2026 garden

Our 2026 Garden: deer damage? and infrastructure progress

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This morning, I made sure to give the garden beds a through watering before things got too hot.

I found this.

On the one hand, I was happy to see another poppy blooming.

On the other, I was sad to see one of the flower buds got chomped!

I have a suspicion that it didn’t taste very good, or the rest would have been eaten, too.

So… we’re down to just 3 Giganthemum poppies instead of 4!

The nasturtiums are kicking into high gear with blooms right now.

The transplanted Crackerjack marigold and white dwarf cosmos that were supposed to be red cosmos are still blooming, too. The bush beans in the high raised bed have flower buds, and I spotted a flower on one of the Caspar eggplant. There are also more flowers showing up on various types of tomatoes. The musk melon and watermelon transplants I bought have also been flowering, but I’m picking those off. The plants are still way too tiny, but they finally seem to be growing.

Once the morning watering was done, we all just stayed indoors and out of the heat. I even crashed for a couple of hours of much needed sleep.

In the afternoon, after the cats were fed, it was back into the garden. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to get done.

First, I wanted to work on the corn patch.

In the first image of the slide show above, you can see the corn leaves are starting to press up against the netting. This is not a tall variety, but it does get taller than this. I considered finding a way to make the hoops higher, but decided to just remove the netting completely.

Once the netting was off, the corn got a thorough weeding, and then mulched with grass clippings. Parts of where I mowed yesterday do not have Creeping Charlie, so the clippings were safe to use. You can see it all done in the second image. I have left the hoops. Corn gets knocked over by wind very easily, and the hoops will provide at least some support. I’m considering other ways of adding more support as well.

I’ve got the motion sensor deer scarer set to go off at night, though I’ve set one off when it was still dusk, so “night” is a very brought frame. Hopefully, it will be enough to keep them away – and the raccoons! I might have to switch it to be active both day and night, though that would mean I would be setting it off while tending the garden. Which I might be willing to put up with!

Once the corn was weeded, it got a thorough watering, then the mulch was added, then it got watered again. From there, I kept watering the beds until I got to the next one I wanted to work on.

It was hard to see through the turnip leaves, but it did seem the red noodle beans were getting bitter. So, I harvested most of the turnips, partly to let the beans have more light, then added the trellis supports for them to climb. They look like they’re just starting to throw out tendrils.

This bed also got grass clippings added to mulch between the remaining turnips, and between the turnip row and the beans. The daikon radish is looking good – the one survivor from the winter sowing is not only still blooming but starting to develop seed pods. We will have seeds to collect for next year. The onions along the radish side of the bed are looking good, but not to much the ones on the turnip side. Those might start doing better, now that most of the turnips were pulled and they’re no longer shaded out by large leaves.

There was one more bed to water in this area before I moved to the next beds I wanted to work on.

The first section was around the dwarf peas. I wanted to remove the netting, partly because it was a pain to get under it to collect ripe pea pods.

I left the hoops, but added the wire decorative fencing to keep the cats from lying on the peas. After weeding and watering, grass clippings were added. This bed already had some leaf mulch on it, but that was breaking down quite a bit.

I found a surprising number of self seeded tomato plants while weeding! I removed the protective plastic collar that had been around the mystery flowers I’d found and transplanted here. They’re large enough now that I don’t think they need it. Very few of the onions I’d found and transplanted here in the fall made it, but the garlic I’d ground and planted are doing rather well.

Next, I worked on the rest of the wattle weave bed.

The Florence Fennel was pushing up against the netting already, so I took it off completely. I’ll probably remove these hoops later, but left them for now. The fennel, chicory and strawberries, with the two surviving summer squash I’d transplanted from thinning the other bed, are now well mulched with grass clippings and well watered again.

There was one last bed I wanted to work on.

The summer squash.

After removing the netting, each surviving summer squash got its own stake for vertical growing. It looks like four spots, from three different types of squash, didn’t make it. Once the stakes were in place, I went to use garden wire to start securing the larger vines to the stakes, but I think I may have accidentally killed one of them. I moved the stem to put it up against the stake and heard a noise that sounded like it was pulled right out of the ground! It wasn’t, but it may have been pulled up and the roots damaged. I’ll probably know by tomorrow morning if I killed it.

With four plants not making it, I found myself with four extra bamboo stakes, so I wove them across the vertical stakes on the inside, just a bit higher than the hoops. If I can find more bamboo stakes long enough, I’ll do the same on the outside row, too, just to help keep them stable and better able to hold weight.

Hopefully, the garden will survive the heat we’re going to have over the next few days. We’re expected to go above 30C/86F for the next three days, then the highs are supposed to be in the mid 20’sC (around 77F) for the rest of the month.

Definitely “water twice a day” weather.

It’s going to be brutal at the market tomorrow. Thankfully, we do have the canopy tent for shade, at least!!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: peas, gooseberries and volunteers

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Last night turned out to be a rough night for all of us. No one got much sleep at all. We couldn’t even blame the heat for it, as we had a decently cooler night.

In my case, when I finally fell asleep, I was down so hard, I never even heard a cat knock a display off a shelf, onto the floor. Ghosty, for some reason, has been determined to climb up onto the shelf, through or over the display shelf, to jump down the other side, rather than simply walk on the floor to get to the same spot. It’s an ongoing problem, and she only does it when I’m asleep! I discovered it when I had to get up to go to the washroom and had to pick everything up, just to be able to get to my door.

