Hmmm. Our internet is cutting in and out like crazy today, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to post this right away!
Today, our first batch of seeds from Veseys came in. Yay! There are more that will be shipped later, but even so, that little box was just jam packed! You can read about all that we ordered, and why we chose what we did, here (link will open in new tab).
This is what we got in today.
First, the wildflower mixes. These are both for planting in the fall, so we will have the summer to prepare the locations we intend to plant them in. The Western mix is intended for outside the yard, between the fence and the road, to attract pollinators. We have not yet decided exactly where the Alertnative Lawn mix will go, other than well away from the house. My husband is allergic to bee stings, so anything like these needs to be planted away from any doors, the path towards the garage, and the firepit.
Spinach is among the items we will have to ensure are protected from deer. In talking about it, the girls and I are leaning towards building simple box frames with wire mesh that will fit over the beds.
Here are 2 of the 3 varieties of beans we orders; a yellow variety will be shipped later, plus the peas. The collection I’d intended to order for peas suddenly went out of stock, so I ordered these as an alternative, and I’m still seriously considering ordering another variety or two. I like peas more than I like beans! :-D
The girls and I are looking into various trellis designs for these. Yes, I know, bush beans aren’t supposed to need them, but we are looking to grow as many things vertically as we can.
We already have 2 varieties of corn from Baker Creek Rare Seeds, so we might not actually plant these at all this year. It all depends on how well we are able to prepare growing spaces. The Rare Seeds varieties are priority, and we have to keep in mind that we don’t want them to cross pollinate.
The pelleted seeds will be much easier to plant!
We now have 4 varieties of carrots, and I will happily plant them all. Carrots are a favorite vegetable in our household. The challenge will be creating the soft, deep soil they need. We have space to create one more bed in the soft soil where the wood pile used to be, and that’s it. Our topsoil is shallow, and we have a lot of rocks. My mother always successfully grew carrots in the old garden bed area, but I don’t think the soil has been amended since my parents sold off the cows and retired from farming. Raised beds would be the solution. At this point, the girls and I are thinking we’re going to have to order in a dump truck load of garden soil. We have not yet decided where we will build permanent raised beds, so any beds we do build this year will likely be temporary.
At least we don’t have to worry about the deer going after the carrots.
Three of the 4 varieties of onions are in; the 4th variety are sets that will be shipped at planting time in the spring. I’m hoping to plant these in the old kitchen garden, near the house.
The beets are intended for the additional bed we’ll be preparing next to where the garlic is currently planted, where the old wood pile used to be. My daughters had wanted to get another variety as well, but they were sold out. These might be enough. Like the spinach, we are thinking of protecting these from the deer with a wire mesh box.
We got extra cucamelons, just in case the tubers I dug up and currently have stored in the old kitchen, where it’s not quite as cold as outside, don’t make it. We intend to plant these along the chain link fence bordering the south yard. The melons will be trellised, elsewhere. Possibly near…
…the squashes we will be trellising. :-) I am hoping to build squash arches for those.
The summer squash will, hopefully, be trained up stakes. We could get away with letting them spread on the ground, like we did last year, but it’s supposed to be healthier for the plants to train them up, while pruning off the lower leaves.
Speaking of summer squash…
Last summer we ordered a summer squash mix, with extra sunburst squash. We enjoyed them enough to order the same thing again for next year. I was a bit confused as I unpacked them from the box, however…
Somehow, I accidentally ordered three collections!
Totally my goof on that one.
I’ve offered the extras to my siblings. I don’t even know if they like squash. If they don’t want them, we’ll just keep them for next year! :-)
In the spring, along with the onion sets, cherry tomato mix, yellow beans and mulberry tree, we will be getting 4 varieties of potatoes. While using the Ruth Stout, no-till, heavy mulch method did work last summer, we are thinking of using grow bags or something similar, next year. Those would give us more flexibility and, hopefully, higher yields.
The more I think about the condition of our soil, and the spaces we will be working with, the more I think getting a truckload of garden soil is going to be the best thing we can do at this point. I would much rather build up the soil over time, but I simply did not expect the soil condition to have deteriorated as much as it did, over the years. Plus, given how much my planned timeline for cleaning up the yards has been pushed back, anything that we can to do make up for that will be good.
We just have to find a local source and see how much it costs. I think it’ll be worth it, in the long term.
I was very happy to see our first order from Rare Seeds (Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds) come in. With so many delays in deliveries, I was more hoping than expecting.
Also, I’m a suck.
More on that later. :-D
Here is what came in: (click on the images to see them better)
We’ve got 2 varieties of carrots in. We’ll have 2 more varieties in our Vesey’s order, too. I would love to plant all of them, but that will depend on what we will be able to prepare for garden plots. There is basically just one place where we have soft, deeper soil, and that’s where the hard neck garlic is currently planted. I have room to make one more bed over there.
