2026 garden

Our 2026 garden: planting carrots and cucumbers, trellis added, and food forest progress

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Well, my day of rest yesterday, such as it was, is done and today, I got some work done in the garden.

The first thing I wanted to do was plant thew carrot seed tape I’d picked up. These went into the trellis bed, next to the Rainbow Mix carrots.

The boards that had been used to protect the Rainbow Mix carrots until they germinated were simply set aside in the bed when they were no longer needed. The first task was to move those off and remove the leaf mulch that was under it. The whole bed got a weeding, and I used a garden stake to make a planting furrow, then used the jet setting on the hose to break up any lumpy bits of soil and saturate the furrow.

The carrots I chose were Scarlet Nantes; a basic orange carrot. I didn’t clue in that the seed tape was perforated and designed to be split into two lengths to total 15 feet, until I’d already set down two or three feet into the prepared furrow. I broke it off, split the roll and finished off laying it down. The result was a few feet short of the furrow I’d made, but that’s okay. It meant the three boards I had were more than long enough to cover the entire planted area – after it got one more watering.

There was a small section available along where the peas were planted, as I ran out of this variety of peas before I could fill the entire row.

I was going to try planting the short season luffa there, but I simply could not find the package. I know I had some left after direct sowing them in the bed against the chain link fence. I know I even saw them the last time I was going through my seed bins. Today, however, I could not find them anywhere.

I’ve had several packets of seeds, including seeds I’d saved myself, disappear, and I’m at a total loss as to where they might be!

So I picked the Eureka cucumber, which is a dual purpose cucumber. I’ve got some in the seed tray, replanting after the tray was decimated. Pretty much nothing is germinated out of the second sowing. I’m hoping this location, which gets quite a lot of sun, will do better. They are older seeds, though, so I don’t expect a high germination rate.

That done, I needed to set up trellis netting for the peas, and this time I wanted to attach permanent horizontal supports. Before I started on that, I moved off almost all the pieces of wood and boards weighing down the cardboard to the far end of the cardboard covered area. That is covering what will be a path and the matching garden bed. I didn’t want to trip over any of the weights. Later on, I think I’ll see of the large tarp I had is the right size to cover the entire space. The cardboard has formed gaps in the high winds we get, so it’s not quite killing off everything underneath it anymore.

I salvaged lengths that were used in the old squash tunnel we built long ago. It’s still standing, though bits and pieces of it have been repurposed over the years.

I dug out eight lengths, roughly 5 feet long, though a couple were shorter, to use as horizontal supports. The spaces between the vertical supports for what will be a trellis tunnel after the matching bed gets built are a little less than 4 1/2 feet apart. It’s variable, due to the different thicknesses of the verticals. That meant there was an overlap with most of the horizontal lengths. Only one of them ended up being just barely long enough.

Each length was tied in place first, just to hold it until I could screw the ends in to the vertical supports, alternating setting each horizontal length above or below the previous one. The northernmost vertical post has a tendency to lean inwards, so I made sure it was pushed into position before screwing in the horizontal support, to hold it in place.

One the horizontals were secured, I got out a couple of nets with 4″ squares for the peas to climb. One of them reaches roughly 3/4 the length of the bed. After the first one was set in place, with the bottom pegged into place near the bottoms of the row of peas and the new planting of cucumbers, I started the second net from the opposite end of the bed to fill in the space, and overlapped the rest.

It was a pain in the butt to get the netting to stay at the top horizontal support, while I set the bottom half at an angle to secure it to the bottom horizontal supports, trying to make it as snug and straight as it would go, using ground staples on the base. I had some length of a sort of plastic cordage salvaged from last year, that I used to secure the bottom half of the netting at an angle from the base of the wire “fence” the peas are currently attached to – literally – to the bottom horizontal supports, making sure to match the squares of the overlapping sections of netting as close as I could. Then the top half got secured to the higher horizontal support. I wasn’t as concerned about that part, since the peas are unlikely to get that tall.

Last of all, to “train” the peas to attach themselves to the trills, it was just a matter of tipping the wire fencing towards the trellis slightly. Some of the peas are tall enough, they mostly just sort of fell towards the trellis netting and will soon start climbing that.

The next thing I wanted to get done was work around the plum, gooseberry, apple and haskap. The chicken wire around the plum tree needed to be removed, and the entire area weed trimmed and cleaned up.

Before I started on that, though, I salvaged the last section of wire on the old squash tunnel to use, as it’s quite a bit longer than what was around the plum.

You can see the chicken wire in the first two images above, before I started pulling supports out and using the weed trimmer.

You can see how the row looked after the weed trimming in the third image. After that, I went ahead and removed the tomato cage fencing around the gooseberry and apple. I left the wire tomato cages over the haskap.

I was considering a few things to do for the area and decided to use the chicken wire to fence off as much as I could. I brought a bundle of bamboo stakes to support the wire. The ground is too hard to drive the bamboo stakes in, so I used on of the metal supports that I’d removed from around the apple tree to make a hole in the soil first – they have handy points on their ends – before I could push the bamboo into the holes and in solid.

I ended up using both lengths of salvaged chicken wire. The two together was just long enough to go around the plum, apple and gooseberry, with openings on either side of the cracked rain barrel. There’s enough space that I could get inside without too much trouble, and I hope no deer will notice the gap and squeeze it’s way in! Later on, I plan to set a couple of brightly coloured rope between the bamboo stakes to further discourage the deer. So far, the wire tomato cages will continue to be enough to protect the haskap.

I had two very thin bamboo stakes left from the bundle, so I wove them through the wire at the top. These will help keep the verticals in place, as well as provide support for the chicken wire in a space the hose goes over, when it’s time to water the trees.

Hopefully, this will keep the deer from getting to, and chomping, the greenery!

Once everything was cleaned up around this area, I took advantage of having the weed trimmer out and finally got to clearing around the old crab apple stumps, and the live trees as well. My brother had come over while I was working on the trellis bed, pruning away the low hanging branches. One of them had hit my SIL in the face while she was mowing. He cleared so many branches, he ended up attaching their little trailer to their zero turn mower and using that to remove the branches and set them on one of the branch piles near the fire pit. He even trimmed a low hanging maple in another area that was starting to hang lower and lower, getting in the way even when just walking.

The old stumps had been buried in tall grass when my SIL decided to mow along there, and she ended up hitting one of them because she hadn’t seen it. Once the branches were cut away, my brother used his zero turn mower to mow closer to the trunks, now that it could be done. He got a lot closer to the trees than he was able to get to the stumps! I got the weed trimmer to clear to bare earth around the trees and stumps, pausing to cut away some suckers that were trying to grow back along one of the stumps. I was on my second battery by then, and was able to do most of the spaces between the silver buffalo berry as well before it died. My brother had used the weed trimmer earlier in the day and the battery he’d used wasn’t recharge yet, so I was done with weed trimming for the day!

That done, I popped inside for supper, then headed back out to water the garden. I got some water soluble fertilizer in the hose attachment to fertilize and water at the same time. I’m hoping that will help the weaker plants that are struggling a bit from the cold nights we’ve been having. I’d set the hose up to the leaking rain barrel where I’d just fenced things off, so I was able to water the food forest trees, too. I didn’t have the energy left to do the nut trees in the outer yard, though.

