This evening, before things started to get dark, I headed outside to do my evening rounds. I remembered to bring a bowl to finally harvest some tiny Orange Currant tomatoes!
I actually dropped quite a few of them that were damaged by frost to the ground. Which means we might have some self seeded tomatoes showing up in this bed next year, which I am okay with. I still managed to get quite a few, plus a couple of Blueberry tomatoes. I even found a Manitoba tomato that was getting ripe, with no cracks in it! All over those, I’m seeing green tomatoes already cracked. The cracked ones I’d brought in before, intending to dehydrate the non-cracked portions, ended up molding almost right away and had to be composted. *sigh*
Once the tomatoes were picked, I checked the beans in the bed beside them and found a few ready to harvest. A couple of the plants have lots of developing beans still, so this will probably not be the last beans we pick from there.
While checking the main garden area, I found myself really impressed by this bolted carrot.
It is HUGE! Those flower clusters are downright massive! We’ve had carrots bolt before. Usually Uzbek Golden carrots. This one is from the Rainbow Mix carrot seeds, and I’m not sure which colour of carrot this is from. When we can finally harvest this bed, we’ll be able to see. I’ll make sure to leave the bolted carrot. If it survives long enough before it gets too cold to develop seeds, I intend to harvest them.
We’ve got at least three more mild nights before temperature drop enough that I would want to cover as much as I can, just in case the actual temperature drops lower than the forecasted temperature – again. Overall, though, we’ve possibly got almost two weeks of fairly mild overnight temperatures.
I’m really hoping for a mild winter overall. My tolerance for our typical prairie winters is getting shorter as I get older! 😄
We had some rain, off and on, during the night, and today was mostly overcast. Overnight temperatures were quite nice, and the garden survives.
This morning was very good, on the pain scale, for myself, but not for my daughter. I headed to the garage this morning on my own, and didn’t even bother to bring the walker – though I did remember to bring the water jugs.
I always leave early, but I forget that the new location is closer enough to make a difference in travel time. I got there almost 45 minutes early.
He took the truck in almost right away.
The oil change got done and, when I asked, I found out he’d already checked the steering linkage for me when he was doing the diagnostic on Monday. All is good. We talked for a while about the check engine light. The most common fix he’s seen for that code is changing the gas cap, but we might not need to do that. It could be as simple as the cap not being on tight (we know it is), or the O ring not sealing as well. Applying some oil to the O ring would help with that. It could be dust in the EVAP system, especially since we drive on gravel roads. He described the system to me and told me about a number of other possibilities. My scan showed it as a “very common” code to come up. He assured me it won’t affect drivability. He never recommends getting work done, if it isn’t actually necessary. We can clear the code ourselves with the scanner, or it might even go away on its own.
In the end, he charged me for the oil and filter change, and an hour of labour for the diagnostic testing done on Monday. Considerably less expensive than I feared, at the start.
The whole thing was done before my actual appointment time!
I didn’t have a lot of driving after that, but I could already feel the truck felt like it was running smoother. The oil gauge was where he said it should be, and looking better than before. We’ll be doing many trips into the city next week, so it’ll get a work out, then.
I headed into town to refill the water bottles and picked up a few other little things, then headed home. My older daughter helped me with bringing the bottles in, as her sister has barely been able to get out of bed for the pain.
Later on, after I’d gone out to do the outside cat feeding, I hosed down the mats from the sun room some more, then checked on the garden. I ended up with a little harvest; just enough for a meal or two.
It’s been a while since I’ve tried harvesting, or even weeding, any carrots. The Rainbow Mix carrots are harder for me to reach, but are the one planted earlier, so I made sure to take from that row. They were a lot thicker than I expected! Then I grabbed the two Lemon Squash from the old kitchen garden. My older daughter is making a hearty potato soup for supper and made sure to include some of this!
The 10 day forecast is looking pretty good. Aside from a trip to the post office, we don’t need to go anywhere and the weather looks like we should be able to get things done outside – and finish clearing and cleaning the sun room!
My daughter and I headed into town this morning, hoping to get the truck worked on, even though I hadn’t received a message back from the garage with a time. I had my suspicions, but my daughter had something to do in town after, so I knew it wouldn’t be a wasted trip.
Oh, my. I really feel for the owner of the garage.
When we got there, he was outside, on the phone. My daughter stayed outside by the truck while I went into the office and waiting for him. I couldn’t hear what he was saying on the phone, but I could hear his tone, and it was a lot tenser than his usual laid back manner.
