we wanted them, I went around with a garden trowel and dug a hole for each one, while my daughter followed along and watered the holes, then I followed along behind her, planting each potato into the watered holes. Once she was done, she went to get more water from the rain barrel, while I covered the potatoes and used the soil from the sides to create hills over them. They got a final watering in the trench between them, then we put a cover over the bed, so the cats won’t go in and use that nice soft soil as a litter box!
Before we’d gone outside, I set the sugar snap pea seeds I bought yesterday to soak. Unfortunately, I’d put them in the bowl last night, and it got knocked over by the cats. My older daughter and I found most of them, but from the 24 seeds I’d counted when I opened the packet, we were down to 21 – and only because I found one more this morning.
I’m not impressed with the inside cats right now! It’s been no end of them getting into things they shouldn’t, lately!
Once the potatoes were done, my daughter went to get the peas while I used a bamboo stake to make a row of holes for them. I planted the previous two rows of snap peas, so I knew where I could do that, and not be on top of the previous rows. There may, possibly, be a single pea from the first planting emerging, but I’m not sure, yet. Last night, I found that something had dug into the bed over where some peas had been planted, and there was no sign of any peas when I pushed the soil back. I think most, if not all, that first planting of peas died off for some reason.
Once that was done, I went to the garden shed to get the trellis netting. That’s when I spotted Broccoli’s babies! I got the netting out, as a tiny calico hissed silently at me, then called my daughter over to look. She had already finished planting the peas by then. We paused for a bit to move the babies to a carrier, then my daughter went on mama-baby watch while I continued. I gave the bed a watering, first, then set the netting up on the T posts. Then it was back to the shed, partly to see if Broccoli was looking for her babies, and partly to get some netting to put around the bed. I’d already grabbed a bundle of supports and set six of them up around the bed. Unfortunately, the bundle of netting I grabbed was not long enough to go all the way around. There’s about 2/3 of one side that’s not shielded by netting. The netting is there to keep things from eating the spinach that’s coming up, as well as to keep the cats out. We’ll have to go through our other bundles of netting to see if we have either something short enough to fill the gap, or long enough to go all the way around, and replace what I put up today.
Eventually, we will need to set up something outside the beds to secure the T posts. If the peas actually start to grow, their weight will pull the T posts inwards, so we’ll need something to keep that from happening. There’s no hurry on that, though, since we’ll only need it if the peas survive in the first place! I don’t assume anything, at this point.
So we did manage to accomplish the goals we had for before things got too hot – we’re now at 26C/79F. 28F/82F, if I go by the website instead of my phone app.
For all the warmer highs we’re getting, over the next week to ten days, our lows are expected to dip to 1 or 2C/34 or 36F, which means we could get frost. If the long range forecasts are at all accurate, we’ll start to bed overnight temperatures consistently 6C/43F or warmer, which is about the minimum we’d need for the soil to get warm enough for direct sowing anything that isn’t cold hardy, like the peas and spinach. Mind you, with plastic covered covers for the raised beds, we could plant things and the covers will protect them.
What we really need to get working on is harvesting logs to build the raised beds we need. It’s too windy to try and cut down dead spruces, but we can process the ones that are already down.
We’ll have to make sure we use plenty of bug spray before going into the spruce grove. Not for mosquitoes. Those aren’t out yet. For wood ticks! It’s been a really bad year for them, already. So far, I’ve only pulled them off myself before they’ve attached themselves, but I’ve been pulling lots of them off of Syndol. With his long fur, he can’t get them off his neck or near his ears on his own. The short haired cats that let me pet them have no ticks. Just Syndol. Which makes me wonder about the other long haired cats, that don’t let us handle them like Syndol does.
Also, while I was writing this, Broccoli has been seen around the kibble house and walking around the sunroom, to the back of the house, but she has not gone into the sunroom. With her babies sleeping peacefully and not meowing, she would have no way to know they are there!
Moving them was a big risk. I hope she finds them, soon!
The Re-Farmer
While we no longer have cat food bowls in the sunroom, we do still allow them in, and I keep an eye on things through the critter cam.