While I was watering, my brother messaged me with a link from Amazon to a solar powered critter scarer. We’ve been messaging as I was working on this post – I’d need at least four of them! My brother has ordered one, and I’ve ordered one. Within the next couple of weeks, we should have at least one in to test out. They are triggered with motion sensors to flash lights and make 14 different pre-recorded noises to scare animals, or you can record your own sounds. I’m not sure I like the idea of having super loud sounds of things like dogs barking or gunshots coming out of our garden in the night, though! Still, it’s worth a try if it’ll keep my garden and fruit trees from being eaten by critters!

All in all, I am happy with how much I got done today, and the trellis bed now finally has permanent horizontal supports attached to the vertical posts. Eventually, I’ll be adding one long piece across the top, but that’s going to require trimming the tops of the vertical supports to match heights, and for that I’ll need to set up our little scaffolding to reach. I’ll need to snag a daughter to give me a hand, too.

All in good time.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: peas, beans and summer squash

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Today was a combination of direct sowing and clean up in the garden. I’d gone out earlier to do finally clean up the cat mess in the dirt floor of the garage around my mother’s car, only to get rained on, which was fine. It meant I didn’t need to water, and we didn’t get the thunderstorms other areas were getting warnings for.

After the rains were done, I headed out again. First up was the newly reclaimed square raised bed.

I found I was able to lift the netting and secure it to itself with the ground staples to work under it. The netting was still a bit in the way, but nothing I couldn’t work around.

I set a collar in the middle of the bed, where I hope to transplant a winter squash at some point, but the beans went around the perimeter. I didn’t soak them first, so I made sure the furrow was thoroughly watered, and then watered some more. There weren’t a lot of seeds in the packet, having already used some in the high raised bed, but it’s a small bed so I ended up not using all of it.

Next, I decided to sow the super sugar snap peas I’d saved last year, in the remaining third of the chain link fence bed.

In the first image above, you can see how the elm seeds are germinating like crazy. I broke up the unplanted area, weeding out as many of the elm seedlings as I could, then gave a thorough watering before planting the peas. In this bed, there are two protective collars that were set up but never got anything planted in them, left for open space. The cold nights we’ve been having seems to have done in some of the melons and one of the winter squash, and none of the short season luffa have germinated, even with the protective collars. I’ll give it a bit more time before I decide if I will plant in those spaces again.

The next area to work on was the summer squash bed.

I had considered removing the protective collars but decided against it. I did move them off while weeding and thinning, but put them back again. I also ended up thinning by transplanting for the most part, shoving the thinned out seedlings in empty spaces in the wattle weave bed and in some of the retaining wall blocks that were empty.

Once the protective collars were all back in place, I grabbed straw and heavily mulched around them. Hopefully, it will be enough to keep the weeds from returning.

The next area to work on was the wattle weave bed. The netting I’d put over there originally had to be removed. At first, it would out fine, using the dollar store netting with channels to hold wire supports that I had replaced with my first hoop kit with fiberglass rods and plastic connectors. After a while, though, it got too low. The cats kept using it as a hammock, and the hoops were getting pushed lower and lower into the soil. I reset the hoops, setting the ends of the hoops inside the wattle weave. Unfortunately, the rods were thin enough that they slide through the wattle weave, flattening the netting over the peas and garlic. Cats lying on it would flatten them more. The netting also started lifting on the sides and cats would get under – then panic trying to get out. I found a substantial tear in the netting while I was removing it from the bed! It looks like we also lost a few pea plants, likely from cats simply lying on top of them.

After weeding the bed, I decided to use my remaining Pex pipe hoops, though I didn’t have enough of them for the space I wanted to cover, so one of the hoops is from what was used in the netting I’d removed.

These hoops are a lot higher, so there should be enough space for the dwarf peas and the garlic. I also had some used paracord available so I used that across the top of the hoops to keep things from sagging or shifting out of place. They’re mostly secured with zip ties, though some of the vertical posts in the wattle weave were too thick for the length of zip tied I had, and I ended up using wire twist ties, instead. With this netting and set up, I don’t think the cats will try to use it as a hammock anymore.

As for the hoop kit that was used here…

I will definitely not be buying this one again. Not only did the plastic connectors bend, but even some of the rod tips bent, too! I like the kit with the metal connectors and slightly longer rods better.

I got pretty much everything I wanted to get done today, since I don’t expect to get much done in the garden tomorrow, when we are planning to do combined birthday and Father’s day celebrating.

It’s past 9pm and still quite like out. I think I’ll head out for one more walkabout before heading to bed. A couple more days of this, and then the days will start getting shorter!

Good grief, this year is just flying by.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: reclaiming beds and succession sowing

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I was able to get a couple of big jobs done in the garden. It’s going to be an odd growing year. We had another cold night last night, dropping to about 6C/43F It looks like the cold has killed some of the melons and at least one winter squash transplants that managed to germinate in the tray that got resown after a mouse got to the seedlings. A couple more winter squash have germinated in the tray and I’ll transplant them when they get their true leaves, but it’s really too late for them, unless we have a super long, mild fall. The next time I have a chance to check out a garden center, I’m hoping to find more winter squash, at least.

Right now, I’m thinking of what can be direct sown for succession sowing. I’ll be doing more peas and bush beans, I think, and possibly some beets, but that’s not what I sowed today.

The first bed I worked on was the winter sown kohlrabi bed.

The down side of having a cover that can keep the cats out is, it’s much less convenient to weed.

Lots of crab grass. Thankfully, the remaining mulch kept most of the elm seeds from germinating. That is getting to be a real problem in other areas. Especially inside the protective collars around the tomatoes in the bed next to this one, and in the chain link fence bed.

In the next image of the slide show above, you can see my little surprise. There are actual kohlrabi growing! Absolutely tiny, but surviving. I was going to leave them to grow bigger but, as I was clearing the weeds, there were rhizomes going right under the little cluster. I ended up transplanting them to one end – a whole four tiny seedlings that probably won’t survive, but at least there’s a possibility.

The rest of the bed got completely worked over as I pulled all the rhizomes I could. Unfortunately, there were quite a few tree roots in there, too, and there isn’t much I can do about those. In this location, the roots could be either from the elm in one direction, or the cherry trees in the other. Both are close enough and spread roots far enough to be possible. It might even had been both, not just one.

Once the weeding was done, I have the bed a deep watering. Especially in the three rows I planned to sow into, which you can see in the third image.

In the fourth image, you can see what I decided to plant. American Spinach, Rainbow Swiss Chard, and I had some seed tape of Uzbek Golden Carrots left. They are old seeds so I don’t expect a good germination rate, and I hoped there was enough to lay down a double layer.

Before sowing anything, I noticed my brother had left some cardboard in the garage for me that was just right for this bed, so I cut strips to lay it down as a mulch between the rows, plus a couple that would be used to lay over the carrots to protect them until they germinated.

I didn’t need much. I had only enough of the home made seed tape left for half a row. I thought I had more seeds left in the packet and went looking, but couldn’t find it. So I grabbed the Hedou Tiny bok choy seeds we collected last year – something got to the ones planted in the old kitchen garden. The rest of the new row in the middle got those. The carrots got covered with the strip of cardboard, but not the bok choy.

Then the spinach and chard got planted in the rows still marked by twine on either side. There weren’t a lot of seeds in the packets, relatively speaking, and both got emptied in the planting. Then the cat proof cover got set back on.

Hopefully, these will take. We do have some seedlings from the rainbow carrot mix growing, but very few. I might try planting more carrots later on, but we’ll see. The chard and spinach planted between the garlic are just not growing, and what seedlings there were seem to be disappearing. It would be nice to have some greens that survive!

