2026 garden

Our 2026 Garden: clean up started, and an explosion of growth!

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Today, I finally was able to head out and get working on the garden.

We hit 22C/72F and almost all the snow is melted away! I didn’t try to go into the main garden area yet, as I can see the paths between the beds are full of water, but I will need to remove the mulch on the pre-sown beds soon.

This morning, while doing my rounds and checking things different areas, I discovered new growth has emerged overnight!

All colours of our snow crocuses have emerges, and the tulip patch has dozens of leaf cluster emerging all over the area. They’re pretty spread out, so it was hard to get a good picture of them.

In the old kitchen garden, the rhubarb is also emerging, as are the lilies on the north side of the area. Last year, those never even bloomed. I hope this year will have better conditions for them.

In the morning, I focused on getting the old kitchen garden prepared.

I had helpers.

The fiberglass rods fit perfectly in the channels of the row netting I got from the Dollarama, last year. Hopefully, they will do better than the wires the kits came with. I thought I’d need two for the area I needed to protect from cats, but once I started setting it up, one turned out to be just barely long enough.

I hope I secured everything solidly, because I just know cats are going to be climbing on top. This netting is protecting the dwarf peas and garlic in the wattle weave bed. The rectangular bed with the beets and tiny bok choi now has its plastic cover. The herbs are also uncovered and it looks like the thyme and oregano, at least, survived the winter. I’m not as sure about the sage and lemon balm. Later on, that bed will need more clean up. In moving mulch in the wattle weave bed, I uncovered the tiny strawberries that still need to be transplanted, and they are looking pretty green. I also uncovered the walking onions, and they have clearly been growing under the mulch for quite some time. I took some time lapse and regular video of the old kitchen garden work that I’ll put together and upload later on.

That done, and a break for lunch, the next area I worked on were the East garden beds.

Well… sort of.

I first needed to work on the cover that spent the winter over the purple savoy cabbage bed. The hoops got somewhat crushed under the weight of snow. I added some cross pieces between hoops at each end. Then I needed to close up the open ends, so that cats can’t get under it.

I had some leftover pieces of half inch wire mesh and decided to use that.

I’m not sure if I regret my decision. It did the job and the ends are now secure, but good grief, it took forever! Most of that time was spent using needle nose pliers, which are also wire cutters. I had one piece large enough to cover one end, though corners needed to be trimmed off. I left wire ends to secure them to the plastic mesh on this cover. I sat there, bending wires, using the pliers to twist them around the plastic mesh, over and over. I even managed to stab a finger and bleed all over the place. 🫤 I think I spent over an hours, just working on one end.

The other end took longer. I had to join two scrap pieces together to be able to cover the space, but one piece was narrower, so there is a tiny gap at the top. Nothing a cat can get through, though.

All together, I think I spent at least 3 hours working on that cover!

Once that was done, getting the mulch off the pre-sown beds took no time at all, in comparison. These beds were first covered with leaves, then with straw after we got the round bale. I got all the straw off first, then used the twin marking the rows to remove the leaves by hand, leaving the leaf mulch in between the rows.

While doing the kohl rabi bed, I realized I was seeing tiny sproutes!

So that bed got the cover with the newly enclosed ends. The cabbage got the cover that was stored on the box shaped cover on the third bed. That one needs to be redone, but it’s at least something. It has no hoops, so if a cat jumps on it, it’ll cave in. The wire mesh on it isn’t as strong as I’d like, so it wasn’t really used. I’ll have to take care of that, if I want to better protect the cabbage bed.

By the time I was done, it was almost 6:30pm. I just checked the time stamps on my photos, and see that I spent almost exactly 4 hours working in that area, and most of that time was working on the one cover!

While I worked on that, my older daughter made sure I had something to eat when I came in, and got the laundry going. With the well pump issues, we are seriously behind on laundry and dish washing. My younger daughter is still not feeling good and has been asleep pretty much all day. With so much to catch up on, my older daughter has offered to buy us take out tomorrow. My husband has been craving pizza from a particular place in town that doesn’t open until 4pm, so that will be our supper. Until then, we’re going to be eating a lot of sandwiches. 😄

If all goes to plan, I’ll be uncovering the pre-sown beds in the main garden area, and prepping the area I am planning to sow poppy seeds in – the variety that is supposed to get pops the size a a baseball. The next few days are supposed to be cooler, with overnight temperatures at or below freezing, which is what poppy seeds need. Otherwise, I’d have to cold stratify them in the fridge, and I have no interest in doing that.

