2026 garden

Our 2026 Garden: Yellow Celery – I hope this works!

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Well, it was time.

The yellow celery (Golden Boy celery) had outgrown their tray. They needed potting up.

The question was, how to do that without damaging their roots?

That’s the down side of scatter sowing such tiny seeds. Especially when the germination rate was so high!

I decided the best way to do it was to set them into a seed snail roll.

As with the onions, I wanted to use potting soil rather than a soilless seed starting mix. That meant, more sifting. Which had its own challenge. Wearing a dust mask again was out of the question. I just can’t wear a mask anymore, and trying to last time was really awful. Yet not having some sort of protection was also out of the question because of how much dust sifting the dry potting soil would raise up.

My solution turned out to be pretty simple. The clear plastic garbage bag I use to protect my work surface is large enough to cover the entire bucket, and have enough slack that I could grip the handles of the colander I am using as a sifter and shake it. Yes, small amounts of dust did come out from below, but this was at floor level and it wasn’t an issue.

Before I started, I emptied the old, cracked tray I was using to collect the big pieces. This is what I got.

The depth of the soil barely reached my second knuckles. Meanwhile, just look at all those pieces that got sifted out! Totally insane. This bag was purchased last year, and I’ve heard that a lot of people were having the same issue. A few sticks is pretty normal, but nothing to this extent. It wasn’t even just one brand, either. Hopefully, the companies have gotten better at making sure their raw material is properly composted before bagging it up and sending it out!

That done, it was time to prepare the seedlings.

The first picture is the “before” shot. You can see how dense they are. The tray is bottom watered, and roots are showing out the opening. Roots that would be quite entangled. How to get the seedlings out and apart, then transplanted, gently?

In the second picture, you can see what I decided to do. I had a tray (a thoroughly cleaned and repurposed meat tray that we’ve had for a few years now) that was wider and flat. I carefully moved the whole clump over into the tray, then very gently started to loosen the seed starting mix to untangle and free up the roots a bit.

Then I got some hot water and thoroughly moistened the sifted soil. The seed starting mix the seedlings was in was really quite cold. Not good! I wanted to transplant them into soil that was at least a bit on the warm side.

I had prepared a strip of packing material – this time, using a clear repair tape I happen to have, instead of painters tape, to join three sections to make one long strip. I started out by laying a thin layer of soil over about 3/4 of the strip, as I wasn’t sure just how much of it I would need to use. Then it was time to VERY carefully and gently pull apart and set out the seedlings.

I was able to get all of them in, and did add more soil to the roll to fit them all.

The remaining seed starting mix got added to the bucket of sifted soil. I added more hot water and mixed it all up before adding another layer of soil to the roll; just enough to cover the roots.

Before rolling it, I added strips of masking tape to the end, so it just needed to be lifted into place, with the tape already handy to close up the roll.

With the two layers of soil in there, the result was a pretty thick roll. I could use the plastic underneath to hold the soil in at the bottom, but there wasn’t much that could be done at the top, and soil was falling out. Once it was taped closed and the roll set upright, I found a few seedlings had fallen out with the soil. I found some gaps and carefully set them back in. I then used some of the soil that fell out to fill in the top of the roll and support some of the seedlings that seemed to need it more.

Now, it’s back in the tray under the shop light. Both trays were empty of water, so I added warm water to the trays to maintain bottom watering.

While I was doing all this, I had the heater going. It’s aimed under the shelf I have the trays on. The thermometer is kept at the far end, and the temperature was only about 13C/55F. Holding my hand under the shelf, though, I could feel it was a lot warmer just under the trays. So I set up the thermometer next to the tray with the snail roll, which is at the far end from where the heater is.

The first picture shows the “potted up” celery back in their tray. After setting up and leaving the thermometer for a while, I got a reading, which you can see in the next photo above.

It’s just barely touching 25C/77F! This is great, as cold is the big issue here. The ambient temperature really should be about 20-24C/68-75F

Since the heat is under the trays, that will warm up any water that is in them which, in turn, will warm up the soil and seed starter mixes. Not by a lot, but enough to hopefully keep the chill off the roots. Plus, it will be better for the fresh pepper and eggplant seeds I sowed to hopefully replace the ones eaten by a mouse or whatever it was.

The hygrometer reading is low, though. Ideally, it should be between 50% and 60% – even 70% for some plants. Hopefully, the bottom watering and occasional misting helps counter the ambient humidity at least a bit.

The celery seedlings now have a nice deep roll to spread their roots into, so they should be good in there for a while.

Hopefully, they will survive this! I seem to remember that I used the entire packet of seeds for this, so there’s no trying again if they don’t make it.

Well, we shall see, soon enough, I guess!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: “potting up” the onions, and setting things up

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Okay, I got some good progress today!