That done, I moved on to reclaiming the small, square bed near the compost ring.

The first image is the “before” picture. The boards on the side are from a same size frame that had been around another bed. They’re pretty rotted out, but they should last at least a couple more years. They still had their screws, so I took those out, first.

In the next image, the bed is all weeded, and the soil pulled away from the sides.

My original plan had been to join the corners opposite of how the frame already in place is, but it turned out the pieces weren’t all quite the same length, so I mixed and matched to get them to line up to the existing frame as best I could. Once the corners were screwed together, I had to be careful shifting it around to lay on top of the bottom frame properly. The wood is dry and rotten enough, I could hear it cracking at the corners.

I rummaged around in the scrap lumber pile in the garage for a while, and found some pieces I could cut into eight 8″ lengths, which is the new height of the bed. Four of them were screwed into corners, and four into the middles of the sides. One side didn’t line up at one corner. After screwing the vertical support piece to the bottom board, it left a gap between the support and the top board. More rummaging in the scrap lumber pile and I found something thin enough and cut it to 4″ in length. It was a bit narrower than the gap, but nothing the 3″ screws I was using couldn’t secure.

That done, I cleared a path to the remaining pile of garden soil we bought years ago and uncovered it. I thought I might be getting two wheelbarrow loads but, in the end, only needed one to top up the bed. In the next image, you can see the finished bed, all cleaned up, topped up and leveled.

The next thing was to protect the bed from being used as a litter box!

I had decided to use the rods from my hoop kit to made supports, running to opposite corners and crossing in the middle. This time, I decided to try something different. I found a drill bit that was the same diameter as the rods in this kit and drilled holes in each corner of the frame.

Which was fine for three of the corners, but one corner is a lot more rotten. There was no solid wood near enough to line up with the rods in the other corners, so I had to make do with what was there. Hopefully, it will be enough. The hoops will not be holding anything heavier than netting, and there shouldn’t be a lot of stress on it.

In the end, it took 6 rods to create each hoop. The hoop set into the rotten corner is a bit wonky, but otherwise it’s holding.

For the netting, I decided to dig out some green dollar store netting from last year, instead of the black netting I’ve been using elsewhere – the black netting that snakes can get caught in. The green netting is quite long, and I wasn’t sure it was wide enough to simply drape over the top, so I decided to wrap it around, instead. It was wrapped low enough that the netting could be secured to the ground with ground staples in the middles, outside the frame, while also being clipped at the bottom of the hoops at each corner.

I still had a lot of leftover netting, but I didn’t want to cut it, since it’ll be used elsewhere, some other time. After fussing with the netting to gather the excess toward the top and securing it with clips, I just pulled the excess length up and over the top and back again, before securing it in place with a clip, too. You can see the final mess in the last image of the slide show above. 😄

With this bed, I might transplant the one Arikara winter squash that has germinated in the middle, and then I will likely plant bush beans around the perimeter.

But not today.

That done, I headed inside for supper before coming back out to do the watering.

Which is when the phone started ringing. I hadn’t bothered to tell the family I was outside, so when the phone started ringing, they thought I was in my office and could answer. After four calls and no messages left on the answering machine, my daughter came looking for me. I went in and saw it was my mother, which was a surprise. I’d gotten a call from the nursing home this morning – at her request – to be informed that my mother was not feeling well. They’d already informed my brother yesterday, as he’s the primary contact, and he let me know. I was told she’d had a very rough night and was doing worse today, coughing, having a hard time breathing and talking. I was informed as to what treatment she was getting, and that she’s still in quarantine. She’s not the only one that’s sick, and if enough people in her ward are ill, they have to shut it down to visitors. For now, she can get visitors that need to wear a gown and mask, which rules me out because I can’t wear a mask.

I had asked the nurse that called me to let my mother know that I knew she was having a hard time talking, so I would not be phoning her. So it was very odd that my mother would phone me! She would have gotten the message, but when I mentioned it, she didn’t say anything about getting it. She did say that the nursing home phoned me this morning because she asked them to, but I told her they’d also already contacted my brother, yesterday. I told her about the medical treatment she was getting. She knew about the antibiotics but was saying they weren’t helping – I had to explain to her that it takes at least a few days before she would feel any difference, but she expects immediate response. I told her about the medication to help with her breathing, but she couldn’t remember anything about that one, then told me whatever pills they give her, she takes. I think she’s having a harder time remembering what she’s taking and when.

Of course, she started saying how she was so sick and didn’t think she was going to live much longer. Which she has been saying for the past… five? six? or so years. Thankfully, she is in the nursing home now. She’s coming up on 96 years old, and a simple cold can be dangerous at that age.

That got her to talking about the funeral and what I thought of it, and how she was surprised to see so many people. Then she told me, in a round about way, that she wanted us to make sure that her funeral had lots of friends there. I told her, we would let people know, but didn’t mention that she’s pretty much outlived most of her friends already.

By the end of the call, her voice was getting pretty squeaky, though she sounded a lot better than I expected, and even seemed to be in good spirits. Finally being where she has wanted to be for so long has definitely made a positive difference in her, even when she’s feeling sick.

After the call, I took the time to update my brother, then headed back out to finish watering the garden beds before it got too dark.

There are a few things I want to get done tomorrow, which is Friday, because I’m going to be doing some driving around on Saturday. June is a birthday month, and Sunday is Father’s Day, so we will be combining both on Saturday, to avoid crowds. My older daughter has offered to spring for Pizza Hut, which we haven’t had in at least a year. The nearest one is about an hour’s drive away. I’ll have other errands to do as well, including a dump run, which I did not do while we had my brother’s car and the truck was in the garage. Next week has got medical appointments, my daughter’s blacksmith workshop (she’ll be bringing home a forge when it’s done), and our first stock up shopping trip. So the more I can get done in the garden in between all this, the better!

Hard to believe we’re coming up on the solstice and the first day of summer already. With the cold nights we’ve been having, it feels like it should be April or May, not coming up on the end of June!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: critter rescue, and redoing a garden bed cover

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First, though, an update.

I have had no word back about the truck yet, which means they haven’t had a chance to look at it or do a diagnostic. I should try phoning directly, tomorrow.

Before I share about today, I wanted to share what I found last night. I am so glad I decided to enjoy the long daylight and walk around the yard before bed! This, of course, included checking the garden beds. In of them, I saw unexpected movement.

It was a garter snake.

Stuck in the excess black netting over the Daikon radish, turnip and red noodle bean bed.

I tried to get it loose with just my hands at first, but quickly realized that was not possible, to I ran… well.. hobbled…. to the house to get a utility knife. I then very carefully cut at the netting where it was tight against the snake’s body – and even its mouth! This netting is something even frogs can get through, but there is something about the garter snake bodies that get caught. The more they struggle to get loose, the worse they get caught. Last year, my daughter was helping me remove some of this netting from around the trellis bed and found a snake had been caught up in it, in a spot where it couldn’t be seen until we pulled the netting out. That one was already dead when we found it. This one was still alive, thankfully. Once I got its mouth and head free, it tried to curl up on itself as they are wont to do, but it had obviously been struggling for a while and didn’t have a lot of energy left.

Once I got it free, I set it aside in the greenery under where I stack the logs and boards we use in the garden. This morning, it was gone!

I am so glad I found it in time.

We really need to find different critter netting. This stuff is to keep the larger critters out while still letting the pollinators in, but I’m quite unhappy about how it catches on everything – including our much desired garter snakes!

So that was a happy start to the day.