*sigh*

I was outside, feeding the outside cats and doing my morning rounds early enough that I could go back to bed for a few hours.

Well… I tried to, that is. Didn’t actually get much sleep, again. I didn’t put the display shelf back again, figuring it was just an invitation to disaster, which meant half a dozen cats all wanted to explore the now empty top of the shelf it rested on.

Loudly.

Eventually, I gave up and headed out to get the mail and pick up a few things, including a 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats. Later in the afternoon, my older daughter joined me and I found out her night was bad, too. She has her pre-op appointment booked next week, but she’s considering finding the doctor’s phone number to talk about increasing her meds again. The girls and I had plans to do a deep clean of several rooms today, but with how we’re all feeling, it’s going to have to happen piecemeal, over several days.

Towards the end of the afternoon, I headed out to do the evening cat feeding and rounds. I was coming about to go to the isolation shelter when I realized there was a cat inside, watching me.

It was Sweetie! She actually was willing to go into the isolation shelter again!

She took off when she saw me walking towards the shelter, but at least we know she’s coming closer for food, and willing to go into the space she spent so much time in, before going to the rescue.

I saw Slick this afternoon, too.

Slick is no longer pregnant. *sigh*

She’s lost two litters this year. It’ll take time before we know if this one survived.

No sign of the one kitten I spotted not long ago, still. Hopefully, it will start showing up at the furthest food bowls, and we can start working on socializing it, or at least getting it comfortable with coming to the house for food and shelter.

After the cat feeding, I watered the south garden beds from the rain barrel. We’re not expecting rain again for almost 2 weeks, and it’s supposed to get above 30C/86F on the weekend. After today, I’ll be making a point of trying to get outside early, before the heat hits, to water the garden. On the plus side, the water table is high enough that I don’t need to water any of the trees and berry bushes. It’s only the garden beds that drain and dry out quickly, even if there are still puddles in the lower areas.

In the old kitchen garden, I actually did a tiny harvest.

The Tom Thumb Dwarf peas had pods large enough to pick. Or should I say, thick enough. They are not at all large, just like the plants themselves!

We have some volunteers in the wattle weave bed.

Next to the peas are three self seeded tomatoes. They won’t have time to reach full maturity, but I’m leaving them be, anyhow.

In the next image of the above slide show, growing along the edge by the path along the wattle weave bed, there are a few self seeded chamomile, including one that has started blooming!

After the south beds were done, I watered the main garden area, too, though with a hose. One of these days, I’d like to set up a water tank so that the main garden area can be watered with ambient temperature water, rather than from a hose. By the time it’s done, the well water is so cold, it can shock the plants.

With that watering done, I went to check on the food forest trees and bushes, and spotted something that made me smile.

We have gooseberries!

They are unripe and still rock hard, but we have them!

Unfortunately, by the time I was finishing up, I was starting to have pain issues. It seems to kick in after I’ve done a fair bit of walking. It’s almost at the point where I’m wondering if I should go to the ER or something. My own doctor is away right now and we have a phone appointment booked for when she gets back, but if this keeps up, I might have to find an alternative. There are no urgent care clinics out here. We don’t even have any walk in clinics any closer than my doctor’s clinic, so the ER would be pretty much the only other option. If I did that, I would expect to spend many hours in the waiting room, since I would not be an “urgent” case. At least the diclofenac works, though it can take a while to kick in. When the pain hits, it doesn’t matter if I’m sitting, standing or lying down.

Oddly, while talking to my older daughter and describing where the pain it, it’s almost identical to the pain she is having! Hers is worse in other ways, given what the cause is for her.

Ah, well. Nothing much either of us can do about it right now. I don’t even have a diagnosis, and I won’t until I talk to my doctor. Even then, that would only be if the ultrasounds actually found something.

Still, I’m managing to at least get outside and get at least a few things done. I’m quite excited that we have our first gooseberries since getting planting that bush. It brings back memories. We had a gooseberry bush here when I was a kid and I used to love eating them fresh off the bush. In retrospect, I was eating them under ripe, but I loved that sour taste. I did taste one of the biggest gooseberries today. It was pretty nasty! 😄 They still have a ways to go before they are edible!

On my list of things to get done in the garden over the next while, along with loosening up the area near the corn bed and sowing tillage radishes, it’s getting time to uncover the corn and put a mulch down around them. Right now, there are a lot of weeds and I’ve been leaving them, since they are acting a bit like a living mulch right now. We’ll see what I manage to get done over the next while. If the yards dry out enough, I might be mowing, instead. That, at least, shouldn’t trigger the pain levels like walking does.

Being broken really sucks sometimes!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: poppies, melons, and a deluge

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I was rather late in heading out this morning to feed the outside cats and do my morning rounds. A thunderstorm rolled in when I normally would have gone out and lasted a couple of hours.

We got a lot of rain in a very short time! The upstairs window started leaking again; the same one that used to leak a lot when the snow started to melt in the winter, before we got the new roof. This is the second time it has leaked during a heavy downpour. I’ve contacted my brother about it, since he had the warranty papers and was able to pass on details he thought the company would need. He’ll let me know what he gets back from the roofing company.

