2025 garden

Our 2025 Garden: they’re alive!

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No surprise that last night’s low was colder than originally forecast. We dropped to at least 1C/34F, and probably hit 0C/32F.

It did make for a pretty morning, though!

The first two shots above were taken from the gate. The field across from us always looks so amazing when it’s foggy like this.

The third photo was taken from the main garden area. The sun through the trees at the edge of the property was so dramatic!

There was still frost visible in the shaded areas while I did my morning rounds.

The first shot was just some of the weeds and whatnot in where the area I’ve been slowly getting mowed. The second is of one of the Hopi Black Dye sunflower seed heads. That’s among the largest seed heads, too. This frost seems to have finally done them in.

*sigh*

The coldest part of the night tends to be around 6am, so it was still chilly while I did my rounds. I didn’t uncover the garden beds until the afternoon, when it was finally getting decently warm.

Warm enough to uncover the winter squash bed.

They survived!

In fact, they’re looking pretty darn good. In the next two photos, you can see some of the developing squash are actually getting bigger, too! I had some concern that the pollination didn’t take and they’d just wither away, but nope; we actually have winter squash trying to mature!

Tonight’s low is expected to be 10C/50F. Since the actual overnight lows have been trending lower than forecast, though, I’m still going to cover the beds again for tonight, and probably the next two nights as well. After that, the overnight lows are expected to stay above 10C/50F, so they should be okay without covers – except for the winter squash, which I will keep covering.

While planning on what we need to do around the yard over the next while, I checked the RM (Rural Municipality) website and found that we are no longer under any fire bans. That means we can use the fire pit, if we want. I’d like clean it out and reset the fire bricks we set up for the Dutch oven to stand on. These are larger fire bricks I found while cleaning up around the yard, not the ones we’ve been slowly stocking up on for when we build our outdoor kitchen. It’s been such a long time since we’ve used the fire pit. We also now have two Dutch ovens. There’s a traditional round one on three legs that we got a while back, and now we have a smaller, square one I got on clearance at Canadian Tire this summer. I’m hoping we can have a family gathering and cookout, probably in October, before things start getting too cold. My husband hasn’t seen his family in a long time because he couldn’t physically handle the trip to and from the city, plus the time for a visit, for the last family dinner we were invited to. Kinda scary to think his father, who is in assisted living, is probably more mobile than my husband is!

We’ll see what we can work out, as we get the place ready for whatever winter throws at us!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: cold damage

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I found myself staying up late very last night, which meant I was up to see what the weather was doing. So I was not at all surprised by what I found in the garden this morning.

The first picture in the above slideshow is the Arikara squash, which only recently had its first female flowers start to bloom. I’d wanted to grow these specifically to save seed, as it’s a rare variety.

Not going to happen this year.

Thankfully, I do have a few seeds left and can try again, next year.

The next two pictures are of some of the pumpkin plants. It’s a bit hard to tell in the photos, but the leaves are that darker colour they get from cold damage. In one of the pictures, you can see the leaves starting to droop, too. We do have the one pumpkin in its sling on the trellis. It does not appear to be frost damaged, but it might take a day or two before we can see for sure.

The next picture is of the summer squash, still under their covers. They actually seem okay, even though they aren’t completely covered. I did not try to check on the winter squash, under their plastic. They should be fine, and I don’t plan to uncover that bed at all today.

I didn’t uncover anything this morning. It was still too cold at the time. It’s not going to get much warmer, though, and now it is supposed to rain all day. From what I could see, the peppers held out fine under their sheet. So far, the eggplants do, too, but they tend to start dropping later on. It’s the plants at each end, that are the most exposed, and take the brunt of the cold. I’m hoping the jugs of hot water we set beside them helped, but it’ll be a while before we can tell, one way or the other.

Last night, I worked on getting the radish seeds out of their pods, which ended up taking a VERY long time. I stayed up a while longer to monitor the oven, so my daughters could go to bed. Which is why I was up to check the weather apps and get the screen captures in the next two images.

So much for a low of 4 or 5C/39 or 41F. We were expecting it to be colder, to be honest. We did end up hitting 0C/32F. There were no frost warnings.