We were expecting the insurance company assessor to come today at around 12:30. I did my morning rounds as usual, then had my breakfast before heading back out again at about 11 and do some work in the garden until she arrived. I started out by using the very full rain barrel to water the garden beds by the house and in the south and east yards.

I have been checking out the cabbage and kohlrabi beds, and they appear to be a total loss. The cabbage bed is full of self seeded radishes, which would be a good thing, except they are all bolting. The only thing doing well in that bed are the shallots and onions I transplanted while redoing the bed by the chain link fence. As for the kohlrabi, I can see a few seedlings here and there,, and they are quite eaten up. No sign of what did the eating. Normally, I’d say flea beetles, but there’s no sign of any. Those tend to show up later in the season, anyhow, after the canola fields are harvested.

After watering in front of the house, I moved to the main garden area to water there. That done, I was getting ready to set up the hose to fill the old rain barrel to water the food forest trees and bushes.

While I was watering everything else, I could hear a utility vehicle, and it was definitely coming closer, so I went to take a look. It was the wife of the couple that rents the rest of the property, checking the fence line. So I headed over to say hi. While she kept following the fence line, it gave me a chance to check on the walnuts.

*sigh*

The Manchurian Walnut, that had been doing so well, has been eaten by dear. So has at least one of the Black walnut, and it looks like the ash tree my mother gave us was also eaten.

I hadn’t gotten to making cages for them fast enough.

I still plan to do that; they should regrow their leaves again. It’ll set them back probably a year, though.

Around then, our renter was closer so we stopped to chat at the fence for a while. I told her where I had planted the basket willow, and how I’d set up the T posts and used a partially collapsed fence line to hopefully ensure their cows won’t trample them. She said they will be rotating the cows to this section very soon.

After a lovely conversation with her, I checked my phone because I’d heard some notifications while we were talking.

It was well past 12:30 when my brother messaged me, asking if the assessor had arrived. I told him no, and updated him about the renter and their cows. It was a little past 1 when my brother messaged me again. He just received a text from the assessor, saying she would be here shortly after 2.

Hmmm.

I went back to watering the food forest trees. When that was done, I moved on to the old kitchen garden.

The bed with the tiny bok choi, mixed beets, onions and parsnips needed weeding, and I decided I would remove the old mosquito netting, which is two lengths cobbled together, and replace it with the second sheet of new insect netting I picked up, one of which is currently protecting the cabbage transplants.

In the first image, I had removed the netting and done nothing else yet. While I was putting the mosquito netting pieces away, I heard some noise out by the barn and went to check it out. It was the renter; some stuff had blown around and she was moving them back onto their pile, so the cows wouldn’t step on it. We talked for a while again. The grass in this area is incredibly tall – tall enough to short out the electric fence, so she was going to have to come back with the weed trimmer. The fence posts in that section are getting really rotted. Part of the rental deal is that they are responsible for the fences, and she told me of what she would be telling her husband about the fences and what she sees that they need to do.

Then I went back to the garden.

That big green thing in the top right of the image?

That’s an invading rose stem! Likely from the pink rose bush at the end of the bed. In the wattle weave bed, it’s the white roses that invade.

While weeding the bed, I found the remains of some of the tiny bok choi, which you can see in the second image of the slideshow above. That little strip was almost the only ones I found at all.

There are beets and parsnips coming up, though. There was some self seeded spinach, but it was all bolting, so I weeded those out. The onions that got transplanted in the fall along the south side of the bed are looking nice and strong. You can see how the bed looked after clean up in the third image above.

Then I recovered the bed with the new insect netting. This stuff is much lighter and flexible, but it is still quite strong. It’ll hold the weight of cats using it as a hammock! I didn’t want to cut the netting to size, though, as it will be used differently in the future, so the excess length got rolled up at the end near the rose bush, and the excess width got pulled up over the top, then fastened in place with safety pins. There is a gab between the cover and the frame along the north side of the bed, so I used a board to hold the netting down and below the based of the cover.

By this time, it was past when the assessor was supposed to arrive, and I hadn’t had lunch yet. I went inside and the girls were cooking, so I went to sit and take a break.

Before I knew it, there was a knock at the door!

The assessor had arrived, but parked her car in front of the garage, out of view.

Now, as far as I knew, she was going to look at all the outbuildings.

Turns out, she needed to come into the house, too.

I warned her, the house is a disaster, and that we had 21 cats.

We did that part last.

We started out going to the garage, though she asked about the storage house along the way. She never took measurements of that, but did take pictures. Once at the garage, I told her about the ages of the different parts. She took her pictures and measurements. Then we moved on to the barn, though she did take pictures of one of the sheds beside it that is still used for storage. She checked out, photographed and measured the barn, then we headed to the pump shack. I explained to her the fence line marking where its rented out and where we are responsible for taking care of. While checking out the pump shack, she asked about the log building that used to be the chicken coop, and I told her that’s the last log building we have that is still salvageable; it needs a new roof, but the walls are still solid. So she took pictures of that, too. My brother’s caravan and trailers are not permanent, so she ignore those, but did check the warehouse, stuffed with my parent’s belongings.

Finally, we made our way back to the house, and I showed her where the septic tank is, where the well is, which part of the house was original log, and about what year it was built, and the additions.

Then she had to come inside.

*sigh*

We haven’t been able to do the spring cleaning of the sun room yet, because of the weather. Then there’s the old kitchen – I made sure to tell her that the old wood cook stove was broken and cannot be used. I’d already told her about the new roof, and that the chimney to the old wood burning furnace had been removed, so there’s just the chimney to the old kitchen.

Then she had to go through all the rooms in the house, which was downright embarrassing. Our house really is a disaster. Then we went into the basement, starting with the “new” part basement. Once in the old part, I made sure to tell her that we had a new well pump, and she checked out the other pumps, too. The blower fans are going continuously now, and I explained the the old basement was built before weeping tile was a thing, so it does get wet, but doesn’t flood.

I apologized for the disaster, and she basically said, between the cats and being on a farm, she knows how it can get.

Oh, and it turned out she’s allergic to cats!

After she was done, I followed her car out to close the gate behind her. By this time, I was getting pretty famished, so I headed in to finally have my lunch (it was well past 3 by then). We were running low on kibble for the inside cats which, for the price, would normally be a trip to Walmart. Chatting with the family, my older daughter ended up sending me funds and a list, so I ended up doing a bit of a grocery shopping trip. I checked out the garden centre after the shopping to see if they had any transplants worth picking up.

They did not.

So I headed home. If I hadn’t had frozen stuff in the car, and forgotten to bring insulated bags, I would have gone across the road to see the garden centre at the Canadian Tire, but everything would have just melted in the car while I did.

By then, it was late enough that my daughter took care of the outside cat feeding while I was gone. I will be heading out again after I finish this post to do my evening rounds and checks. It’s still nice and light out.

Hopefully, I won’t find another trapped garter snake, but I’ll bring my utility knife with me, just in case!

Tomorrow, I think I will re-work those failed beds and see what I can plant in there, that has a short enough season for it.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: transplanting and our furry family

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We had another chilly night last night, with temperatures dropping to 7C/45F Today reached 22C/72F, but we’re supposed to drop to 7C/45F again, tonight! In fact, over the next while, our overnight lows are expected to be below 10C/50F more often that above.

Not good for the garden.

This morning, after doing my rounds, I started on transplanting the purchased plants. I decided to plant the butternut squash in the bed along the chain link fence.

