flowers

Our 2025 Garden: winter squash and finally some buds! Also, a general update

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It was still comfortably cooler when I did my rounds this morning, but we were set to have a hotter day again. And by “hotter” I mean a high of 23C/73F (we actually hit 24C/75F) and sunny. It was strange to be walking around the yard and hearing what sounded like the patter of rain, only to realize it was the sound of leaves falling!

I was very happy to finally see our very first Cosmos flower buds!

In the next picture, you can see the one group of asters is opening up nicely. I’m glad they survived the frosts we got at the start of the month, because – as with pretty much everything else but the winter sown beds – they are about a month or more behind.

In the last picture, you can see the remains of one of the peas I found a couple of days ago. *sigh* Of course the deer would eat the biggest one, too. There’s just the tiniest remains of a stem poking through the mulch, and a tiny branch that got left behind.

With today being so much warmer, I made sure to move the plastic off the winter squash. While condensation under the plastic showed that there was still moisture under there, they did need a very thorough watering. In the process, I found a few new female flowers and hand pollinated them.

I uncovered them in the morning, but these pictures were taking in the early evening.

This first group of photos is of the Baked Potato squash.

There were the two already developing ones, plus a couple to hand pollinate.

Then there was the Mashed Potato squash.

That group had a couple of small, older squash, plus some smaller ones that I’m not sure will make it, and finally one that I could hand pollinate.

There is nothing with the Sunshine squash. Those seem to be mostly dead. The transplanted zucchini seem to be making it, but are still very small.

I don’t know what the chances are of these surviving long enough to develop before the hard frosts come, but as long as they are covered when it gets cooler, they at least have a chance!

Then, finally, there is a pepper I found to pick.

Not quite ripe, but as soon as I lifted it to see, the stem broke off, so inside it went! It will continue to ripen indoors.

In other things, I headed out this afternoon to meet someone for a kibble donation. She’d suggested meeting at an intersection on the highway. I got there a little bit last. First, because I had to pull over while going through my mother’s town to check my phone. I kept getting notifications. One of them was to let me know that home care called and wanted to talk about my mother. Not the scheduler, but a coordinator covering for our usual coordinator. I asked my daughter to send me the number, then continued on my way. I caught up to a car that was driving a bit slower. Then it slowed down more, started signaling a left turn, started breaking…

Then kept on going.

They did this every mile for the next five or so miles. It wasn’t until we were in the last mile before the highway that the vehicle started signaling a right turn. I thought at the stop side ahead, but nope. They pulled over completely!

I’d say someone was very lost!

Meanwhile, I pulled over just short of the stop sign myself, where the woman I was to meet was already waiting with a large bag of kibble for us. It’ll be enough to last us until CPP Disability comes in, and I’ll be able to go to the city for a stock up shop. That will be after dropping the truck off for the insurance claim repairs, so I will be doing the shopping in a courtesy vehicle.

I’ll have to make sure to transfer over some of our hard sided insulated and non insulated grocery bags when I switch vehicles.

After picking up the kibble, I called the home care coordinator. It went straight to voice mail, so I left a message, giving my cell phone number, but adding that I would be driving and it would be a while before I could answer.

My next stop was at the pharmacy. Since I was heading out anyhow, I was able to pick up some prescription refills for my daughter. It was getting close to 4pm when I got there, and the home care office closes at 4, so I tried the number again as soon as I parked.

The woman had a bit of a laugh when she answered and it was me. She had just finished listening to my message!

It turned out to be about my mother’s inhaler. It’s out. There’s still two in the lock box, but they are a different type, so home care isn’t allowed to use them. We had a fairly long talk about that. I explained that I didn’t know why my mother was still on an inhaler, as it was a test to see if they helped with her breathing, and they’ve made no difference, confirming my mother does not have asthma. Plus, my mother went ballistic when I picked up her last refill and she saw how much it cost. She can afford it, but she expected it to be “free”. She still doesn’t understand that she has the provincial insurance or what a deductible is. I don’t know of this type of inhaler is even covered, though.

What I’ll be doing is calling my mother’s doctor’s office tomorrow, and trying to get a telephone appointment with her to talk about it. Then the doctor can send instructions to home care, either saying they can use the other type, or that my mother doesn’t need to use an inhaler anymore. Which is what I am hoping for.

We spoke about other things involving my mother as well. I told her about the person that’s coming to see my mother tomorrow for a mental health assessment. We talked about my mother’s declining mobility and increased pain. I mentioned that my mother should not be living independently anymore. She was really surprised when I mentioned my mother actually wants to go to a nursing him. Not being familiar with my mother’s file, she didn’t know that it’s been over a year since the paneling process has been started.

The main thing is that I wanted to stress how much more difficult my mother has been finding it to just get in and out of a chair, never mind walking around her apartment, or standing to cook for herself. Meals on Wheels is just three days a week.

We’ll see how that goes. At this point, my mother isn’t even on any waiting lists, which frustrates me to no end.

After that, didn’t take long to get the prescriptions and then head for home.

Our overnight low is supposed to be 13C/55F, so I will be leaving the winter squash uncovered for the night. Tomorrow is supposed to be ever so slightly cooler. If the forecast over the next few days is accurate, I should be able to leave them uncovered for three more days, and two more nights. We’re still supposed to be warm during the days, but overnight temps are looking to drop below 10C/50F more most nights after that. Around the middle of October, we’re supposed to get our first days with a mix or rain and snow, while overnight temperatures are supposed to drop below freezing before then. Of course, long range forecasts can change quite dramatically, so who knows.

It’s time to get the mostly done beds cleaned up and ready for winter sowing. We’ve got lots of leaves available to use for mulch right now, and I’d better start collecting them before they are blown away entirely.