I’m actually thinking of turning the furnace back up for today! I do have one of the heat lamps in the sun room turned on – the one with the 250F bulb, not the 150F lamp. It hangs above the space in front of the new cat cave, and the sun room littles have definitely figure out that this is a good spot to hang out! 😄

Our daytime highs are supposed to increase quite a bit, about half way through next week, and stay high for about 2 weeks. That will be the time to empty out and clean up the sun room for the winter, and do things like bring the isolation shelter back near the house, put the heat lamp back in and get it set up, so we just need to plug it in to the outdoor outlet there, as needed.

I am not looking forward to winter. My daughters love the colder weather. I can tolerate cold a lot more as I get older – it’s heat I’m having a harder time with now! – but I don’t like the season. Too many things that need protecting from the cold – including the house itself – and too many things that can go wrong that, in the summer, would be just an annoying but, in the winter, can be dangerous, or even deadly.

Having one of these sure would be nice.

One can dream!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: some final harvests, and we do still have a “hot house”!

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Today was definitely on the chilly side. Even overnight; apparently, we dropped to 3C/37F last night, which is colder than was forecast. I’m glad we got that plastic over the winter squash!

We’re supposed to drop to 4C/39F tonight, which means we can expect it to get colder. I never removed the plastic cover on the winter squash, though. We got rain last night, which means the squash didn’t get any natural watering, but I do have the soaker hose still set up with them. I rarely used it, as filling their collars with water several times was more efficient. Today, however, I lifted one corner of the cover, hooked up the hose, then covered it again, letting the soaker hose run for an hour.

We did reach our expected high of 12C/54F this afternoon, so the girls and I took advantage of it to get some final harvests done on some things.

I started off in the East garden beds, pulling most of the corn (I left some stalks just to have a bit of protection for the bush beans). There were very few cobs to harvest and, as you can see, they were very small. I did find some yellow bush beans to harvest, though, then later found a few of the Royal Burgundy in the main garden area.

The chocolate cherry had the most to pick green. There were a few Black Beauties and Sub Arctic Plenty to pick. These are now sitting near the window in the cat free zone (aka, the living room) to ripen.

I also picked as many dried super sugar snap pea pods as I could find, as well as the dried radish seed pods. The girls, meanwhile, pulled all the spoon tomatoes, then sat with the plants to pick up the ripest ones. That took long enough that I finished first, then joined them. We made sure to not have any little stems on them before adding them to the bowl. It’s a lot more difficult to get those off if they’re left for later! With the Spoon tomatoes, we did NOT harvest the green ones. They’re so tiny, it really wasn’t worth doing it. So those went into the compost with the vines.

I suspect we’re going to have another year of compost tomatoes next year, and that most of them will be Spoon tomatoes!

Later on, before covering the eggplant and peppers for the night, I harvested a couple of kohl rabi and Turkish Orange eggplant. I have no idea if the eggplant is right, but at this point, it’s unlikely the greener ones will finish ripening, even with protective covers. The plants were already drooping from last night’s cold, in spite of the cover and bottles of hot water to help keep them a bit warmer. I chose the two that looked the most orange, but the rest still have green on them. I don’t think eggplant is something you can pick and will ripen indoors, like tomatoes and peppers can.

The kohl rabi I picked are pretty small, and there are just a few left, but I wanted to snack on them. That bed is almost done.

While the day was chilly, it was quite warm in the portable greenhouse! We have kept the “door” rolled up for quite some time but, yesterday, my daughter unrolled it half way and pulled the zippers down.

The thermometer in there was reading over 30C/86F, late this afternoon!

I’d moved our succulents and coffee plant into there yesterday evening. I’m glad I remembered to, as they likely would not have survived the night, but they would be very happy with the heat they got today! I’m hoping to keep those outdoors as long as possible, as they seem to be doing much better than in our living room.

In the next photo, you can see our first male luffa flower starting to bloom. They fell off when I moved a leaf to get the picture, but there were ants climbing around the stem and base of the flower. Which means, pollinators are still getting into the greenhouse. I still plan to hand pollinate, should the opportunity arise.

My daughter and I were checking on it when we spotted our first female flower buds starting to form. No visible baby luffa yet, they were were too small, but we knew they were female flowers, and those form in singles, while the male flowers form in clusters.