My first goal was to “pot up” the onions in their seed snails. For this, I wanted to use potting soil, rather than more seed starting mix. I have a bag of potting soil from last year with plenty still left in it, but I knew it was really full of sticks. Which meant I needed to sift it, first, because there was no way it could be used in the snail rolls as it was.

I got out a bucket and a colander that I use for harvesting in the summer, and started sifting in batches. The potting soil was bone dry which made it easier to sift, but also meant there was a LOT of dust. Even misting with water didn’t really help much. I did try to use a dust mask, which is difficult all on its own, since I can’t wear masks anymore. It was either breathing dirt without it, or struggling to breathe with it. Definitely a no-win situation. It didn’t actually help much, to be honest, but it was better than nothing.

I was blown away by just how many sticks I sifted out.

That pile on the side? That’s what I sifted out of what you see in the bucket. I poked my finger in to measure, and it was up to my second joint, so about 2 inches deep. Good grief! It was almost more sticks than soil!

The next step was to moisten the sifted potting soil. I used hot water for that, so it wouldn’t be a shock to the plant roots. It took a remarkable amount of water to moisten it, and I was just aiming to get it wet enough to be able to stick to itself.

Then it was time to get the onions ready.

This is how they looked to start with. These rolls all fit into one bin, and the seedlings are looking pretty good.

The length of them did make unrolling the snail a bit of a challenge! They were tangled together, and wanted to twist around each other as I unrolled the snail.

In the first photo above, I unrolled the first seed snail. These were bottom watered, and you can see that the soil is moist all the way through, and the roots are all the way to the bottom. Some of them seemed a bit crowded, so I did adjust a few of them to space them out a bit. In the second picture, you can see where I’ve added the potting soil on top. From there, it got rolled up and taped closed again.

It was a lot bigger, of course. Only two could fit in the bin I was using, but I did have a second, slightly smaller one, available.

Here are the “potted up” onions. In the second picture, you can see that one of the snails is a lot smaller. That’s the bunching onions. It’s a good thing those didn’t need as much soil, because I was scraping the bucket to get every last bit out for that roll. I really didn’t want to have to sift more!

These are now back in the living room. They are the only things I have space for there, this year.

In order to do this, I had to completely clear my work table. That meant taking away the trays, lights, heat mats, and everything under and around them.

With the onions done, I could then arrange the work space to be ready for the next batch of seed starts. I have the top shelf from a plastic shelf that was too tall to fit in the old basement, and it was used last year to hold trays higher up. That’s what I am using it for again now.

My poor little peppers and eggplant.

Hopefully, the new seeds I sowed yesterday will germinate – and won’t get eaten! I had some concerns about not having heat mats under them anymore, but before I set up the shelf, I made sure to create a wall of cardboard around the back and at one end, then moved the heater so that it was blowing under the shelf. That made a big difference, and the warmth is kept under the shelf enough to warm the trays from below. Not that the heater is on all the time, but even when the furnace is on, now that the opening between the basements is uncovered again, there is heat blowing in and the cardboard, etc. holds it around the plants surprisingly well.

Which you can see better in this next picture.

The insulation leaning at one end it just there until it’s needed later; the cardboard forms a “wall” behind it, out of frame. I’ve got the flaps of the cardboard box under the back legs, so I had to put something under the front legs to level the shelf. Then I set up the insulation pieces, which protect the cutting mat from warping, and the heat mats, ready and waiting. With the seedlings so close to the shop light, the plant lights aren’t needed for now, so they’re just clamped to the table in the front. There is no place to clamp the lights to use them on top of the shelf, anyhow. Everything gets plugged into a power bar with USB ports that I have set up above my work table.

As for our next seed starts, I don’t think I’ll be using the seed trays again. They are all smaller seeds, and for the space, I think I will do more seed snails. I wouldn’t me making them as deep was what I used for the onions, though. More like a third of that height. I have lots of that packing foam available.

I need to remember, though: do not use painters tape to attach them together to make a longer strip. One of the onion rolls started to split at the tape while I was rolling it back up again. It doesn’t like moisture. I’ll have to see what alternatives we have.

That won’t be needed for another week or so.

For now, I’m just glad I don’t need to sift more of that potting soil for a while!!

The Re-Farmer

For those who want to winter sow

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For the gardeners out there – especially those who are still buried in snow, like I am – Gardening in Canada just came out with a new video on winter sowing.

The temperature fluctuations are so very typical for our region – and she’s farther north than we are!