I’m really looking forward to a more planned out winter sowing! We’ll need to prepare a bed to plant garlic in, too. None of those will go into the ground for at least a couple of weeks for the garlic, and probably longer for the direct sowing. I don’t want any of the seeds to germinate before the ground freezes.

It’s been slow going, but it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Morning in the garden, and some afternoon progress

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It was a very pleasant morning today. I’m liking the cooler temperatures, even though I’ve also decided it’s been cool enough to keep the winter squash covered by plastic during the day. With the bits of rain we’ve been getting, I had some concern they would dry out, but I can see plenty of condensation inside the plastic, so they’re definitely not drying out.

I’m finding what’s left in the garden to be rather remarkable. The pumpkin vines, for example, aren’t just still blooming after all that frost damage, but are growing healthy looking new leaves. Except the one that has a pumpkin hanging in a sling on the trellis. That one seems completely dead, but the pumpkin is still slowly yellowing, so we’re leaving it for now.

Five vines. One pumpkin. *sigh*

Then there are the sunflowers. Especially that one stalk with all the extra seed heads on it.

There’s the one seed had at the top that has barely any outside petals, but the little ones along the stalk are opening right up! I don’t know how well they’ll do, given how late in the season it is, even if we do end up with a long and mild fall (which I don’t expect). There are hardly any pollinators right now. Between the wildfire smoke all summer, and then the early frosts, followed by a heat wave, and now cooler temperatures again, it’s just not been a good summer for the pollinators are much as for the garden.

The next two photos are of the blooming memorial asters, with more buds developing. I’m hoping the weather holds out long enough that they can develop seeds for me to collect.

The last photo, photo bombed by Sir Robin, is of our very first White Scallop squash female flower.

Yes, I hand pollinated it, though I really don’t know why I bothered. We’re past the middle of September. The chances of any of these squash developing is very, very low!

Morning rounds done, I headed in for breakfast, and was soon back out again. We’re expecting rain this evening, through to tomorrow, and there were a couple of things I wanted to get cleaned up while I could. One was the burn barrel area. We have several recycling bins for aluminum, which we take to the scrap yard once there’s enough to fill the box of the truck, one for stuff for the burn barrel, one for general recycling at the dump and one last one for glass to take to the dump, as glass has it’s own bin there.

The burn barrel bags would get taken out to where we would normally burn them. The barrel itself, which was here when we moved in and already in rough shape, basically fell apart, long ago. Instead, we set up a metal ring I found in the spruce grove, so we have a burn ring, instead.

The problem is, we haven’t been able to actually burn anything for a long time. Usually because there’s too much wind. Lately, it’s been because of burn bans. So the bags have been accumulating to the point that I’ve just started taking a few to the dump after loading up with household garbage and recycling. Most of the bags, however, have gotten torn up. Not from animals; there’s nothing in the bags to attract them. I’d say, mostly from the wind. The rain has also soaked a lot of it. It’s gotten to be a real mess.

To today I headed out with some garbage bag it up. A few bags were still intact, but most of it had to be completely re-bagged. It’s a good thing we’ve got heavy duty garbage bags, because a lot of it was very wet, so it didn’t take long to make the bags quite heavy, for the amount in them. So now, it’s all looking much better, though there’s still quite a few bags out there! They are next to the branch pile that needs to be burned, as that’s where I’ve been tossing diseased branches and garden plants. Unfortunately, my brother didn’t know that, so when he trimmed branches for their trailer to fit through, he put them on the same pile. At that point, I’ve just started to do the same. Plus, there are some sections of maple set near the pile that were too big for my brother to throw on top, and I’ve been making a point of keeping maple wood for the fire pit.

The fire pit we haven’t used this year, at all, yet!

That done, I then started working on the last bags of cans against the garage. We’ve had to stop storing the bags there, as the cats kept tearing them up. Most of our aluminum is from cat food cans, and they can smell it. My daughter and I had cleaned most of it up and we now have all the bags in the basement, taking up space. The only bags left were from a while back that have metal mixed in by mistake.

So today, I got bags set up for the aluminum and the not-aluminum and started sorting. I got through two torn up bags before it started to rain. Just a light rain, but enough that I called it and will work on the last bag another time.

What I did manage to do before heading in was finally deal with the mesh covers on the garden bed against the chain link fence. This is the one that was winter sown with tall and climbing things, mostly, but was a complete failure. The mesh was to protect the bed from the Chinese Elm seeds, which would have worked just fine, except for the cats. They would play on top of the mesh, or get under it, only to not be able to find their way out again, panic, and bounce of the inside of the mesh until the finally reached an opening.

Needless to say, nothing in that bed survives. Except some Jebousek lettuce, which I allowed to go to seed and have already collected their seeds.

I had already pulled the netting with their wire supports up and set them on the stump bench. Today, I got the wires out so that I could fold up the mesh to put away for the winter.

I had help.

I stretched out and folded one section, turned around and there they were! Eyelet, Grommet and The Grink, claiming the rest of them as beds. 😄

In that picture and the next one, you can see just how bent up the wire supports got. Some might be salvageable, but others might be just too twisted. I wouldn’t use them again for this, anyhow. They would have been fine if all they needed to do was keep the seeds off the garden bed, but they just couldn’t hold the weight of playing kittens! The channels in the mesh that the wire ran through might be large enough for the Pexx pipe hoops I now have. Maybe. It would be a tight fit, but I’d prefer that over loose.

The kittens were not all “helpful” though. Each section of netting has a drawstring at the ends, with a sliding cord lock bead to hold it closed.

The Grink discovered one. Started playing with it. Got startled. Tried to run off with the bead in her mouth.

The next thing I know, she’s running down the patch, a section of netting dragging behind her, catching on the wire supports and dragging them along!

