We have a couple of hot peppers developing, just on one plant so far. I also spotted our first corn silks this morning!
I found some new female winter squash and a pumpkin blossoming and hand pollinated them. Today was the first time I found a female squash blossom in the squash bed with the corn, which got transplanted after the ones with the peas and beans. The area around the pumpkins and winter squash is getting hard to walk through to water, the vines are getting so big! I need to find a way to set up supports for the hose above ground at each bed, so it doesn’t get dragged on top of the vines. I really should have set up the soaker and sprinkler hoses around the beds before they got so big.
Quite a few things that were looking wimpy and behind are starting to perk up, too, like the last onion transplants and the melon bed. Most of the tomatoes are getting big and bushy. I have not been on top of the pruning this year and, at this point, don’t really intend to do much of that. I’ll take off some of the lower leaves, but the stalks that grow out of the leaf “elbows” just got away with me. I figured I may as well leave them, since they will produce fruit. The black cherry tomatoes are vining so tall, the double lilac bush with branches above them is actually helping to support them! That group will need extra support around them, though.
The tomatoes growing in the concrete blocks, both at the chain link fence and the retaining wall, are not getting bushy, though. They are starting to produce tomatoes, but the plants themselves are not as strong and bushy as the others.
I’m going to have to rethink what we grow in those blocks. Perennials like the mint and chives are doing great. We did successfully grow cucamelons in the retaining wall blocks, though their vines remained spindly. They did not do well at the chain link fence. Onions and shallots don’t seem to do well in them, either, which is odd considering how well the chives are doing.
So it looks like we should be looking at saving the blocks for things like perennial herbs. The old kitchen garden is meant to eventually be a combination herd garden and kitchen garden, for both annuals and perennials. Basically, mostly things that we’d want to harvest as needed throughout the summer. I want to see if we can grow things like rosemary (which would be an annual, in our short growing season), sage or savory, which we tend to use quite a lot. We know now that chamomile will self seed nicely. We’re not using the thyme we have right now, as we don’t have a lot of it, and I want to see if it will either self seed or survive the winter, if it gets mulched well enough. In the fall, I want to find someplace to transplant those “wild” strawberries out of the wattle weave bed to where we can just let them do their thing.
Ah, the fun thing about gardening. I’m always thinking years in advance!
That whole “get outside early, before it gets hot” thing is just not working. After finishing my morning rounds, it was already 25C/77F, with the humidex putting it at 31C/88F! As I write this, it’s actually cooled down a tiny bit, but it’s going to go right back up again this afternoon.
One of the garden beds that has me a bit perplexed is the eggplant and hot pepper bed. I have not tried to replace the plastic around the box frame, that got shredded by the wind, so they’ve been exposed to the wind and temperatures like everything else beside them. That bed does get a bit more sun than the other two beside it. The peppers and eggplants, though, just don’t seem to be growing. This seems like more than transplant shock. They’re just stagnating, and I don’t know why.
Which makes what progress I am seeing in them a bit surprising.
As small as they are, I am seeing flowers opening up among both the Classic eggplant, and the Little Finger eggplant. There are flowers on the Cheyenne hot peppers, too, but I would almost expect that. These peppers were started the earliest. They should be big and bushy and have fruit developing by now, so having a few flowers appear is late for those. For the eggplant, though, would have expected flowers to appear after they’d gotten much better. Especially considering how large the fruit is supposed to get at maturity. The normal fruit size, even for the Little Finger variety, is bigger than the plants are now!
Aside from that mystery, I found a couple of ripe strawberries among the older plants in the asparagus bed. Yesterday evening, I’d picked a few from the bare root strawberries that were planted this spring, and the tiny strawberries grown from seed in the old kitchen garden. The strawberries in the asparagus bed are having the hardest time of it, because the deer keep eating the leaves, so anything out of there is bonus.
There are sugar snap pea pods developing, and I’d picked a couple last night. This morning, there was just one, ready to pick. I’m only picking these because, the more they are harvested from, the more they will produce.
The real bonus this morning was the garlic scapes!
Almost all of the scapes were ready to be harvested. Of the ones remaining, they should be ready to harvest in the next day or two. So we’ll probably have one last harvest, and then be done for scapes for the year.
We need to plant more garlic. 😄
The mint that keeps trying to take over the bed is managing to get into the raised rectangular bed with garlic, tomatoes, onions and shallots in it. Since I was weeding them out, anyhow, I picked enough for a day’s use.