With how warm today has been, I think most of the water in the main garden paths will be gone.

I’m so enjoying being able to get outside and working again!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: “potting” up, and weather whiplash

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I have been seriously procrastinating with the seedlings in our basement set up. Today, however, my daughter was available to assist, and we got it done!

My daughter took on the job of sifting the rest of the bag of potting soil. She had to start a second bucket for all the sticks she sifted out, as the one I’d been using before was already 3/4 full. While she did that, I worked on making a whole bunch of strips for snail rolls, with a few extra strips, just in case.

Once the soil was sifted, my daughter thoroughly moistened the potting soil with hot water while I cleared all the trays of seedlings, the heat mats and the full spectrum lights. Everything was going to go on the shelf under the shop light. A shelf that sags in the middle. I did try to elevate the trays in the middle, but when I watered the bottoms, it would still all pool towards the middle, so anything on the outsides of the trays would end up with less water available. After some poking around in the old basement, I found a board to set across the top. It’s too short to be able to use heat mats under it, but I decided not to set those up again. Hopefully, they will be okay without them in our basement, where the ambient temperature is at least 5C colder than it should be for seedlings.

Once everything was cleared out and set up, the first things I wanted to “pot up” were the peppers and eggplant. They have been really struggling. Some new seedlings from a second sowing did start to germinate, but even some of those have already withered away.

I bottom watered the tray and had vermiculate on top, but there still ended up some algae growing on the surface. That’s not harmful to the plants, but it does suggest a moisture imbalance.

When it came time to transfer them, my daughter used a large spoon to scoop the seedlings out of the cells while I set them onto one of the strips, flattening out the seed starting mix they were in, then adding the moistened, warm potting soil to fill in gaps.

I had already transferred all the tomatoes, fennel and flower rolls into one metal tray – 8 snail rolls – and had room for two more rolls on there. In the end, there were only 5 surviving Caspar eggplant, and only three Sweet Chocolate peppers. I did have a full row of California Wonder bell peppers, though, and one of the cells had a two seedlings, so that gave us a very large and full snail roll to put into the second metal tray set up under the shop light.

One thing about these thicker snail rolls is that it’s a lot harder to keep the soil in them, while they are being rolled up.

Next was the Golden Boy celery, which has already been “potted up” once. They now needed to be split up into two rolls. We were really surprised by how dry their soil was! For all the regular bottom watering I did, they were large enough that they’d needed more.

The leaves were all tangled up, so it was very careful work to unroll the celery. The soil was very full of roots. Between use, we carefully broke out half the celery and spread them out on a new strip before adding the moistened potting soil to fill the strip. It took both of us to very carefully roll them up without losing too much soil from the bottom. Once that was done, we had the space to finish unrolling the original roll, space out the seedlings and add more soil.

So we now have two snail rolls of celery, to go with four types of tomato, three types of flowers and the Florence fennel.

I considered putting the sad little herbs into a snail roll, too, but decided against it. As for the last surviving luffa, I’m not sure it’s surviving any more! It got pretty buried under the celery leaves. Well, we did get seeds for a different variety with a much, much shorter growing season – short enough we could potentially direct sow them – so if this last one doesn’t make it, we can try the new variety, instead.

Once everything was set up under the shop light, I supported the light while my daughter shortened the chain it’s hanging from, so it wouldn’t be too close to the plants. Especially the celery. The chain on that side was hung even shorter, to give them the space they need.

Which means we now no longer have anything under the grow lights. With the snail rolls, everything fit in the two trays. They got a thorough bottom watering, then a second one when we saw how quickly the water was absorbed. With how dry the celery was, I’ll probably give that tray another watering, later today.

The next batch of seeds are the 4-6 weeks before last frost ones. I don’t have a lot of those, comparatively speaking. There are a LOT that can be started in the 2-4 weeks before last frost category, but a lot of those can actually be direct sown, so I plan to be more selective about it.

Looking at the forecast, we’ve got some more weather whiplash expected. Winter still does not want to let go! Today, we are now expected to reach a high of 15C/59F (it’s 8C/46F as I write this), shortly before noon), but the overnight low is supposed to drop to -7C/19F. At midnight, we’re supposed to start getting snow. Tomorrow we’re supposed to get a mix of snow and rain all day, through to the next morning.