She finally let go at the end of the path, having dragged almost a dozen of the wire supports down the path with her!

Definitely not helping!

While the wire supports may or may not be salvageable, the netting is just fine. For a Dollarama purchase, these are really good. I still have one package, unopened. If I can find something better to slide through the channels to support them, they would work to keep kittens off as well as elm seeds!

Since it was still raining a bit, I headed inside once the mesh and wires were added to the sorting pile at the bench near the garden shed. The rain and stopped and started a few times since I came in. If the weather radar is accurate, it’s going to rain steadily from now on until tomorrow evening, so I guess that’s it for outside stuff. I’d hoped to get a few more small things done before the rain. Ah, well. It won’t go away.

The dump is open tomorrow, so I might make that trip, but we don’t have much of anything to take to the dump right now, unless I want to grab what I bagged up by the burn barrel today. The main thing is that we’ll be taking Eyelet to the new rescue. He’s a bit young to be neutered still, but he’ll be getting that and all the usual vetting before he’s put up for adoption. The main thing is that he will be indoors and at less risk of becoming coyote chow, since he can’t hear.

Some lucky person out there is going to get themselves a stunningly beautiful and sweet little cat!

Speaking of cats, time to get the kibble out!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: first large harvest, first flower bud, and a kitten fix!

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Gotta start with the kitten fix!

Eyelet is so flipping adorable.

Today and tomorrow are supposed to be in the 30C/86F or higher range. I made sure to water the garden beds last night. This morning, I gave everything another watering, including the food forest additions that need it. I even watered the raspberries growing on the old compost pile. I’m starting to see the first red berries, and might even be able to pick a few by the end of the day! The garden will get another watering tonight, and the whole shebang will get watered again in the morning. After that, we expect to be staying below 30C/86F again, at least for a few days, so I will probably just water in the mornings again.

While watering the high raised bed, I decided to do some thinning of carrots and beets.

I ended up harvesting some of the biggest beets we’ve ever grown!

The one white thing is also a beet. There were some albino beet seeds in the mix, but very few germinated, it seems. The Uzbek golden carrots are from the same bed. Some of those bolted, and I’m leaving one of them to go to seed.

In the other root vegetable bed, I’d included our collected lettuce seeds that basically took it over. More than we can possibly eat. I’ve been thinning those out and found several turnips crowded together, so I picked those. I found two others that have bolted and I’m leaving those to collect seed.

All along one side of the bed, the tops of plants have been monched. Looks like a deer has been snacking on the way by. !! The damage isn’t too bad and, after one got eaten, they seem to be leaving the radishes and their pods alone! All that extra lettuce is now protecting other things in the bed from deer.

In the greens bed in the old kitchen garden, after the spinach bolted and I pulled most, leaving some to go to seed, the Swiss Chard has started to grow. They were being choked out, before. There aren’t a lot of them, but a couple have leaves and stems large enough to harvest. Just a few.

While watering the flowers next to the high raised bed, I spotted some colour this morning.

Our very first nasturtium buds are appearing!

The Cosmos are getting tall enough they were starting to grow through the protective netting, so I removed that. I left the hoops, though, just in case I need to add something on the sides, to keep the cats out.

I have to figure out what I can add to the sides of the trellis bed. Along the edge on the side with no trellis net, and thankfully where no seedlings were affected, I found evidence of cats burying their “treasures” in there already.

I had been thinking that today, I’d be cutting the maple suckers I’ve been allowing to grow larger, so use in the wattle weave bed. With how quickly it’s getting hot, I might not get to that. It’s also getting really windy.

A trip into town to refill water bottles is going to be needed, so I might do that and avoid the heat, and the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are insane right now!!! Oddly, I get attacked my mosquitoes more in the old kitchen, while preparing the food for the outside cats, than outside. There’s one window that’s open just enough to allow extension cords through, so I assume that’s where they’re getting in, but so many of them? It’s brutal. Every now and then, I’ll see the back of my hand or part of my arm, and there will be five or six mosquitoes, sucking me dry. Thank God I don’t react much to mosquito bites!

I keep forgetting to look for our cans of bug spray, too.

I’m very happy with what is our first substantial harvest. All of which is from beds sown in the fall. Without that, we’d still have next to nothing to harvest!

Yup. Direct sowing in the fall is definitely going to be a regular thing for us from now on!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: MI Gardener seed order

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Yup.

You read that right.

I’ve ordered seeds for next year’s garden already.

There’s a reason for that, though. For starters, we can already see how things went with direct sowing in the fall, and how they’re doing now. So while these are for our 2026 garden, some will be planted this year, before the ground freezes.

Another reason is, MI Gardener has refused to raise their prices making them more affordable, even when taking the dollar difference into account.

As low as their prices already were, they also have a 20% off sale, and free shipping to boot.

I took advantage of that.

Well. Just for the seeds. Everything in their site is on sale for a week, but ordering things bulkier than seeds over the border is not something I plan to do.

When I did the winter sowing, I made seed mixes using up a lot of our seeds that were starting to get old. All our radish seeds, spinach, a summer squash seed mix I’d accidentally bought extras of a few years ago, beets, Swiss Chard, etc. were all finished off when I made our seed mixes for the winter sowing.

Here is what I ordered today. I ended up taking three screen caps of the entire order, to get all the little thumbnail images.

Borage: this is an herb I’ve been meaning to get for a long time. Many uses, and a great pollinator attractor.

Kandy Korn Sweet Corn: I have the super short season Yukon Chief for next year already. Having a longer season variety means we can have a longer season for corn, and no overlap on pollination times, so we can still save seeds.

Fordhook Giant and Rainbow Swiss Chard: the same types that I finished off in my winter sowing seed mixes, these will be planted in the fall.