One thing I really liked was how much information is on the backs of that packages.
Which Tissue decided she needed to investigate.
In fact, ALL the cats came over to investigate!
The Kyoto red is supposed to be a “winter” carrot, but that does not apply to our climate. For our Zone 3, this is a summer carrot! Customer comments on the website included someone who very successfully grew it in another province, but also Zone 3. It was really that review that convinced me to try it.
Unfortunately, the Montana Morado corn’s package has no growing information on it. It is a black corn that is also a good flour corn. I am really glad I ordered it when I did, because it is now out of stock! These are both varieties we will be saving seeds from. We’ll have more corn coming in with our Vesey’s order, but whether or not we plant those ones as well will be decided by how much garden space we can prepare. Particularly since they have to be planted well away from each other, to avoid cross pollination.
I am so excited to have these poppies! I have no idea where we will plant them, but we will find a place! Saving seed with those will also be a priority. The strawberry spinach should be interesting. I’ve tried them before in a balcony garden, with limited success.
I had to laugh when I saw the free seeds they included.
We had decided not to try and grow Kohlrabi again, until we could figure out how to protect them from cabbage beetles and deer. Who knows. We might be able to figure something out by spring. I would really love to grow some! For me, these are a “treat” vegetable. :-)
My husband also got a package and, along with round sharpening stones for serrated knives, he had my Christmas present.
He didn’t bother waiting for Christmas. :-D
Yup. My darling, wonderful, thoughtful husband got me SPORES!!!! Oh, I am so excited!!! My husband is the best!
Both of these are native to the area. I haven’t seen morels since I was a child, and that was on the other quarter section, which is rented out. I’ve never seen them on the home quarter. As for puff balls, I actually saw some growing along the side of our driveway last summer! Not this giant variety, to be sure, but it was good to see them. Large ones like these can be sliced and grilled or fried like steak. Big steaks! They can also be battered and fried.
Growing these outdoors will be touch and go, but I am really looking forward to trying it. The morels package mentions elm as a tree to plant them under (the other trees mentioned don’t grow here), and we have plenty of elms around the yard.
Meanwhile, I’ve gone and placed another order with Rare Seeds!
Because I’m a suck.
I got a promotional email from them saying something along the lines of “hey, we noticed you looking at these, so we took the liberty of adding them to your list” and it included a link.
It wasn’t my wish list they added it to. It was my shopping cart.
Normally, I would have just blown it off, but…
I just couldn’t resist. It was affordable, and I really, really want to try these, even if we can’t plant them this spring. Plus, they are still in stock.
They are all gourds.
There is the Birdhouse gourd (I definitely want to try those again), the lovely Ozark nest egg gourd, the absolutely adorable and prolific Tennessee Dancing of Spinning gourd (in the customer comments, someone said they got about 250 off a single plant!), and finally, the Thai Bottle gourd, which is actually an edible gourd, unlike the others, which I plan to use for crafting purposes.
Plus there’s another package of free seeds. :-)
I do not expect to plant these next spring. The Birdhouse gourds take so long to germinate, they would have to be started much earlier than we did last time. And in bigger starter pots, because of how late our last frost date is.
Mind you, nothing says we have to plant entire packages. We could try growing just a few seeds and see what comes up.
Oh, this is going to be an interesting growing year! :-D
I posted previously about seeds we ordered from Rare Seeds. Since then, I’ve placed another small order from them, which I will talk about below. (all links should open in new tabs, so you won’t lose your place. :-) )
The problem is, our first order hasn’t arrived yet. It has been shipped and, as far as my account on the website states, it’s complete. It should have arrived by now.
Could it be stuck at the border? I don’t know. I’ve emailed them and asked. Hopefully, they will be able to find out at their end.
A lot of the stuff on my wish list there is out of stock, so when I had the chance, I did place another order while what I wanted was available. This is what I will be getting (along with a free packet of mystery flowers).
Hopi Black Dye Sunflower. I’m really excited about this. Not only is it supposed to be a good eating sunflower, but it can be used to make a purple dye. After what happened when we planted sunflowers last year, we ordered 2 packages of these.
Mongolian Giant Sunflower. I love how they use small children to demonstrate just how MASSIVE some of their products are. This one is a monster of a sunflower! Heads can reach up to 18 inches across, and the stalks can reach 14 feet. This will make a substantial wind break and privacy screen. Yes, we ordered two packages of these, as well.
Crespo Squash. This is a type of big, warty green pumpkin. Why did I order it? Because it’s big, green and warty. Also, it’s supposed to be very delicious.