The weather system that’s hitting us is mostly going to pass to the north. They are looking at potentially several inches of new snow. This is actually really good. Everything is still so dry u[ there. Every bit of moisture is needed, so this year’s fire season isn’t as bad as last year. There will be fires. There always are. Between any moisture we get, and the fact that last year’s insane number of fires probably cleared out a lot of deadwood, hopeful this means very fewer fires, and only little ones, this year.

The highs for the next two days are supposed to be -3C/27F. After that, we’re supposed to get back above freezing, and soon reach double digit Celsius highs. Before the end of April, we’re even expecting to reach 20C/68F, and once we’re into May, the long range forecast has us getting as high as 24C/75F It’s the overnight lows that are the thing, though. Last year, May had all sorts of hot days, but the nights remained cold, so the soil never got warm enough for transplants until the middle of June. Even then, it might still have been too cold. Our transplants really struggled last year.

Hopefully, our winter sown beds will do well. After the next couple of days of cold, and any snow we get on the beds melts away, I should be able to remove the mulches on at least some of the beds, so the soil can thaw out faster. I can set the vinyl over the cover in the old kitchen garden to create a little greenhouse. That bed has the beets and tiny bok choy in it, along with the little onions I’d found while preparing the bed for sowing. I have more vinyl I can potentially use on one of the other covers on a 9’x3′ raised bed to create another little greenhouse. Plus, once I can access the main garden area, I have the hoops and 6mm poly I’d ordered and can use to set over one of the other pre-sown beds to speed things up a bit. Or just to warm up one of the other, empty beds, faster. We shall see how things look, once the snow has melted enough to get to them.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: seedling progress

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One last update, and I am done for the day!

I am so tired.

This morning, I checked on the seedlings in the basement, as always, and had a bit of a surprise.

The first picture in the slideshow are the tomatoes, hollyhock and fennel. They are doing quite well! I’m very happy with what I’m seeing there.

The next picture is the leggy herbs, the sad little luffa, the celery that should probably be “potted up” and split into two rolls! – the marigold and cosmos.

The last picture has my surprise.

I’d rotated the trays just a couple of nights ago, so with the peppers and eggplant, the eggplant row is now in the foreground, and the California Bell Peppers are in the back.

There are three new seedlings in California Bell Pepper row, that weren’t there yesterday. There’s even at least one new seedling in the Sweet Chocolate pepper row in the middle!

Those poor eggplants are struggling, though. At least two have just withered away.

It’ll still be at least a week before I start the next back of seeds, but I might just re”pot” the eggplant and peppers into snail rolls before then. I’ll just need to sift more potting soil again, first!

We definitely have some things struggling, but over all, they seedlings are doing remarkably well for being in a rather poor environment for them!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: more tomatoes, and the fennel is up!

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Today ended up being a home day. Yesterday wiped both me and my daughter out completely, so we’ve been in recovery mode. Tomorrow, I will need to go out to do the last of our Easter shopping and errand running, since so many places will be closed.

When I checked on my seed starts last night, I had a lovely surprise. The first Florence Fennel seeds had emerged! I could see at least a couple of Blueberry tomato seedlings, too.

By morning, there were more.

They are hard to see, but in the first photo, there are both Blueberry and Chocolate Stripe seedlings emerged.

The second photo shows an explosion of Orange Currant and Manitoba tomato seedlings.

The third photo, you can see more of the hollyhocks, including a couple lifting up their seed casings. I’ll keep an eye on those and see if the seed leaves need help getting out. The other roll has quite a few Florence Fennel seedlings showing, and I expect I might even see more by the time I check on them again this evening.

I added more water to the trays and realized it was time to “graduate” out of the plastic tray for the mixed stuff, onto a stronger metal tray. Moving the herb seedlings was the most delicate. These were sown into 5 cell trays, but the tarragon had only three cells with seedlings, so I removed two of them. The compostable material was breaking apart, anyhow. The summer savoury looks so long and spindly. I’ll probably end up buying transplants for those, but we’ll see how they do for now. Then there’s the sad little luffa!

The Golden Boy yellow celery, however, is going fantastic! It’s getting too tall to fit under the shop light. The marigold and Cosmos are doing very well up there.

After transferring everything to the metal tray, I could remove the plastic one, then poured the water I’d added earlier into the metal tray. The shelf sags slightly in the middle, unfortunately. I’ve added some sheets of cardboard under the heat mats in the middle, but it isn’t quite enough to make up for the sag. Ah, well. I just have to be careful to make sure that roll with the celery doesn’t dry out too much.