It’s not much of a harvest, and this year, it doesn’t look like we’ll get much that can be harvested through the summer. The bush beans have been decimated by slugs, so I don’t expect anything from them anymore. They mature fast enough that I could replant, but there’s no point, unless we can get rid of the slugs.
I should pick up some cheap beer for slug traps. Even the last Zucca melon is getting decimated, and it’s of a size they normally wouldn’t be able to damage that much. There is evidence of slug damage on some of the melons and winter squash, and at least a couple of melons have simply disappeared, but they seem to really like the Zucca melon – enough to get up into that kiddie pool raised bed it’s planted in!
The shelling peas are of a size that they need to be trained up into the trellis netting. There are very few pole beans, but they are getting tall enough that trellis netting needs to be added on that side of the bed, too.
The hot pepper growth has been stagnant, but so have the bell peppers in the high raised bed. They’re not getting any bigger, though they certainly look healthy, small as they are, and some of them are starting to bloom, too!
Most of the tomato varieties are also showing blooms. The only ones that aren’t are the last San Marzano transplants. Considering how much later they were planted, that’s not a surprise. The ones planted in the old kitchen garden almost all have flowers and are getting tall enough we’re going to have to start clipping them to their bamboo stake supports.
Along with all that, we need to get the weed trimmer and lawn mowers out before the grass gets too tall again. We still have standing water in places, and the ground is still saturated in others, but we should still be able to get at least some of the mowing done. That will give us grass clippings we can add to some of the garden beds as mulch, too.
Also on the list it so finish assembling the log frame on the one low raised bed. I was able to accumulate more cardboard that I plan to put under the logs, first. So they’ll need to be rolled away, the ground under where they will go needed to be levelled off more, the carboard laid down as a weed barrier, then the logs rolled back and permanently attached to each other. I just plan to cut notches in the shorter end pieces to fit them over the ends of the side pieces, to set them snug against each other. I still have some broken pieces plant supports I got a few years ago. They were hollow metal tubes coated in plastic, and with so many rocks in our soil, they broke very easily. I’ve used some of them, already, on the current trellis bed. I used an auger bit on my drill to make a hole through the logs at the short ends, then drove the broken lengths of supports in, to hold them together. I plan to do the same thing when assembling the new frame. It needs to be done very soon, as the winter squash is starting to grow into the paths, and will soon be too big to move out of the way without damaging them.
Meanwhile, the temperature and humidex is already starting to get hotter again. Our humidity levels are supposed to reach over 90% at times. I’m amazed we have an only 25% chance of rain this evening. I would have expected thunderstorm warnings. We do have a small system with storms in it passing us to the north, but not anywhere near where we are.
Well, summer is summer, and I’d better get used to the heat, if I’m going to get anything done.
The mosquitoes, on the other hand, are something I will never get used to!! Mosquitoes, horseflies, deer flies… they’re all just brutal this year!
We didn’t get too excessively hot – our high was 19C/66F – which made a huge difference. As I write this, we’re at 17C/63F, with a “feels like” of 15C/59F. That’s more my kind of weather!
Best of all, we had a break from the rain. We should have another break tomorrow, and then it’s supposed to rain for another two days.
Still, we got enough sunshine to dry some things out.
Today, I wanted to get some direct sowing done – finally!
I decided to plant chard where the spinach is done. That required first removing the netting I set up that turned out to not be long enough to go all the way around the bed. Once that was cleared and put away, I pulled the sad little remaining spinach plants – I wish I knew why they did so poorly! – and weeded the bed. We don’t have a lot of carrots, unfortunately. The cats would go in where there was no netting to keep them out, and use that corner of the bed as a litter box, digging up quite a few carrots in the process. I’d hope to plant more, but it’s too late in the season for carrots, now. Of the overwintered onions that had been transplanted at one end, there are three that survived the transplanting, and they are starting to go to seed!
Speaking of seed, I had both Bright Lights (a rainbow variety) and Fordhook Giant seeds. The cats had gotten into them and chew through the packages, so now they’re all mixed up in the a Ziplock baggie. These are not new seeds, so it will be interesting to see how well they germinate.
Once the planting and weeding was done, I grabbed one of the new nets I picked up at a dollar store and set it up around the bed. I added a couple more support posts around the perimeter. These are salvaged from the frame of a canopy tent a tree fell on, so they all have screw holes in them. Very handy to string line through, to hold the netting in place and keep it from just sliding down the supports! The netting is wide enough that it can reach the trellis netting in the middle, as well as to the ground outside the raised bed. I didn’t bother fastening the netting to the middle, since it’s mostly to keep the cats out. Once the netting was in place, it got some ground staples to hold it down, since it kept wanting to creep back up!