In deciding what to get, we are looking at both summer fresh eating, and winter storage. The sunflowers we planted last year did not get a chance to mature, but if we can get these planted earlier, hopefully, that will not be an issue again. We will also be looking at finding ways to keep the deer away from them. From the looks of the stalks we left in the garden, they are still trying to eat them which, for this time of year, is part of why we have them there. Hopefully, the birds are able to eat the developing seeds in the seed heads, even if they’re not fully formed and ripe. Last I checked, some did appear to be eaten, but not much. With bird feeders right by the house, they don’t really have much incentive to eat underdeveloped seeds.
We got our Vesey’s catalog in the mail recently, which was quite exciting. :-D The girls and I have been talking about what we want to do while going through it. Today, I ended up placing a much larger order than before. I had been thinking of waiting until January, but with things already disappearing from my cart because they were suddenly out of stock, I figured I’d better order things while I could. Even so, much of what I would have liked to have ordered was out of stock. Some of them, I ordered different varieties instead. Others, we will wait and will probably order in January or February.
This is what we’ve got ordered, as of right now.
Vesey’s Mosaic Mix Tomato. We are not big tomato eaters. I actually detest tomatoes, though I can eat tomato paste or crushed tomato as an ingredient in dishes. One of my daughters, however, really likes little tomatoes. This package is a mix of cherry and grape tomatoes in a range of colours that will produce over a long period of time. This is for her! :-D
Merlin Beet. Of the beets we tried to grow last year, this is the one the girls liked the most. We’ll just have to protect them from the deer!
There is another variety we plan to get, but it’s out of stock, so we’ll order that later. When we’re ready to plant, we should have 2 varieties of beets.
Spinach collection. Three varieties of spinach that mature at different types. We all love fresh spinach, but store bought spinach goes bad so quickly, we rarely buy it. Something else we have to protect from the deer, though!
Summer Squash Mix Sunburst Summer Squash These are the same as what we ordered last year. The mix does include sunburst squash in it, but having more of them went over very well last year. This time, we have better information for starting them indoors, and protecting them from late frost, so hopefully, we will have even more. They will be for fresh eating, and for pickling and freezing.
Baby Pam Pumpkin. The pumpkins we planted last year were planted way too late, and we didn’t even know what variety they were. This time, we chose a variety noted for its eating quality, and faster maturity.
Red Kuri (Little Gem) squash. These little winter squashes should mature even faster than the pumpkins! This variety was also chosen for its winter storage qualities.
Teddy Organic Winter Squash. We picked these for their combination of small size (serving size!) and high production, as well as it’s faster maturity.
I was unsure about trying to grow melons again, as the transplants I bought last year did not work out. I had a variety recommended to me, but it was not available. These cantaloupe type melons were picked for their quicker maturity. We enjoy melons, but it’s another of those things we rarely buy, so it’s worth giving it another go.
Cucamelon. Yes, even though I was able to save some tubers, I’m still getting some to start from seed. Just in case!
We have 3 varieties of garlic already planted. Now, we’ll also have lots of onions, too! We use onions a lot, so figured it was worth going ahead and planting lots. We chose come of these for their winter storage-ability.
Last year, we ordered 2 boxes (3 pounds each) of the Yukon Gold. This year, we decided to double the amount (each comes in a 3 pound box), but quadruple the varieties. The Norland and Purple Chief are noted for their winter storage, so we’ll have some we will grow for eating earlier, and others to keep for later.
Deep Purple is one of the varieties we planted last year. The Napoli is not the variety I originally picked, but this one was in stock and highly rated. We have two other carrot varieties coming from Rare Seeds that should have arrived by now. If something has gone wrong with that order (for all I know, seeds aren’t being allowed across the border right now. Or maybe it’s just slow), we’ll still have 2 varieties. If we end up with 4, well, that’s just more for pickling or freezing.
Dalvay Pea I actually had a 3 variety collection in my cart, but waited too long to order, and now it’s out of stock. So I ordered this variety for now. We may order another variety, later. These were noted for their fast maturity and long pods.
The 3 variety collection I had on my wish list is out of stock, so I picked similar varieties that were in stock. These types of beans are another thing I rarely buy in the stores, though we like them. They tend to either look oogy, or get oogy very quickly. These will be used for pickling and freezing, too.