We tried the winter sowing in jugs a few years ago, and it was a complete failure. This video covers a few of the reasons why. In our case, that year, they basically just froze, thanks to those fluctuations. That is why I tried the in ground winter sowing – sowing in the fall, before the ground froze, and mulching heavily. As an experiment, it worked quite well last year (not counting the beds destroyed by cats). These beds are now covered in deep snow, so they are well insulated from any temperature fluctuations. In the spring, once things warm up enough, I’ll remove the mulch so the ground can thaw out faster. Mulch will be returned once any seedlings are large enough.

Would I try this type of winter sowing again? Possibly, but unlikely. Perhaps a few years from now, we might have a better set up, and catch the right conditions. Hopefully, our direct sown beds will do well this year, too, because doing it that way is a real game changer.

Currently, I haven’t even tried to get at any of the garden beds, as that would require a fair bit of digging. The rectangular bed in the old kitchen garden has our cover with the strongest wire on it. I have a vinyl cover that fits over it. I used it last year to great greenhouse conditions, and I plan to do that again, once we can get access into that garden again.

Such are my thoughts this morning, as we have gone from 3 or 4C/37-39F yesterday, so a current temperature of -15C/5F, with a wind chill of -24C/-11F as I write this. Our high of the day is supposed to be -11C/12F. We’ll be warming up again over the next few days, then back down again. We’re not expected to see highs about freezing until 10 days from now, but of course, those longer range forecasts are constantly changing. Still, by the second half of March, we should start to more consistently see highs above freezing.

Today, I think I will putter around in the basement with our seedling set up. I need to “pot up” the snail rolls of onions, and make space for my next round of seed starts. I think I might end up doing more snail rolls. I didn’t plan to, but I think those might be easier to protect from the mice or whatever that’s been eating my pepper seedlings. I’ve resown new seeds in the now empty cells. Hopefully, they’ll take but, if not, I still have enough seeds left and they have a short enough growing season that I can try direct sowing in the spring. Hopefully, it won’t come to that. Meanwhile, the next seeds to be started indoors can wait a bit longer, though I can do some, like flowers, earlier if I want. I hope to interplant with more flowers this year, including the memorial aster seeds I collected in the fall.

With so much snow on the ground, yet spring just around the corner (we’re almost half way through March already!!!), a bit of garden therapy will be good for the soul.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: Noooo!!!!!

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Well, crud.

I checked on the seedlings in the basement today, and discovered carnage.

In the first picture, there were three seedlings – two that I’d planted after the first pre-germinated one. All three, gone.

In the second picture, you can see that one of the cells was dug into – and the stem of a seedling. There were actually two cells that had been dug into.

The third is what’s left in the tray. The row on the bottom is the Sweet Chocolate peppers. They were doing the best. All the cells had seedlings, with the “just in case” seeds sown later also emerging. The row of seven cells had at least ten seedlings, with hints of more emerging. Now, it’s down to two.

The California Wonder row, in the middle, didn’t do as well, but I did have four seedlings. Now there is just one.

The top row is the Caspar eggplant. There were three surviving seedlings, which seem to be untouched. Whatever ate the others doesn’t seem to like eggplant, I guess.

With the evidence of digging, it must be a mouse. There are a couple of ultrasonic mouse repellents plugged in, in both basements. They’ve been there longer than we have, so I’m guessing they aren’t working anymore.

*sigh*

The celery, herbs and luffa in the other tray are untouched.

About the only thing I can be glad of is that these are all short season varieties. In theory, I could even direct sow them. Not that I would expect that to work with our growing season, so I do want to try again, but how do I keep this from happening again?

We could set traps, of course. There are several live traps that are currently stored in the sun room. They’re not really accessible right now, though.

My daughter suggested the three of us find a way to get the big aquarium into the basement to use as a greenhouse again. A mouse can’t climb the glass, and it has wire mesh covers. The original problem remains, though: how to get it down the stairs. There is so little room at the bottom turn something of its dimensions. Not that we can access it, anyhow. We’ve got so many of my mother’s things shoved into the living room, safe from the cats, that we can’t access where the aquariums are, never mind carry the big aquarium, and the shelf that supports it, out. I was planning on getting some of my mother’s stuff out and into the storage house (which is already so full of my parents’ things) so that we could use the big aquarium to house the chicks, but that won’t be until the end of May.

So frustrating.

Meanwhile, our day changed completely. My doctor’s appointment was this afternoon. If the truck behaved and the road conditions were good, I would have gone on to do the Walmart shopping, after. My younger daughter’s appointment was on Monday, but she wanted to come with me as there was something she needed to get at Walmart.

Note, I said “was”.

We were expecting snow today, but when it started coming down, it was harder than expected. If we can see the snow and wind around the house like that, we know it’s a lot worse on the roads. It was early enough in the day that I called the clinic to cancel my appointment. We’re expecting a combination of rain and snow over the weekend, so I cancelled my daughter’s appointment on Monday, too. When I explained about road conditions, the receptionist I was talking to concurred. The clinic is about a 45 minute drive away, and it sounds like conditions were worse there, than here. I’ve certainly driven in worse conditions, but we’ve had so many issues in such a short time, I just didn’t want take the chance.