The usual low spots that were finally drained were full again. Even the inner yard had standing water all over the place. I was rather hoping to be able to mow the lawn or at least do some weed trimming. Lawn mowing was out of the question and likely will be for a while, but I did managed to get the weed trimmer going to clear the paths in the old kitchen garden. It’s higher there so no standing water there. I kept trimming until I went through all three batteries.

The lower eavestroughs are terribly full of elm seeds that are sprouting. None of us are able to get up to them safely with a ladder. Last year I got a cleaner brush that can be used from the ground. It came with two brushes, and the first one broke rather quickly.

The second one broke before I could get very far with the cleaning.

*sigh*

My daughter has been looking into hiring someone to do it for us. Someone with a lift or a harness… and insurance. Meanwhile, I’ve just ordered a hose attachment, but it won’t get here for a couple of weeks.

After failing to get much done on the eaves, I switched to working in the garden. There are a couple of things I want to get done. One of them is to work over the entire area that was supposed to be planted with corn to loosen the soil, then scatter sow the tillage radish seeds I got a while back as a cover crop. These can grow up to 6 feet long and should be able to force their way through the layers of gravel, sand and clay under our shallow top soil. They are left to freeze and die off over the winter. The decomposing radishes create channels and enrich the soil, and the leaves can be worked into the topsoil to compost in place. At least, that’s what I’ve read they can be used for. Over time, this area will be getting a combination of perennials, annuals that self seed and can be treated as perennials, and possibly some shorter, 12′ long raised beds. We’ll see.

The exposed ground that had been under the black tarp is starting to get taken over, even though it’s pretty compacted. I will work on that later. For today, I decided to work on the small bed where I’d planted the giant poppies. A few actually survived, but the area was being overtaken by weeds.

I forgot to take a “before” picture, so the first one in the slide show below is after I’d started clearing around one side of the poppies.

The second picture shows the area all cleared. The soil here is really, really good. I could dig into it easily with my bare hands. Which I needed to do to try and get as many of the tree roots as I could.

*sigh*

With more than half of this little bed empty, I decided to transplant into it. In the next image, you can see a couple of little sprouts. One of those was quite a bit smaller this morning, and the other was barely breaking the surface. They just sort of exploded in a few hours! So I figured, why not. These are Canary Yellow melons, with 80 days to maturity. I made sure to get a photo of the label, since I haven’t been labeling anything from my own transplants. I’m using my photos as a record of what things end up where.

We have about 60-70 days left to our average first frost date. At this point, I’m counting on that Super El Nińo giving us an extended growing season.

I transplanted them in protective collars, then mulched the whole bed heavily with straw. The soil was still moist from today’s deluge but, once the straw was down, I gave the bed a thorough watering, focusing more on getting the straw soaked through.

In the last photo, you can see one of the poppy buds. This variety can potentially get poppy heads the size of a softball. I don’t expect to get any that big, considering how relatively small the plants are right now, but it should be interesting to see how large they do get by the end of the season. I did get another packet of the seed when I thought none had survived, but plan to save seed from these, too. The seeds are edible, but there won’t be enough poppy pods to harvest for eating. There should be plenty of seeds to save for planting.

Unfortunately, by the time I was done with this, my pain levels had kicked in pretty high. Once inside, I was able to take some painkillers, hydrate and start this post while my daughters made supper – and brought some over to me so I didn’t have to get up again! That was much appreciated.

Time to eat before it gets cold! 😁

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden, and a general update

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We were expecting a very hot day today, so I was up early to water the garden thoroughly before things got too hot – even though we have rain in the forecast. Depending on which app I check, we’ll either get rain or thunderstorms. Just before I started writing this, our phones started going off with tornado warnings, but it looks like the system will be passing to the north of us. We might get some rain from the edges of it. We did hit 31C/88F today. As I write this, past 7pm, we are at 28C/82F right now, with the humidex making it feel like 30C/86F.

After I did the morning cat feeding (with some cats very confused by the early hour!) and garden watering, I went back to bed. I must have been really beat because I slept for about 3 hours, checked the time, then passed our for another 2 hours.

Unfortunately, today has turned out to be a bad pain day, and not just for me. My daughter somehow ended up getting a sun burn yesterday, even though she was in the shade most of the day. I’ve been getting so much sun since it got warm enough to work outside longer, I don’t get burned, though apparently I’m quite the redneck right now. 😄 Meanwhile, my other daughter has had increased health issues again. Her pre-op appointment in the city is a couple of Fridays from now – the day the bin my brother is renting is supposed to be delivered! My younger daughter will have to stay home so she can meet them and tell them where to drop the bin off.

Aside from the pain related to why I got those ultrasounds done, my left hip has decided to start working wrong again. Not a lot of pain there. The joint just isn’t moving right and wants to give out.

I am so thankful for all the arm bars and hand rails that were installed for my father, all those years ago!

Eventually, though, I did head outside. I had to use the walker for it, but I set up the new deer scarer my brother picked up for me.

I’ve set this one up by the corn, which is going to need the netting removed from it pretty soon. I set the other one up by the peas to keep the deer away with the sound of a dog barking. With this one, I expect raccoons to be more of an issue, and I set it to the ringing of a bell, since I think raccoons would get used to the sound of a dog barking very quickly.

Once that was set up, I wandered around and checked on various things. In the next image in the slide show above, you can see some chard leaves. These are planted between the garlic and are finally starting to grow! Still pretty much nothing on the spinach in the other row; what little germinated and survived promptly bolted. It does look like we will at least have some Swiss Chard for greens this year.