I checked it shortly before heading out this morning, and had an unpleasant surprise. The extra board we put over the cat cage was on the floor. From what I could see, so was at least one of the bins.
I rushed out to see what could be salvaged and didn’t stop to take any before pictures. Thankfully, it was just the one bin on the floor – the one with only two pots with the Crespo squash in it. There was a tray that had a couple of pots knocked over, but the damage was nowhere near as bad as I feared.
The Crespo squash that has a pot to itself had a bent stem. I was able to use a couple of sticks and some plant wires to make a splint around it. I think it will survive. We’ve had one with worse damage last year that survived.
The cats did not actually damage the plants directly. The problem is that we have to keep one of the sawhorses holding the table at an angle. The board is there to cover the cat cage, but also gives them a ledge they can lie on, and not try to squeeze in between the trays and bins. One of the heavier cats must have jumped up onto the corner of the board that doesn’t have the sawhorse under it, and knocked the whole thing off. As it fell, it took the one bin down with it, but only jarred another tray, knocking over a couple of pots. One squash and it soil was almost completely out of it’s pot. Hopefully, it will survive being put back. A peat pot had a piece broken off and lost a bit of soil, but is otherwise fine. I will find a plastic pot of an appropriate size and pop the whole thing in, to hold it together. A couple of other pots are broken above the soil line, so they should be okay. It could have been a lot worse! I rearranged a few things so that, if the board gets knocked off again, it won’t take any trays with it.
Once that was fixed up, I did my morning rounds and checked the garden beds. The garlic continues their growth spurt!
I can see gaps in some places, particularly in the larger rectangular bed, that shows some cloves didn’t survive the winter, but most of them have made it.
The walking onions in front of the tiny raised bed are looking really strong and healthy. This is the second year for the bulbils I’d planted there. They produced their own bulbils that are just resting on the ground; we didn’t try to plant them, and are letting nature take its course with those. The only thing is to keep them from spreading into where my daughter had planted some irises, though we don’t know if they’ve actually survived. We’ve seen some try to grow, then disappear. It would seem they didn’t make it, but we do have those tulip bulbs that we thought had died, suddenly emerge this year, so it’s possible they survived, too!
The rhubarb in the south corner is also getting pretty big. Those ones always do better than the ones at the north corner. One of these years, we should transplant the lot of them, away from those apple trees, so they have better growing conditions. We typically get just one decent harvest per season, out of them.
By the time I was finishing up my morning rounds, my daughter was outside and starting on our project for the day, but that will be for my next post!
The Re-Farmer
According to the Window 11 weather icon on my new computer, it’s 15C/59F out there. According to the other weather app that came with my computer (why is there two of them?), it’s 17C/63F. According to the app on my phone, it was 19C/66F, but has already cooled down to 18C/65F. The thermometer on the wall of the sun room says it’s 20C/68F in there.
I don’t think any of the apps are right, because when I walk out the sun room door, it’s like walking into an oven. The sun room is cool, in comparison!
We have high winds today, which suggests that it would feel even hotter outside, without it!
My plan to get to bed early then start outside before things got too hot, did not succeed. The longer I lay in bed, the more awake I became. By the time I finally fell asleep, it was starting to get light out. *sigh*
My younger daughter and I were talking about this, and how the temperatures are expected to continue to be about the same for the next while. She had the same plans that I was trying to accomplish; to go to bed early, then get up and work outside while it was still cool.
She’s been as successful at it as I have been.
Still, that’s what we’re going to try doing. Maybe it’ll work out better if we encourage each other about it!
I did manage to get some gardening related stuff done, though.
The last two trays of tomatoes have been moved out of the living room and into the sun room. I ended up rearranging the transplants a bit. The Crespo squash are getting so big, they were shading the luffa and drum gourd sharing their bin, so those got moved to a tray and are now in the window, while the Crespo squash have a bin to themselves. I also moved the Black Cherry and Florme de Coeur tomatoes in individual pots out of the plastic tray they were in, and onto a metal one. The plastic tray was just too wobbly, while carrying them. For now, I’m using the plastic tray for the luffa and drums, but I’ll switch that out to metal trays later on. We’ll be starting to harden things off, soon, and I don’t want to risk dropping any because of a bendy tray!