Giant Nobel and American Spinach: while I am looking to save seed from what we have now (we didn’t eat much spinach this year; they bolted too quickly), these are new varieties that I hope will do well. They will be planted in the fall.

White Egg Turnip: all our turnip seeds were used up, so I will be trying this interesting looking variety for our fall planting.

White Icicle Radish: these will be sown in the fall, but not for their pods, though I will probably allow at least one go to seed. My younger daughter likes the daikon radish, which was sold out. This is a smaller relative, and I think she will enjoy these. I recall seeing a variety of radish sold specifically for their large seed pods that I’ll keep an eye out for as well.

Spring Blush Pea: a new variety to plant in the fall, along with other peas we still have.

Bi-Colour Pear Gourd: my “for fun” item.

Purple Vienne Kohlrabi: I used up the last of our old kohlrabi seeds to plant in the fall, and most of the ones that are growing now are the purple ones. Definitely doing to plant more in the fall!

Red Beard Bunching onion: I’ve tried a red variety of bunching onion twice before, and they didn’t succeed. I want to try again with this variety. For bulb onions, we will have our own seed.

Assorted Beet Mix: I planted the last of our beet seeds in the fall, and have the most robust beets growing right now. I decided to go with a mix this time. I like variety!

Green Scallop Benning’s Squash: we’ve got white scallop squash, but they don’t seem to like germinating here. We have more seeds for next year, but I want to try a green variety, too.

Gill’s Golden Pippin Squash: a new and versatile variety to try. I have lots of different types of winter squash seeds, still, both large and small. I like variety!

Tri-colour Green Bean mix: we have a number of different beans left, but the first bush beans we ever grew were a tri-colour mix, and they were the most successful we’d ever grown.

Rainbow Mix Carrot: to plant in the fall. We still have a couple of varieties of carrot seeds left, so we could also start some in the spring, as space opens up, too.

White Vienna Kohlrabi: of our old seeds, it looks like only a couple of the white kohlrabi germinated. These will be planted in the fall. I think they will fair better, not in a mix.

Yellow Scallop Squash: because I like variety, and I really like patty pan squash!

While I will probably pick up other seeds for next year between now and spring, between this order and what I still have in my seed bin, we don’t actually need anything else, besides things like potatoes. It may still be July but, with fall planting in mind, plus working on getting more beds either reworked or made new, I hope to have a larger garden next year, and get a head start on it, this year. After all, almost half of our growing season is already gone!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 garden: Arikara squash, and a little harvest

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Today is feeling downright cold!

When I checked the temps in the wee hours, we were at 7C/46F, but it felt like 4C/39F. As I write this, we are now at 10C/50F, but it feels like 3C/37F! The expected high of the day is only 16C/61F.

I don’t know if we got one last rainfall during the night. Wind is the real issue this morning. For the first time in a long time, though, I have not been seeing smoke, so I’m hoping all that rain has made a big difference for the wildfires.

While doing my morning rounds, I finally gave in and took the netting off from above the Arikara squash. The elm seeds are mostly dropped, and it was doing nothing to keep the cats off. In fact, as I was starting to pull the ground staples to remove it, one of the yard cats (a tabby with no name) jumped onto the mesh and immediately fell through over a squash and started to roll around in a panic!

Thankfully, the collars around the squash did their jobs, and nothing was crushed.

What we do have, however, is buds and even a blooming flower!

What is strange is that these are all female flowers. No male flowers! I’m used to the male flowers blooming first. I’m not sure if I should be pruning these off so the plants themselves can grow bigger before starting to bloom again. I’ve never grown these before. I’ll have to look that up. I’d hate to have to prune them but, without any male flowers to pollinate them, the baby squash are just going to wither away, anyhow.

At the high raised bed, I decided to pick these, as the plants were getting big enough to crowd other things out.

I’m leaving one Purple Prince (I think) plant that has bolted to go to seed. Tiny flower buds have started to appear. I picked the other larger ones; perhaps I waited too long and should have picked them at a smaller stage. As for the red thing in the middle, I thought it was a beat, but as I was cleaning and trimming it later, I could see that it’s white on the insides to… a big radish?

That’s one thing about using a seed mix for the winter sowing. This one was a mix of whatever root vegetable seeds I had left. There was only one type of turnip, which makes it easy, but there were several times of radishes and beets, and two types of carrots. One type of radish – the French Breakfast – has a distinct shape that makes it easy to identify. Everything else is “root vegetable surprise”. 😄

I just hope today isn’t so cold that the seeds recently planted will die off and rot instead of germinating. Things are supposed to get sunny and warm up over the next while, without extreme heat, which will be nice. Those overnight temperatures, when they start dropping below 10C/50F, could be a problem, though. The transplants should handle things fine, but the direct sowing… well, we’ll see how those go. At the very least, it will slow germination down.

Well, hopefully, we will have a long, moderate fall and a late first frost, to extend our growing season.

Meanwhile, in the time it took me to write this, our temperature has actually dropped, instead of getting warmer! We’re not supposed to reach our high of the day until 7 or 8 this evening. I’m( seriously considered plugging the cat house in again. It’s overcast enough that the light sensor for the heat bulb will turn on for the kittens.

Definitely “brrrrr” out there!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: two quick supports

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I had an entire day at home, with excellent weather. Which means I got lots done!

Of course, I took full advantage of it. While getting the transplants in was my primary goal, I got as many other things done in between that I could.

One of them was to add some horizontal supports for the Spoon tomatoes.

Spoon tomatoes can get pretty tall, but they don’t tend to get particularly large or heavy. Each transplant has its own pair of vertical supports, and I wove the horizontal supports through. The bamboo stakes I used are about 6′ long, and the row of tomatoes is about 13 or 14 feet long. I ended up weaving two bamboo stakes through, then using whatever sticks I had handy to finish off the last bit. The tomato plants should be light enough that this should be enough to hold them. I might have to secure the supports to the metal posts, if they start to get tippy, as the tomatoes get bigger. There’s a possibility that, once the trellises start filling in, they will start acting like sails in the wind. We’ll see, as the season progresses.