In the next image, we have a red nasturtium flower. The seeds I collected were from a package with a variety of colours in it, and so far we’ve had yellow and red. They are still quite small, but adding that straw mulch once they got big enough has really helped.

Next is the row of summer squash. Those are picking up quite nicely. The plan is to grow them vertically, but I’ll need to remove the netting to do that, and they still need that protection for now.

The last picture is of the fennel and chicory. They’ve had a bit of a growth spurt! Unfortunately, some of the fennel at the end of the bed got flattened. Stinky found his way under the netting and I found him lying there. I opened the netting up at the other end, so as not to spook him, then moved to scoot him in that direction. Instead, he panicked and started running into the netting over and over before I finally got him to go out the open end. *sigh* He didn’t do too much damage, at least. We added more rods to the hoops over the fennel and it’s getting so tall, it’s almost touching the top of the netting again!

We just got another tornado alert on our phones while I was writing the above paragraph. While that is passing to the north of us, our region and the entire south end of the province are currently under a severe thunderstorm watch this evening and overnight. The warning includes 4-6cm (about 1.5-2.5in) hail, 50-70mm (about 2-3in) of rain and wind gusts up to 100km/h (about 62m/h). For us, we’re to expect rain starting around 4am tonight and lasting until about 10am.

We are definitely not going to be hit with the worst of it, for which I am thankful, but my heart hurts for the people that have been slammed by these storms, over and over again.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: a harvest, some transplanting and direct sowing

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But first, the cuteness!

Colby is one of several cats that just love that garden bed cover. So adorable!

And yes, those are garlic scapes on the netting beside him. Those are from the few garlic that are growing in the wattle weave bed. More on that later.

Today was our first market day at the large animal rescue. My younger daughter and I loaded up the cab of the truck, then headed out to arrive at around 9:30. They are only a mile away from us, so it was a quick drive.

A couple of vendors were already setting up, with vehicles all backed up to the spots they were setting up in. After pulling the truck in, along the row of vehicles, I went into the large shelter where there is a gift shop, admission is paid, and a petting zoo.

They have three kittens; two orange and a grey tabby that were free ranging. They really, really enjoyed the attention they got from the vendors! The kittens will be available for adoption at the end of the season. I expect they will have a waiting list of people interested by then!

I found someone and got instructions on where we could set up and where to park the truck after we unloaded. It didn’t take long to get everything out, then I moved the truck. Thankfully, the splayed leg style of the canopy tent we have was not an issue. We set that up, then the table with a cloth over it, then my daughter and I set out price tags on my inventory and made the display look pretty.

Thankfully, there was a pleasant breeze, and we had our shade. A couple next to us just had an umbrella, and it kept getting blown over. We took turns checking out the other vendors – there was 7 of us altogether on this first market day. I was told more are expected next weekend.

It was extremely quiet, and most of us made zero sales. I bought things from two different vendors, and those were very close to being the only sales for all of us today! We had plenty of time to talk and get to learn about each other, which was nice. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized one of the vendors is the mother of the woman that runs the rescue. Which means she’s the mother of our mechanic and his younger brother that drove the tow truck (though not anymore; he’s moved on to somewhere else). Too funny that I keep meeting more and more members of this family We had a great chat.

We were super appreciative of the shade and the breeze, as we hit 26C/79F. Things shut down at three, but we didn’t start packing up right away. The truck would have blocked others from being able to get around to load up then leave.

I got quite a laugh when I finally did bring the truck over. The vendor next to use had finished loading and was in her car with her family, waiting patiently as I turned and backed up to our tent. Then I reached out the window to open the door, and one of the guys in the car with her started to laugh and opened his window to say, “you’ve got a broken handle, too?” Sure enough, one of their doors was missing the handle on the inside, and they have to open the window to reach out and pull the handle from the outside, too.

While we were there, we kept the family updated, and I started to hear from my brother. They have their grandsons with them and today they visited my mother. They even managed to get her outside to enjoy the sunshine in a park that is right alongside the nursing home property.

Just as we were finishing loading the truck, I got a message that they’d be swinging by the farm to drop off some stuff, including the second solar powered, motion sensor noise maker they ordered for me. They got here shortly after we did. We’re leaving the truck loaded, except for the box of the truck, as we wanted to be able to put the cover back. I was still outside when the arrived and I was able to chat with my SIL and the grandkids while my brother rushed to get things out of the back of their car and into their caravan. The mosquitoes and horseflies were insane, and he didn’t want them getting into the vehicle. I got the box with the noise maker – I told my SIL that I plant to set it up by the corn, in hopes it will keep the raccoons away. Raccoons are very good at decimating corn, just when they get ripe!

We also talked about where to set the bin they are having delivered to haul away junk. My SIL was telling me they’re feeling quite frustrated. They hadn’t knows they’ve had their grandsons with them for so long before they’d ordered the bin. They’re having a blast with the grandkids, but it means they can’t come here to do any of the stuff they had planned to in preparation for the bin. We talked about where it should be dropped off, as I’ll likely be the person meeting with the delivery people.

They were in a bit of a hurry, so when they were ready to leave, I went ahead to the gate to close it, so they wouldn’t have to stop. Then I went straight to working in the garden.