I also moved a tray of winter squash to the sun room, leaving the onions and shallots in the mini greenhouse frame. I was going to set the Summer of Melons tray out of the aquarium greenhouse and to the window, but decided to take them straight to the living room, instead. I put them on the bottom shelf at the window, where they would get the best sunlight – with the overhang of the roof, the lower shelves get more sun than the upper shelves. I’m trusting the cats will leave them alone.
The makeshift table under the lights got rearranged a bit to use the space more effectively. There is a wall about a food wide between the east facing windows, casting a shadow across the table, so I’ve left a gap between the trays and bins, moving one bin of peppers and thyme to the shelf between the south facing windows, next to the mulberry and the Butterfly Flower.
Oh, we might have some oregano, after all! When they didn’t sprout, I returned the seed starting mix to the big bowl I use to pre-moisten the mix before filling pots and cells, mixing it all together. Now, some of the tomatoes look like they have oregano growing with them! They’re looking pretty leggy, but I’m leaving them be for now. They’re not big enough to be a problem for the tomatoes. If the survive, we’ll just transplant them at the same time we transplant the tomatoes.
Some of the other melons and watermelon we pregerminated have emerged from their soil, so I moved those ones off the heat mat and into the mini greenhouse frame with the onions and shallots. I checked the remaining seeds set to pre-germinate. Still nothing on the remaining two Zucca melon seeds, but one of the Pixies had its radical, and another was open, so I planted both. Those got added to the tray on the warming mat, along with the other pre-germinated melons that haven’t emerged yet. I ended up adding water to the trays under the cardboard and peat pots a couple of times. The pots were drying out, and I didn’t want them sucking the moisture out of the growing medium, and wow did they ever absorb the water from the trays fast! These are needing to be watered more often, because of the pots. The transplants in the plastic pots don’t have this problem.
Tomorrow morning, the plan is for my daughter and I to prep one of the empty raised beds in the West yard, next to the peas, carrots and spinach, with the peat and sulfur amended soil left from other beds, and finally get those German Butterball potatoes planted. We then want to set up netting of some kind around the other bed, to protect the spinach from hungry critters, as well as from the cats walking all over it, but in such a way that we can easily left the netting to tend to the bed. There are still no peas emerging, but it would be a good time to add trellis netting to the support posts set up for it. By now, I’m guessing they all failed, and I don’t know why. We do have shelling peas to plant, but I think I might buy another package of edible pod peas for that bed. It’s starting to get too hot to plant peas, though!
Hmm… I just looked at the time. The post office is open for the afternoon, and my husband’s medical grade latex tubing arrived early. They have a seed display. I’ll check and see if they have any edible pod peas! We might even plant them tomorrow morning, after planting the potatoes.
What we try to do next will depend on the weather. If it’s not still windy, we might even try to take down some dead trees!
We shall see.
The Re-Farmer
It’s done!
Sort of.
The half of the sun room we use as a greenhouse is now done, and we even have spaces for the cats, several of which have been quite happy with.
Especially Syndol. He loves that baby jail! I did have to add an extra board next to the closet door on the saw horses, though. I found one in the garage, just wide enough, and cut it to match the length of the closet door. The cage is wider than the door, and I didn’t want the cats jumping up on it, like they normally would, as it was a favourite place for some of them to sleep. One sawhorse is angled, to allow access to the shelf at the south window. Unfortunately, that extra board does get in the way, but we can work around it without risking knocking the sawhorse right over!
We’ve started to move more of the heat loving seedlings in, what with the thermometer in there reading almost 30C/86F! It didn’t actually feel quite that hot, though – the ceiling fan certainly helped – so I got out the temperature gun to do some spot checks.
The ceiling was right at 30C/86F, while the floor was 20C/86F! At table height, the temperature ranged from about 24-27C/75-81F, depending on where I aimed the gun. Overnight, we’re supposed to drop to 3C/37F, but the sun room should remain adequately warm.