Peaches and Cream Corn Collection Three varieties of Peaches and Cream corn. Not the collection I originally intended to order, but the one that was in stock! We have 2 other, more unique, varieties from Rare Seeds that are held up (watch, after my saying this so often, I’ll find them in the mail tomorrow… LOL). I believe we will need to plant those varieties away from these ones. I don’t think they would be good to cross pollinate. Especially the purple variety. :-D
Illinois Everbearing Mulberry (shipped in the spring) This is it! Our first food tree! I really hemmed and hawed about ordering it, because it’s quite expensive, but it will be two years before it produces fruit, so the sooner, the better. It’s actually a zone 4 tree, so we will have to ensure that it is well protected. It can grow up to 25 feet high, which also needs to be kept in mind when we decide where to plant it, too! My mother remembers they had a mulberry tree growing behind their barn, when she was a child in Poland. She remembers bright yellow silk worm cocoons on them, too! We might be able to grow the tree here, but I don’t think we could introduce silk worms here! :-D
These are mixes that will be scatter sown in a couple of areas. One of them will actually be outside the property, between a fence and the road. This is an area that is currently open, and I don’t want it to be taken over by trees, like on the other side of our driveway. Plus, the garden area is on the inside of the fence, so it will attract pollinators. Reading over the planting instructions, it seems they actually do better being planted in the fall, so we might take the summer to prepare the areas (they actually recommend tilling! No, we aren’t going to go that far), then seed them.
There we have it! Our order is in.
This is probably way too much – and there are other things I’d still like to order! We certainly don’t have enough beds or grounds prepared for all of it. Especially the corn. But that’s okay. We’ll work it out!
We will need to build potentially 4 trellises for the peas and beans, plus we want to build squash tunnels and trellises. Where we planted the squash last year, there are 5 prepared beds, plus the 2 beds the potatoes were in, plus 1 long skinny bed where I planted the seed potatoes I found that hadn’t sprouted. No idea if they will grow at all next year. We also have the retaining wall and parts of the old kitchen garden available for some things. The potatoes we ordered will need to be planted in a different area from where we grew them last year, so as not to attract the Colorado Potato Beetle. We are talking about trying to grow potatoes in containers, instead, this time.
So we’ll have to prepare beds for 27 plant varieties, plus larger areas for the corn and sunflowers, just from what I’ve listed here. More, counting my first order from Rare Seeds, and anything else we might order later. Not that we actually have to plant all of everything we get this year. Some things can be inter-planted (squash, beans and corn together, for example), so that will help a bit.
We’re still looking at potentially 20 beds or more that need to be prepared! All manually, too.
Yes, it’s only the middle of November, but the girls and I are already planning for next year’s gardening.
We learned a lot in our first year of gardening here, and will be using that information as we expand our food growing.
We have several goals and things we keep in mind when deciding what to order. First is keeping in line with our long term goal to be as self sufficient as possible. The other is to take advantage of being able to grow our own food by growing things we either can’t normally buy in the grocery store (either due to lack of availability, or poor quality in stores), or because they tend to be more expensive, or “treat” items, that we typically can’t justify spending our limited budget on. Both of these goals also allows us to go a bit wild in what we grow! :-)
With that in mind, I’ve already placed and order with Rare Heirlooom Seeds. It’s a small order; some of the things I would have bought were out of stock while, with others, we will go through the wish list to pick and choose. Here is what I’ve got ordered right now.
Giant Rattle Breadseed Poppy. I was really excited to see this new item! These are very much like the poppies I remember my mother growing, when I was a kid. I used to love eating the seeds right out of the dried poppy pods. She grew enough to make the filling for poppy seed rolls, which uses a LOT of seeds! Poppy seeds are something I love, but buy very rarely. If we have our own, I would certainly be using them every chance I get!
Kyoto Red Carrot. This is one I ended up choosing based on comments other customers left behind. It’s described as a “winter carrot”, which obviously isn’t a thing in our climate. Several people had complained about not being able to grow it well in their warmer zones. Then someone in a zone 3 – the same as us! – said they grew it as a summer carrot and it thrived. Awesome!
Strawberry Spinach. This is something I’ve actually tried to grow before, in containers on our balcony, years ago. We had limited success, largely due to weather conditions. What little we got, I liked, so I want to try them again. Both the leaves and the berries are edible, so that’s bonus, too!
Dorinny Sweet corn. I hemmed and hawed quite a bit about growing corn yet, but I decided to just go for it. This variety is from a Canadian hybrid, so it should be quite hardy to our growing zone.
Montana Morado Corn. This one falls into the “go wild” category! I chose it partly because it is a cold hardy variety, but mostly because of the amazing colour. It is also a variety that can be milled into flour; something we have included in our mid term plans. We just have to acquire a hand mill. Once we do, we will be looking into planting grains as well as corn, specifically for milling.
Other things we plan to get from this site are giant sunflowers, plus a variety of sunflowers that can also be used to make a purple-grey dye.
We’ve also got a substantial wishlist going at Veseys, which is where we got almost everything we planted last year. Those will be ordered later in the season, as their new catalogs include promo codes for discounts. With how much we plan to order, we’re going to need a discount!
This past year, one of the things we really loved about having the garden, was being able to pick and eat our own produce, daily.
As great as it was to have fresh produce all summer, there wasn’t much left over for the winter. This time, we will focus more on things we can process (the pickled summer squash was a huge hit for our family), as well as things that can be kept in the root cellar for long periods.