As of now, we no longer have any tomatoes in the garden. There are still bush beans, which will probably be killed off by the cold tonight. I’m debating when to just pick the green peppers and bring them in. I’m really surprised by how well the summer squash is holding out. I don’t expect things like the pumpkins, melons, bush beans, the stalled pole beans or sunflowers to survive tonight’s cold, but you never know. Things like the remaining radish plants that still have greener pods on them, the root vegetables, kohl rabi, chard, and even the tiny onions we’ve got growing in the old kitchen garden, can handle frost. We harvested some herbs at the last minute but I haven’t covered that bed with anything. The basil probably won’t make it, but I think the other herds might. We shall see in the morning.

Meanwhile, I’m now going to find some suitable containers, set up something to watch, then start opening up those dried pods and collect their seeds!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: covered

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Well, I hope this works!

Setting the hoops over the winter squash bed worked. They’re taller than I would have liked, but they are held in place by stakes, not pushed into the ground, and in places, I could barely get the stakes pushed into the ground. Too many little rocks.

Thankfully, I had enough hoops and stakes for decent spacing. I still ran three lines of twine across, to keep the cover from caving inward too much. I removed the staked holding the boards along the sides. Those were there to keep the soil from eroding from the edges, but with the mulch there, and time, they’re not really needed for that anymore. Instead, I planned to use them to hold the cover in place.

My original intension had been to use mosquito netting, until I remembered I had picked up 10’x25′ medium weight plastic drop clothes specifically to fit over these beds. “Medium weight” is still very thin, unfortunately (you can see the package in the second photo of the slight show above).

Once the hoops were set, I left it until it was starting to get cooler before we covered all the beds that we are able to. We were able to fill six 4L/1 gallon water bottles with hot water, which is all the empties my husband had from his distilled water at the moment. All the others we had have already been cut to suit other uses in the garden.

Two of them went at each end of the row of eggplants, where they are the least protected by the too-short fabric we have for that. The peppers are planted more densely, so they are covered better.

The remaining four bottles of water were spaced out in between the winter squash before my daughter and I put the cover on. At 25 feet, it was more than long enough to cover the hoops on an 18′ bed. I’d hoped we could keep it folded in half, length wise, but at 5′ wide, it was too short to be able to secure it on the sides. We had to open it up completely, but that did give us more material to wrap around the boards up to the bases. It will certainly not be blowing away!

The down side is, kittens.

While we were covering the bed, Sir Robin and Grommet decided that we were making a lovely tunnel, just for them. After fishing them out and setting the plastic out on the ground, so the boards could be used to roll up the excess, Sir Robin started pouncing on the plastic and promptly made holes in it. Holes in a section that’s now wrapped around a board, but gosh, that didn’t take long!

One bonus in having plastic to cover this bed is that I could probably leave it there. We’re only supposed to reach 12C/54F tomorrow, and only 9C/48F the day after. We’re supposed to get rain a couple of times tonight, and they’re still saying we’ll be getting a low of 7C/45F, but the next night, they’re saying we’re dropping to 4C/39F. If we leave the plastic, or only partially lift it for watering, it should act as a greenhouse.

If the plastic survives the kittens!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: still blooming, ripe yet? and tiny harvest

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After the hot days we had recently, the 14C/57F we had when I headed out this morning felt cold! We were supposed to reach a high of 16C/61F, but that changed to 15C/59F, which is what we’re at right now, as I write this in the late afternoon.

We are supposed to drop to 7C/45F tonight, then down to 5C/41C tomorrow night. Which means we will want to cover the more cold intolerant plants.

Which are still blooming. In fact, some are blooming more than ever right now!

The pumpkin blossoms are huge!

All male. No female flower blooming.

Unlike the Arikara squash. We finally have a couple of female flowers blooming, but the male flowers that had bloomed have died off a while ago, so there is nothing to hand pollinate with.

The winter squash are also blooming. Male flowers again, as the female flowers are done, though I was (hopefully) able to use male flowers that had bloomed the day before to hand pollinate them. There was even some zucchini to hand pollinate, too. The White Scallop squash finally has a single flower blooming, but there’s no sign of any female flowers.

I think I have figured out how I can cover the winter squash bed. There are a surprising number of developing squash right now, considering this year’s growing conditions, and I want to give them the best chance of surviving. This bed was made narrower than the 4′ that was marked for when it gets a permanent frame around it, but I think the Pexx pipe I used to make hoops is flexible enough to be used. I’m thinking of covering them with the mosquito netting we have. It wouldn’t be enough to protect from an actual frost, but it should be enough to keep them insulated. Especially if we add a few jugs of hot water around the plants before putting the netting on.