When he came to the office door, he was furiously texting while also apologizing. He had meant to text me back with a time, but had never had a chance to look at his schedule to tell me when. He was finally able to set his phone down on a shelf just outside the door, telling me how, after he’d had to go home yesterday, unable to work on our truck, things ended up taking hours longer than it should have. Of course, that absolutely screwed up his schedule completely.
He had just sat down at his desk and started getting his schedule out when his phone started ringing again. From where he’d left it just outside the door! He had to answer it and went outside again to talk. When he came back, he looked absolutely frazzled.
He was, of course, needing to catch up on things, and I could already see his bays were full, so there was no way we’d be getting in anytime soon. He had no openings today and, at best, could squeeze me in between other scheduled jobs. Of course, that would me us waiting in his office, since there’s nowhere else to go in the industrial park his shop is now located in. Alternatively, he had openings tomorrow.
We’ll be back tomorrow morning.
Poor guy. Yes, there was another mechanic, but there are things only the owner can take care of and, when it comes to our truck and needing to figure things out, he had taken that on himself rather than delegating.
That arranged, my daughter and I headed into town. I had forgotten our water bottles to refill, but we’ll be back to do that tomorrow. My daughter ran her errand and we were soon home.
I was feeling really good today – left the walker in the truck and didn’t even need a cane. After we had lunch at home, I headed outside to see what I could get done, as we are expecting rain.
I got the cat beds soaking in the tub finished and set out to drain and, if it doesn’t rain, dry. Floor mats got hosed down, which will need to be done again another time or two. I got the cat cage dismantled and the interlocking mat under it set out for soaking, then hosing down.
With the cat half of the sun room finally empty, I swept as best I could, but the floor washing and window washing will have to wait. Instead, I brought out all the cleaned cat beds and blankets and set them on one side, then brought all the food trays that had been removed and laid them out on the other, along with a water bowl. This way, the cats will at least have someplace warm and dry to hang out in, should the weather get wet. The wind, at least, seems to be dying down.
By the time all that was done, it was time to do the outside cat feeding. The singleton kitten would not let me touch her today, but she kept calling at me. She looks so sad without the little kittens to play with! I’m glad she’s staying close to the house now, though. Hopefully, with all the trays returned to the sun room, she will start hanging out in there more often, and the other cats won’t chase her out.
Before heading in, I did my evening rounds and checked on the garden. I watered the muskmelon, since they are under their own mini greenhouse set up. Then I noticed a strange bit of colour among the yellow leaves of the red noodle beans in the other bed.
There it is. Our single, sad, floppy little red noodle bean! I couldn’t see any others. Which I found funny because the same thing happened the first time we tried growing this variety during what turned out to be a drought year. We got just one sad little bean that year, too.
I would really like to successfully grow this variety, but I think I’ll wait a year or two before I try again.
I was still able to get a little harvest for today, though.
I got a handful of beans from the ones planted later in the season, with the Arikara squash. My pain levels started to kick in, so I asked a daughter to make supper, and I now have those beans on my cooling plate as I write this. I also grabbed a few of the Blueberry Tomatoes for the girls.
Sept. 23, and we still have a few things we’ll be able to harvest. If the long range forecast is at all accurate, we will have no danger of frost at all for at least the next 10 days.
I’m appreciating every frost free day we’re getting as a gift right now!
This evening, I was able to head out to the garden before things got dark and cold. We are looking at a potential low of 1-2C/34-36F, depending on what app I look at. 1C/34F is cold enough for potential frost.
So I first made sure to bring our single winter squash that was curing, into the house. Then I took our frost cloths (repurposed old sheets) to see what we could cover. My older daughter came out to help.
Embedding from Instagram seems to crop the images quite a bit. Irritating!
Three of the clothes I brought were the right size to wrap around the protective tomato cages around the California Wonder bell peppers, and another around the Sweet Chocolate peppers and eggplant. I got some garden wire and my daughter helped me fasten the bamboo supports for the Chocolate Stripe tomatoes at the top. This old sheet was large enough to drape over the supports and reach all the way to the ground on all sides! All of these got secured with garden clips and clothes pegs, to keep them from blowing away.