With the temperatures at a more reasonable level, I haven’t had to water every morning to protect the garden beds from the heat. Even with that lovely rain we got recently, though, things dry out really quickly, so I watered the beds in the main garden area, after I was done with the tomato supports. The other beds got watered as I was working in the areas, later on.

When working in the old kitchen garden, there were a few things that needed to be done before I could start on the transplants. One of them was dealing with the pink rose bush. This rose bush is insanely thorny, and it wants to sprawl. Part of it died over the winter, too.

So this afternoon, I broke out the leather gloves and pruned away the dead parts. There was more of that then I expected! Then I dug out the pair of wire supports I’d picked up at the dollar store last year. I used them on their own, as three sided supports, last year, but for the rose bush, I joined them together.

I didn’t think to get a picture until much later, though, after the transplanting was mostly done.

The green wire is hard to see with all the other greens around it, but you can just make it out in the photo. It’s tall enough that it should keep the branches from leaning into the garden bed or the paths. It had a tendency to flop all over the place, so we’d tied it off with twine and, for the tallest stem, I actually had it tied to a branch of the ornamental crab apple tree.

I think that tree might be why the rose bush doesn’t seem to be doing as well this year. We pruned it back quite a bit, years ago and, once it started getting sunlight, the rose bush finally recovered and started to thrive. The crabapple tree has filled in again, though, and the rose bush is being shaded out again. We’re going to have to prune it back again.

The ornamental apple tree at the other corner did get some pruning. Aside from a few low hanging branches that kept catching on my hat, there were some large, dead branches that needed to be cleared away, too. On that side of the garden, there is a white rose bush that is aggressively spreading. I cleared spreading little rose bushes away from the wattle weave bed and out of the rhubarb, old asparagus and some flowers in that area. It was even coming up through the stack of small logs I’ve got stored in that corner. There is more that needs to be cleared away, but for today, I just cleared enough that I could get into where I needed to work, without getting attacked by rose bushes or crabapple branches!

These were the “little” things that gone done today.

I did manage to get all the transplants in, though! That will get its own post. See you there in a bit! 😊

The Re-Farmer

Morning pretties, and a longer day than expected

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My daughter had a doctor’s appointment today, so I headed out to do my morning rounds early, then stayed out to work in the garden for a couple of hours. I’ll write about that in a separate garden post.

Before we headed out, I couldn’t resist getting a picture of Ginger.

Since Butterscotch has gone into another stressed out and hiding all day phase, I’ve been kicking the other cats out of my room for the night, so she can come out to eat, drink, use the litter box, and not be hiding under an armchair all night. Ginger is the one cat I’ve been allowing in the room at night, since he’s a bundle of nerves, too. He is taking full advantage of the perk, and luxuriating in comfortable cat beds and oodles of pets. Thankfully, he and Butterscotch get along!

This time of year, we’ve got quite a few things blooming, or starting to get into bloom. This year, a couple of bushes that normally don’t, are blooming prolifically for the first time since we’ve moved out here!

The white flowers are on a small bush near the house. It has been bashed and battered, and at one point, I was sure it was dead. Whatever it is, it’s incredibly hardy! This year, not only is it the largest I’ve seen it since our first year here – a major recovery – but it is covered in these clusters of white flowers.

The lilacs are on a bush that is at the fence on one side of the gate at our driveway. This area gets baked in the sun, though it at least gets some shade from a giant spruce tree in the evenings. It also doesn’t get a lot of moisture. This year, however, we have enough moisture that the “pond” not far away in the old hay yard still has some moisture in it. Since moving here, I’ve seen it bloom a couple of times, when we had very wet springs, but nothing like its blooming this year!

There is another lilac planted at the fence line on the other side of the gate. That area gets baked out from sunrise to sunset, and I’m amazes it’s surviving. No flowers this year, though.

When we finally get around to making the people gate near that sad lilac, I’m hoping to improve conditions around it and find a way to get water to it.

As my daughter and I were heading out, she got the truck out of the garage while I opened the gate, so I picked a few clusters of lilacs for her. She set them on the dash. When we came back to the truck after her appointment, they were completely flat and shriveled from the heat! I hope she remembered to take them out when she parked the truck in the garage.

Thankfully, she and I left really early for her appointment. My plan was to have lunch before her appointment. About twenty minutes from home, she suddenly remembered the prescription, an injection, she was supposed to bring with her today. It was still in the fridge at home! So we turned around and headed back while I messaged her sister to meet us at the gate with it in an insulated bag and some ice packs.

Even with the return trip, we got there early enough that we could have had lunch at the Subway next door – until we saw the line up. So we skipped that and headed for the clinic. She got into the examination room a bit early, but the doctor was running late and even had to leave part way through the visit and come back later. It was just a follow up visit, though, and there were no changes to my daughter’s mediations. She did get a chance to show and ask the doctor about some skin issues she’s been having. She’s had issues that she traced to an allergy to something in her deodorant, but with the recent heat, that’s gotten painfully worse, plus she’s got all sorts of skin issues. The doctor said it looks fungal, and recommended…

Head and Shoulders, used as a body wash.

She could have prescribed an anti-fungal cream but it turns out Head and Shoulders contains anti-fungal ingredients that work just as well, and it’s a lot cheaper!