That’s a project for this evening.

Both the eggplant and the peppers are still blooming, though I don’t think they are setting any more fruit. The Turkish Orange eggplant looks really intersting!

There are two photos in the slide show above. I’m not sure how to tell when they are ripe, but in the back of the second photo, there is one eggplant that is a very deep orange, so I’m thinking they need to be at least that dark. The cover we have for the eggplant isn’t long enough to cover the ends well, but I plan to include bottles of hot water at each end to give the most exposed plants at least some extra protection. The peppers will be fine.

I also picked a few Chocolate Cherry and Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes this morning.

We will probably have to pick the remaining unripe ones tonight, or maybe tomorrow, as we have no way to cover this bed. It already has netting around it. We just don’t have anything that will protect from cold that’s large enough to cover them.

Looking at the 10 day forecast, it looks like we’ll need to cover the beds every night for the next week, before overnight temperatures start warming up again. Enough time for little squash to mature? No. But who knows what the weather will actually do over the next while! The old average last frost day, which I’m still going by, is Sept. 10, but we might get cold enough to get frost on the 6th.

Well, whatever happens, happens. We’ll deal!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: late starts, and our largest harvest yet.

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With all the extra stuff that needed to be done yesterday, I did finally get to water the garden yesterday evening. The poor Turkish Orange eggplant were drooping so badly!

This morning, I made sure to give it another watering, before things got too hot – we’re supposed to break past 30C/86F, and the humidex will make it feel even hotter! Before I did, though, I checked on things and got a harvest done.

I’ve been hemming and hawing for a while now about the corn. Being a short season corn, with only 65 days to maturity, they should have been ready to harvest a while ago but – like everything else – they were way behind. In the process of taking a closer look, I found something else.

Our very first female Arikara squash flower buds. There had been only male flowers until now, but now that we’ve got some females about to bloom, there isn’t a male flower to be seen!

*sigh*

Today is the last day of August. We’ve got one more hot day, and then things are going to cool right down, with overnight temperatures low enough that we’ll need to cover some things.

While watering, I also spotted new female flowers on the Mashed Potato and Baked Potato squash. I’ll have to check them again this evening and see if they opened up and can be hand pollinated.

Why I bother, I have no idea. They won’t have enough time to mature, and they are in beds we won’t be able to cover.

Ah, well. You never know. It’s not like weather forecasts don’t constantly change!

I came prepared to do some harvesting, including stainless steel container for the Spoon tomatoes.

I decided to go ahead and harvest some of the corn. Since the stalks had one cob each, I pulled the entire stalk on the ones that looked ready enough. Handily, the beds are right next to the compost pile.

While I was picking beans and corn, I had company.

Sir Robin was absolutely fascinated by the reflections inside the stainless steel bowl and was busy trying to catch whatever he was seeing.

Then he… well… did this!

It turns out, he’s a perfect fit. 😄

In the next picture, you can see I got a whole bunch of tiny corn cobs. This is not a large cob variety of corn, but they should have been bigger than this. A few little ones had so few developed kernels on them, they weren’t work keeping. So I just ate them. 😄

It was SO nice to finally pick a decent amount of beans! Finally!

The one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato looks like it should have been picked earlier. I think the heat got to it a bit. There was a decent amount of chocolate cherry tomatoes to pick this time.

The carrots are from the bed that was sown in the spring, rather than the ones sown in the fall. With the Atomic Red ones, it’s still somewhat of a thinning by harvesting situation. The Uzbek Golden carrots were planted using home made seed tape, so spacing was not an issue.

I’m always amazed by the Royal Burgundy bush beans. We have only three surviving plants, and one of those got chomped by a deer. Yet even that one had beans to harvest today! The plants are still really prolific, considering how small they are and how delayed their growth has been.

It wasn’t until later, when I was watering the summer squash, that I realized I missed a zucchini! Just one, though I found a couple that I was able to hand pollinate.

I’m quite happy with this harvest. Sure, we’ve had better in previous years. A harvest like this was something I had picked every couple of days throughout the summer but, for how things have gone this year, this is pretty amazing!

Also, it took forever to pick all those little Spoon tomatoes. Aside from the plants being stunted and short this year, it was pretty painful to pick them from the low raised bed. It did help that I could put a foot on the log wall when I needed to, to take some of the pressure off. In theory, I should be squatting to pick them, but I can’t squat with the condition of my knees, so I’m having to bend over, instead.