Normally, I would take these off the heat mat completely, but the basement is too cold, which means the soil is even colder. The metal tray will diffuse the heat better than the plastic, and the water on the bottom will also help equalize things – in theory, anyhow! Before, I had tried using a heater and staying in the basement while it was running, but between the heat mats and the shop light I’m running out of places to plug things in. The basement has three outlets in the entire space, and only two of them can be reached from the table. With the third one, though, I’ll be able to plug in a fan to get some air moving to help strengthen the stems. It doesn’t need to be very close to do the job.

So that is our seedling progress today, and I’m very happy to be seeing so many tomatoes. Especially with the ones where I’d used up the entire packet of seeds and have no spares! I was starting to wonder about the Florence Fennel, too.

Pretty happy with how things are going, considering the rather poor set up we’ve got this year.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: graduation, and new sprooooots!

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First up, some good news in progress that made it worth being up way too late again.

At around midnight, I was contacted by someone from the new rescue. Some spaces are opening up, and she was wondering what friendly yard cats might be available to take in for fostering and adoption?

She had a few in mind from pictures I’d sent before, but requested more up to date photos and videos that she could show to potential fosters. My daughter and I did that while doing the morning cat feeding. Unfortunately, a couple of times when I thought I was taking video, it turned out it wasn’t recording. Instead, I had a second or two of video of our feet or whatever, taken at either end of what was supposed to be a video for the rescue! We have a whole bunch of adult males in particular that are so friendly, it’s almost impossible to get still shots of them, as they are all over each other, trying to get pets.

So I will have to try again later today. If all goes well, we might be able to have our tiny girls that are friendly, but still too small to spay (even though they are almost a year old) be taken in. Or Sir Robin. Sir Robin desperately wants to be an indoor cat! I haven’t even seen some of the adult feral females in a few days which, unfortunately, means they may well have just had kittens somewhere in their hidden places.

Tis the season.

Speaking of the season, here is how our seedlings are looking.

Two snail rolls have graduated to the upper level and are now under the shop light, giving them a few more inches of space that I couldn’t give them with the gooseneck light fixture they were under.

The Golden Boy celery is thriving since being “potted up” to the snail roll! That poor little luffa is getting its true leaves, but is looking pretty sickly. The summer savoury is looking very leggy and weak, but the tarragon – the very few there are – are looking stronger.

The second picture is of the eggplant and peppers tray. Those seedlings are looking very sad and weak, and there are so few surviving. I’ve already resown them, but I won’t try again. They are short season enough that I might try direct sowing, instead.

With how few there are, I’m seriously considering “potting them up” into a snail roll. I could easily fit them all into a single roll, with room to spare. I’m just not sure how well they’d handle being transplanted. It can’t be much worse than they are doing now.

In the other snail rolls, we have more growth.

In the first picture, you can see quite a few more of the hollyhocks now. There are still two or three seedlings disguised as vermiculite in there.

In the next picture, you can see a second Orange Currant tomato is up – plus there’s another elbowing its way up that I didn’t even see until I looked at the photo, later.

It’s the same in the next picture. I could see one Manitoba tomato had emerged, but looking closely in the photo, I can see the stem of another, pushing it’s way up.

Still no sign of anything in the Chocolate Stripes or Blueberry tomatoes, and still no Florence Fennel visible.

All in good time.

Tomorrow is the last business day of the month – payday – so we are expecting to do our Costco stock up trip in the city. I’ll see what they have for seed starting mix. I only got one bag and it’s pretty small. I might only get four seed snails out of it. I won’t be starting more seeds for a couple more weeks, but I will probably be starting more. Costco carries the big Pro Mix bags, which would last me for the rest of the seed starting season. I might have to sift it before using it. I haven’t heard people talking about needing to do that with their seed starting mixed this year at all, though, so it might not be an issue. I might need to get more potting soil, too. I still have some but, with so much material getting sifted out, I don’t have as much potting soil as it appears in the bag! Any time I pot something up, I would be using potting soil rather than seed starting mix.

We really need a better set up for starting seeds indoors.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: new sproooot!

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After all the running around we did yesterday, today has been mostly a recovery day.

It’s also been a day of reminders to get that doctor’s appointment rebooked, now that we’ve tested the truck out and it seems to be holding out fine.