With the heat of the day, I wanted to do some watering, but first I wanted to do some transplanting.

There were two that I decided to try and transplant. The largest, in the first image of the slide show above, is a Golden Hubbard squash, while the smaller one is a Gille’s Golden Pippin. They both got planted in empty spots in the bed along the chain link fence. Then I started watering everything out of the rain barrel.

As I started on the East yard beds, I remember I’d bought some fresh bush bean seeds (actually, my daughter bought it, along with the other groceries we picked up the other day). The square garden bed is down to four surviving plants!

The Arikara Squash on the middle is looking good! Big enough that I removed the protective collar.

I picked the Gold Rush variety to plant this time. I just wanted a yellow variety, as they are easier to see. Hopefully, these will back it. I have remarkably few bean plants this year!

That done, I continued watering in the main garden area with the hose. I’d picked the few garlic scapes that were on the wattle weave garlic They were much smaller than the ones in the main garden area with a hose.

While watering, I noticed the pods on the Spring Blush pea were looking very good. After i finished watering, I checked them out, then very carefully removed several.

Along with the scapes, I was concerned about the next bed. The red noodle beds are looking like they are doing what they did last year; growing just a few inches, then nothing. I harvested some of the largest turnips, as the greens are getting big enough to shade out the sun.

The turnips were pretty small, but the leaves where useful – and they are edible so we at least have that!

Not too bad for a first harvest. There are the turnips, scapes, Spring Blush peas, and a handful of herbs. Oregano, lemon balm and sage.

They made a nice addition to supper this evening.

Tomorrow morning, I plan to be back to watering the garden earlier in the day, before the heat hit. We are expecting the heat to potentially get up to 32C/90F tomorrow. Nowhere near as bad as other areas, but still not something anyone should be working in, if they can avoid it!

So… in the end, I would call today successful, even though nothing was sold. All the vendors were talking about coming back next weekend. It should be fun, and there should be more people.

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: flowers, tomatoes and strawberries

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Today turned out to be a bad pain day, so I didn’t get much accomplished. I did my morning rounds, as usual, but as the day wore on, things just kept getting worse – and I was mostly just sitting at my computer, crocheting some new items for the market on Saturday, not attempting anything active or physical!

I did remember to call my doctor’s office to make a telephone appointment to go over my ultrasound results. It turns out the doctor is leaving for holidays for 2 weeks, so I wasn’t able to book it until the 20th. The fact that the clinic hasn’t contacted me for an appointment by now means either 1) nothing showed up in the ultrasounds or 2) the doctor hasn’t seen the results yet. All I can say is, there is something wrong and it causes problems that fluctuate in severity.

It was bad enough that I asked my daughters to take over the evening feeding of the outside cats (still no sign of Sweetie). One of the things on our to-do list was to pick up prescription refills for both my daughters, but in the end I asked them to call them in for pick up tomorrow, because I wasn’t up to the trip into town. I have a couple of other places to go at well, and I really should visit my mother, too.

Thankfully, by around 7pm I was feeling well enough that I could go outside to walk around and get some fresh air with my younger daughter – until the mosquitoes drove us inside. We decided to give the last few garlic scapes another day before a final harvest, but I also spotted a couple of firsts, today.

Our very first nasturtium flower has emerged. These were direct sown using seeds we saved from last year. All the flowers in that bed are doing much better, now that they have a straw mulch around them.

In the next photo of the slide show above, I have a couple of Albion Everbearing strawberries. I’m not expecting much from these at all this year, so it’s nice to see at least a few strawberries developing.

It was while I was walking with my daughter in the early evening that we spotted our first tomato! (Which you can see in the next image.) I hadn’t even noticed any flowers, but we have one Manitoba tomato plant with a few flowers and a developing fruit. With the weather we’ve been having, the tomatoes aren’t actually growing much, so seeing this was a nice surprise.

The last image isn’t a first, but more of a last – the last of the flowering bushes. The mock orange has just exploded in blooms! It is definitely liking the weather we’ve been having.

The sad thing is, we’re going to have to move it at some point. My mother planted it against the laundry platform, and it’s in the way when we try to hang things. Not that we’ve been able to use the clothes lines much this year, but it is something we want to use as often as possible in the summer. The other thing is, we’re going to have to do some maintenance on the platform itself, including lifting it and replacing rotting wood. It needs to be on bricks or blocks or something, so that it no longer has direct contact with the soil. I suspect it has actually sunk into the ground a fair bit. The bottom step is almost lower than the patio block that is butted up against it, and is quite rotten. Some of the boards on the floor of the platform need to be either replaced or reinforced. To do that, we need to access the platform from all sides, and the south side is completely covered by the mock orange. So, it will need to be transplanted at some point.

I’ve just been watching the Gardening in Canada video released today, and it was interesting to hear her comment about the super El Nińo we’re supposed to be getting this year. It depends on where you live, of course, but she talks a bit about how it will mean a cold, wet summer, and a long hot fall. Something to consider, when it comes to planting in July.

Right now, I’m thinking of re-sowing bush beans in the square raised bed. Only a few of the seeds I planted have come up, and a few of those look like they got munched by insects. The seeds I used are older, so I’m not surprised by the low germination rate. I’ve also got more seeds germinating in that tray of winter squash and melons! If we really do get a long, mild fall, they might actually have a chance to reach full maturity. Either way, I plan to give them a chance. I’m also looking to plant spinach again – we have yet to have any spinach or chard succeed this year, though we do have a few new seedlings right now – and more peas.