That done, it was time to go to the main garden area, and the last bed that got shifted over. The empty space between the shallots and the yellow bulb onions needed something in it!
The white patty pan and Magda squash that was planted in pots in front of the house did not germinate, so I replanted them there. I also grabbed the G-star pattypan seeds, and planted all three varieties between the onions and the shallots. I used broken bamboo stakes to mark were I’d planted pairs of seeds. I hadn’t pre-soaked them or scarified them, so I made sure they got a deep watering. Then I raked up some of grass clippings and used it to mulch around where the seeds were planted. Then I dampened the mulch, too!
I completely forgot that I wanted to replant the Seychelle pole beans by the Crespo squash. I can do that tomorrow. It’s really late for pole beans, but I’m going to take the chance.
Aside from that, the garden is now finally all in! There are no other beds to plant things in. That will be our next focus: build more beds for next year! Especially the trellis beds. Plus, of course, harvesting more dead spruces to frame all the beds.
Once that was done, I tended to the tomatoes in the old kitchen garden. I didn’t bother taking pictures, since it’s hard to see. They’re starting to get big and bush, and starting to flop. So I grabbed some jute twine and wove it around the pairs of bamboo stakes at each tomato plant, and the tomato stems in between. That was more finnicky work than I expected! The leaves are so dense the jute twine is mostly hidden, but it’s doing its job, and holding the vines up between the support stakes.
I also took some video of the raised beds that got shifted over. I’m planning to do a progress video. I was going to do it tonight, but I’m falling asleep at my keyboard, so I think I’ll call it a night, and work on it tomorrow.
All in all, it turned out to be a decently productive day! Not bad for it starting out as such a bad pain day, this morning. Not bad at all!
I was very happy for a pleasant breeze to cool me down while I was working. I got the last of the bed turned and weeded, the boards laid out to mark where the log frame will go, and the soil evened out and leveled off as best I could.
Since I was wanting to finish off the onions and shallots, I decided to work in a grid instead of rows. I marked off 5 rows lengthwise first,, about 3 or 4 inches apart, then made cross rows, also every 3 or 4 inches apart.
Once the lines were marked out, I used the jet setting on the hose to drive water into all the marked lines. It makes it messier to transplant into, but it evens out the soil and gives deeper moisture for the roots to reach for.
After that, I just laid out the transplants where the lines crossed, starting with the yellow bulb onions at one end. I got to about half way down the bed, maybe a little more, before I finished them. Then I planted the shallots at the opposite end. Last of all, I used the grass clipping mulch I’d removed earlier today, to scatter a light mulch around the transplants.
I was very happy to see that this left me an open space where something can be direct sown. I’ll go through my seeds to see what I’ve got that will mature in less than 2 months, since we basically just have July and August left for a growing season.
This is really late for onion transplants. My intention had been to interplant them with other things, but that doesn’t really work out with the winter squash and melons, since those will get bigger and overshadow the onions. At least I got some in with the tomatoes.
We shall see if the weather holds long enough for all these onions to fully mature!
I’m now going to let my self breathe for a bit. I have some direct sowing to do, including where the spinach was planted, and that’s about it. After a break, I’ll get back to working on the trellis beds. Hopefully, we’ll dry out a bit and the winds will die down, and we’ll be able to harvest more logs for the raised bed frames. The forecast of rain to start this evening and continue for about 4 hours has changed. Now it’s saying we’ll get some rain for about an hour, around 10pm. On Friday, though (today is Tuesday), they’re still saying rain all day, starting about 5am Friday morning, through to 1am on Saturday morning. Aside from the brief rain we’re supposed to get tonight, though, we’re not supposed to get any rain at all until Friday.
I might actually be able to do some mowing! How exciting!
The Dalvay peas seemed to just explode overnight, and almost the entire row is filled with pea shoots. The Yukon Chief corn has also seen quite a growth spurt.
The beans don’t seem to be doing well this year. I could explain that away for the older seeds, but the purple bush beans were fresh seeds, and there’s just one bean that has sprouted! Hopefully, more will appear in the next while, but if they don’t, some of them will get a second sowing or, if I’m out of a particular seed, something else will be sowed in place.
My main goal for this morning was to get those tomatoes and as many onions as I could, transplanted, and I’m happy to day that has been accomplished!