Each pot had two plants in it, so I prepped four spots. Unfortunately, there was no way I could separate them without damaging the roots too much. So I kept them together. I plan to train them up the chain link fence, and/or the sunflowers. You can see some sprouted sunflowers in the bottom of the above images. These went into the middle third of the chain link fence, and the two varieties of sunflowers each got half the entire bed, so the seedlings coming up next to the butternut squash would be the Mammoth sunflower variety. Both varieties should have stems strong enough to support climbing vines, if they get a chance to get big enough, first.

That job went quickly. The next one took quite a bit longer.

The rest of the transplants were to go into the bed in the main garden area that I had to put the insect netting over, to keep the cats out of the exposed soil. Newly exposed soil. The first thing to do was to remove the netting and hoops. I made a point of spreading out the netting and folding it up right away, because it was rather breezy and I didn’t want it getting blown around and tangled up.

Next, I went over the bed with the garden fork to loosen the soil and get rid of any weeds. There were hardly any weeds, which was nice for a change.

Once the soil was loosened and leveled, I spaced out the cabbage transplants to be more or less a foot apart. Or, slightly more than the length of my trowel. As this bed only recently had the plastic cover removed, the soil didn’t get much chance to be rained on. Moisture drains away and disappears so quickly, I made the extra effort to deeply water the planting holes before the cabbages were transplanted. I also made sure they were slightly below grade, so that any water would drain towards the plants. The dozen transplants took up about half the bed. Once they were in the ground, that half of the bed got a thorough watering, not just the plants. Then I started cutting up pieces of cardboard to set around the transplants as a mulch, which also got a soaking. Finally, I added straw on top of the cardboard and thickly along the edges. Then the straw got a soak.

The cabbages need insect netting to protect them, but the rest of the transplants need insects for pollinating, so I set hoops up over the cabbages only. For the entire bed, I’d made 7 hoops, but used 5 over the cabbages. I used the extra rods and connectors to add one more rod to the hoops. This way, the hoops could cover the width of the bed, including the straw mulch, completely. For the netting, I set it so that the salvage edge of one side was at the base of the hoops along one side, and the excess length was at the end of the bed instead of the middle. After clipping the salvage edge to the hoops, close to the ground, I pulled things snug to clip the netting close to the ground at the other side. That left me with a lot of excess netting, which got pulled up over the top and clipped on the other side as far as it could reach.

It isn’t set up yet when I took the last photo in the slide show above, but I later added weights along the edges of the netting between the hoops, too. I didn’t want to use ground staples as, with the straw mulch in place, they get pulled up very easily.

That done, it was time to do the melons.

For this, I had a large, heavy duty card board box that I could use to cover the entire remaining half of the bed. I decided to lay it down and cut squares out where the melons would be planted, first. It got moved aside after that, so the soil could get a good watering. Then I laid the cardboard down to give it a thorough soak, turned it over to soak the other side, then turned it back again to soak it some more.

For here, I have one pot of watermelon and three of muskmelon. All have two transplants per pot but, as with the butternut squash, there was no way to divide them without damaging the roots too much. Which means I have six muskmelon in three spots and two watermelon in one spot.

As always, the planting holes got a deep watering, before the plants were added. Again, I made sure they were planted into a slight depression for water flow, then the whole area got watered again.

That done, the straw mulch was added, including in the area that has nothing planted in it. If I find more transplants worth buying, I have room. I would just need to push aside the straw mulch, then cut a hole in the cardboard below.

The straw got a very thorough watering. If the straw is too dry, it’ll act as a thatch.

That done, and everything put away, I wanted to get some trellis netting out of the garden shed. Which meant disturbing our little furry family.

Things had been knocked about by the raccoons, and the wrapped balls of netting were coming undone and getting caught on things, which meant it took a while for me to get them. In the end, I grabbed several different types of nets and the tomato cage they were getting hung up on, just to not disturb the raccoons to much.

They didn’t seem to care.

The mama didn’t move. She actually seemed to be asleep. The babies just watched me. No chittering. No getting upset or scared. Not even looking particularly curious. They just stayed snuggled up to Mom and watched me.

These buggers have no business being that cute. 😄

The netting got set aside for now; the peas in the trellis bed are getting tall enough that the trellis netting will soon be needed.

Once everything was done and set aside, I got changed to head into town. My younger daughter forgot to call in her meds for delivery on Thursday and she just ran out of one of them, so she called her refills in when the pharmacy opened which, on Sundays, is at noon. My older daughter sent me funds to pick things up at the grocery store, too.

After picking up the prescription refills, I made a point of heading to the cash desk, just to show the cashier that there was nothing owing on the meds. Along the way, I passed a new display of what turned out to be bouncy balls. I had no idea. All I saw were all these round critter faces looking at me. Including a hilariously adorable dragon, though it took some doing to figure out that it was a dragon.

It called to me.

They weren’t expensive, so I bought one for my daughter and hid it in her bag of prescriptions. She loves dragons, and I knew she would get a giggle out of it.

The cashier started chatting about today’s weather, and how we are finally supposed to not get rain for a while. Where she lives, the flooding was pretty bad, but not as bad as an area south of her that got 12 inches of rain in 6 hours.

12 inches.

30 cm.

In six hours.

That’s just insane!

No wonder highways were being washed away!

That done, it was off to the grocery store to pick up a few things, then home.

My daughter loved the dragon. She thinks it’s hilarious.

By the time I got back from town, it was time to feed the outside cats, so I quickly did that while my older daughter made supper. After supper, I headed back outside again. First thing was to break out the weed trimmer and clear the grass away from several rocks in the west yard, so I could see them and not high them with the riding mower.

I am so thankful to my brother for letting us use their push mower and little riding mower. The riding mower they gave us years ago still runs but, for some reason, doesn’t cut. The grass just bends – and my brother had sharpened the blade when he repaired the chain that kept falling off. Our push mower lost pieces and couldn’t be repaired. We don’t have the funds to replace the push mower, and we can’t figure out what’s wrong with the riding mower. Thanks to my brother, we can still do the mowing.

I was able to do most of the inner yard. As I was moving into the West yard, where all the cat shelters are, I spotted a huge raccoon coming out of the catio, where it was stealing food! Not the mama, but a bigger one; likely a big male.

I didn’t even try to mow around the main garden area, nor did I start on the outer yard. That will wait for another day.

Not tomorrow, though.

On the way into town, I took a quick side trip to find where our garage’s new location is. It was very easy to find, and our truck is parked under the shade of a tree. Tomorrow morning, I will take my brother’s car into town to pay for the repairs and get the key, but will leave the truck there. After the funeral and internment, we’ll be able to switch vehicles, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that before the garage closes. It’s unlikely my mother will be physically up to anything beyond the funeral itself, but we are working out the timing so that we all arrive together with my mother, who will be using her wheelchair for this outing. Hopefully, it won’t be too difficult for her to transfer into my brother’s vehicle.

I really hope things work out well tomorrow. A part of me still suspects someone that believed our vandal’s lies about us might make a scene and try kicking us out or something. We shall see.

Time to go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: mulching the potatoes and garlic

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We have ourselves a downright cold day, for this time of year. As I write this, we’re at 11C/52F, with a humidex at 5C/41F Our expected high of the day is only 15C/59F

With that in mind, I decided to leave the transplants I purchased in their bins and will transplant them tomorrow. Today, I focused first on weed trimming around the main garden beds for as long as the batteries lasted. After I drained two batteries around the log framed beds, I switched gears to focus on the potato bed.