They are booking new appointments at four weeks right now, so I could have rebooked for the end of March. I told her, we’ll call to rebook closer to the end of March instead, to make the appointments in April. March being the sort of month that it is, I didn’t want to book appointments only to have to cancel them again due to weather.

So, we stayed home today. I ended up going back to bed. I got up again before noon, in enough pain that I could barely walk. I can’t say the nap helped that much, because I still feel ridiculously tired.

Ah, well. It is what it is.

I’ve got to figure something out to protect my seed starts.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: West Coast Seeds are in, plus an update

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Oh, goodness. What a morning.

I heard back from the garage when they checked their messages this morning (they don’t check while the shop is closed), and the mechanic agreed that it was likely a burnt fuse. I ended up talking to him on the phone and we made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon so they can look at it.

Then, I headed to the post office to finally pick up our packages. One of them was my West Coast Seeds order that came in almost two weeks ago!

Also, I’m an idiot.

I’m also short. Have I mentioned, I’m a bit on the short side?

Well, I didn’t open the garage door quite far enough. As I backed out of the garage, I hit the door. Broke the light above the box on the back of the cab. Just cracked the plastic, but still… What a doofus!

Our driveway may be mostly clear, but there is still that mix of hard packed tire tracks and softer snow on either side. The hard packed snow was already getting slippery – we have been warming up all night and were just a few degrees below freezing. Still, I got through all right and onto the road.

Where it started again.

That strange shuddering that wasn’t there when the mechanics test drove the truck before I took it home.

I was still on 4 wheel drive, as I needed it to get the truck unstuck, so I stopped and switched to 2 wheel drive. After that, it ran fine.

Then I saw the clock.

The time was wrong, but the clock was visible. I turned on the radio, and all the display information came on, as usual.

The console display is working again so, obviously, it’s not a burnt out fuse!

When I got to the post office, though, I confirmed that the warning dings for keys still in the ignition or headlights left on, that are supposed to start when the door is opened, didn’t.

I got our mail and a few groceries in the store, then headed home. As soon as I was settled, I sent a message to the garage, along with the picture of the broken light, asking what it would cost to get it fixed. Then I asked him to call me so I could tell him what was going on with the truck. I did add that it was NOT a burnt fuse, but maybe the ignition switch?

He called me back right away. I described what was happening, both with the shuddering back while on 4 wheel drive, and with the console display being on again, but not the warning dings that should go off when the door it opened.

He doesn’t think it’s the ignition switch, as he thinks that would cause other issues as well, but he will check it out.

He also asked how much we had left to pay off the truck. He knows we just can’t have this happening all the time, and we’ve already talked about trading the truck in a bit. We’ll see what happens when I get there, tomorrow.

I would really, really like to get our stock up shopping finally done!!

Meanwhile, I got to check out my new seeds and decided to make a short video of it.

You can also see how the seedlings are doing. Not the best. I’ve added “walls” around two sides of the trays to help keep the heat from the heater from blowing right past everything, and moved the thermometer to one end, away from the heater. I’ve actually seen that thermometer at 20C/68F since moving it closer to the trays! When I was doing the video, though, it was more like 17C/63F or so. It really should be closer to 24C/75C for the seedlings, but we just have no way to give them that. Still, I’m seeing more of the extra California Wonder bell pepper seeds I added, just in case, emerging. We’ve only got 3 surviving Caspar eggplants, but at 75 days to maturity, technically I could direct sow those.

There we have it, though. My little West Coast Seeds haul

I’m looking forward to trying these.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: morning seedling mystery

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With our seedlings starting in the basement, I make a point of checking on them at least twice a day. In the evening, I turn on the heater and spend some time down there, getting my steps in if I need to. The celery is doing particularly well, and I’ve been seeing new seedlings coming up, including from the “extra” seeds I added to the pre-germinated ones, just in case. There was one little eggplant seedling that had its seed case stuck on the tips of the seed leaves that I ended up very carefully removing and was surprised to see three seed leaves unfurl instead of two.

In other words, I’m keeping a close eye on things.

Which means I immediately noticed something wrong this morning.

The first picture in the slide show above is the seedling that had 3 seed leaves. You can see part of one of them nearby. The other two, and half the stem, are gone.

I tried to zoom the next picture in, but the stem of that Sweet Chocolate pepper is cut right to the surface. The next picture is also a Sweet Chocolate, while the last one is a California Wonder.