The first thing was to break up the clumps of soil that were hilled into the new bed location and pull out as many roots and weeds (and rocks) as I could. This bed was in so much better shape than the previous one, it didn’t take very long at all. From there, it was using the thatching rake to even out the hill of soil between the boards – the north send, where the bed was extended, had to have more soil spread into it – and level the top for planting. Of course, more weeds, roots and rocks were removed at the same time.
Then I brought the transplants over. There were seven San Marzano tomatoes left, including one that wasn’t looking very good at all. I also happened to have exactly seven bamboo stakes left, to use as their supports, which was nice. I pre-dug holes for them down the middle of the bed, as evenly spaced as I could eyeball it, then used the jet setting on the hose to fill each hole with water, and basically drill the water deeper into the holes. I want those roots to have water below them to encourage them to grow deep.
I removed the transplants from their cells into the bottom drain tray to make it easier to carry them around. That last tomato that looked the most beat up, though, didn’t come out with its soil, but broke off, instead. I could still see some roots on the stem, though, so I kept it. I just transplanted that one at the north end of the bed, closest to the trees. I don’t really expect it to make it, nor do I expect that end of the bed to do as well as the rest, because of those !%$@# elms.
The tray still had vermiculite topped soil in it from the tomatoes that didn’t survive, so I dumped all that into the drain tray, then put a bit of it around each of the tomato plants. I didn’t bury the stems deep – they didn’t need it – but I did plant them deep, so each one is in a bit of a hollow, so water will flow towards the roots and seep into the soil there, instead of flowing down the sides of the bed.
Once the tomatoes were in, I made a narrow trench all around the perimeter of the bed, except the north end, which doesn’t quite quite a much soil, still, so it’s basically a long U shaped trench. That got watered with the hose on the jet setting, too.
For the onions, I chose the tray with the yellow bulb onions. I keep forgetting the name of the variety. It’s a good thing I record all this here in the blog! They are Frontier onions, noted for strong necks, consistent size and disease resistance. They are supposed to mature 100 days from transplant, which means I’m really late in getting these in the ground. Hopefully, we’ll have a mild fall, and the frost will hold off until October.
The tray I used for the onions was a vegetable party tray, divided into 4 spaces around the perimeter, and a shallow circle in the middle where a dipping sauce was kept. I am really liking this design. After giving the tray a thorough soak, to make it easier to separate the onions, I could just grab on section of onions and carry it with me as I went around the bed, pulling out and spacing the onions in the trench. I was able to finish off one section, plus another dozen or so transplants from another.
Once those were planted, I make more shallow trenched between each tomato plant and repeated the process. I was able to fit three or four transplants between each tomato, with enough space to fit five in one area. In hindsight, I probably could have planted the ones around the perimeter closer together, but what’s done is done. I wasn’t able to fit even half the tray of onions in!
The last thing to do was give the transplants a gentle watering, to settle the soil around their roots. It actually started to rain while I was doing this, but so little, I barely got wet.
When I looked at the forecast last night, it was saying we could expect rain for a couple of hours, starting at about 7 this evening. It is now saying the rain will start at about 5pm, and continuing until 1am! Today is Saturday, and the forecast says we will not have more rain again until late Wednesday night.
We shall see.
Now that the tomatoes are in (yay!!), there are the rest of the yellow onions to transplant, a few remaining shallots, and the Orange Butterfly Flower. I was going to try direct sowing some of that, but it just didn’t happen. I still don’t know where I want to plant them, since it has to be in a permanent location. I want it to be near the main garden area, but where I think would be best for them is going to see a lot of traffic and commotion as we build the frames for the beds.
The main thing, though, is the tomatoes are in. This bed will need to have mulch added around the sides, to keep the soil from being eroded, until we can get it properly framed.
This leaves one more bed to shift over. Like this one, the last one shouldn’t take very long, comparatively speaking. It’s more a matter of working around the heat of the day. From the looks of it, the entire bed could be filled with the remaining onion and shallot transplants. I might even have some left over.
Today, however, we’ve already reached our high of 21C/70F. It’s not even noon yet, which means we could still get hotter over the afternoon. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 22C/72F, and then we’ll get our hottest day on Monday, with an expected high of 27C/81F. After that, it should cool down a bit, but still remain in the 20’s for a while. Hopefully, we’ll have enough dry days to get the lawn mowed, and maybe even cut/process more logs to frame the beds. I might just go ahead and scythe in the outer yard a bit, tomorrow, so the hay can dry for a bit before being gathered and used as mulch. Grass clippings are great, but when green, wet clippings are dumped in a pile, the inside of the pile gets astonishingly hot. Then it gets all slimy, while the exposed grass on top dries out. Once the insides gets slimy, it’s not much use as a mulch and we just leave it to compost.