So for sure, we will be re-ordering the summer squash mix, with an extra packet of sunburst squash again, to go with the carrots and cucamelons (I have cucamelon tubers from this past summer, but will likely get more seeds, too).
We plan to get a variety of winter squash, with a focus on those that store well. Winter squash is something I almost never buy in stores. This will include small eating pumpkins (rather than the more popular carving pumpkins).
This time, we know to use 3 or 4 inch pots to start our seeds indoors, and to start them earlier. Maybe even get a warming mat. Some of our seeds took forever to germinate (especially the birdhouse gourds!), while others germinated fine, but outgrew their Jiffy pellets before the weather allowed for transplanting.
With potatoes, we decided to get the same amount of Yukon Gem potatoes as before (6 pounds of seed potatoes), but also get other varieties. If all goes to plan, we’ll be planting 4 varieties, including two that are noted as being good for winter storage. For these, we’re thinking of using grow bags or pots, to try and keep out the grublins that chewed holes in our potatoes.
We might get more varieties of corn, as well. We will be getting a collection of peas in 3 varieties. Peas right out of the pod are the best! A 3 variety collection of bush beans is also on the list. I love fresh beans, but in stores, they are among those things that always look a bit iffy. Eventually, we will get beans for drying, but not quite yet.
If we can figure out how to protect them from the deer, we will be getting the same collection of beets as we did before, too. A spinach collection (three varieties, each maturing one after the other) is also on the list.
We will be getting at least one more variety of carrots. We will very likely pick up a 3 variety pack of raspberry canes, too. These produce in their second years, so they will be for 2022’s garden. We’ve also been looking and onion and shallot varieties, focusing on those best for storage.
We’re looking at starting to get more trees and bushes, too. There are blueberry varieties that are suitable for our climate. Of course, we want more haskap berries. What I thought were gooseberries here turned out to be currants, so gooseberry bushes would be good to get, too. We’re also looking at mulberry, apple, plum and pear trees. All of these take at least a couple of years before they start producing, so the sooner we start planting them, the better. We will likely get fruit and nut tress from Hardy Fruit Tree Nursery. It’s one of the few places I’ve found that has cold hardy food trees suitable for our zone.
There is an extra purpose to all this planning ahead so early. We had plans we weren’t able to follow through on for last summer’s garden, in regards to trellises and other supports. Once we know what we are going to plant, and figure out where, we can use the winter months to accumulate any materials we need to buy (like cattle panels, rebar or rebar grid, tie wire and other fasteners, etc.). Most of what we want to build, we can use materials salvaged from around the property, but there will always be a few things we’ll have to buy.
With that in mind, I now have a tighter goal for cleaning up the spruce grove – something that is already behind “schedule” of our original timeline by a couple of years! We have a lot of tall, springy poplars that I want to clear out, and they will be used to build upright trellises, A frames, arbors, and more. We’re also looking to build squash tunnels. The beds we have where we planted squash last year looks like they will be permanent gardening areas, so I would like to start building up raised beds there. The walls for these can double as supports for any arches we add. Plus, I’m going to see if I can start taking down more of the dead spruces that are further from the house and garage (the ones closer will be taken down by professionals!). The wood might be usable for various projects. However, as we clear out the dead wood and open up the ground to sunlight, this will give us space were we can plant fruit trees that require extra protection from the elements.
With snow on the ground and a chill in the air, we’re already thinking ahead to what we can do next year.
Since moving here, our long term goal has been to be as self sufficient as possible/realistic for our needs. Growing up here, my parents were subsistence farmers. My mother had a huge vegetable garden, we had a few fruit trees and raspberries, and pin cherries grew wild in one area. We had chickens, sometimes adding ducks, geese, and turkeys. We had sheep at one point, but I’m not sure I was even born yet when we had those. We had a comparatively small herd of cows for milk and beef. There used to be a small creamery in our little hamlet, and we sold our cream to them – sometimes in exchange for butter! Aside from beef for our own use, once a year we’d sell cattle at auction, and that was the bulk of our annual income. Sometimes, we had pigs, too. We grew crops and hay to feed our own animals, with very little purchased feed to supplement. If the money was tight, my parents would go and get short term jobs. My dad had been working full time after they first moved here from the city, but when he asked his boss for a few days off to do the haying, he was told he could either be a farmer or work for him, not both. So my dad quit the job, right then and there!
We don’t plan to go quite that far in our goals. Our first focus will be on vegetable gardening and planting food trees, including nut trees. The challenge with the trees is finding varieties that will produce in our Zone 3 climate.
There is a great deal of work that needs to be done to get to that point, with limited resources, while also dealing with varying levels of health and able-bodied-ness.
All of which we can work with. It just tends to slow things down.