The potatoes had gotten big enough that they were pushing up the netting that kept the cats and elm seeds out. The first photo was taken after I’d removed the weights and ground staples holding the edges of the netting down.

There was enough debris and elm seeds on the netting that I took care to drag it well away from the bed before rolling it up. After the supports were removed, I got the weed trimmer going again. The battery lasted me long enough to finish around the potato bed and almost all the way around the garlic bed next to it.

With the potatoes, I brought out the wagon and started hauling straw from the round bale to mulch around the potato plants. It took 3 1/2 loads to get it all thickly mulched. Especially around the edges, where the crab grass and creeping Charlie keeps trying to invade.

Then, since I had half a wagon load anyway, I started mulching around the garlic bed. It already has a leaf mulch around the edges, but things are starting to grow through. A couple more wagon loads finished the job. The short distance that didn’t get cleared with the weed trimmer got an extra thick layer.

There is spinach and chard planted in between the garlic, and they are just not growing. I can see seedlings. They are there. They are just not getting bigger! I’ve had the same problem in previous years. The first time we grew spinach, we had three bed with three different varieties and they thrived. That was the last year we were able to grow really good spinach. Even the winter sown spinach we grew in the old kitchen garden were not as lush. That was also the only time we successfully grew chard. Every other time we tried to grow it, we’d get seedlings and that was it. They just stopped growing. I have no idea why.

The garlic is looking good, though. I’m looking forward to when the scapes start showing up!

When I was all done putting everything away and heading in, I was rather surprised when I checked the time. It was barely past noon. I hadn’t paid attention tow what time it was when I headed out, and the day felt like it should have been more like 5pm!

Checking the temperature again. It hasn’t changed, except for the “real feel”, which has dropped to 4C/39F. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 21C/70F, and it’s expected to be the hottest day for the next 10 days or so.

Welcome to spring in the prairies.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: replacement transplants and herb harvest

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Today we are expecting rain, off and on, with possible thunderstorms, until tomorrow morning. After that, we are expecting a break in the rain for at least a week. For the past while, more people are sharing images and information about damage in the region. This morning, I learned that an iconic building, known for a cheerful message to drivers on the highway passing by, is gone. Just… gone. Blown away. The highway that runs nearest us, with a second closed off due to a sinkhole, is now washed away clear across the lanes with a raging river running through it. The electric company has restored power to many places, but others will take longer to repair. They shared photos of sections where the cedar power poles were snapped like twigs, lying on the ground.

All of this is to the south of us. In our immediate area, we were very fortunate. There was some wind, hail and water damage in places, but nothing like what’s been happening in other areas.

There wasn’t any rain while I was doing my morning rounds, and everything seems to be doing well. The dwarf Korean lilac is coming into full bloom, and has a much more intense scent than the earlier varieties.

I also spotted a friend in the flowers. Always happy to see dragonflies. They eat mosquitoes.

I’ve got sunflower seeds emerging, as well as corn. The summer squash is getting big enough that I will soon be removing the protective collars, though one variety still has no seedlings germinated yet.

After doing my rounds and grabbing a quick breakfast, I headed into town with my brother’s car. My first stop was at a local greenhouse by a hardware store to see what I could find to replace some of the things we have lost. There’s just one place selling transplants locally, and there isn’t a lot to choose from, but I did find a few things.

I got two trays with a dozen green cabbages. I also got three pots of muskmelon, two of butternut squash and one of watermelon, all of which have two transplants in them. Not in the photo is the new watering can I got, just like the one that cracked over the winter, at a remarkably low price compared to where I’ve seen this style elsewhere. I probably should have got two.

All the transplants were 25% off, so that was a nice little bonus.

After that, I made a quick stop at the grocery store next door to get some basic fresh stuff, plus I was able to get a few extra items for stocking up because they were on very good sales. Then it was home, where I pulled up to the house to unload. It had started raining again, by then. After my daughter took care of the grocery items, I tucked the transplants into bins and set them in the portable greenhouse frame.

For something that lost its cover, it’s still getting a remarkable amount of use!

By the time I put the car back in the garage, it had stopped raining again, so I quickly changed into my grubbies and rubber boots to head into the main garden area. Between the weather and my pain levels, I haven’t been able to get to that area with the weed trimmer. There is one bed in there that was still covered with plastic, and that’s where most of the transplants will go.

The first photo is after I’d removed some things I’d had resting on the plastic to keep them out of the way, but hadn’t removed the various things weighing town the edges. Once I moved everything off the sides and at the far end, I used a garden hose to pressure wash the elm seeds and debris off the surface, first. Then the whole thing got rolled up and set aside.

You can see in the next image that the bed is pretty clear. There is one spot with a weed where there was a hole in the plastic, and weeds pushing up around the edges. I will need to clear those out but, before I do, I wanted the bed to get watered by the rain.

Unfortunately, pretty much as soon as the plastic was off, there was a cat going for the fresh dirt! Which meant I had to get it covered right away. Which I could do, now that I’ve got another hoop kit and a couple of 10′ x 20′ sheets of insect netting.

You can see that set up in the last photo. This is temporary and will be redone when it’s time to do the transplanting. For now, it just needs to keep the cats from using the bed as a litter box!

It started and stopped raining several times while I was working on this, so I was pretty wet by the end of it!

I really like this insect netting. The mosquito netting we have been using, which my daughter bought for us years ago, is great mosquito netting, but not as good for what we needed to use it for. The weave is so dense, it catches on the wind like a sail quite a lot for netting. The weave is also tight enough that, when I water through it, there needs to be enough pressure to push the water through. If the spray of water is too gentle, most of it drains right off. This new stuff is slightly more open, so both air and water will flow through more easily, while still being fine enough to keep the bugs out. It’s also got quite a lot of stretch to it, is more flexible and easier to work with in the wind.

I might be buying more of this insect netting. It’s also available at a 10′ x 40′ size. At some point, I’ll be making moveable cover frames, so having more that can be cut to size would be useful. For now, the 10′ x 20′ size is sufficient length to cover hoops over our 18′ long garden beds. The width is almost double what is needed, depending on how wide the hoops are set up.

Once that was done and stuff was put away, I did some harvesting. I picked a whole bunch of rhubarb (I got the missing ingredients for the rhubarb upside down cake my daughter likes to make), then cut some herbs.

Across the middle is lemon balm, and there is oregano at the bottom. On the left is chives, with blossoms and buds, and on the right, near the top of the photo, is walking onion greens with developing bulbils. I don’t actually want the walking onions to walk any further than they are now, so we’ll focus on trimming the bulbils more. We have so much chives and walking onion, we can start dehydrating them.

Looking at the weather radar, it seems we’ll be getting one more rainfall soon, but the main part of the system will be passing north of us. Which means that, tomorrow, I should be able to get those transplants in the ground.

Oh, I almost forgot, and neglected to take a photo. While doing my rounds, I checked the bed where I’d broadcast the giant poppy seeds in a small bed that got rolled on and dug into by cats. Much to my amazement, I actually found some poppy seedlings have emerged! Basically just one cluster of them in one spot. I don’t know if poppies can handle transplanting well. Otherwise, I’d thin by transplanting. I’ll have to look them up to see, first.

Meanwhile, I just realized that I went to the post office too early in the day. There are now parcels waiting to be picked up! I’ll have to go get them soon because, if I don’t get them today, I won’t be able to until Monday.

Time to head out again!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: new growth and more transplants

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I’m going to catch up on the garden stuff before I write another post about yesterday’s bizarreness. I didn’t get home until well past midnight by the time it was all done!