If these were outside, I would be thinking that insects got to them. But these are trays in my basement. One of my daughters suggested it might be mice. We do have at least one mouse in the ceiling of the addition – the skittering drives the cats nuts – but there has been zero evidence of mice in the basement. There was also no disturbance in the soil that a mouse would cause if it was moving around the top of the tray. Plus, these damaged seedlings are sort of all over the place on the tray, and it would be odd for a mouse to get just those ones and not, say, the entire tray.

So what on earth chomped on these seedlings???

Very strange!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: onion, eggplant and pepper seedlings, plus an update

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I got a little bit of garden therapy in, while checking on my seed starts.

I also remembered to get a picture of how the onions are doing in the seed snail experiment.

I’m actually debating whether it’s time to “pot up” the onions. That would involve unrolling the snails, adding more soil (at this stage, I would be using potting soil rather than seed starting mix), then rolling them back up into thicker snails. I made sure to have plenty of excess foam packing material being used here to accommodate extra thickness. I think I might wait a bit longer, though.

You might have noticed the tips of the onions look dry and shriveled. I think that’s from getting too close to the shop light before I raised it higher. Currently, they have the shop light on for part of the day, but for 12 hours on a timer, they are getting full spectrum light from the larger new lamp I picked up.

In the next couple of pictures, you can see new seedlings from the pre-germinated seed starts. Well… almost see! The row at the bottom of the picture is the Caspar Eggplant, and three seedlings have broken ground. In the middle is the Sweet Chocolate Pepper, and five seedlings have appeared, a couple just barely visible through the vermiculate. The top row is the California Wonder pepper. It took some searching, but I did see the curved stems of seedlings just barely visible through the vermiculite.

In the last picture, you can see the largest of the Sweet Chocolate peppers.

I turn the shop light on for part of the day for these, too, but they also have full spectrum lights on for 12 hours. I’ve got two lights fixtures with four light strips each, and I’ve got them set up so that five light strips are over the full tray, then three strips are over the celery and luffa in the other tray. The strips with the herbs I recently sowed are off to one end of the tray, closer to the heater that I have set up to blow warm air over both trays.

I have the full spectrum light strips quite close to the surfaces of the trays. As the seedlings get larger, I can raise each strip individually, as needed. Right now, for example, the container with the celery is lower than the Red Solo Cups the luffa are in (still just the one seedling in those), so it has its own light strip that’s lower than the two that are over the taller Red Solo Cups.

I’ve made a point of spending time in the basement to have the heater on. Usually, that’s my time to do my steps (I have a step counter on my phone), but I also go over my notes. I have lists of things based on how many weeks before last frost they should be started. What I have so far has been started early, based on a June 2 last frost date, though the newly revised average has our last frost date in a range of dates at the end of May, potentially adding as much as a week to our growing season.

Looking at the calendar, I made sure to write down when the next batches of seeds should be started, though I can get away with some, like the herbs and the marigolds, to be started early. Some of them are things that could be grown in pots indoors, and are more flexible. I am mightily resisting starting tomatoes! Those are next on the list but, if I were to go by calendar dates, they shouldn’t be started until the middle of March. Being short season varieties, I could theoretically wait even longer.

I don’ wanna wait that loooonnnggg!!! <insert childish whining> 😂🤣😂

Still, spending some time with the plants and thinking these things through, even for as little time as it was, was enough to make me feel better than I have been for much of today.

In other things, I phoned my mother today. In the TCU, she can’t have a phone in her room. I call the nursing station and they transfer me to a cordless phone that they take to the person being called. They tried transferring me four times before it finally worked!

My mother was very, very happy for the call, and said she had been thinking of calling me. I reminded her that, where she is now, it’s a long distance call.

She really wants a phone and was asking if we could get her a phone, like other people have. Meaning, a cell phone.

Now, there’s no way my mother can handle a Smartphone. She could barely handle the new phone my brother got for her at her apartment, to replace her old set, and it was actually simpler than the one she had before. Still more bells and whistles than desired, and things were in slightly different locations, and that was enough to give her a hard time. My brother tried so hard to find the simplest phone set – a corded phone with an answering machine, plus two cordless phones for her dining table and bedroom – that he could, but everything has bells and whistles these days.

I do know there are cell phones made for seniors out there, so I plan to do some research later today and see what’s available here in Canada.

I explained to her that she would have to buy a phone and have a monthly phone bill. Her response was, she has money that’s just sitting in the bank, not doing anything, so she doesn’t mind using it. She currently has no idea what’s going on with her banking right now, as my brother is taking care of it for her. None of us have tried to explain to her that the hospital back dated their billing for her stay there, which was charged daily. Plus, her rent for February was taken out, but as my brother explained my mother’s situation and why he wasn’t able to give them a month’s notice, it will be refunded. Until then, she’s being double billed for the month, which she would not be able to understand and would freak out over if we tried to explain it to her. My brother is the best person to be taking care of all this for her, and I assured he, even though he’s still out of the country, he’s on top of all this and taking care of things for her.