After that, my daughter started to harvest the fully dry caraway seed heads while I started harvesting some bush beans. She finished first, then helped me pick beans. After that, she watered the melons – we had lots of rain the past few days, but they were covered, so they didn’t get any direct watering – while I moved on to pick beans from beside the Arikara squash plant. Then I picked some of the ripest larger tomatoes. My daughter joined me in time to work on harvesting the Orange Currant tomatoes.
She had to go inside before we got all the tiny tomatoes. This bed is one we don’t have anything large enough to cover and protect from frost.
I was finishing up and gathering the containers when I noticed something in the next bed.
Every single Swiss Chard in that bed is gone.
*sigh*
They never got quite large enough to be worth harvesting yet!!
From there, I went to the old kitchen garden and harvested what little there was that looked big enough. Then I used my last and largest sheet to cover the self seeded tomatoes in the wattle weave bed, which you can see in the second image of the slide show above.
In the last picture, you can see the harvest. The larger tomatoes that are split, I will cut the split off then dehydrate the rest of the tomatoes. I finally harvested the one green scallop squash I had been leaving to get bigger. There was only one other that was at all large enough to harvest. I grabbed a few little yellow zucchini.
If we do get a frost tonight, this is very likely the last harvest we get of the summer squash, beans and tomatoes. There are so many green tomatoes on the plants. I was talking to the girls about bringing them inside to ripen, but they tell me that it’s not worth it. They say tomatoes ripened indoors don’t test as good, but mealy instead. I’ll have to take their word for it.
One thing that isn’t having a hard time with the cooler weather are the marigolds and cosmos!
These are the French Dwarf marigolds that suddenly got quite a bit taller. I neglected to get a picture, but the Crackerjack marigolds by the high raised bed have gotten taller than any marigolds I’ve ever seen before – well above the height of the high raised bed. The cosmos are a dwarf variety, so they aren’t as tall as what we had last year, but some of them still reach higher than the high raised bed, too.
With the cooler weather, there are still some thing I expect to harvest. There are the carrots, which we haven’t been trying to get at lately. We will need to start digging those up, though they can stay in the ground for quite a while longer. There are also the Red Beard bunching onions, which can stay longer. None of the onions from our own seed appear to have survived much after transplanting. They got smushed at some point. Probably rolled on by cats. There’s the beets and the parsnips, and I still can’t tell if we have much root development in those. I’m also not sure about the chicory. At this stage, I don’t expect them to bloom anymore, but will they still have roots worth harvesting? The Florence Fennel all bolted, but I should be able to harvest seeds from them, instead. I don’t expect to have any Diakon radish, since they all bolted, too. I don’t think we can even harvest seed pods from those, they are so badly damaged.
If we get frost, that’ll be it for the winter squash on the chain link fence. The sunflowers might be okay, but it doesn’t look like we’ll have any seed heads worth harvesting.
Tomorrow morning, the covers will need to come off. We are supposed to get rain from about 3pm – 9pm, and the overnight low is supposed to be warmer than tonight, so we might be able to get away with not covering them again for quite some time. The rain itself would prevent an actual frost and covering them while it’s raining might be worse than not covering them at all. It looks like things will actually be decently warm for the next 10-15 days or so! All it takes is one cold night to kill everything off, though.
We need to leave by about 9am tomorrow morning for my daughter’s appointment at the Women’s Hospital in the city. This time around, I’m not even going to try an park by the hospital and keep adding $2 to the meter every half hour, when we don’t know how long it’ll be. I’ll drop the girls off at the door, then head back out to a shopping area with free parking. Maybe check out a Michaels and see their craft supplies. My bead kit came in today, so there isn’t much more I need to find before I can start making the Christmas ornaments I have in mind. I’ll just need somewhere to hang out until my daughters message me to come pick them up. Depending on how long her appointment ends up being, we might be able to get home before the rain starts.
What I should be working on now is preparing beds for the winter, and for the garlic we need to be planting in October. Something may not be physically able to do, if I’m going to be having surgery by the middle of October. There’s only so much my daughters can do, as they are dealing with quite a lot of pain issues, too, though very different from my own.
This year has basically been in a holding pattern. Virtually no progress. We even had a lot of good weather days that I should have been able to take advantage off. Instead, I am largely banned from manual labour, and spend way too much time having to lie down due to pain.
Ah, well. It is what it is. We do what we can with what we’ve got!
I’m glad I was able to get outside this morning. It started raining in the afternoon and is expected to continue through to about 3am.