Thankfully, I got the harvesting and watering done before it got too hot. The watering got interrupted for a while as I spent some time with my brother, going over my mother’s car. It’s going to need a new battery, and that tire was almost flat again. My brother will take care of a few things on it, and we will take care of emptying it out and getting it detailed, and then it’s going to be sold.

As much as it would be good to have a second vehicle again, we just don’t have the budget to insure and fuel two vehicles anymore – and I would really use the space the car it taking up in the garage! That addition was made to be a work/storage space. My mother’s car is just small enough to fit in there, as long as the passenger side it close enough to the wall, so the driver’s side door can be opened wide enough to squeeze out. I would rather store things like the lawn mowers, snow blowers and wood chipper in there, so that the other side they are stored in can be a work shop again. When I was building the cat isolation shelter, I had to keep our vehicle parked outside for months, so that I had the space to build in.

All in good time. There is no hurry, but it would be nice if we could sell it before the winter.

Winter is on my mind a lot these days, even when we’ve got heat like today!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: MI Gardener seed haul (video)

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Yes! They finally came in! My last two orders from MI Gardener. USPS tracking simply told me they had arrived at a facility in Canada. That’s it. Not even that it arrived as destination. Just… Canada. Somewhere. 😂

I picked the packages up before I headed to my doctor’s appointment, so it was some time before I was home and able to open them up. I went ahead and did a seed haul video as I got them out.

I just realized I goofed in the video. The first order of seeds I did was on July 8, and there were no sales when I placed that order. Then I placed an order on August 1st, for a 25% off sale. Then a 40% off sale started the next day, so I placed a third order. If you visit the links, you can read more about each item. Links will open in new tabs.

With that caveat, here is my seed haul video.

While the video was uploading, I headed outside for my evening rounds and checked out a few things.

The first image is the Jebousek lettuce in the bed that self seeded in the garden bed by the chain link fence that was basically destroyed by cats getting under the mesh cover. There will be plenty of seed to collect, soon.

The next two images are of ripening Turkish Orange eggplant. Whether we enjoy these or not, these are not something I will be growing again until we have a polytunnel or a greenhouse or something. They are way too sensitive to cooler temperatures!

In the last image, we have our FIRST luffa flower buds. These clusters are the male flowers. The female flowers have a single flower on the end of a teeny developing luffa gourd. Who knows. Inside the portable greenhouse, it might still have time to fully develop. Unlikely, but one can hope, right? 😁

While out there, I even managed to pick a small handful of purple bush beans.

We’ve been having a fair bit of rain in the last while, so I haven’t been watering the garden. When checking it last night, things looked a bit dry, so I figured I’d do some watering. With our Dark Grey Zone soil, overwatering isn’t really possible.

I couldn’t belief how dry things were! It really showed when I was filling the upside down plastic jugs by the summer squash, and the collars around the winter squash. It took a shockingly long time to fill them with water, it was draining into the thirsty soil so quickly. Almost faster than the hose could fill them! I refilled them two or three times before it finally started to drain more slowly.

It got dark before I could water the old kitchen garden, so I did that, this morning. It, too, was really dry.

They should be good for a while, though. We weren’t supposed to get any rain today, but as I was driving back from my appointment in the late afternoon, I drove into a wall of rain. It was coming down so hard that I was seriously considering pulling over to wait it out. It let up a bit, though, but as I drove the last couple of miles to home, I was fully expecting to get completely soaked while opening the gate.

But then, it was gone. When I reached the gate, had all but stopped. By the time I closed the gate up again and was heading for the house, the clouds parted and the sun came out!

The deluge was welcome, though. We still have a lot of wildfires right now. Most are in the “monitored” category, so nothing is being done about them for the moment. Some are listed as either “being held” or “under control”, with a few that are still listed as “out of control”. We are no longer under any alerts for air quality from the smoke, so that’s a good sign.

Tomorrow, I’m off again to the city for our Costco shopping trip. A good time to be doing it, as we’re going to be getting some really hot days coming up. Depending on which app I look at, we’ve got a couple of days that might even exceed 30C/86F! I’ll see if the garden will need watering in the morning; if it doesn’t, I’m pretty sure it’ll need it by evening! We might be watering twice a day again, if the forecast is accurate. By next week, though, it’s supposed to drop right down, and we’re supposed to get overnight lows of 5-6C/41-43F We’ll be covering some of the garden beds again, in that range. They’re no longer predicting overnight lows at or below freezing in the second week of September anymore, which is when we would typically expect first frost.