She also recommended doing her laundry in hot water, and hanging her clothes on the line instead of using the drier. My daughter had already switched to using hot water and we’ve started to use the clothes line more often, too. Often enough that we’re looking to hook up two more lines. When I was growing up here, there were three laundry lines set up, so the hooks for pullies are already on the posts. I have no idea what happened to the pullies that used to be there. I spotted some kits that include 150′ (which is how much we would need) of medium strength, plastic coated metal laundry line, and all the parts and pieces, for about $50. The pullies and tightener, however are plastic, so I think we’d be better off paying a bit extra and getting metal pullies and tightener.

Anyhow, sunlight is also anti-fungal, so we’ll be using the clothes line more often. We’ll need to get more clothes pins, though. The kittens have discovered them and think they are toys!

After my daughter’s appointment was done, we finally had lunch. We were both pretty famished by then! We’d both had only very light breakfasts.

We also had a shopping trip planned. I was prepared to have to go to town to pick up new prescriptions, if necessary, but it wasn’t, so that made the day a bit shorter! The nearest Walmart to us is just 15 minutes away from the town our doctor is in, so that worked out well, too.

Since we were planning to get things that needed to stay cold, we popped over to the Dollarama, first. I got the rest of the tomato cages I wanted, which will be used over the eggplant and pepper transplants. I also got more plant clips, as my bucket with them seems to have disappeared!

The Walmart shopping was both stuff for my husband, and my daughters’ list. Nothing came out of my regular grocery budget, so I didn’t do my usual “this is what $X looks like” photo. The important thing is that I remembered to get more distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier.

This year, I’ve been using his empty water bottles to make collars for transplants, much more than usual, since we’re expecting a dry year. I’ve used up all the old collars I’d used last year, plus made more with all the bottles I’ve been saving all winter. There’s only a few empty water bottles left and, if I want one for each of the remaining tomato plants, I’m going to have to find more.

Oh! I just remembered! I have a bunch of them on posts at the chimney block garden bet at the chain link fence! Which means I’ll only be short about 5 or 6 for the tomatoes I have left to do. I’m sure I can find enough other containers I’ve been saving to reuse somehow.

By the time we got home, it was about 5pm. As we pulled into the yard to unload, the yard cats were absolutely everywhere, waiting for their feeding time! As soon as my daughters and I got most of it in, I headed over to feed them and distract them away from the truck, so my daughter could safely leave the yard and park it.

One of Poirot’s babies made an achievement today. Japp got out of the cat cage! I’m not sure if s/he climbed out the “door”, or if s/he found the opening at the bottom (it was blocked with a stuffy). We’re really going to have to watch our step, now!

The days are long enough and warm enough that I seriously considered going back out to at least work on the garden bed I’ll be planting in tomorrow, but I need to keep my limits in mind. I’m already pushing them on a daily basis right now. Plus, we’re getting weather alerts for possible thunderstorms. Looking at the weather radar, I don’t think we’ll be hit with any, but it’s possible I certainly won’t complain about getting more rain!

I’ve got a couple of days with no outings or appointments planned. If all goes well, I should have everything transplanted or direct sown by then. After that, it’s more construction type stuff, like making the wattle weave walls on the bed in the old kitchen garden, and working on the permanent trellis supports.

The main focus right now is just to get plants and seeds in the ground!

Tomorrow.

I’m done for today.

😄

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: reclaiming and replanting the flower bed

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So the winter sown flower bed was a total failure. If any seeds did survive the winter, I saw no sign of them. While the bed did get covered with plastic, eventually, once that mulch was removed in the spring, it became a favourite spot for the cats to roll around on!

And did in, of course. 🫤

I decided it should be safe to direct sow more flowers into this bed.

The Dwarf Jewel mixed nasturtium is one of the flowers that had been planted here in the fall. I recently picked up the Cosmos, as I know for sure they grow here; my mother grew them here, and even after we moved back, I remember seeing a few of them show up in places were they’d self seeded. The Aster are seeds that were included in a memorial card for an old friend that passed away suddenly, last year.

The plastic cover on the bed had torn at one end, where the end of a bamboo stake was. That tear was all the wind needed to rip the whole thing in half. So that was the first thing to get removed. Then the hoops and the bamboo stake pieces holding them in place were pulled out and set aside.

The bed itself was full of weed seedlings, plus the dandelions, crab grass and creeping Charlie around the edges. There was even some burdock coming up, next to the high raised bed. It took a lot of loosening with the garden fork before I could start pulling the weeds and trying to get as many of the roots out as possible. Unfortunately, I was also finding elm tree roots in there, too.

Once weeded, I went over it with the rake to pull the soil more towards the middle, making it narrower than before. Partly because fewer seeds were going to be planted here, and partly to make it easier to cover and protect. After everything was levelled, it got a thorough watering, before the smaller seeds were scattered about. The nasturtium seeds are large enough that I planted those, individually.

While cleaning up the bed, I did find at least one nasturtium seed that had been planted in the fall; they were the only seeds large enough that they could be seen. Which means that it is possible that some of the seeds planted in the fall might have survived and could still germinate. Unlikely, but possible! 😁

Then it was time to set the hoops back in place, over the broken pieces of bamboo stakes holding them in place. With the hoops still attached to the bamboo stakes across the top, it didn’t talk long to get them back in place.

While gathering my supplies for this, I had grabbed a folded up piece of mosquito netting I thought might be good to set over the hoops, but it turned out to be too short for this bed. So I went and got the rolled up netting that had been over the garlic, before they got too tall. That turned out be just the right length! I weighted down one edge at the based of the high raised bed, then unrolled the netting. This netting catches on everything, so that was not as easy as it should have been! Once the netting was pulled snug, there was just enough slack to roll back around the stick it had been stored on. I then used the bricks, rocks and pieces of wood that had been used to hold the plastic over the hoops to secure the side, rolling the weights up in the excess netting. I was able to get the netting nice and snug over the hoops.

