cold climate gardening

Our 2026 Garden; getting covered, a harvest, and brave flowers

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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!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: Will they make it?

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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!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: curing and collecting

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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. 😄

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: harvesting onions and tomatoes

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Today was too wet and windy to break down that fallen tree this afternoon, but I did manage to get some progress in the garden.

First up was to harvest some onions.

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!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: first scallop squash, and the garlic is in!

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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.

After we get back from Costco.

Unless something else happens… *sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: pretty things

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I spent very little time in the garden today, but did want to share these, from when I did the evening watering.

First, the Arikara squash is looking fantastic!

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.

Then there was this fussy little friend.

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.

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

Our 2026 Garden: mulching and transplanting in the heat

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It took a while, but it looks like we’re going to be having hot days consistently for the next while, with warmer nights than the cold that has been setting back the garden.

I was able to spend most of the day working outside. Even with the heat, it felt good!

I started off by finishing the weed trimming around the cat shelters and the south and west yards.

The down side is that the weed trimmer is loud enough I didn’t hear the message my husband sent me, letting me know the prescription delivery was almost here. Before putting the weed trimmer away, I stopped to clear around the step to the electricity meter. When that was done, I was hearing some strange metallic noises and could not figure out where they were coming from.

It was the delivery driver, squeezing through the gate with my husband’s prescription!

I met up with him and I let him know, the gate isn’t actually locked. It’s just a carabiner. We chatted for a bit – he lost some of his tomatoes to all the rain we’ve been having – while I opened the gate for him so he could see how it works. I explained that we’re making sure it stays closed right now, in case the renter’s cows get through the electric fence, so they don’t end up on the road.

After putting away the weed trimmer, I popped in to give my husband his meds, hydrate, then break out the riding mower. The south-west and west yards haven’t been done recently; my SIL did the south-east, east and north yards on the weekend.

One thing about the south west yard is, the grass is very dense there. The other thing is, it has not been infested with creeping Charlie. Which means the grass clippings were thick enough that they could actually smother the grass below, and that I can use these clippings as mulch.

When I was done with the mowing, I headed in for lunch. By the time I came out again, the heat and sun had already dried almost all the clippings! I was able to rake up and cram all of it into the wagon.

Then put it to good use!

I had a single Arikara squash the germinated, and it was getting too big for the tray’s cells. I had a place prepared for it in the square raised bed, so I transplanted it there, gave the whole bed a good watering (no sign of the beans, yet), mulched it would grass clippings then, after I got the second photo in the slide show above, watered it again partly to moisten the grass a bit.

That done, I moved to the next bed.

This is the bed that we resown with spinach, chard, Hedou tiny bok choy from saved seed, and the last of our Uzbek Golden carrots. This bed already had strips of card board in between the sown rows, plus a strip over the carrot seeds to help keep them cool and damp until they germinate. If they germinate. There are old seeds.

I was very impressed when I got the cover off the bed.

There were SO MANY little bok choy seedlings! I think I even saw some spinach and chard trying to break ground. No sign of carrot seedlings yet, though. Too soon to expect to see any of those.

I very carefully laid the grass clipping mulch on top of the cardboard. Then everything got a watering before I put the cover back on, which is what you see in the second image..

Then it was time to move to the next bed, with the purple savoy cabbage. This one needed some extra work.

I’d pulled as many of the self seeded radishes as I could, finding more cabbage seedlings than I expected. There was still a lot of empty space, though. I used my little hand cultivator to clean up the gaps and weed, then thinned by transplanting some of the larger and stronger cabbage seedlings. The first image above is after the clean up and transplanting. I left some of the groups of seedlings, in hopes they will grow stronger and can handle transplanting,

That got a grass clipping mulch, too, doing my best not to bury the cabbages! Once mulched and watered, the cover was returned.

There was just a bit of the grass clippings left after this, so that got tossed onto the compost ring.

This all took a fairly long time so, when it was done, I headed back in for supper before getting back to it, this time to do the watering with the fertilize applicator. With our Dark Grey Zone soil, all this rain would have washed away quite a lot of the nutrients.

All together, these jobs took up most of the day, and the old bod is really feeling is right now. Just waiting on the pain killer to kick in!

I’m glad I got it all done, though. I’ll be out with our first stock up shopping trip in the city tomorrow, and then there’s my daughter’s workshop on Saturday, so I won’t be getting much done at home! I do need to visit her soon, though. She is no longer in quarantine. It will have to wait. With all the driving around I’ll need to be doing, I won’t be getting much else done over the next while.

I still have to edit the garden tour video I took. I’m just too tired to work on it today, though. I’m actually having a hard time writing right now, deleting partial sentences because I forgot what I was writing and I’m falling asleep at the keyboard.

Definitely time to go to bed.

The Re-Farmer