At this point, my focus is getting more on being ready for next year. There isn’t much more we can do about this year’s garden if the temperatures drop. Things are just too far behind.

Ah, well. We’ll see what happens when it happens!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: cold damage, and a morning harvest

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Last night, a daughter and I covered three areas in the garden.

I rigged a cage of sorts around the summer squash large enough to fit around the large leaves. Our covers are old sheets, and one was large enough to cover the summer squash, though nowhere near large enough to reach the ground. Which was okay, as we weren’t expecting actual frost.

The peppers and eggplant in the wattle weave garden all have their own wire tomato cages, so we just needed to use some clothespins to keep the covers from blowing away. The way the peppers are laid out in the shorter end of the L shaped bed allowed them to be covered more than the eggplant, which are in a longer row. The cloth was just barely long enough to reach from end to end. As a result, the first and last eggplants had less coverage, with one of them being at a more exposed end of the bed.

You can see there is some cold damage to the leaves.

Depending on what app I checked, we dropped to either 6C/43F or 5C/41F last night. It’s hard to say so soon, but it looks like the winter squash, which we have no way to cover, managed okay. In fact, just this evening, I spotted two female flowers in the Mashed Potato squash that I hand pollinated. I’m not sure why I’m bothering, but at least they’ll have a chance!

Our overnight temperatures are supposed to warm up for the next while, so we shouldn’t need to cover them again for some time. In fact, some of our daytime highs are supposed to get downright hot. By the second week of September, however, the long range forecast has changed again, and we’re not looking at dipping below freezing, right around our old average frost date. The new 30 year averages have been released, which suggested our growing season has actually increased by quite a bit, but I’m not counting on that. Based on the previous average frost dates, we’ve got a 99 day growing season, and I think that’s still the more accurate one. That’s the thing with averages. All it takes is one or two unusual years to shift things quite a bit, even if they’re now showing a range of dates, rather than a single date.

This morning, I harvested some potatoes and a few other things for a supper I was planning on.

The potatoes are what I found under a couple of plants. For all that the plants struggled this year and there isn’t a lot, we do have some really nice potatoes! I grabbed a couple more kohl rabi (not too many of those left now!), some Swiss Chard, thyme, oregano, sage and lemon balm, as well as some walking onion bulbils.

All of this, plus some carrots I still had in the fridge, a Sub Arctic Plenty tomato the family hadn’t eaten yet, an entire bulb of fresh garlic (about 6 large cloves), some stewing beef and chunks of sausage, got used to make an Instant Pot one pot meal.

I do like being able to set up either the Instant Pot or the Crockpot and just leave it. Today, it meant I could get a nap in! We’re a real messed up household right now. My husband’s dealing with a broken tooth on top of his constant back pain. My younger daughter had a rough night and has been caning it today – yet she still just came back from picking the Spoon tomatoes for me! My older daughter has been walloped by her PCOS again. I’m still dealing with a wonky hip, plus my injured left arm is still causing issues, but it’s starting to look like I’m the most able bodied person in the household again!

I had thought I could use the riding mower and mow the lawn today. After all the rain we’ve had, it actually needs it again. When I went to bed last night, the forecast was for sun and a few clouds for the next week. This morning, that changed to a light rain, pretty much all day! They’re still saying we’ll be getting sun with some clouds for at least a week, but who knows what we’ll actually get. I’m certainly not going to complain about more rain, though. We still need it so badly!

It does make things hard to plan around, though. There are things I’d like to get some work done on before I start making my monthly stock up shopping trips to the city, plus my follow up medical appointment about my arm, and so on. Things that need to be done when it’s dry, or at least not raining. I have this constant sense of running out of time.

Ah, well. It is what it is, and there’s only so much we can do. Having all four of us struggling with physical limitations at the time time, though, was not something I had ever expected when we moved out here, though!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: Morning harvest, and first zucchini!

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Another tiny harvest this morning, and we finally have a zucchini!