Meanwhile, it turns out we need to make another trip to Walmart. We’re almost out of kibble, and first disability check doesn’t come in until the middle of next week, when we do our first stock up shopping trip. The Cat Lady has said she’ll acquire some cat food donations for us, but they’re going to be in the US for a couple of weeks, so I don’t expect that anytime soon. They’re packing their bags now.
Well, time for me to get changed and head out to get kibble!
I don’t know why Instagram now cuts the sides off my photos, even though I select the wide image function.
I got about half way through the bed, sifting the soil, when I stopped for a break that ended up taking longer than I intended. Which is okay. It gave the soil I needed to move time to dry out a bit. Sifting damp soil is a lot harder and heavier. I’m amazed my home made soil sifter is still surviving the abuse!
By the time I was done fighting with my garden tour video and getting it uploaded, it was quite a bit later before I could get back at it. Thankfully, today has been cooler, with a pleasant breeze. I was greatly appreciating that!
The last bit of soil that needed to be worked on was the worst. This was the section full of creeping Charlie, and I was digging up and tossing large clumps of it. In the end, by the time I finished sifting the last of the soil from the old bed location, there wasn’t enough left to finish the new bed location. I ended up “stealing” soil from the last bed that will be worked on.
By then, it started to rain, but it was just a gentle shower, so I kept at it. Once the bed was done, I brought over the melons. I’d already gone through them and sorted them by type. I kept the Zucca melons aside, since they get huge. I’m thinking of using the kiddie pool as a raised bed, just for them, and setting it somewhere where they can spread.
There were a total of 16 melons to transplant, and I decided to dedicate the entire bed to them. I don’t know that we’ll be able to trellis them, since they will need stronger trellises than what we’re setting up for the beans and peas. If we end up not being able to add trellises, they should have room to spread on the ground and into the paths, if need be.
So this bed now has two rows of eight melons in it. As with the other squash and melons, I planted them slightly below grade and made hills of soil around them, so water would flow towards the plants rather than run down the sides of the bed and take the soil with it. The rain had pretty much stopped by the time that was done, so they got a good watering, too.
The bed still needs a mulch added to it, but it’s getting late, so that will be done tomorrow, when I will also started working on the next bed. That one needs to be shifted a lot, too, but it’s not as weedy and isn’t infested with creeping Charlie like this one was, so it should go somewhat faster. The hard part will be breaking the sod in the new location – and I don’t have anymore carboard that can be put over it, before shifting the soil on top.
This bed is where the last of the San Marzano tomatoes will finally be planted. There aren’t a lot of those left to transplant, so there will be room for other things.
Hmm… I should probably set up the kiddie pool and fill it with soil for the Zucca melons, first. They need to be transplanted more urgently than the tomatoes. That means sifting several loads of soil from the pile in the outer yard.
Once the transplants are in, I hope to be able to do some direct sowing, still. It’s getting really late for that. Our first frost date is September 10, so we’ve basically got July and August for things to grow, since if I plant things within the next 7-10 days, they will take the rest of June just to germinate.
What we don’t have a lot of is stuff that can be harvested throughout the summer. I’ve got three types of beans planted, and the very first Seychelle bean was sprouting this morning. The sugar snap peas are going to be awhile before there’s anything to harvest from them. The spinach is doing so poorly, I’m thinking of taking them out completely, and planting some chard or something, instead. I think it’s getting too late to plant more carrots, but I’ll check the information on my packages to be sure.
What I will likely do is direct sow more summer squash, since right now we just have some in pots. They haven’t germinated yet. Since summer squash gets harvested while still quite small, planting them in late June should be okay. As long as I can keep the slugs away! I haven’t actually seen slugs yet, so hopefully, we won’t have a bag year of them, like we did last year.
We shall see how things work out! Hopefully, we’ll even get weather that will allow us to harvest more dead spruces and build the frames around these beds, and maybe even continue the trellis beds, by fall.
Much work to be done.
It’s a good thing I love this kind of work! Even if I do have to pain killer up for it.
Speaking of which… time to do that, before this broken old body starts to seize up! 😄😄
After I finished my post earlier today, my daughter and I headed out for a dump run, then errands. We ended up going to the smaller city for her shopping, so that I could pick up some cat food at a better price at Walmart. By the time we got home, it was well past 3 and, I’m happy to say, starting to get a bit cooler!