Hopefully, this will be enough to protect the area until the seeds germinate and get big enough that they won’t need the hoops and netting anymore. The nasturtium are edible, but they can also act as a trip crop, to keep insects away from other edible greens.

Once I gather the materials, I’ll build frame to fit over this area and attach these hoops to support whatever wire mesh I have to put over it, making sure to close up the ends, too. That will be much handier than setting hoops over sticks in the ground! I’ll be making several such covers, little by little, all with the same frame dimensions, so they can be interchangeable. The prototypes I’ve made so far have been incredibly handy!

One more job done. Time for another hydration break, then one more bed to work on!

See you in my next post…

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: Vesey’s order for the food forest

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Okay, after going through their website more, I made some decisions and placed an order at Vesey’s. It was mostly for our future food forest, but I did order a couple of seed packets so I could take advantage of a promo code for free shipping.

As I was preparing to write this post, however, I got a phone call.

From home care.

Guess who has to go to my mother’s again this evening, to do her med assist?

Two nights in a row. Apparently, someone just called in sick.

My mom is going to be furious.

*sigh*

I will just have to deal with that, later.

Meanwhile, here is what I ordered today. (Links will open in new tabs)

These were the one thing we absolutely wanted to get this year. The Opal Plum tree. The description from the website:

Prunus spp. Opal stands alone as the hardiest European type Plum available on the market. It is vigorous, productive and self-fertile. Even in short summer seasons, the fruit will reliably ripen. The plums are round, red-purple with a golden flesh and have a complex and sweet flavour, fresh or dried. Hardy to zone 3. We ship 18″ trees

The key points were that it is self fertile, so we don’t have to plant it next to our dying wild-type plums, but can plant it in the section we’ve designated for a food forest. It’s hardy to our zone, so we don’t have to do like we did with our zone 4 Liberty apple, and tuck it into a sheltered area. (Hopefully, it survived the polar vortexes we got this winter!)

I decided to also order some more haskaps. We already have three, but they have not been doing well at all. While I should probably transplant them, I’ve decided to get a couple more that will be planted in the food forest area, this time.

This first one is the Aurora Pollinator variety.

The second is Boreal Blizzard, an early producing and largest fruit variety.

We currently have “Mr” and “Mrs” haskap varieties, where are sold as cross-pollinating varieties. The “Mr” is an Aurora, and seems to bloom too early to pollinate the “Mrs.” variety, so I am hoping that the early Boreal Blizzard variety will work out better.

If these haskap do well, that will confirm that the ones we have now are not producing because they are in a bad location. Which I am 99% sure of, but it really is a good location – for us!

To use the free shipping promo code, I needed to have at least one packet of seeds.

I had been looking at these last night, while planning my order, but they were listed as sold out. This morning, they were back in stock! So I snagged them.

This is the Sweetie Snack Mix of small sized peppers. They have a short growing season, too, so they should work out. I think my family might like them better than the larger bell peppers we’ve been trying so far.

Last of all, I got some flowers for the girls. 😄 The Jet Black Hollyhock. These are pollinator attracting biannuals and should be self seeding, so we will plan out where to sow them with that in mind!

There we have it. Another order in for our 2025 garden, and our food forest.

The grand total for this, after tax, came to $137.08, however we will only be billed for the seeds when they get shipped in the next day or two. The sapling and haskap plugs will be shipped closer to our last frost date of June 2, and we will be billed for those, then.

The flower seeds were not that expensive, but that packet of mini peppers cost $8.75, with only about 20 seeds in the pack. That’s almost 44¢ per seed!

Still cheaper than buying them at the grocery store, but what a huge leap in prices for vegetable seeds! During the illegal lockdowns, with people panic buying and prices going up and up and up, so many people decided to try growing their own food, a lot of seed suppliers were completely sold out. They are still recovering from that. I know some smaller Canadian seed growers had to back out of the consumer market completely and only sell commercially in bulk. Add to this, in the years since, more people are trying to grow their own food because the grocery prices have gotten so high. That increased demand puts a major stress on supplies, too. Which is why I’m seeing the cost of vegetable seeds skyrocketing, while the number of seeds in the packets are going down, but not with flower seeds. I haven’t been looking at herb seeds lately, so I don’t know how they are doing for pricing.

With this order in, the next thing we’ll need to decide on is what variety of potatoes we want to grow and where. Anything beyond that is just gravy.

Or back ups if the winter sowing fails!

The Re-Farmer

Makin hay, while the sun shines!

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Or, in my case today, raking leaves and planting wildflowers!

This afternoon, we reached our expected a high of 8C/46F, with some lovely sunshine and NO high winds!

What a difference that makes.

We did get some rain this morning, but by the time I headed out after lunch, you couldn’t tell we’d had any.

My first job of the day was to rake up some leaves to mulch the wattle weave bed.

Not all of it. Just where the wild strawberries and herbs are growing.

This was the first time I used the pair of hand rakes my brother and his wife gave me. Now that they’ve sold their property, they are living in a townhouse, and have no need for gardening tools anymore. I don’t think these were ever used before!

They work really, really well! The only complaint I could have about them is the straps for the hands are on the small side. At least for broad simian hands like mine! 😄

Oh, gosh. I just realized what I caught a kitten doing in the other mulched bed in that first photo.

*sigh*

The next photo is the packaging for the hand rakes, though Instagram cut part of it off, even though I have it set to “original size” on the slideshow. The website says uncleweiner.com (not an affiliate link). A rather unfortunate name, but a good product!

Oh… gosh. They are located in Prince Albert. That’s… double unfortunate! 😂😂😂

In the last photo, you can see I had a helper when it came to mulching the Albion Everbearing strawberries in the main garden area. I put the chicken wire back over it to keep the leaves from being blown away but, as you can see, it doesn’t lie flat on the strawberry bed. Little Magda quite enjoyed going under there!