We really weren’t ready to start gardening this year, as far as clean up and soil preparation, but we went ahead and did it, anyhow. If we waited for everything to be perfect, we’d never start at all! :-D
So for what we had to work with, we were pretty ambitious with our gardening this year. My expectations were actually pretty low for this year. As we plan ahead to what we will do next year, it’s a good time to assess what worked, what didn’t, and why.
Let’s get started!
The one area that was easiest to work in was where the old wood pile used to be. Cleaning that up revealed incredibly soft soil, perfect for root vegetables.
How did this area do?
Carrots: pretty darn good, really. Of the three varieties we got, the purple carrots were a favourite. As far as taste, they were all good, but the purple carrots seemed to have a better, more robust, shape to them, and of course the colour is awesome.
Looking ahead: we definitely want to do carrots again. The purple carrots, for sure, plus there are a couple of other varieties suitable for our climate that I’d like to try.
Beets: Well, they could have been better, but deer were a problem, leaving us with a paltry crop. Even so, we enjoyed the three varieties we got. The girls especially liked the deep red Merlin variety.
Looking ahead: we definitely want to do beets again, but we are going to have to find ways to protect them from deer!
Parsley: those did really well. So well, in fact, that after harvesting and drying them, we have enough parsley to last us quite a long time.
Looking ahead: we don’t plan to grow parsley again next year. In the future, we will be growing herbs in a more permanent location, where we can try growing root parsley (which can take a couple of years for the roots to be mature enough to harvest).
Kohl rabi: this was a disappointment for me. I really hoped they would turn out! For all the seeds we planted, only a few sprouted, only two got big, and between the deer and the tiny cabbage beetles that showed up, they were decimated. The few plants we had ended up on the compost heap.
Looking ahead: I really want to grow these, but I don’t think we’ll try again next year.
Muskmelon: this was a last minute addition, with 2 purchased transplants. They seemed to do very well at first. Then one just up and died. The other grew and even started blooming, but remained very tiny. Then the first frost killed it.
Looking ahead: I remember we’d grown muskmelons when I was a kid, and really enjoyed eating them. My mother didn’t even do anything special to grow them. They were just in with everything else in the big garden. So I know they can grow here. I wouldn’t mind trying them again next year, but we shall see.
For this garden area next year: well, we’ve already got things completely changed in this area, with two slightly raised beds planted with fall garlic. There is still room for another bed the same size, so there is still potential to add to this area. Given the quality of soil, most likely we would plant root vegetables here again.
The next section we planted in was the retaining wall in the old kitchen garden. In this area, my mother had flowers and it’s where she planted her onions and garlic. Unfortunately, she also planted trees and bushes, which has greatly reduced the usability of this area.
Cucamelon: these were not planted were we originally planned, and with less sun than recommended for them, I did not expect much at all. So we were very pleasantly surprised by how well they did! This is something we’ve never even seen before, other than photos, never mind tried to grow. We really liked the tiny little fruits, and even had enough to try a quick pickle.
Looking ahead: We definitely will be growing these again. When cleaning up at the end of the year, I found they had amazing tubers, which are now planted in buckets, in a cool indoor location. From what I’ve read, we should be able to transplant these tubers to get an earlier crop next year. We still plan to drag the rest of the chimney blocks out of the old basement and set them up by the chain link fence in the south yard, which should make for a more ideal growing location for them, too.
Fennel: they… got really nice fronds! No bulbs formed, though. To be honest, once we transplanted the few leggy seedlings we managed to sprout, I tended to forget they existed.
Looking ahead: I’d like to try growing these again, but probably not for another year or two.
Chives: when setting up the retaining wall, I transplanted some of the chives growing in one corner into a couple of blocks that would otherwise have been right on top of them. They grew just fine, and we were able to snip some greens any time we needed. The original clump of chives I dug them up from is still there, too.
Looking ahead: nothing needs to change here.
For this garden area next year: my daughter planted a border of Gardenia Daffodils and Eye of the Tiger irises along the south edge of this area. There is rhubarb growing under each of the ornamental apple trees. They aren’t really doing well, and I might transplant them somewhere else, eventually. Some asparagus still shows up on the north edge of the garden, but not enough to harvest. If we plant fresh asparagus, it will be somewhere else.
Though we have done a lot to amend this garden area, which had been overtaken by spreading vines and invasive flowers, there is still much work that needs to be done before the whole garden can be used, including building the soil up more at the retaining wall, to level it off. The mulching we’ve added has already improved the soil considerably, but there is so much in this tiny space, it’ll be hard to get it to a functional garden. My thought is for this area to be a kitchen garden; the place for those vegetables and herbs we use the most. There are perennial flowers in there that I want to transplant elsewhere, and while I want to keep the main rose bushes, there are lots of little rose bushes spreading that are going to be difficult to clear out. Not as difficult as those invasive vines, though!