With the evening sun coming through the West windows, I put the trays on the table for now, then gave them a misting with the hose. In the morning, I will move some onto the shelf in the south facing window. I’ll also bring the two remaining tomato trays. I might leave the onions in the living room, as they prefer cooler temperatures. The Summer of Melons tray could probably be moved, too. The last pot’s seedling showed up today, so all 21 seeds from that packet are now growing. They just have their seed leaves, but melons are heat lovers, so they’ll probably do better in the sun room than even in the aquarium greenhouse.
I was going to work on the other half of the sun room once things starting cooling down, but… well, things haven’t really cooled down, yet. To top it off, instead of getting to sleep early last night, I ended up awake most of the night, and I’m falling asleep at my computer right now. So my daughters will do what they can in there, later on. My older daughter has commissions to work on, but they should be able to get at least some clean up done in there, once things cool down.
As for me, I’m mightily resisting going to bed right now. It’s barely past 6pm, as I’m writing this, so it would end up just being a nap, and that would really mess me up!
I definitely want to try and get an early night and an early morning, though. There’s lots to do out there, before things get hot again. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 20C/68F again – and a couple of days from now, we’re looking at possibly 24C/75F, with things cooling down a little bit after that. Looking at the low raised beds this morning is downright depressing. We pull so many rhizomes out of them, every fall, but you’d never know it from all the crab grass popping up in them right now! It’ll be easier, once they get converted to higher raised beds, though some crab grass will still find a way through.
Little by little, it’ll get done.
The Re-Farmer
The outside cats are most confused!
There are no food bowls in the sun room right now. I checked the critter cam a few times during the night, and would sometimes see a cat wandering around where their platform and cat beds used to be, seeming lost! This morning, there was a whole crowd of them, milling about, waiting for their breakfast. They were all over the baby jail, inside and out, but there are no beds or blankets inside it right now, either.
As I fed them, I counted only 17, though.
With yesterday’s high winds, while checking around the yard, I was surprised to find just a couple of fallen branches, and just one broken tree.
The trunk of a poplar snapped off and will need to be cleared out. There’s also a live spruce tree nearby that has been slowly falling over, but it’s been doing that for years now. I’ve been keeping an eye on it. The only reason it’s not on the ground already it because it’s leaning against another tree. The dead trees around it, however, are all still standing straight!
It looks like we won’t be getting any haskaps again this year. The one “Mr.” haskap is leafing wonderfully, and even showing flower buds. The “Mrs.” haskap that was purchased and planted the same year is barely showing leaf buds. The smaller “Mrs.” haskap that was planted the following year is actually further ahead, but is really small compared to the other two. There’s just 1 year’s difference between them, so it should be much closer in size.
We’ll see how they do this year. I keep saying we need to transplant them to a better location, but every time I talk about it with the girls, they are concerned that moving them would damage them too much. Considering how poorly they are doing now, I don’t see what difference that makes. For the length of time we’ve had them, we should be getting plenty of berries every year by now, but there’s just no possibility of proper cross pollination to happen.
Of course, I checked the bed with the peas, carrots and spinach planted. I think I might, maybe, possibly be seeing a carrot sprout or two, and there are no peas coming up yet, but we’re finally seeing spinach!
The garlic, meanwhile, is seeing an absolute growth spurt, in all the beds they are planted in!
Syndol was following me around this morning, and he is frustrating me to no end! He kept going into the garden beds as I was checking them. I’ll have to put something around the bed with the spinach to keep him out! We can’t put a cover back on it, because of the T posts set up inside, which will have netting set up for the peas to climb, later on. The tiny raised bed that has its own cover is closed at the ends, so cats can’t get inside. Instead, Syndol climbs on top and uses it like a hammock! He’s the only cat I’ve seen that does that, but I’m sure there are others. I have to put another support hoop in the middle, plus a cross piece at the top, because there’s no way we’ll be able to keep the cats from climbing it.
But not today.
Today, the focus is back on the sun room. First, the windows in the plant corner need to be cleaned, then the second light hung back up over where the makeshift table will be set up. After that, we can set up the plant table over the baby jail, and bring the cat beds and blankets back.