After having a late lunch, I headed outside to finish at the new low raised bed.
Before I got started, I prepared a 4L size water bottle by removing the top and punching holes in the bottom, then brought over protective rings and support posts. The support posts were long enough to reach from corner to corner on the bed, so I used them to find the centre. That is where I partially buried the water bottle. This way, we can add water into it, and it will drain out the bottom and water the roots of the plants nearby. We’ve done similar in the past, including the first time we tried to grow Crespo squash, and it has worked well.
The pot with the single Crespo squash was the one where the stem had broken when the cats knocked the bin holding the pots off the table. I had it supported with a pair of bamboo skewers. Unfortunately, as soon as the skewers were removed, it immediately bent over at the break, almost snapping off. I had intended to plant it deep enough to cover the break, as the squash will develop adventitious roots, but I had to be so careful not to break it completely! I planted it in a protective ring and ended up filling the ring to the top with soil to support the stem. It still ended up lying on the soil. I just made sure it was running towards the side I wanted to train it towards, as it gets bigger – if it survives!
The other pot had two squash in it. I was planning to separate them, but the roots were too entwined, so they were planted together. They, too, ended up with their protective ring filled almost to the top with soil. They both got well watered, and I added water to the reservoir in the middle – which drained much faster than I expected! I ended up filling it again, a couple of times. before I was done.
With how the light hits this area, I decided to plant a row of beans along the east and west sides of the bed. I chose Seychelles pole bean seeds left over from a couple of years ago, that did so well for us when so many other things did not! These are a very straight green bean, and they were quite prolific.
Once the beans were planted and well watered, I set up supports to create an A frame, then added 4″ square netting. This will be enough to keep the deer from getting at the squash, while still being open enough to reach through to weed or pick beans. The beans themselves are planted about 8 or 10 inches from the side, so they will also be protected by the netting until they get tall enough to start climbing it. Hopefully, we’ll have a decent germination rate. The germination rate was excellent when we grew them before, but after a couple of years, I would expect it to be far less.
Though it was starting to get late, the days are so long right now, I decided to do more transplanting. The San Marzano tomatoes needed to be transplanted, and I decided to see if the retaining wall blocks could be used for that.
Aside from the chives in the corner, I planted mint in alternating blocks. Unfortunately, there’s some sort of plant in this garden that is more invasive that even crab grass or creeping Charlie! The mint is struggling to come back this year, and this plant is choking them out! I pulled as much as I could around the mint, but they’re so mixed together, there really isn’t much I can do.
In the other blocks, there was a lot of this plant to clean out as well. A couple of blocks still had some onions growing in them. There had been more, but they were choked out by this invasive plant.
I was able to clean up 10 blocks for the tomatoes, including two of blocks with a pair of onions in them that still had room for a transplant. I used my pH meter and was surprised the soil was just as alkaline as everything else. These blocks have been amended with peat in the past, and the cement itself can increase the acidity of soil. That meter’s needle was a hard 8. So I worked some sulfur granules into the prepared blocks, too. I wonder, at times, what the reading would be if I had a meter that went higher than 8! Even the solution in my soil test kit maxed out at 7.5. Ah, well.
In the tray that had the biggest, healthiest tomatoes, there should have been 9, but there were only 7 surviving. One of them was even starting to bloom! The last three blocks were planted with the smaller tomatoes that almost didn’t survive being moved to the sun room. This was the tray that had tipped and spilled after I’d topped up the soil in the cells, so they’ve had just a rough time, over all! After transplanting the three strongest looking ones, there’s maybe 5 or 6 left. There’s one, I’m not sure is going to last much longer. I don’t know where I’d transplant these right now, but being as small as they are, they can stay in the tray longer.
Each of the transplants got a bamboo stake that will be used to support them as they grow. They will likely need more as they get bigger, but that can be added later. Last of all, they got a very thorough watering. Hopefully, they will do okay here. The ornamental apple trees cast quite a bit of shade, even with the pruning we’ve done over the years, but we’ve grown tomatoes in these blocks before, and they did okay.
Once everything was put away, I did one last prep. There are three pots on the landing outside the main doors. Last year we grew herbs in them. I have decided to grow summer squash in them this year. This way, even if we don’t end up having the space to direct sow in the main garden beds, we’ll at least have some summer squash in the pots to enjoy!
One of the pots had spearmint in it, but it did not survive the winter. Another had a mix of thyme and oregano. The one oregano that survived to be transplanted had bloomed and gone to seed, and I was going to see if any of the self-sown seeds germinated, but decided having summer squash was a priority. The biggest pot had lemon grass in it and, wow, were those roots every hard to clean out!