So while we’ll be able to use parts of this garden, other parts still need lots of work. With the poles by the retaining wall being to ideal to hold a trellis, the chimney blocks are ideal for planting anything that climbs.
The next area we planted in was where my mother’s big garden used to be. It is in such rough shape; poorly plowed, largely neglected, full of rocks – and rock hard soil! We’d gone so far as to use Round Up on one area, then mulched it with straw, the previous year.
The mulched area became our squash beds.
Summer Squash: these probably had the roughest start, yet were our greatest success! We planted sunburst squash and a summer squash mix. A late frost damaged the first transplants, most of which never recovered, but the second group of transplants did very well.
The sunburst squash were very prolific, and we all really enjoyed eating them, too. The zucchini varieties had a harder time of it, but still did fairly well. It was great to be able to include picking squash for the day as part of my morning rounds.
Looking ahead: we are most definitely planting these again! We did end up transplanting them later than they should have been, but late frosts are an issue here, so we need to be better prepared for that.
Birdhouse gourds: these were a sad disappointment for me. They took forever to germinate, and when the first batch was transplanted, they got hit with frost. Amazingly, more germinated later, but in the end, this tiny little gourd was all we got – and it got killed by the first frost.
Looking ahead: There are a variety of gourds I want to try growing, as I want to use them for various projects. I want to try these again, but now know I need to start them indoors much earlier, and will probably need to invest in a warming mat.
Pumpkins: these were planted very, very late, using seeds my mother got for free. No idea what the variety was. I quickly made some mounds to plant the seeds in, but honestly didn’t expect to get anything. Ultimately, they just didn’t have enough of a growing season.
Looking ahead: we do want to grow different pumpkin varieties. We’ll just have to make sure to start them earlier! I’m not entirely sure why I want to grow pumpkins. We’ve only ever eaten it as pie. But there are lots of recipes out there, and I’m sure we’ll find something we like! :-D
Yukon Gem potatoes: These were an experiment for us. We planted two beds, using the Ruth Stout method, because our soil is just too hard and full of rocks.
It did work, though it wasn’t a particularly large harvest. The odd thing was finding seed potatoes, still intact!
Looking ahead: we do want to grow more potatoes, and try other varieties. We’ll still probably use the Ruth Stout method of growing under mulch for a few years, until we can start building raised beds. For now, I’ve taken the seed potatoes I’ve found and replanted them along the north side of the garden, covered in mulch. It should be interested to see if they grow at all, next spring! We planted only 6 pounds of potatoes this year. Next year, we definitely want to plant more, now that we know we can successfully grow them without digging and hilling.
Giant Sunflowers: We had several goals with our sunflowers. Some were met, some were not!
Growing them for bird seed seems to be a miss. We likely planted them too late, as it doesn’t look like they reached maturity at all.
While I did harvest a couple of heads that are hanging in the basement, we’ve decided to leave the rest out over the winter. If there’s anything the birds can get out of them, great. It looks like the deer are still trying to eat them, too, as I find more and more of them, broken.
The other purposes we grew them for is as a privacy screen, and wind break. With a 50% loss of our first planting, likely to deer, we planted another variety, just to fill in the gaps. We did not expect to get seeds from them. It sort of worked. There just wasn’t enough of them.
Looking ahead: yes, we want to plant these giant varieties again, but if we do, we need to get at least double, if not triple, the amount of seeds to create the windbreak and privacy screen we want. Hopefully, we can plant them earlier, too. We also want to try other varieties, including one that is the source of a purple dye. We definitely have to figure out how to protect them from deer, though!
For this garden area next year: In the mulched area the squash were in, the soil is so much softer! Except for all the rocks that are still a problem. In cleaning up for winter, I turned the pumpkin mounds into larger beds, so that area now has 6 beds, including one long thin one at the back, prepped for next year. Plus, there are the two potato beds nearby. Any potatoes we plant next year will be in a different location, to avoid attracting the Colorado Potato Beetle. We will likely continue to reclaim more of the old garden area, but not all of it, as we intend to plant a nut orchard in here in the relatively near future. The sooner we can get that done, the better, since it takes so many years before nut trees start producing. So we will focus mostly on where we have already planted, but when it’s time to do more, it will be elsewhere.
Final thoughts: so it’s been a year of successes and failures, but we did learn a lot from our first year of gardening here.
We have a better idea of what works for us, what we like and what we want to plant next year. For the longer term, we definitely will need to look at getting poly-tunnels – possibly a greenhouse – to be able to extend our growing season and protect from frost. We are looking to claim more of the outer yard, towards the barn, where there is more sun, for things like that. We also know that winds from the South are more of a problem than winds from the North, and need to plan accordingly. This year also really hit home for me that we need to built tall, accessible, raised beds. Any raised beds will help when it comes to our rocky soil, but this old body is just too broken, and height will help.