But first, the cuteness!

My husband has to be really careful before sitting on or getting into his hospital bed. Big Rig all but lives in it, burrowing under his covers, with just the tiniest bit visible. In this case, just her nose was visible, until I got right down to mattress level!

She’s such a giant slug of a cat!

Anyhow…

Today, while checking on the seed starts in the basement, I found another first.

You can just barely see in the first image above, our very first tomato seedling. This one is an Orange Currant tomato. Hopefully, that means we’ll be seeing more tomato seedlings coming up over the next few days.

The next photo in the slide show above has the Crackerjack marigolds (left) and Cosmos (right). These are starting to get tall enough that I will soon move them up to the shelf under the shop light. The tray the single luffa, herbs and the celery that was transplanted into a snail roll has room for at least two, potentially four, snail rolls, depending on how thick they are. I might end up taking everything out of that plastic tray and setting them on another metal baking sheet, like what these snail rolls are on. Less space on the tray, but it can hold the weight of those seed snail rolls.

In the last photo, you can see the hollyhock seedlings. It looks like only three, but there are four more seedlings hidden in the roll. The seed leaves are still encased in the seeds’ outer shell, so they look a lot like the vermiculite. There are two near the centre seedling with the green of their stems just barely visible. There are two more in the outer part of the roll, center and left of centre. Honest!

I didn’t take any pictures, but the pepper and eggplant seedings are not looking particularly good. One of the eggplant seedings simply died off. It was right in a corner cell, on the far side of the tray, and I suspect it was just not warm enough for it there, even with the heat mat under the tray. With so few survivors, that’s a lot of wasted space in the tray, too.

In hind sight, I’m now thinking it would have been better to do those in seed rolls, too! Chances are, they wouldn’t have been eaten by mice or whatever it was that killed most of them, either.

Ah, well. Live and learn!

I’m just happy to see my first little tomato seedling. This variety might even be a type of tomato I can eat raw, like the Spoon tomatoes. We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: a seedling explosion

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My goodness! When seedlings start to germinate, some of them do it incredibly quickly!

Last night, checking on the seed starts before going to bed, I spotted a single marigold seedling that had emerged. I could also see a hollyhock elbowing its way up.

This is what I found this morning.

On the bottom right are the Cosmos that had already germinated. There are 11 seedlings – I think I planted only 12 seeds in there.

On the bottom left are the marigolds. I counted 7 seedlings, 6 of which there had been no sign of at all, last night.

Above the marigolds is the hollyhock roll. At first, I could see just the one seedling lifting its head (these are the seeds that the instructions said not to cover at all). When I looked closer, though, I could see three more little green elbows.

Still no tomatoes or fennel, but I’m not expecting to see any of those quite yet. Heck, I wasn’t expecting to see the flowers emerge this quickly!

Hopefully, this is a good sign for the garden this year. From the amount of snow we have on the ground right now, we should at least get a good start before the heat hits and everything dries up. I believe we are supposed to have drought conditions again this year. Which is actually the “normal” for the prairies.

Meanwhile, I watched this video from Self Sufficient Me this morning. I really find videos like this the most inspiring – the ones where things have gone all “wrong”!

Granted, an overgrown jungle like that would never happen here. We’re more likely to have everything baked and dry. Still, it comes down to the same thing: having a bad year is not being a “failure” or a “bad gardener”. It’s just a bad year. Things will never be perfect.

If we waited for perfect conditions and the “right” circumstances, we’d never accomplish anything – in the garden, or in life!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: we have sprooooots! (and a weird update)

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Checking on the seed starts in the basement this morning, I had a lovely little surprise.

At least three lovely surprises, though two are pretty hard to see in the photo. Looking at the photo more closely, though, I wonder if there’s actually five sprouts.

These are the Dwarf Dazzler Cosmos. It hasn’t even been four full days yet, and there they are!

It should be interesting to see when the rest start showing up.

Aside from that, today has been another quiet day of domesticity. It’s been snowing on and off – just lightly, where we are – and that is expected to continue until about 2am. Tomorrow, I’m planning to “test” the truck again. I want to go into town and refill a couple of our big water jugs, and maybe pick up a few other things at the grocery store.

The grocery store that is across the street from the garage.

Yes, the truck ran perfectly well after we picked it up, but I still don’t trust Damocles, with how it would switch from working fine to breaking down for so long.

I plan to leave early enough that, if things go well, I’ll try visiting my mother afterwards, too.