Then I told her that I had going to mass yesterday, where prayers were said for her health, which she was very happy to hear about. I then told her I had been on the way to visit her when something went wrong with the truck, and I had to get a tow truck. She immediately said, I need a new vehicle. *sigh* As if we don’t know that! So I told her about my BIL driving me home in his truck, and that he was planning on selling it in the summer. If we can come up with $5000 by then, we will buy it from him. It took a while before I realized she didn’t know who I was talking about at first, so I said my BIL’s name again. Oh! You mean… and then she said his Polish name (his family are also from Poland). 😄 So she was pretty keen on the idea of our getting a truck from him.

We talked about a bunch of other stuff for a while. She’s not liking where she is right now, and I can’t blame her one bit. Not only is she now in a smaller room that’s being shared with someone else, it’s very close to the nursing station, which is right next to the entry doors. Lots of traffic, lots of noise. I explained to her that everyone else there is waiting to go somewhere else, like she is. Her response was, I don’t care about anyone else. I just care about me. *sigh* I said it meant that she would be seeing a lot of changes in who is there with her. She is doing a lot better, as far as care needed, than many others and that’s part of the problem; people with higher needs are going to get beds in nursing homes faster than her, typically. I reminded her that, when it came to nursing home spaces, we’re basically waiting for people to die, as that’s pretty much the only way beds get freed up. She thought that we could talk to people about getting her into a nursing home faster, because where she is is not good for her health. I told her, where she is now is the first step, but in the end, it’s the ultimately the provincial government that decides. So she said we should tell them to build an addition to the nursing home she wants to live in.

…

*sigh*

I didn’t even try to explain. Our province certainly needs more beds for long term care and assisted living, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before that happens.

Our conversation went all over, and she gave me messages to pass on to my siblings. I mentioned again that it’s long distance for me to call her now, but not for my sister. She was all surprised by that (not sure why; my sister lives only 15 minutes away, at most) and started saying my sister should phone her more often! She’s not understanding that it’s harder to do that through the nursing station where she is than how it was before. Then she wanted to know when I would be visiting her next. I reminded her, the truck was at the garage and we have no idea how long it will be, before we have transportation again.

Oh, so you want me to give you money for the truck now?

?????

I said no, I was just letting you know that it might be a while before I can visit and why. That’s all!

I can give you a check…

????!!!

I told her again, I wasn’t wanting anything like that. I was just letting her know why I might not be able to visit anytime soon, but we just don’t know right now.

But the money is just sitting there, not doing anything… I can write a check.

???!!!

Finally I deflected and said, we can talk about it the next time I visit. She happily agreed with that and we dropped it.

I wasn’t going to ask, but I’m not sure if she was offering to pay for the repairs, or to give us funds to buy the truck from my BIL! I fully expect her to forget about it long before I’m able to visit her again, and I will certainly not bring it up again! The offer was totally out of the blue and not at all what I meant by telling her about the truck. That’s the sort of thing our vandal was constantly doing to her and my late father for many years, which might be why she thought that, by telling her about the truck, I was actually asking her for money. I do appreciate the offer, but I will not ask or bring it up again.

Over all, for all that my mother is not liking where she is, she did sound happy. Even when, at one point, she started rather playfully referring to herself as an “orphan” for being there. She told me to make sure to pass that on to my sister, so she will call and visit more often. 😁

I really hope my mother isn’t there for very long. Still, it’s the first step to getting her where she wants to be, at least.

Meanwhile, I’ve got my homework assignment, and will start seeing if there is some sort of phone out there that will work for her and where she is. That won’t be easy!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: starting tarragon and summer savory

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I had been thinking to start more seeds tomorrow, but I expect to be out and about and decided to just go ahead and do some today.

There are flowers and herbs that can be started in February in our climate, but I had only four in mind. After reading more on what the flowers – cosmos and hollyhock – needed to be started indoors, I decided to hold off on them. Instead, I went through two of my herb seeds that needed the longest start up time before our last frost date. Russian Tarragon and Summer Savory.

The seeds for both are very tiny and would have been ideal for the seed starting kits I got a couple of years ago. The cells are quite small and there is a USB powered full spectrum light disc for each dome.

I couldn’t find it.

It had all been stored in the original box in the sun room, but the sun room got completely emptied and cleaned out in the fall. I thought I’d put it in one of the storage shelves or one of the storage bins, but I couldn’t see it anywhere. I didn’t pull the bins out completely to look, as that would require far too many cat-blocking things to be moved out of the way, but they are semi-transparent, and I couldn’t see anything through the sides. It’s possible the box was buried in one but, for the size of it, it is highly unlikely it was in one of the bins and I wouldn’t see it.