It’s going to be a strange growing year.

The Re-Farmer

Scapes, peas and a huge step

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Today was another day of off and on rain, though more off than on, thankfully. The last storm did a lot of damage in areas, including at least one tornado touching down at the edge of the city. We have much to be thankful for.

While doing my rounds this morning, I was able to harvest some more scapes. The largest one yet, which you can see in the first to images in the slide show below. There will be only one more small harvest after this, unless I find some I missed. The girls and I have already talked about dehydrating whatever we won’t use fresh, and my plan to grind the dehydrated pieced into powder, and that should get started soon.

While checking the old kitchen garden, I can’t help but be amused by the dwarf peas. They are incredibly tiny – I don’t know how big they are supposed to get, but I’m sure it’s supposed to be a lot bigger than these! – and yet they are producing pods! You can see some of them in the last image of the slide show above. The plants themselves are less than 6 inches high.

I’m glad I planted other peas, and am thinking of where I can succession sow more in the next little while. The Spring Blush peas are producing pods, too, and the super sugar snap peas I sowed not long ago are growing nicely. One more succession sowing would not go amiss.

Today is Canada Day, and it was a big deal for us for a change. It has been so long since all four of us went out together! It meant clearing out the back of the cab so we could put down the rear seats in the truck. I was able to put our emergency supplies in the box, along with the cane collection and other items, and secure it all on one side, so there would be room for my husband’s walker on the other.

We went to the cottage of my husband’s brother, in a little town on the lake. Talking to my SIL about how I don’t think we’d ever been there before, and she was pretty sure we did – though it would have been about 25 years ago! As an added bonus, their adult children were able to join us, as did my husband’s sister and her significant other. It has been so long!

We had a fantastic visit. Their cottage is very close to the lake, and the girls and I had a chance to walk to the pier, finding it had a set of steps to the shoreline.

The views from above the water level were gorgeous.

The area has a lot of large rocks set in place to reduce erosion, but there are a few tiny beaches in this area of the lake.

My BIL BBQd, though he had to check on the meat with an umbrella a few times when it started to pour rain. We had a great meal and great company, with lots of catching up to do. Thankfully, my husband thought to bring his “as needed” painkillers, though, as that’s the only reason we were able to stay for about 5 hours, plus driving time of about an hour in total. My husband usually can only manage about 2 hours, including driving time.

We had made sure to feed the cats before we left. When we got home and the girls helped get my husband inside, I stayed out to do my evening rounds. The outside cats were acting really hungry, even though some of the outside kibble dishes still had food in them. I topped up the empty ones, and they were still running around, like they were expecting more.

They were waiting for the cat soup I’ve been making with the freeze dried cat food and cat milk included with the hot water.

So I made some up for them. I’ve been making more than I had been, before, and pouring it around more food dishes besides the one in the isolation shelter.

No sign of Sweetie anywhere. I feel so sad for her! I hope she finds her way back, even if she does remain feral. She must be so scared.

The inside cats were also swarming around and I figured they wanted their wet cat food, too, even though they still had plenty of kibble. I decided to make them some cat soup with the freeze dried mix, too. They keep trying to dig into the boxes to get at the bags inside, so you’d think they’d be happy with that.

Nope.

They sniff at it. I sometimes see a cat taking a few licks, and that’s it.

If the cat soup is still there in the morning, I’ll just take the trays outside. The outside cats can’t get enough of the stuff. They’ll finish it off right away!

The inside cats are so spoiled that they can be fussy like that! 😄

Anyhow.

Tomorrow, it looks like we’ve got a rain free day. We should be able to get the corded electric chain saw out to clean up that big piece of maple tree that broke in the storm, It’s going to be cut to lengths for the fire pit. Maple is an excellent wood for cooking over. We’ll also need to go around the yard with the wagon or the wheelbarrow to pick up all the smaller branches that came down with the storms and high winds, before we can mow the lawns.

I’ve also got the first market day coming up soon, so I want to prepare for that, too. I wasn’t able to find the straight legged canopy/market tent, but we do have a splay legged one, so that’s what I’ll be using. I’ve also been crocheting small things to add to my inventory from when we used to do the markets every summer, back in the day. It should be interesting to see how the market goes. If it goes well, the large animal rescue will extend the market dates into August, too.

All in all, I’d say this is the best Canada Day we’ve had in a long time, simply because the entire family was able to get out, and my husband was able to see both is brother and sister again.

Being broken sucks, but when there are good days, we sure to appreciate them more for it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: more scapes, garden tour video and a couple of surprises

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Today, we’ve had rain off and on throughout, with a brief period where the sun actually came out. As I write this, we are under a severe thunderstorm alert, which is a whole lot better than the tornado alerts other areas were getting. Large swaths to the south and west of us got storm damage and at least one tornado touching down. We are very fortunate in our location. Even today, I could hear thunder, but all the storms went around us. Our weird climate bubble has protected us again!

I did get a chance to do my morning rounds, if a bit on the late side, in between rain. I was able to harvest more scapes.

At this rate, I’ll have enough to dehydrate a bunch, which will then be ground to a powder. I did that last year and it was the handiest thing ever!