Speaking of my mother…

I got a call from my brother yesterday evening. My mother had called him while he was at work.

We now know why our vandal told my brother he wanted to talk to my mother alone when they ran into each other at the TCU on the weekend.

He wants her to pay for his funeral.

He has no money, he says, so she should pay for it.

???

Not that long ago, he told her he had his own funeral all arranged, including the service at the church in town we all went to as children. He even told her that, for the gathering afterwards (the tradition out here is to rent a hall for a catered luncheon after the internment, sometimes with video displays and music), he said he wanted a bottle of vodka on every table.

Now, he wants Mom to pay for all that?

The thing is, Mom told my brother that she said yes, just to shut him up and get rid of him. We all know what his reaction would have been like, if she hadn’t. With his wife there, he wouldn’t have gotten too out of control, but it would not have been good.

Yeah. His wife was there.

Mom told my brother, nothing was signed or anything. She says he’s got plenty of money (he got a very generous buy out and was able to retire in his mid 50’s), his wife works, they’ve got land – he can pay for his own funeral. Seriously; I have to drive by his place regularly. I see the equipment and vehicles he’s got all over. He could easily sell just half of it and do quite well for himself for many years.

My mother had commented to my brother about how sick our vandal was looking. Which is interesting, because when my brother saw him just an hour earlier, he was looking pretty hale and hardy for a man that’s supposedly about to die. He’s still broad shouldered and agile, not wasting away. Which is what I see, too, when I see him going by on the trail cams. Or when he stopped at the end of the driveway in the fall and yelled at me from the road while waving his colostomy bag around, getting in and out of his vehicle, and looking quite energetic. He’s clearly putting on an act for my mother.

That his wife is part of this is an extra element of disturbing.

I’m just so disgusted with them. He still feels like he’s entitled to whatever he wants from my mother, because he “helped” here at the farm for so many years, and “helped” my late father after my mother moved out (though we now know he was verbally abusive and manipulative, on top of helping himself to whatever he wanted). Our vandal was one of the reasons my mother moved out. Yeah, he did do nice things for both of them, though he also caused plenty of problems, too, but when my late brother died, it clearly destroyed his mind. His terminal cancer diagnosis (if he actually has one; who knows, at this point) has only made him worse.

To go after my mother like that, though? With his wife!!! Disgusting.

What he doesn’t know, though, is that even if he convinced my mother to sign something, it wouldn’t matter. The doctors have already agreed that my mother’s cognitive function has dropped low enough that if she signs anything like that, it can’t be legally binding. Only my brother can sign on her behalf now. Verbal agreement doesn’t hold much either, since she’s flat out said she only agreed to shut him up; she was coerced.

I will be honest; my mother is not a nice person. These two really are very much alike in their behaviour, and it is a mutually abusive relationship. Knowing that there is an undiagnosed mental illness behind all this doesn’t make it any better. There was a time, long ago, when the person my mother could have been would emerge briefly, and she was so amazing. She is a survivor and amazingly strong. She somehow managed to keep it together for so many years and raised us as best she knew how. She deserves better than this. Especially from someone that was once so close to all of us.

Bah.

The main thing is, she made a point of letting my brother know what happens, so my siblings and I now all know why she said yes to our vandal at the time, and that she has no intention of paying for his funeral. He must still think she has millions of dollars squirreled away somewhere – and that he is entitled to it! Just like he felt entitled to this property.

What a mess.

I’m looking forward to being able to engage in more garden therapy, because I could really use it of late!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: next batch of seed starts

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Today, I started on the seeds that are in the 6-8 weeks before last frost category.

These are what I sowed.

In the first picture are the four varieties of tomatoes we will be growing this year: Chocolate Stripes, Manitoba, Blue Berries and Orange Currant.

I just realized I made a mistake of some kind for the days to maturity on the Blue Berry tomatoes. That’s probably supposed to be a 65, not a 95!

In the second picture are Florence Fennel, Crackerjack Marigold, Dwarf Dazzler Cosmo and Jet Black Hollyhock.

I did a lot of prep in advance. I had enough bubble warp to make the eight snail rolls that I needed, so I went with that, this time. The bubble wrap has perforations to make 12″ square sheets. I made strips 3 sheets long, then cut them in half, giving me strips that were 3′ long and 6″ wide, using clear packing tape for where I needed to join pieces together. I saved the masking tape for holding the rolls together, labelling half the strips I needed in advance.