Yesterday, some plans went out the window. I’d hoped to be able to get another bed ready to plant more short season corn, but I ended up focusing on watering, instead.

I was very happy to see this.

These are one grouping of summer squash. If I remember correctly, these are the Early Prolific Straightneck Squash. I’ll have to go through my photos to confirm, since I haven’t actually labelled anything yet.

Of the five varieties, all but one has a least one seedling growing.

I also saw that we have LOTS of the resown Daikon radish germinated, and even some of the Red Noodle beans were emerging already! The bush beans in the high raised bed and mostly come up and already have their true leaves, though a couple of them look like they got chomped. There is just a bit of stem above the seed leaves and that’s it. Which makes little sense, since the beds are protected by netting, so all the usual things that would eat them like that can’t get at them!

The last area I watered were the trees and bushes in our developing food forest. One of the mulberry trees now has lots of unfurled leaves, and I was happy to see that at least one of them survived. In looking at the other one, I thought it was dead, but there was a bit of green peaking at the base, partially covered by mulch. I cleared around and, sure enough, they were mulberry leaves! It has survived – barely!

I even found that one purple raspberry that survived last year has emerged. There is still a possibility we’ll have more of these, but it’ll take a few years!

To water the trees, I keep an old hose in the rain barrel that leaks. I connect the active hose to it to start filling the barrel while I use a watering can to water everything but the silver buffalo berry. I start off with the ones furthers from the barrel and, by the time I start watering the ones close to the barrel, it is usually almost full. I then unhook the hose and leave the barrel to slowly leak, giving the trees closest to it a deep watering in the process. As I was starting to water the closer trees and bushes, however, I noticed the water level was lower than usual. I lifted the hose end out of the water and saw the flow was very slow. There was almost no pressure.

So I unhooked the barrel hose (I love those quick connects!) and finished watering with what I could from the barrel, and messaged the girls to check the pump in the basement. As I took the active hose back to the main garden area, I turned on the nozzle and there was still very little pressure. Setting that hose where it belongs, I went to the front hose, and there was almost no pressure at all, and the tap for that hose is right next to the pump and pressure tank in the basement!

It turned out the girls were trying to do dishes, not realizing I was still watering. We were using water faster than the pump could refill the pressure tank.

We need to replace that pressure tank, but a tank the same size costs almost $500.

So that was in for the watering.

I had just gotten into the house when my mother phoned, and a couple of hours later, I headed out for what was supposed to be just a few hours, until our personal sword of Damocles fell. I’ll talk about that in my next post.

With brings me to what I managed to get done this morning. We’re supposed to get thunderstorms later today and tomorrow and rain for the next couple of days after that – though the forecast changes so often, who knows what will actually happen. The remaining tray of cucumbers, melons and winter squash that got decimated and resown had a few seedlings in it that I decided to transplant now.

The largest transplant was a Black Futsu. There was also one Gill’s Golden Pippin. From the melons, there were three Hale’s Best Jumbo, plus two little Tigger melons. The Hale’s Best were the only seedlings that survived the carnage we discovered when we moved the transplants out of the basement. Nothing else in the tray that were resown have germinated.

I might be buying winter squash transplants. We’ll see.

My husband had a lot of empty distilled water jugs for his CPAP dehumidifier set aside, so I grabbed seven of them and cut the tops and bottoms off to make more protective collars. I was able to loosen the netting and raise just the area I was working in, rather than the whole thing, which was nice. I started by loosening the soil, setting the collars in place, then giving the soil inside the collars a deep watering. While the water was left to be absorbed by the soil, I went and very carefully used a teaspoon to lift the seedlings out of their cells in the growing tray, as there was no way I could have lifted the cell tray to push them up from below, without disrupting all the other cells where things might still germinate.

I had set up the new protective collars in a line continuing from the luffa and gourds already there, just spacing them out a bit wider. Staring from near the luffa (still nothing germinating there), I transplanted the three Hale’s Best melon, then the one Gill’s Golden Pippin, the two Tigger melon, and finally the one Black Futsu. Then the netting got put back in place. It is very much needed! Even in the short time I had it up, there were cats checking things out in the bed, and I had to chase them away. Which I hated to do to cats we are urgently trying to socialize enough that we can get them spayed and neutered!

The transplants are protected now, by both netting and collars, and hopefully, they will survive.

I don’t expect I’ll be able to get much else done in the garden today, as I have my medical appointment this afternoon, and we’re also expected to hit 30C/86F, right around the time I’ll probably be returning home.

Using my brother’s car.

*sigh*

I’ll explain that in my next post…

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: corn is in, and some clean up done

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Things stayed way too hot overnight. None of us got much sleep, even though the house is so much cooler. With today supposed to reach 31C/88F today, I headed outside shortly after 6am.

My plan to dig more beds for the corn quickly changed. We had high winds, I could hear thunder in the distance. So I quickly planted one package of corn, first.

We’ve grown the Yukon Chief variety before, and I was happy to see the seeds back in stock. They are only 55 days to maturity! I’ve got two packages, and planted one of them. Then I used the hoops and netting that I took off the garlic bed to protect the corn bed.

Ideally, these would have been planted in a large block, but that just wasn’t working out. If I can manage it, I plan to dig out three more beds like this one. I can then plant the second package next to this one. I have another short season variety of a white corn I’d like to plant as well. It is short season, but not as short as this one, so there won’t be an issue of cross pollinating, if I want to save seeds.

At this point, I have no idea if I’ll be able to get the other beds dug in time, though. We shall see. We’re just a week into June, so I’m not behind for a lot of things.

It’s starting to look like I’ll be looking for kohlrabi and cabbage transplants, though. It looks like the kohlrabi seedlings have all disappeared while still only at the seed leaf stage. In the cabbage bed, there are so many self seeded radishes popping up, I am having a hard time seeing which ones might be the cabbage, so I will wait a bit longer before deciding anything there.

After planting, protecting and watering the corn, I kept on watering, even though I was still hearing thunder. I got the main garden area watered when it started to rain, so I began heading inside.

It stopped raining, then started again, then stopped…

Checking the weather radar, I could see the system. Major thunderstorms and driving rain expected… all to the west of us. The system was going to miss us entirely. We just got a bit of splattering.

It gave me time for breakfast, as least.

Then I headed outside again, this time to dig out the push mower. My brother also got out their big zero turn mower and finished going the outer yard.

With the push mower, I finally managed to get the edges, areas the riding mower can’t go, and FINALLY, the paths between the garden beds in the main garden area. I didn’t do all the areas I would have done with the push mower, though, as it was getting way too hot. I took a break, then headed back out again, this time to use the weed trimmer.

My brother has three batteries for the weed trimmer. I went through all three of them before heading back inside!

Among the areas I mowed and weed trimmed was around the east yard garden beds – and the “found object” art display. I even stopped to clear it off of all the debris that had blown onto everything, then set it up again. The branch is something my daughter added because she liked the shape. Everything else there is things we found while doing clean up, most (not all) around the spruce grove, including the table itself.

It’s silly, but I like it.

I was able to use the trimmer around the east garden beds, including the square bed I still need to work on. The crab grass around it was so tall, the bed was almost completely hidden.

After doing the east garden beds, I trimmed the paths in the old kitchen garden and around the edges. I got that done, then started around the cat shelters when the third battery died.