One of the new seeds we got for this year were are a white patty pan, so I’ll plant some of those, for sure. We have both green and yellow zucchini, and I haven’t decided which of those I will plant, yet. If we still have some Magda seeds left, I want to plant some of those. We really like them, but they are the ones that have been the hardest to grow! With some of the seeds being a few years old, I’ll plant at least three per pot, and see how many germinate.
The pots are prepped, but the planting will be done tomorrow.
With so many winter squash that need to be transplanted, they are a priority for the low raised beds that are already shifted, with or without frames. Tomorrow, my daughter and I will finally drag the second 18′ log out of the spruce grove – between the rain and the high winds, we haven’t gone into the spruce grove since she got this last one cut to size! We have enough logs to frame one bed, so that will make things a bit easier.
Things may change, but I’m thinking of planting the winter squash in the middle of the bed, in a long row, then planting more pole beans on either side. We won’t be able to do an A frame support structure, like over the Crespo squash, but we should still be able to rig up a quick trellis for them, later on.
With how many winter squash we have, and how far apart they need to be planted, the two shifted beds might not be enough for them all. The drum gourds and the pumpkins will probably need their own hills. I’ll figure that out, later. We’ll be transplanting melons into the first of the trellis beds, all along one side, where the trellis supports will be added, later, but again, we probably won’t be able to fit them all in. Since they will have a trellis to climb, they can be planted closer together, but I don’t expect to fit them all in that bed. Something else we’ll need to figure out!
Still, today was a productive day, and it feels rather good to have fewer trays to return to the sun room for the night!
A lot of what I write about in this blog, besides cats, has been about gardening. We’ve had a lot of unexpected challenges, so I’ve been spending a lot of time doing research and watching gardening videos.
Videos like this.
A very useful video about harvesting onions.
So why is this a weird time of year?
Because this video was just published a few hours ago. It’s May 30.
It’s May 30, and he is HARVESTING his onions.
He also has garlic scapes to harvest.
Onions can take anywhere from 90 to 120 days to maturity. Which is why we start our onion seeds indoors earlier than anything else.
We haven’t even transplanted our onions yet. They can handle the cooler nights, but they will be transplanted around and in between other things, not in a bed by themselves.
While our garlic was planted in the fall and is growing quite nicely right now, we probably won’t see scapes for another month.
It’s one thing to reading blogs or watching videos of harvests from people that are living in the southern hemisphere. It’s quite another to see this happening here in the norther hemisphere, and there are SO many channels I follow that are harvesting from huge, lush gardens right now. Even in places with climates that are actually cooler than ours, or at least don’t have our extremes of bitter winters and scorching summers, but have a longer growing season.
As I write this, the video I made is still uploading, so I’ve scheduled this to be published tomorrow morning.
One bed is prepped and ready for logs to be placed around it. My younger daughter is working in the spruce grove to get them for me, but has to clear away pieces of trees and branches that have fallen in high winds, and other debris, just to reach them. She handles heat even worse than I do, and the humidity sure didn’t help. She ended up needing to use a cane to get around the house until the painkillers kicked in.
She’ll have tomorrow to recover, though. The rain started up again this evening, with thunderstorm warnings. It’s supposed to keep raining all through tomorrow (meaning today, by the time this is published). A good day for me to be helping my mother out with her errands.
Sunday is supposed to be sunnier, though rain is expected to start again in the evening, so we might get a few hours of work in during the day. Then the rain is supposed to be back on Monday.
This weekend is a long weekend, when many people will be putting in their gardens. While we could probably direct sow some things, our area still has a while to go. Looking at the 14 day forecast is frustrating, since it seems to change every time I look at it, but at one point I was seeing predictions of overnight temperatures dropping below freezing in the last few days of May. When I look at it now, though, it shows a few chilly nights, just above freezing, and then overnight temperatures are predicted to be considerably warmer. Once I look into June, the daytime highs are all supposed to be 20C/68F or higher, for the entire month!
Of course, that might change completely, the next time I look.
Well, whatever ends up happening, we’ve got a lot of hard work to do before we can plant in the main garden area.