Some time back, I had moved the seed tray of winter squash, melons and cucumber off the portable greenhouse frame and set it in the open on our front steps. I don’t know why I bothered, and yet…

Look what I found today.

The first image is of a Golden Hubbard seedling from the second sowing that finally germinated. The second image is a Canary Yellow melon.

Yes, I’ll transplant them somewhere, even though the chances they will produce fruit that reaches maturity is very low. Especially the Hubbard squash, which needs 95-110 days for maturity. The melon needs 80 days. We have maybe 70 days before our average first frost. Still, we have had years where we didn’t get frost until well into November. This year is supposed to have a Super El Nińo which, in our region, usually translates into heat waves and drought.

I actually poked around in the seed starting mix in the tray, and it looks like we will actually have more things popping up!

Yes, I will transplant anything that does. Chances of them reaching maturity may be low, but possible. I’d rather give them the chance. It certainly doesn’t hurt to try.

This afternoon, during that brief period we had sunshine, I got out the shake and feed fertilizer we picked up during our Costco trip. The instructions say to work the granules into the top couple of inches of soil, but that’s not really an option. Especially with the mulched beds. So I just scattered it. This stuff can also be applied in water. Between the rain we’ve been having and watering the garden in between, the plants will get something out of it. The granules are supposed to be a slow release over 3 months. Every little bit will be a help.

We shall see soon enough, I guess!

Meanwhile, I finally got around to editing the garden tour video I took on the last day of spring. I got one of my daughters to watch the video when I was done to check for any errors I missed or let me know if anything should be fixed or changed. When I messaged them to ask if one of them could come down, my older daughter was able to do it.

Apparently, it’s hilarious. She burst out laughing several times. Mostly because of the cats, but a few other things, as well. I wasn’t trying to be funny, which is probably why it actually was. It just finished uploading onto YouTube, so here it is now!

I hope you enjoy it.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: more maintenance, and we have scapes!

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The rain started last night. The forecast has completely changed.

According to the app on my phone, we’re expecting to have rain and thunderstorms for the rest of the week. The app on my desktop shows a more moderate forecast, with today’s threat of thunderstorms already over (it’s not yet 11am as I write this) and rain off and on through to tomorrow, then no rain for the rest of the 10 day forecast. If I had to choose, I’d say my desktop weather app is more accurate than the one in my phone. I think the app in my phone is using weather stations further to the south of us.

While doing my morning rounds, I did get rained on a little bit, but just barely. That gave me time to get a few things done in the garden.

In the first image of the slide show above, you can see I finally mulched the high raised bed, around the bush beans and onions.

We don’t have a lot of bush beans. The ones I sowed in the square raised bed are coming up, so there will be more, but it’ll be a while longer before we can see how many made it. We do have pole beans, but I am still concerned we’ll have the same thing we had last year, where they only got a few inches tall and then stagnated. You can actually see them in the background of the above photo, beside the much larger turnip leaves. They are looking way too yellow.

In the trellis bed, I checked on the carrots and they are starting to germinate, so I moved the boards aside. I’m leaving them leaning against the inside of the walls to act as both a weed suppressant and a place for the frogs to shelter under. More than a few times, I’d lift the boards to check on the carrots, and as many as three frogs would come jumping out at once!

The is no sign of the Uzbek Golden carrots germinating in the other bed. I would not be surprised if none make it. They were old seeds. Carrots are one of the things I can still sow again, though, even in July, which I might do.

The last image is of one of the Spring Blush pea flowers. The peas are very sparse; they should be bushier and have more foliage, but they are pretty much just long stems. Still, they are blooming (well; the ones that didn’t get chomped by deer, at least), and they have the pretties flowers!

I also got a couple of first harvests this morning! I’ve been eyeballing the garlic for a few days now, and today I had my first harvest of scapes.

I also harvested our first Golden Boy celery. Yes, it’s on the small side for harvesting, but they are fairly crowded, and thinning by harvesting will be helpful.

As you can see through the netting under the scapes and celery, the purchased cabbage transplants are doing well. I can’t say the same for the nearby melons, though. They are definitely struggling. *sigh* While my daughter was at her blacksmithing workshop yesterday, I checked out one of the nearby garden centres. They don’t have much left at this stage. For edibles, I saw they still had lots of cabbage, pepper and tomato transplants, plus some herbs, but zero melons or winter squash left, which are the only things I’m after at this point.

Today, I had been thinking of visiting my mother. She called a couple of days ago and, right from hello, she was on me about how none of us have been visiting her. She just got out of quarantine. She was really laying it on thick, to the point I was ready to hang up on her. She just can’t seem to understand how much her behaviour drives people away from her. I told her I might be able to visit her on Sunday (today), but now I don’t know that I will be up to it. I’ll phone her, instead. Rainy and overcast weather like this always makes me feel ridiculously sleepy, and I don’t want to drive in it if I can avoid it.

I think today is a day to catch up on sleep.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: maintenance and one last transplant, plus updates

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Today has turned out to be a fairly hot and muggy day. Depending on which weather app I look at, we’re either supposed to be raining right now (it isn’t) through to tomorrow, and then thunderstorm warnings for the next two days. Or, we will get scattered rain today, with more rain for a few hours, now and then, for the next two days. Once again, it looks like the more severe weather systems will go around us.