At that point, we’d reached the high of the day for some time, and I was done for the day. As I write this, at almost 4:30pm, it’s still 31C/88F, and the humidex is at 33C/91F It’s not supposed to start cooling down for a couple more hours, and tonight’s overnight low is expected to be even warmer than last night.

*sigh*

Thankfully, tomorrow is no longer predicted to get as hot as today. Hopefully, that means I’ll be able to get more progress in the garden.

Meanwhile, as I look out my window while writing this, I can see the big maple branches being thrashed by the wind every now and then – and there are so many dried elm seeds blowing around, it’s like snow. I don’t have any of these elms outside my window. This is all being blown in from the trees on the other side of the house. The bloody things are starting to drift.

While sitting down to enjoy the lunch… er… supper my daughters made for me, I watched this video that I think you’ll enjoy as well.

I had no idea that squash leaves were edible!

My list would be slightly different, partly because of our very different climate. Partly because… why does everyone have kale on these lists? Blech. 😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: reclaiming for corn beds started

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As I write this, it’s coming up on 4:30pm, and we’re at 29C/84F, with the humidex at 33C/91F – and we are just reaching our high for the day. Things are not supposed to start cooling down for another couple more hours.

We have a 1% chance of rain where we are now, but some areas to the south of us and into the US are expecting storms with high winds, heavy rain and potentially baseball sized or larger hail.

!!!

I’m still hoping to get outside and get more done, but my goodness, I just can’t handle the heat like I used to, anymore!

Which is why I was out by about 8am, when it was still relatively cool.

My main task of the day was to start working on where I plan to plant corn this year.

A few years back, this area had been a squash patch, but we had to cut back and lost control of some areas. Little by little, I’ve been working to reclaim areas, and this tarp covered area is one of them. I keep calling it a tarp, but I think it’s landscape fabric of some kind. It’s been sitting in this spot for several years now, moved only a short distance to plant where the asparagus and strawberries are now.

The first thing I had to do was remove the things that were keeping it from being blown away. Pieces of wood. The old kiddie pool we sometimes use as a planter. Bricks. Rocks. Lots of rocks. I’ve been tossing rocks onto there while weeding, and some were put into piles to hold corners down. I grabbed as much of the rocks as I could and loaded them into the wheelbarrow, and they have been set on a piece of sheet metal I use in the winter to cover the fire pit. The fire pit has enameled bricks around it – those bricks are everywhere. The problem is, the enamel gets incredibly slippery when wet, and quickly get buried. We will be removing the enameled bricks and replacing them with something else, as we are able. Around the fire pit, it will be rocks from the garden.

Once most of the rocks were removed, I lifted the edges and pulled the tarp over itself to push any remaining rocks and debris together, to make it easier to gather the rest of the rocks.

Which is when I found the ant hill.

Fair warning, if ants give you the heebie jeebies. The second picture in the slide show above is of the ant hill, and the third file is a brief video showing just how many there were, and how they got just everywhere! I uncovered more ant tunnels closer to the opposite corner, and I suspect those were part of the same colony of ants.

In the next file, you can see the whole area that had been covered for so long. It’s amazing how much still managed to grow under there! For the most part, though, any grass or weeds under that tarp has been killed by it.

Ideally, I would have taken the lawn mower or weed trimmer over the next area, but I just didn’t want to lose the time. What I did do was drag over logs, each about 4′ long each, that we used to make temporary frames on the low raised beds several years ago. Logs, a board, the kiddie pool, bricks and larger rocks were laid out or scattered over the tarp. Over time, it will flatten more, and I can stretch the edges out to reduce the slack, over time.

This newly uncovered area is now quite compacted, so it’ll need quite a bit of digging and loosening of soil before anything can be planted.

I started at one corner and immediately hit something, stopping my garden fork. I shifted, tried again, and hit it again. Then again. I finally manage to get under it.

That was one of the bigger rocks I found. Most were more of a size that can be used around the fire pit. As I worked, the rocks all got dumped into the wheelbarrow.

Worse than the rocks were the roots. They were flippin’ everywhere! I was able to pull up some longer ones, but only so far before they stopped dead, because I hit another root they’d gone under.

I had to get the loppers, which meant going into the old garden shed.

The raccoon mama and her babies are still there. The mama didn’t move, one of her babies was nursing, I could see one other that was just sort of leaning against a wall joist, I couldn’t see a third one, but the fourth was just looking at me curiously. No chittering warnings or acting nervous. They have learned I will leave them alone.

I grabbed the lopper as quickly as I could and left them be.

In the next photo, you can see several of the larger roots I tried pulling up before they hit something below ground and stopped.

Loosening the soil alone would not have taken long at all, but between the roots and the rocks, I ended up working at it for almost 3 hours. I got a roughly 4′ wide area loosened, cleaned up, de-rooted and most of the larger rocks removed (there are always more…), then leveled and smoothed out with a landscape rake. Then I brought straw over and set it around the edges, like a frame.

I have two types of corn I want to plant, so I plan to dig at least one more strip like this, with straw covering the paths in between. Someday, these areas might be reclaimed as raised beds, or be converted to a perennial beds.

After finishing up this bed, I watered all the garden beds deeply. The garlic was getting too tall for the netting, so I took that off. I can see some second sowing of spinach and chard where they were planted in between, but not many. I think it’s just been too hot for them. If they don’t take, I might plant some bush beans, instead.

Then I went inside for lunch. Which is when I heard a lawn mower.

My brother had brought out their zero turn mower and started mowing the outer yard.

After I had my lunch, I grabbed the wheel barrow and the landscape rake and headed to the side of the garage their zero turn mower is stored in. The cats have been using the lean-to’s on both sides of the garden as litter boxes over the winter. With the mower out, I was able to rake things up into the wheel barrow to dump out, then use the rake to level the floor, so they would have a nice clean spot to park their mower in.

While getting the wheel barrow I realized my SIL was now mowing – and she was mowing the inner yard! So I moved hoses and logs aside. She even went into the jungle of un-reclaimed main garden area. An area that is extremely rough and is what broke our own push mower. I had planned to very carefully use their push mower they’ve made available to us, with the mower set as high as it can go. I’ve used their little riding mower there before, but really didn’t want to risk damaging it again. That zero turn mower is way more robust and made light work of the mess!

After cleaning up in the garage and putting things away, I backed our truck up to the house to load it with our garbage bags – it’s been several weeks since we’ve gone to the dump, so there was a lot – then headed to the dump. By the time I got back, my SIL was almost done mowing both the inner and outer yards. Since I left the gate open while I was gone, she even mowed the sides of the driveway outside the gate.

I so, so appreciate that she did this! I still need to get the push mower and weed trimmer out, but I no longer have to worry about those huge areas.

It’s now past 5pm as I write this, and I have been seriously considering asking the girls to do the outside cat feeding and calling it a night. I’m falling asleep at my keyboard (which I am now thinking isn’t just being tired from the heat, but from the low iron levels I found out about just yesterday). I should at least try to get the push mower out in some areas, though. It’s not something that can be done in the mornings, because the grass is too wet and would jam the mower. Which means working at it in the evenings, when things would finally have a chance to dry – but we’re not really expected to cool down much overnight, and tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, even before the humidex is taken into account.

The second corn bed is definitely going to wait until tomorrow morning. Digging through all those rocks and roots to prepare the bed is not something I want to be doing during the heat of the day!

Oh, dear. The weather group I’m on just sent a notification out. Some areas now have tornado warnings. Not our area, thankfully, but between potentially baseball sized hail or potential tornados, the south end of the province is not looking good right now!

The Re-Farmer