I also didn’t want to use my new 72 cell tray for just two items. In the end, I grabbed a biodegradable seed starting strip I had left from previous years. It had two rows of five cells that I separated.

The drain tray with the cardboard buffer between it and the heat mat had space available, so I removed the buffer. The strips got filled with seed starting mix pre-moistened with hot water – which cooled down fast, but was still warm by the time the seeds were sown. With their tiny size, I scattered tiny pinches of seeds over the surface, then topped them with vermiculate. I keep a smaller amount of vermiculate handy in a covered container I refill as needed. Over time, a vermiculite dust has started to accumulate, and I tried to use more of that, rather than all larger chunks.

I also made sure the drain tray had water in it for the peat cells to absorb. One of the issues with the biodegradable pots and seed strips is that, as they dry, they tend to suck the moisture out of the growing medium inside. I try to keep them moist through bottom watering to prevent that. It does mean they become pretty fragile and difficult to move around, but that’s something I can work around.

Without the cardboard buffer over the heat mat, I wanted to have some sort of buffer for the things that are already germinated – the celery and the one luffa, in this tray. Something that wouldn’t disintegrate in the drain tray’s water. You can see in the photo that I put a piece of rigid insulation under the celery, but I was not happy with that, as it prevents bottom watering. I ended up rearranging things so the celery was on the far side, with the one sprouted luffa beside it, and then put a carboard buffer under the heat mat only on that side. That helped to push the water in the drain tray more towards the biodegradable strips, which will help them retain moisture longer.

Over the next few weeks, there will be more herbs started, plus there are some that I intend to buy as transplants rather than try to start them from seed, myself. We’ll see if the thyme, sage and oregano from last year were mulched well enough to survive the winter. Little by little, the old kitchen garden will be mostly herbs with a few vegetables, rather than mostly vegetables with a few herbs. 😁

The hard part for me will be not starting too many of any one variety! It’s always good to sow extra and then thin the seedlings, but I have this terrible habit of repotting the “spares”, because they’re usually all really strong and healthy looking! 😄

My biggest concern is having to use the basement for all this. It’s just too cold down there! Granted, the temperature is very steady, but the ambient temperature should be about 20-24C/68-75F, not 13-15C/55-59F. Even if we were using the living room, like we’ve done in the past, it’s only a couple of degrees warmer, but at least we could use the aquariums as greenhouses to keep a controlled area at a better temperature until things got large enough to handle being moved out.

Aside from not being able to safely move the tanks to the basement, we have got to figure out what to do with all the “stuff” that’s being stored in the “cat free zone”. We can barely move around in the living room anymore. Some things will be moved into the storage house, but they still have to be gone through, first, and the storage house is where my mother’s furniture went, so it’s got barely any room left – and I have very strict instructions, not to throw anything out!

*sigh*

One thing about gardening, starting seeds and planning it all out. It is a healthy distraction from the other stuff and keeps me from feeling overwhelmed!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: new seed starting set up

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Well, I got one package at the mail.

I’m glad I didn’t decide to just wait until the post office reopened in the afternoon. I forgot today is Wednesday. The store the post office is in closes at noon, every Wednesday, for inventory.

I was expecting the chicken coop to come in several large boxes, but there was only one small box. Only one package slip in my mail box. No coop. There was no “attempted delivery” this morning at all.

Hmmm.

Something to look up when I got home, and after I checked out my new stuff.

This is what I got.

Two new heat mats, two 4 light clamp lamps and one 5 light tripod pedestal lamp, with full spectrum lighting.

This gave me a chance to do a few things all at once.

Right now, my work table is covered with a gain self-healing cutting mat my darling husband got for me some time ago. Unfortunately, the heat mats make it warp. So I cut some pieces of half inch rigid insulation to size, to go under the heat mats.

The heat mat with the germinated plants in it got a piece of carboard between the mat and the tray as a buffer. Normally, I would stop using a heat mat as soon as the seeds germinated, but it’s so chilly in the basement, that’s not really an option. Especially since I will no longer use a light fixture that puts off a small amount of heat. The buffer will keep the seed starting mix warm, but not too warm.

The large celled tray now has a new heat mat under it. I’ve filled the last empty cells with seeds that were set to pre-germinate, even though they were not germinated yet. Then, just in case, I added a couple of fresh seeds into each cell. I did actually see a single Caspar eggplant starting to break through the surface, but nothing in any of the other cells. It’s entirely possible the seed starting mix, not being on a heat mate, but getting some heat from above, was too cold.

I also added new luffa seeds to the three Red Solo cups where nothing has shown yet, including the one where I couldn’t find the pre-germinated seed at all.