The low raised beds have been wildly overrun by crab grass in particular, with some beds heavily invaded by dandelions, and at least one has a pretty bad infestation of Creeping Charlie. Since they all need to be heavily reworked anyhow, we’re going to go ahead and redo them. Or, more specifically, I’ll be doing the weeding and shifting. My daughter will be harvesting and processing the dead spruces to build walls around them. This late in the game, I’ll be happy if we build them just one log high. They just need to be done! We can add more height to them, as time goes buy. Once these low raised beds are reworked, we can switch our focus back to building the trellis beds. Those will require even more work, since we’ll be bringing soil in from what’s left of the purchased garden soil pile, as well as layers of organic material at their bottoms.
For transplants, we’ve got the winter squash and melons, which will take up the most space, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, onions, gourds, some thyme and Orange Butterfly Flower (a milkweed) plus the mulberry saplings to transplant. Depending on the space available, I want to direct sow summer squash, shelling peas, bush beans, pole beans and more carrots, plus the dwarf nasturtiums. If we really do well for space, I’d like to plant at least one variety of corn, but I don’t expect that to happen. There will be a fair bit of intercropping, plus we plan to have things growing vertically as much as possible, so that should help with space. Still, there are quite a few things I expect to skip entirely this year, like cucumbers, beets, radishes, chard and lettuces, simply because I don’t expect to have the prepared space for them. Mind you, things like radishes and chard can be planted later, after the garlic is harvested and those beds are freed up.
Weather willing, I hope to be able to get at least one of the low raised beds weeded and shifted over in a day. With one done today, there’s four left to do. If the weather forecasts are at all accurate, that means they should be done by the end of next week. Then the log walls need to be placed and secured, and the soil amended with sulfur granules. Hopefully, that will also get done by the end of next week, because the week after has me doing a lot of driving around, from getting my mother to a medical appointment, to our monthly stock up shopping, to hopefully being able to connect with a friend that is back in Canada for a while.
We had rain all night, with a foggy morning. We’re supposed to get possible showers this afternoon, with thunderstorm warnings for the night, and roughly the same tomorrow. Hopefully, this rain is reaching the fires to the north of us in adequate amounts. Currently, we’ve got 5 forest fires burning, with 2 still listed as out of control. That’s actually down two fires from when I checked, yesterday.
With the overcast morning, it was a perfect day to set the transplants outside to begin hardening off. Just a couple more weeks, and we can start transplanting them into the garden.
While I took out the trays in the sun room, my daughter brought the last of the trays that were in the mini greenhouse frame in the living room. As of now, the only things left in the house are three pots in the aquarium greenhouse; one Zucca melon that’s finally breaking the surface and one Pixie melon. There’s a second Pixie melon that has yet to emerge. The seeds that were left for pre-germination, however, have shown no progress. The Zucca seeds will be going into the compost, as they are starting to show signs of mold, but the three remaining Pixie melons look completely unchanged.
Most of our trays of transplants fit on the folding table we made, while a few went onto the set up we made above the seat of the laundry platform. A handy spot, though I always feel nervous going up those steps while carrying trays of plants. I’m never quite sure my knees won’t just give out at some point. Stairs and I do not get along, at all! 😄😄
While continuing my rounds, I checked on the bed with the peas, carrots and spinach planted in it. Of the first peas that were planted, there is one sprouting. I did see what might possibly be a second one, but it’s so tiny, I’m not sure yet. The second planting doesn’t have anything showing yet.
I checked the Royalty raspberries, as usual, and we are finally seeing new growth at the bottom of one of last year’s canes. These were supposed to be first year canes, which should have fruited for the first time this year, but they ended up producing berries last year, then dying back. I contacted Veseys about it and they assured me they would come back this year. So far, they are right about one of them! However, this does mean that any growth we get this year should not produce any berries until next year.
In other things…
I counted 25 yard cats this morning, though at least one or two more showed up later on. When I saw Broccoli while I was still setting the food out, I went around to the garden shed and left some food in a dry spot, then checked on the babies. They seem a bit more active. I ended up leaving some food for Broccoli not far from her baby nest.
With everything being so wet, and more rain and possible storms to come, I decided this was a good day to make a run to the nearest Walmart to get a few things. That took enough time that the transplants were brought back inside when I got back. We’re actually seeing a bit of sunshine, peeking through the clouds right now, too.
As I write this, it’s just past 2pm, and we’ve reached 16C/61F, with the humidex making it feel like 20C/68F. We’re supposed to get just a bit warmer before the end of the day. With how muddy things are, a lot of what we need to do outside has to wait. Very frustrating!
Ah, well. It is what it is! We just shift gears and do other stuff, like going into town for some errands, a bit earlier than planned – which I will cover in my next post. 😊
The Re-Farmer 