That done, I got another wagon load of leaves and started on the patch that’s been covered by the insulated tarp all summer.

After removing the old T posts and a board I’d put around the edges, to keep it from blowing away, I peeled off the tarp. That was unexpectedly difficult. All along the edges, Creeping Charlie had started growing on top of it. It turns out that some of them set their roots into, or even through, the tarp!

So the first thing I did was drag the tarp out to the front yard, where I have one hose still set up. The tarp was spread out to its full size. After hosing it down for a while, I went over it with a stiff bristle broom to get rid of the bigger debris, then used the hose to pressure wash it as best I could. It then got another scrubbing with the broom and a rinse.

For now, I’ve left it out where it is, to dry off as much as possible. Unfortunately, there are some holes in it. Some are tears from winds that happened a couple of years ago. Others were caused by weed roots pushing their way through and into the insulation layer! So parts of it now have water on the inside of the tarp. Not much I can do about that. I don’t have tarp tape, but I do have clear Gorilla tape, so I hope to at least patch up the bigger holes – if they are dry enough! Eventually, the other side will need to be cleaned, too.

That done as much as could be for now, it was back to the patch of soil it covered. In the second picture, you can see how it looked after the tarp was removed. Most of it does look dead but, along the edges, you can see white lines of roots extending into the what will be the growing area.

The soil needed to be loosened for the seeds, so I used the landscaping rake for that – and promptly found a roll of wire, buried in the soil! When we first moved here, this is where most of the chimney blocks and all the ceramic flues had been stacked, along with bricks and other odd things, and even garbage. We cleaned it up, but clearly missed this piece of wire!

The entire area got raked from the inside out, so as to pull the living roots out of the growing area, while also loosening the soil for the seeds.

As you can see in the next photo in the slideshow, the cats were very interested in what I was doing!

After the soil was loosened, I took the container of seeds shaken up in some seed starting mix, and scattered it evenly – I hope – over the area. Then I drew the back of the rake back and forth over the area to cover the seeds a bit.

While chasing away cats that figured this was a big new litter box, just for them!

Last of all, I scattered a wagon load of leaves over the entire area. This layer of leaf mulch is not as thick as on the garden beds. I was trying to more or less emulate how it would be, if leaves had fallen naturally on the ground. They will not be removed in the spring.


These seeds are a Western wildflower mix, so they should be able to handle the winter temperatures just fine. Any that succeed in germinating should have little problem growing through the light mulch.

The seed mix description doesn’t tell everything that’s in this mix. It just says “This mix includes Lupins, Poppy, Coreopsis, Flax, Blanket flowers and much more.” It should be interesting to see what comes up next year!

Image belongs to Veseys

One packet of seeds is supposed to be enough for 1000 sq ft. I used two packets. Technically, this means this area should be very densely sown. I’m not going to assume they’ll all germinate. We’ve tried to plant these plus an alternative lawn mix in areas nearby, and only some of them took – a year after they were sown! – and in only one area.

Still, if all goes well, enough of them will germinate that they will choke out any weeds that might otherwise spread into the area, and the wildflowers will spread their own seed further into the maple grove.

By the time that was done, it was starting to get close to sunset, to I moved on to things to go in the front yard. One of those was to clean up the flower bed the haskap bushes are planted in.

The first two photos in the above slide show are before and after shots. The dead flower stalks were clipped with loppers for a chop and drop. The old mulch I’d pulled off the garden bed at the fence was then raked on top along one side, and leaves along the other edges were raked up and added to the other sides. I don’t mind if the mulch reduces the number of flowers here. They get so tall, they cover the haskaps! Now, they are a mulch for the haskaps, and the lilac at one end.

I also snagged a couple of bricks and broken pieces of sidewalk blocks from the pile in the foreground. I keep thinking the catio is going to blow away, now that it’s wrapped in plastic for the winter. A corner of the plastic did tear off in yesterday’s winds, so that got tacked back into place, and there is now a weight on each corner of the roof.

I finally got around to laying out the hoses, to get the kinks and twists out. Once they moved, I was able to get to the old basement window to clean it up, then switch the summer window for the winter one. There was more to clean up than usual this year. The kittens have been using the area in front of it as a little box. 🫤 The window is now clear, though, and has a cover leaning over it. Eventually, we will pick up a window well and cover for around this window. The window wells are pretty affordable. The covers can sure get expensive, though!

That cleaned up and done, it was time to roll up and tie off the hoses. I ended up using a garbage can, laying it on its side over a hose, then rolling it with the hose around it. Doing it that way prevents the hose from twisting and kinking, though in these cooler temperatures, any kinks that were in the hoses when I laid them out were still pretty bent up when they were rolled up. Those are now ready to set aside for the winter.

Aside from finishing cleaning the insulated tarp, this is it for winterizing on the south side of the house. Tomorrow, I’ve got some things I want to get done in the main garden area. Our high is expected to be only 4C/39F tomorrow, but the day after is now expected to hit 9C/48F. I might wait for the warmer day before breaking out the chain saw to clean up the dead spruce tree that fell on the crab apple tree.

How much I get done tomorrow, though, may be up for debate. I felt really good while working outside, but once inside and sitting for a while, all my joints are stiffening up. Including my hands. I’m having a heck of a time typing right now. I forgot to take painkillers before I started this post.

Hopefully, I will finally get a good night’s sleep, and that will help. What I’d really love is have a hot soak in the tub, but it’s not worth the risk of injury, trying to get in and out. Sitting on the bath chair in the shower just isn’t the same, though!

Ah, well. It is what it is!

Whatever happens tomorrow, it felt great to be working outside, and I’m quite happy with the progress I was able to do while I had the chance!

The Re-Farmer