The new lights have a controller with several settings. There are five brightness settings – I put them at the highest. They can also adjust from red, blue or white light, or all three. I have it on all three. It can also be set to shut itself off after 6, 12 or 16 hours. I set it to 12 hours. Each lamp also came with an adapter, so they can be plugged in as usual, or can have USB. I have a power bar hanging above that has a couple of USB slots in it, so I decided to use that.

The only problem is that these are clamp lamps, and cannot stand on their own. Which means I had to move the tray set up to the front of the table for the lights to reach. Only at the front of the able is the surface narrow enough for the clamps. This worktable has a sheet of plywood on top of a narrower table top. The ends are too thick for the clamps.

With a full tray of cells, plus a second tray that’s only partially full, I set things up so that the full tray has five lights over it, and the other has only three.

I’ve still left the shop light above on. That light is manual, so I’ll need to shut it off and on, but that’s okay.

I am looking to pick up more seed starting mix when we are out and about tomorrow then, either on Friday or the weekend, I’ll start more seeds. Specifically, I’ll be starting herbs.

The tall light fixture will be set up in the living room. The onions in their seed snail rolls are getting plenty of light, with the shop light lowered to their level, but the other plants around them could really use better light! That room gets the morning light, and that’s it. It’s pretty dim, the rest of the day. We don’t have a lot of plants anymore, after repotting and donating most of them to the large animal rescue that took Poirot’s orphan kittens last summer. That, at least, will make it easier to give them proper lighting with this new lamp.

The lights themselves were very reasonably priced. The smaller lamps were under $25 each. It was actually cheaper for me to buy as a quantity of two separately, than to buy a single 2pk, which is weird. The larger lamp was under $40, regular price, and I got that one on a 10% off sale.

That done, I went looking to see what happened with that coop delivery.

Now, when placing the order, I was really surprised that would be delivered by Canada Post. When checking the tracking for the two packages I was expecting, they were the same. They even went through the same delivery depots at the same time, though the lights were ordered several days before the coop was.

Any time an order arrived, the trackers say “delivery attempted”. Of course, no delivery is attempted at all. The packages are just left at the post office for us to pick up with the regular mail.

Today, however, the coop’s tracking now said “undeliverable” and “location unknown”.

It also said, Fed Ex.

*sigh*

If I’d known is was going to be Fed Ex, I would have used our physical address. They have actually found us and delivered to us before.

I tried using the “contact shipper” link on Amazon, which took me to a page with a list of delivery companies.

None of them, Fed Ex.

So I went to their website and eventually found a customer service number to call.

After going through the robot sentinel, I actually got to talk to a real human being! Not only that, but he was awesome!

I gave him our physical address, including both the name and the numerical designation for our road. He put me on hold to work on it, then had to come back to ask more confirming questions. I told him, our address doesn’t exist on Google maps. He did, however, find a road with the numerical designation – but under the name of our municipality, not our little hamlet. So I had to explain that that section of road ends at a crossroad, then restarts a short distance off before continuing for several miles. It’s those several miles that are the empty void in the map, and we are in the void. In the end, he was able to take directions and instructions on how to get to us, and how to find our driveway – with the warning that if they miss our driveway, they’re not going to find the next one to turn around in for another mile. I also told him about the sign we have, with our physical address on it, and arrows pointing the way, at the turn off. Because we’ve had this problem before!

We had a lot of laughs while working this out.

I asked if they would be delivering tomorrow, and he said it was very likely. So I told him, I’ll be out for most of the day, though there will be someone home. I let him know we would leave the gate open, and the garage, and the package can be delivered into the garage. I don’t know how many boxes this is going to go into, but it’s warm enough that I don’t mind not parking the truck all the way into the garage, so make room for the boxes.

We will need to figure out where to assemble the coop. It needs to be relatively close to the house, on level ground, and in an area that doesn’t get flooded out in spring melt. Wherever we decide to set it up, we’ll probably have to level the ground. We really don’t have level ground anywhere!

On the plus side, this is a relatively small coop. It would be easy to move, if we ever need to. It could even get set up in the main garden area, where we can let the chickens help prepare the soil for us, where more raised beds are going to be built. The coops is just under 4′ wide, and just over 6′ long. The raised beds we will be building in the main garden area will all be 4′ x 18′. It could be set up where a new bed is planned and either moved 6′ every few weeks, or an extended run could be built to cover the 18′. I’ve got enough chicken wire for that. I’d just need to find the materials to frame it out. The coop design I got has the eggs boxes and roosts above and an open run below, with wire mesh walls. It would be easy to make a door to access an extended run. The only hitch is that access to the nesting boxes are at the ends, so a run on the end would make it harder to reach.

Hmmm… Things to think about.

We’ll have snow on the ground for quite a while yet, though, so there’s plenty of time to figure it out.

The Re-Farmer