Washing those was quite the thing! We split them all into two loads, and both loads had to be washed twice. Actually, I think my daughter washed the second load a third time, during the night. The amount of debris that had to be cleaned out of the washing machine’s tub was rather shocking, too. Some of the bedding needed a lot of mashing and bashing, as the layers inside got all messed up and bunched up. There’s one large cat bed that was donated to use that I’ve just not been able to get flat and even again. I’m serious considering opening up a seam so I can reach inside and break up the filling. The cats hardly even use it, because gets so lumpy after being washed.
So that’s my main goal today. Getting the plant side of the sun room done. Then the tools and storage side can be worked on.
That side, I’m afraid, it probably going to have a lot more messes hidden among the stuff they’ve knocked about. Now that everything’s thawed out, there’s an unfortunate smell, and it has to be coming from somewhere on that side.
At least it’s got a concrete floor that makes it much easier to clean!
The Re-Farmer
I just finished doing my evening rounds – it is so gorgeous out there right now! – which gave me a chance to see how far my daughter got on the garden bed she was weeding.
Before I left this morning, she asked me which beds needed to be worked on, and if there were any surprised to watch out for, like fall plantings of some kind. I said no, we did the fall garlic in the old kitchen garden beds this year, and those were the only fall plantings we had.
The bed she started on is where we planted the Roma VF and Red Wethersfield onions, last year. The tomatoes ended up not very healthy, and seemed to get blight near the end, but the onions… they just disappeared. The seedlings I transplanted around the perimeter seemed to be doing well at first, and then they were gone. Not dug up. Just died away. So I definitely had plans for amending this bed, and we were most definitely not going to be planting tomatoes in it, again.
Imagine my surprise – and probably hers! – when I looked today and saw this.
All along the perimeter, Red Wethersfield onions are growing! There are so many crab grass rhizomes in there, my daughter has basically been digging them up and transplanting them.
I am totally amazed. Onions I thought had died off, with no evidence of them to be seen when that bed was harvested and the diseased looking tomato plants pulled for burning, had been there, all along, and survived the winter!
We started more Red Wethersfield onion seeds this year, too. I was going to give them one more try before giving up on them, at least for a few years. Now, it looks like we’re going to have plenty!
The bed is only about a quarter finished; it took my daughter a lot longer then usual, since she was both weeding and transplanting all the onions she was finding. Even through the crab grass growing around the edges, I can see more little onion bulbs pushing their way through!
Onions are biannual. Which means that these onions, if left alone, will go to seed, which we should be able to save.
What an awesome surprise!
The Re-Farmer
We had pre-germinated seeds ready to put into pots, but I was almost out of seed starting mix, so it’s a good thing I ended up doing a shop today.
Of the four Zucca melon seeds in the container, two were starting to germinate. With the Cream of Saskatchewan Watermelon, four out of five seeds germinated – and two were getting almost overdue for planting!
At first, I thought four of five Sarah’s Choice seeds had germinated, but it turned out the one of the seedlings had gotten big enough that it dropped its shell completely! So we’re five out of five on those.
As for the Pixie melons, I could see a couple of seeds starting to open up, but they are not at all ready yet. They, and the two remaining Zucca melon seeds are set aside now, to give them more time.
I was originally going to use one of the large celled trays for these but, at the last moment, I decided to use individual 4″ cardboard pots. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but I used a marker to label the pots directly, before filling them with pre-moistened seed starting mix. With some of the Sarah’s Choice seeds, the roots had grown between the layers of paper towel and spread quite a bit, so I tore the paper round them rather than risk damaging the roots by pulling them through. I now have all of the pots in a tray over the heat mat, with water on the bottom for the pots to absorb, rather than absorbing water from the premoistened growing medium.
As for the Summer of Melons blend, all the pre-germinated seeds but one have fully emerged.
We now have quite a lot of squash and melon seedlings going! Hopefully, they’ll all survive transplanting, but we have enough that we can afford a few losses. What was that poem again? Four seeds, all in a row; one for the blackbird, one for the crow; one to die and one to grow! Something like that.
I’m glad I got at least one gardening job done today, without making my messed up right arm any worse. 😁
The Re-Farmer
Today, I was able to finally get to that bed along the chain link fence, and get some potatoes planted!