Our day started early, as my younger daughter and I needed to get to her blacksmithing workshop for 8am. We left an hour early, and just made it on time, partly due to skirting road construction and areas still damaged from the flash flooding. The road to the blacksmith’s acreage had visible damage, some of which has been repair, some still waiting to be patched. There were a couple of areas I could tell had been completely under water, with standing water and flood damage in the fields on either side.

When we got there, I started getting messages from the rescue about Sweetie. She is not doing well and bit someone again. They wanted to know when she can come back to us. After going over what we’ve got going on over the next while, it was worked out that someone will bring her here on Monday (today is Saturday). They did manage to get her spayed a week ago, so we will keep her in the isolation shelter for only a few days, so she can get used to the idea that she is back in familiar territory again.

My daughter’s workshop didn’t take as long as originally expected. There weren’t as many people signed up for this date, which is their only “build your own forge and take it home” workshop of the season, and only one person added the extra of including an electric blower to take home as well. My daughter wants a manual blower. In the end, the workshop was only about 2 hours instead of 4. When it was done, we loaded the table portion into the back of the truck and strapped it down, removing the firepot portion and putting that in the cab with the air duct for the blower. Then we headed to the smaller city nearby for a quick lunch and to pick up a few small things we would run out of before we do our next stock up shop on Tuesday.

Once we got home, we made some space for the forge in the side of the garage with my brother’s big riding mower and other equipment. Now, we need to build a structure for her smithy so set it up in permanently. In between, she wants to find a blower, and then get fuel.

With rain apparently on the way, I asked her to give me a hand with some maintenance in the garden. Plus, I had one Butterneck squash seedling to transplant.

The first bed we worked on was the summer squash. It was time to remove the protective collars. The finnicky part is lifting the netting high enough, without getting tangled up, to work in the bed. The “funnels” in between the groups of summer squash remain, as they get watered through those.

In the next image in the slide show above, you can see the fennel and chicory bed we worked on. The fennel was getting too tall for the netting, so we took it off, then added one more rod and connector to each hoop. The netting had been folded in half, but with the new height, we unfolded it before setting it back. There is still slack with the new height, but not very much.

In the next image, you can see the turnip, pole bean, daikon radish and onion bed we worked on next. The turnips and onions were getting crowded, so all the hoops here got on more rod and connector, too. We also took the opportunity to do some weeding, and add some straw for a mulch.

Once thing I’m concerned about with this bed is the red noodle beans. When I tried to grow them last year, they got to about the stage this year’s beans have reached now, and then… stopped. They never really got any bigger, and I never figured out why. I’m hoping that a different bed and consistent watering and fertilizing will help them grow. Once they get to when they can start climbing, we’ll take off the net set up a trellis. For now, though, there’s just no need.

This netting had also been folded in half and needed to be unfolded to fit over the new height, then secured. A job made much easier with my daughter to help!

The next image is something I’d actually done last night – I finally added a mulch in between the cosmos, marigolds and nasturtiums. The nasturtiums are quite small. They didn’t get very big last year, either, and I know they should be larger and fuller. No sign of any self-seeded memorial asters (I’m still unhappy that the seeds I saved indoors have disappeared), so the spaces are now all mulched.

In the last image, we have progress on the chain link fence bed. My daughter helped me raise the bottom half of the netting from end to end, securing it up so that I could work under it. After that, I could manage it on my own.

In one of the empty protective collars, I transplanted the single Butterneck squash seedling. Then I mulched with straw tightly around the collars, and carefully around the sunflowers. I also made sure not to cover the furrow I’d planted the super sugar snap peas, from our own saved seed. There are seedlings appearing now!

After the straw was in place, I carefully removed the protective collars. The mulch will protect them from the elements now. Last of all, the netting was set back down and reset nice and snug.

Once that was done, and everything was cleaned up and put away, I checked on some of the other beds. The high raised bed needs a straw mulch, too, but I’ll do that later. Hopefully, tomorrow. The short season corn is getting tall enough to mulch, too, I think. I checked on the more recent sowing of carrots. No seedlings yet, but the frogs do love hanging out under the boards protecting the carrot seeds! I didn’t notice any cucumbers coming up, yet. I checked the garden beds in the east yard, too, and was happy to see my last sowing of bush beans, in the small square raised bed, have started to germinate.

I really hope things start catching up soon. Staples like carrots, peas and beans all seem to be under the weather. The winter squash and melons aren’t doing well, either, but they’re not quite staples in the same way. The garlic is doing great, and scapes have started to form. I expect to be harvesting some in the next day or two. I’m really looking forward to those! The potatoes are starting to develop flowers, with one variety developing faster than the other. We should be able to start harvesting baby potatoes soon, if we wanted to.

So that is garden progress today. Mostly just maintenance. I’m really liking the flexibility of the hoop kits. I still plan to build more covers for the raised beds, but for now, these are doing just fine. Being able to make the hoops higher as needed really helps.

The surreal thing of the day has been the time. When my daughter and I were starting for home, it felt like 2 or 3 in the afternoon, but it was just coming up on noon. When I finished in the garden and did the outside cat feeding, I was sure it was well past 5. Maybe even 6. Instead, it was just barely 3 when I got in! Meanwhile, I can see outside my window, the sky getting darker and the wind blowing the maple branches, and I feel like it’s almost bed time… and it’s not even 4:30 as I write this!

Very disorienting, that’s for sure!

😄😉

The Re-Farmer