Last night, we dropped to about 5 or 6C/41 or 43F, depending on which app I check. Tonight, it’s supposed to drop to 9 or 11C/48 or52F, depending on where I look, so no worries of frost. The next night, however, is expected to drop to 3 or 4C/37 or 39F Definitely enough to start covering things, even if we don’t get frost.
Some things can’t be covered, though. Things like this Butterneck squash.
These are the two largest ones. In the second photo, you can just see a bit of wind damage. The Black Russian sunflowers on this side are shorter than the Mammoth ones, and the high winds have been pushing them all over the place. I’ve had to untangle both varieties of sunflowers from each other. In this corner, a couple of shorter sunflowers had gotten tangled with the squash vines climbing the fence. One of them ended up right against that second developing squash. The stalks of sunflowers are quite course and the winds pushing them around damaged the squash’ skin like sandpaper.
I know these are unlikely to survive an actual frost. Will they survive temperatures just above that? Hard to say. The colder temperature and shorter daylight hours also mean they are growing more slowly, so they will take more time to mature even without the colder temperatures.
These squash are from the second sowing of seed starts I did after discovering all the squash and melon seedlings were destroyed overnight, so these are also already quite late. One of the other things from the second sowing that got transplanted is a Black Futsu squash. When I bought some butternut transplants and the plants seemed to be growing all right after being transplanted, but they are barely even blooming now. The winter squash in that area that is growing and actually has female flowers and developing melons are the Black Futsu. They look like little green golf balls right now, and one of the earlier ones seems to have disappeared. So we won’t be getting any butternut squash from from the purchased transplants at all.
I headed out again not long ago to do the evening cat feeding, but it was raining pretty hard, so I didn’t check any of the garden beds. Unfortunately, it looks like we’ve lost more cats. Neither my daughters nor I have seen Bug for a while now. My precious little Bug is missing! I was never even able to get her to accept pets from me again, other than sneaking them while she was eating.
We need to do another head out in the morning. That’s when most of them show up.
I’m so glad we got Slick’s orphans to the rescue when we did. I got a quick update on them. They are allowing themselves to be held, and the one that was the most alarmed and scared and fighting us off? That was the first one to start purring!
Well, I’m certainly glad I was able to cover those melons yesterday. According to the weather app on my phone, we dropped to 4C/39F last night. No frost, but still cold enough to potentially cause problems for heat lovers like melons.
When I headed out to check the garden beds this morning, I made sure to fill the slow watering jugs by the melons. Hopefully, that will help give them the heat and moisture they need for those few little melons to develop.
What can I say. I’m an optomist.
Nothing seemed to be damaged by the cold night, thankfully. The Spring Blush peas are completely dried out, so I collected the pods. They’re not in a bowl in the cat free zone, waiting to be put into a jar or something. Then I completely forgot about them. 😄
When I headed out again this evening, I took care of a few things. The first was to bring in the onions, which have had enough time to cure.
They all got their stems trimmed off and the dirt on them gently removed. I also trimmed the Giganthemum poppy pods off their stalks and brought those in. In the next image, you can see what seeds we got (some of the pods were empty), in an amber glass jar. The plan it to sow those in the fall, just before the ground freezes. Between these and the bread seed poppy seeds we have, I am hoping to finally grow enough poppies to have seeds for baking with as well as for sowing the next year. I have a couple of spots in mind to sow the different varieties, so they don’t cross pollinate.
I also finally harvested our single Arikara squash.
The first photo is to give a perspective of how big it is, in the wheelbarrow. As it got bigger, I set it on a brick, then later added a board, so keep it off the damp ground. The rough surface you can see is what was face down on the board. It was a bit damp so, when I set it on the curing frame (over the cross piece, to support the weight), I made sure the damp part was facing up.
This, I expect, will be the only winter squash we will get this year, and I’m glad we finally got an Arikara squash, since I specifically want to save the seeds from this rare variety. There’s no chance of cross pollination since there were no other winter squash around to cross pollinate with.
We do have the winter squash on the chain link fence, and we do have a few Butterneck squash developing. Some are large enough now that I could be harvesting them as a summer squash. I don’t expect that they will have a chance to reach full maturity, but even young winter squash can be eaten.
According to the weather app on my desktop, we dropped to 6C/43F last night, not 4C/39F. Tonight might be just as chilly as last night, but shouldn’t be any colder. By Tuesday night, though, both apps are saying we will be dropping to 3C/37F overnight. At that point, I might want to add jugs of hot water under the plastic with the melons, and drape frost cloths over the peppers and eggplant. After that, we’re expected to warm up again for a while.