This is not actually our first zucchini, but it is the first one that made it to a size that could be harvested. The first zucchini I spotted withered away immediately, which means it wasn’t pollinated. I hand pollinated the one beside it and thought it was going to make it. When I saw the blossom end starting to turn yellow when it was just a couple of inches long, I knew it wasn’t going to last much longer. So I picked it, bit off the ends, and ate the middle, right in the garden. It was a two bite zucchini! 😄 This one was on a completely different plant; the only other one that’s been producing female flowers.

This morning has probably the most Royal Burgundy beans I’ve picked at once. There were no yellow bush beans to pick at all. What a difference from the first year we grew bush beans! The Royal Burgundy had the fewest seeds in the packet, but they were the most prolific of the three varieties we got in the pack we bought. That year was actually the most prolific of all, and I was finding bags of frozen beans in the freezer, two years later!

Hopefully, next year will be a better growing year. Personally, I think we’re looking at a shorter fall and longer winter, but I hope I’m wrong. I’m looking at the Old Farmer’s Almanac forecast for the prairies, and this is what they had to say about the upcoming fall.

The Prairies

The Prairie provinces can expect a warmer and wetter-than-normal autumn. September: Temperatures will average 12°C (1°C above normal), with around 45mm of precipitation—right on average. The first part of the month will bring isolated showers and a cool dip, but mid to late September will trend warmer with thunderstorms and lots of sunny, very warm days to close out the month. October: Temperatures rise even more to 8°C (2°C above normal), with 30mm of rain (5mm above average). Expect a warm, sunny start with light drizzle mid-month. Later, the west may see early flurries while the east has drizzle, before things warm up again near the end of October.

That would be nice, but I don’t think so. I still keep thinking about the garter snakes, already heading for their winter dens about a month early!

They don’t have a long range forecast for winter in Canada, yet.

The Farmer’s Almanac (not to be confused with the Old Farmer’s Almanac) does have a Canadian winter forecast. For the prairies, we’re told to expect this winter to be very cold with above average snowfall, whiteouts and blizzards. As usual, January and February are expected to be the worst hit.

*sigh*

Well, at least the snow will be a good insulator for anything I plant in the fall!

For now, I’ll just enjoy what we have. Which, today, has brought more off and on rain that wasn’t in yesterday’s forecast, and quite a lot of wind.

Eventually, I’ll be able to finish mowing that last overgrown section of the old garden area!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: August garden tour video

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I’ve been trying to take recordings on the same day every month – usually the 21st, as that’s usually the first day of spring. I did take recordings yesterday, but I waited too long and it was getting too dark, so some of the videos really sucked.

So I tried again this morning, and here we are! There has actually been a decent amount of growth since last month. Enjoy!

After doing my morning rounds, I made a small shopping trip to the nearer city – we were running lot on kibble again, so it was a good time to pick up a few other things we would run out of before our first stock up shopping trip next week. By the time I got home, we were getting hit with intermittent rain throughout the afternoon. Even a brief downpour that had me waiting things out in the garage until it was done!

In checking the basement, though, it really show how dry things have been. In the summer, the old basement, which has no weeping tile, can get very wet, and it’s not unusual to have pooling water that I sweep into the floor drain. Even the new basement has a corner that gets quite wet. The weeping tile drains past the floor drain into the septic tank, and we sometimes see flowing water in the floor drain from under the new basement. We keep blower fans and pedestal fans going to dry and keep things dry, and the sump pump gets quite a work out.

This summer, we have had some damp areas, but mostly it’s been in the corner where the well pump is, and that is from condensation. We haven’t been running the dehumidifier as, when I did get it going, it started making some rather unfortunate noises. It is very old, so we would be better off replacing it.

I checked the basements today, and even that corner is almost completely dry, with just one fan running. The floor drain is barely damp, so there’s pretty much nothing draining from the weeping tile under the new basement. This tells me that, while it’s been raining enough that I haven’t had to water the garden lately, the water table is still really low, and the ground is still really dry, in spite of the wonderful rain we’ve been having.

We’re not expecting rain here again for quite some time. What we are expecting, on Sunday night (two nights from now), is for the overnight temperatures to drop to 5C/41F. That wasn’t supposed to happen until the first week of September. Which means I want to at least cover the peppers and eggplant, and hopefully the summer squash, too. It’s supposed to warm up again, with very pleasant overnight temperatures, but all it takes is one cold night to kill the more tender plants.

Of course, the forecasts change so often, it might not be an issue – or it might get even colder than predicted.

We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess!

The Re-Farmer