Then I used hot water to moisten the seed starting mix. I had a bit left over from last time, plus added the new bag I got. No sifting needed! It took almost a gallon of water to get it sufficiently damp! I also set up a heat mat and a plastic tray under the shelf the seedlings are on, to hold the rolls.

Once everything was set up, it was time to make the seed snails and plant some seeds.

I had a bit of a surprise with the tomato seeds. Specifically the seed counts. I always empty the packet of what I’m working on into a bowl to make it easier to grab the seeds, one at a time – usually with the tip of a damp bamboo chopstick for small seeds. The Orange Currant packet said 25 seeds, but there were only 18. I normally would have planted about a dozen seeds and saved the rest; I chose varieties with growing seasons short enough that I could try again if germination or survival rates were low. I ended up using the entire packet.

The Blue Berries tomato had a seed count of 10, but there was only 9. I even double checked the packet to make sure nothing was stuck inside. Not a bit deal.

The other two varieties, meanwhile, had more than what the packet’s seed count said. I planted a dozen seeds each of those and have some left over if I need to try again.

I’m not complaining about the seed count. MI Gardener even did a video on Instagram, I think, talking about why they do see counts instead of weights, and that they always try to have over counts, but mistakes sometimes happen. Their seed packets are only $2 each, so I’m really not worried about it.

The strips I made for the seed rolls were all quite a bit longer than needed. This is deliberate. It gives me enough slack that I can “pot up” the tomatoes more than once, as the seedlings get bigger.

With the Florence Fennel, I made that roll bigger because I wanted to plant quite a bit more. Those can also be succession sown. We don’t normally buy bulb fennel, even though we enjoy it, because it’s one of those “treat” vegetables, rather than a staple. Hopefully, we will have lots to enjoy. I’ve tried growing them once before in the old kitchen garden and they were mostly a fail (the leaves could be used, but we never got bulbs). We didn’t realize, at the time, just how much the ornamental crab apple trees shaded everything. That’s been largely dealt with but, this year, I’ll be sure to set them where they will get more light!

With the flowers, I plan to direct sow some of the left over seeds later on, to extend the blooming season. They are going to be scattered all over the garden areas, rather than into dedicated flower beds.

I’m a little perplexed, though. I had wanted to start some of the aster seeds I saved from a packet of memorial seeds. I distinctly remember labelling a paper seed envelop (from some of the free ones we got with our seed orders) for them, as well as one for the asparagus seeds I’d collected. Now, I can’t find either. The other seeds I’d collected were larger so they went into little spice jars. I have those. They all should have been together in my seed storage bin, and I just can’t find them anymore!

I really want to plant those memorial asters again.

But I digress…

Once I got all the seed rolls done – which used up all the seed starting mix I had! – I topped them with a bit of vermiculite. Even the hollyhock, which the packet said not to cover. I just dusted a bit for the benefit of the seed starting mix surface; not enough to actually cover the seeds. After that, they all got a thorough misting.

Then I had a couple of problems.

The first was the tray they were in. All those rolls were heavy enough I had to be very careful not to break the tray when moving it.

Then there was the problem of light.

Once they were under the shelf and on the heat mat, I tried to set up one of the full spectrum lights I have. Unfortunately, the only place I can clamp the fixture onto is the edge of the table, and the lights didn’t quite reach under the shelf. I had to pull everything out and set things up closer to the edge, which I had hoped to avoid doing. It leaves me very little work space on my table.

I was just finishing up when my daughter came down to see how I was doing (she’s been taking over the outside cat feeding of late, letting me sleep in in the mornings, and get jobs like this done). I took advantage of her and got her to help me transfer the seed rolls out of the plastic tray and onto one of the metal baking sheets I had been using to hold seedlings in the Red Solo Cups. They are too wide to go under shelf were I’d originally intended the tray to be, which is why I hadn’t used one in the first place. In the second picture, you can see how it’s now set up, on a strong and sturdy metal tray over the heat mat and with the lights.

I had not intended to do so many seed snails but, for this year, they are the most practical way to do it, and they really do save a lot of space.

The next group of seeds that will need to be started are in the 4-6 weeks before last frost category. I’ll do those around the middle of April or a bit later. More than enough time to get more seed starting mix.

Hopefully, we’ll have a good germination rate – and the mouse or whatever that ate my pepper seedlings won’t like anything growing here!

The Re-Farmer