I definitely need to remember to close my window for the night. It’s only open a few inches, and I was cozy under my covers, but I woke to find 6 cats plastered against me, 4 around my face and shoulders, trying to keep warm! 😄🤣
I am so not looking forward to winter. My tolerance for cold, and winter in general, has really dropped a lot in the last few years! Medical emergencies and vehicle breakdowns have contributed significantly to that. 😄
On the right and on the board in the middle are the Red Wethersfield onions that were interplanted with the bush beans in the high raised bed. The largest ones were all on the south end of the bed. The others were probably too overshadowed by the bush bean leaves to get as big.
The ones on the right are the Red Long of Tropea, which were interplanted with the caraway and along the west side of the bed with the (already harvested) turnips. On the other side of that bed, by the Daikon radish are the Red Beard bunching onions, which are looking very tall and strong.
I forgot to look for the onions that were planted near the celery, Those aren’t even visible anymore. Out of sight, out of mind!
That one tomato is a Chocolate Stripe tomato that I found fallen on the ground.
While checking other beds, I noticed some red tomatoes.
The little ones are supposed to be Blueberry tomatoes. 😄 The other, larger ones are Manitoba tomatoes. Then there’s that Chocolate Stripe tomato off to one side. They are now all set aside in the cat free zone to continue to ripen.
After harvesting the onions and the tomatoes, I checked on the summer squash and found a bit of wind damage. These are being grown vertically, but some did not get tied off high enough, yet, and one had been blown over, bending at the highest tie. So I spent a while going through all of them and securing them to their vertical posts with garden wire.
It isn’t a lot, but it felt good to be able to do at least that much in the garden!
So… I didn’t make it to the city again. I didn’t even make it to the garden to harvest until the late afternoon.
I will cover why in my next post.
When I did make it out, my daughter was there to help me with the walker and to harvest the bush beans. Then, as I was feeling well enough, she started doing the watering while I went to the old kitchen garden to harvest a bit more.
The amount of bush beans available to harvest has dropped quite a bit by now, so we didn’t have much to pick. I also harvested what will likely be the only kohlrabi we’ll get this year. Then a grabbed the two largest Green Benning scallop squash. We will definitely be getting more of those, later on! Those are looking really beautiful. Last of all, I grabbed a bunch of mint, to make fresh mint tea.
Then I decided I felt well enough to harvest the garlic. As I started on that, my younger daughter got a message from her sister asking what we were picking, as she was thinking to do a stir fry. So I told her where the colander with the vegetables was, then grabbed a few Swiss Chard leaves for her, for added greens. There wasn’t a lot of surviving Swiss Chard between the garlic large enough to pick, but enough to add to a stir fry.
I am so happy with the garlic. This is easily our best year for garlic, with SO many huge garlic heads! I believe the variety is Porcelain Music, if I remember correctly. They are from our own saved garlic, not purchased.
The first image of the slide show above is where I’d stacked them all while digging them up, on the mulch by the potatoes. There was one garlic head that broke off when I tried to pull it up, even after digging under it with the garden fork, with a snap so loud my daughter heard it while watering at the other end of the garden! I’m happy to say, I timed it right this year. Last year, I’d put it off longer and about half a dozen bulbs had starts to split. Which is fine. Those just got eaten right away. There were no split bulbs at all this time.
Yesterday evening, I’d set up the canopy tent and the folding table. You can see the bundle in the second image. In the last image, they’re all laid out with the bulbs off the edges of the table. I’ll leave them to dry overnight, then string them up to hang for curing tomorrow.
There are a couple of female flowers that have gotten quite large. No male flowers are as large, but there are enough that they might actually bloom at the same time and pollinate. The vines are getting big enough that I’m starting to train them around towards the compost ring, so there is room to mow and walk around that side of the bed.
I have no idea what type of caterpillar that is, but it was enjoying the oregano. There is so much of it, I just left the caterpillar be. It actually didn’t seem to be eating the leaves, though. So we’ll see.
I didn’t try to do any harvesting, though I’m sure I could have picked more bush beans. Plus, there is that one yellow zucchini that is looking great. I’ll probably harvest it tomorrow morning.
Hopefully, I’ll actually be home tomorrow. I got my CT scan done today, but I’ll cover that in my next post.
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…
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!