I must say, though; it really was hitting home for me, how much I need higher raised beds. The narrower bed did mean I could reach across it just fine, but my goodness, the whole process was painful. It didn’t help that I was working during the hottest part of the day! We reached our expected high of 16C/61F, while the “feels like” was 21C/70F, at the time I finally got inside. I think I spent about 3 hours on the job, including hydration breaks. I was definitely not going to push myself in this heat.
Yeah, I can hear you folks from the south, giggling at me. 😉😉
Once I was done, I even remembered to take more painkillers before settling down at my computer to upload the video files I took. It doesn’t take long for the whole body to stiffen up, and I end up hobbling around looking in worse shape than my husband, even on his worst pain days!! 😄😄
I still prefer it over housework. I must say, it was great to come in when I saw done, to a house that smelled like cleaners instead of cats! 😁😁 My daughter is awesome.
I had fun putting this video together, including picking music that much better fits me and what I like.
There’s even bonus Syndol, being incredibly snuggly, while I sat in the shade to get some rest and hydration.
The 10 day forecast has changed, yet again. We went from expecting more rain and cooler temperatures to heat and mostly sunny. Tomorrow, we’re now supposed to reach 20C/68F! Which means I need to make sure to get to work on the other beds earlier in the day, before it starts getting too hot.
Which means I should probably get to bed before midnight, for a change!
I hope you enjoy the video!
The Re-Farmer
I left the Summer of Melon blend of seeds until evening before planting them. By then, the last few seeds were sending out their radicles!
I had to be careful with some of the bigger ones, and their roots has made their in between the layers of paper towel.
All 21 of them got planted into the larger cell trays we’re testing out this year. Even the last one that just started to germinate. While I made sure to plant the seeds so they were not completely buries in the seed starting mix, the vermiculite added to the top does hide most of them. Which should be fine. They’ll still get light, and it’s so light, it won’t hinder their growth at all.
To make room in the aquarium greenhouse, the last tray of Wild Bunch winter squash got moved into the mini greenhouse frame at the window, and the remaining containers of seeds set to pre-germinate were moved over to that side of the aquarium.
Getting the tray with the planted seeds in it is always a pain, though. These trays are a bit longer, and the aquarium has a support running across the middle. The tray needs to be carefully tilted to get it in. It means waiting until after it’s set up before adding water to the bottom tray. The freshly planted seeds did get misted with a spray bottle, after the vermiculite was added, and the seed starting mix was pre-moistened, too, but once it’s on the heat mat, things will dry out quickly. The smaller celled trays we used before – the ones designed for the small Jiffy pellets – had openings in two corners, where water would be poured through. These larger celled trays fit the same base trays, but are quite a bit taller. Normally, that gives space to add water to the base tray from the side, making use of the gaps between cells. That can’t be done with it set up in the aquarium, so I had to move the tray of cells off to the side, add water to the base, then put it back.
I need to find a better way to do that. We have a funnel that is long and flexible that we use to put drain cleaner/maintenance stuff into the washing machine drain pipe. I think that would be long enough to work. The next time I’m at Canadian Tire, I’ll see if I can find another one.
I might be planting more in the next couple of days, though! The watermelon seeds look like 4 out or 5 have germinated, and the Sarah’s Choice melon seeds just sort of exploded. None were germinating when I checked this morning, and now all 5 are sending out little radicles! Even the Zucca melon seeds look like they will soon germinate. Nothing on the Pixie melons yet, though. When it comes time to plant those, they can all go into another of the large celled trays that I have. If the 100% germination rate keeps up, that will be another 10 melons, 5 watermelons, plus the 4 Zucca. That will leave a couple of cells to spare, which will make it easier to keep track of them.
Oh!! While doing a quick search to get the link for the Zucca melon, I found an article about some people in the Canadian prairies, like us, that successfully grew them! That’s encouraging, considering we’ve had I think 2 … or is it 3? … failed years with them. Last year was the most successful, but the developing fruit all suddenly started to rot on the vine, and I don’t know why.
Well, we’ll see how they do this year. Hopefully, we’ll have 30-100 pound/14-45kg melons this year!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 