I was so excited to finally get our bulbs this morning!
Here are the three varieties of garlic we ordered.
I appreciate how they add things to the label, like “best for roasting” , “rich, spicy flavour” and “big cloves with bold flavour”.
This is what 1 pound of each variety looks like. I wasn’t sure how many bulb heads or cloves that would translate into. That was the main reason I wasn’t sure if the two beds I’d prepared for them would be enough. At least I was reasonably sure it wasn’t going to be too much space! :-)
Today turned out to be a very windy day, so my daughter and I broke apart the cloves inside the house.
Those old take out containers were perfect for keeping the varieties organized!
Also, they made the house smell absolutely amazing!
I had been watering the prepared beds, to try and get moisture down to the layer of compost and straw buried inside. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do that as often as I’d wanted to, so I gave them another thorough soak.
The frame used as a guide to dig 4′ x 8′ beds fit in the next space, inches to spare between it and the ring around the new compost pile. It was ready, just in case I needed a third bed.
Thankfully, I didn’t!
Porcelain Music Garlic
The first variety I planted was Music. Directions for planting hard neck garlic I have looked up, say to plant cloves 4 – 8 inches apart, in rows about 12 – 18 inches apart. Since we are doing beds rather than rows, I laid them out in a roughly 6 inch grid. The soil is so soft here, I was able to plant the by just pushing my gloved fingers in to the correct depth, without the need for any tools.
Purple Stripe Garlic
With the number of cloves we got from the Purple Stripe, my grid wasn’t quite as even at the end. :-D The corners on this bed seemed like they would collapse a bit, so I moved the cloves that would have been planted there to the other side.
Once the two varieties were planted, I added boards to mark where the grid ended, and the third variety, which would be in both beds, started.
Racombole Garlic
The last ones to plant were Racombole. Which sounds like a Pokemon.
The Racombole turned out to have a lot more cloves, including more smaller ones. It was almost like soft neck garlic that way. So these were planted slightly closer together. More like 4 inches apart, rather than 6. I probably shouldn’t have bothered to plant the smallest ones, but I didn’t want to waste a single clove!
Those boards across the beds also came in very handy to put a foot on to brace myself, making it easier for my short little arms to reach the middle. ;-)
Planting in these beds really demonstrated for me that building much higher raised beds for accessibility is a very good idea!
The next step was to add the mulch, and this is where the wind became a real potential problem.
Thankfully, I thought to put the chopped up straw on a tarp.
It was easy to slide the whole thing into the path between the beds. I could then grab handfuls, keeping them low and out of the wind as much as I could, to spread out.
I then had to rush to give the mulch a soak with the hose, more to weigh the mulch down than anything else! As you can see, the wind was already starting to blow the straw away!
The last step was to cover the beds with plastic – which the wind certainly made challenging! Thankfully, we’ve found a couple of rolls of plastic while cleaning up the house and basements, so we have plenty, and I could unroll it directly on the mulch, adding weights as I did.. The plastic is actually folded in half on the roll, and I didn’t bother to unfold it, so this is a double layer of plastic on the beds.
As you can see, those board across the beds came in handy for the weights, too!
The plastic isn’t something I’ve seen suggested, in general, but we are in zone three, and most of the places I’ve looked up are in at least a zone 6. While October is the month for planting hard neck garlic for them, we probably should have planted these at the end of September – and would have, if they had not been back ordered.
The issue is overnight temperatures. We’re consistently hovering just below freezing. In the long range forecasts, our highs for the day will be just barely above freezing.
There are a few things going for these beds that should help with our planting this late in our zone. Burying the organic matter at the bottom of the beds means there should be some warmth generated as they break down, just as it would have if it were in a compost pile. The mulch will also help regulate the temperatures and, finally, the plastic should help keep things a bit on the warm side. I don’t want it warm enough for the garlic to start sprouting, but they do need to start their growth below ground before winter temperatures set in.
I might remove the plastic later on. Snow also acts as an insulator, plus these beds should not need any watering throughout the growing season. Between normal precipitation and the mulch, they should have enough moisture. Letting the snow cover the beds would give them that first burst of moisture in the spring, and the beds being slightly raised means they should thaw out faster than the ground surrounding them. However, the plastic will also keep the moisture they already have from drying out before the snow falls, and will help the soil warm up even faster in the spring, giving the garlic a chance to start growing a bit earlier. I would then remove the plastic once I saw that greens were making their way through the mulch.
My mother grew garlic in the old kitchen garden, but she never used mulch or plastic or any of the other techniques I am using that irritates her so much. :-D So I can’t go by how she did things, in past years.
So if there are any experienced garlic growers here, I would love to hear how you have done it! And would you leave the plastic, or take it off before the snow falls?
I’m really looking forward to seeing how these do. When it comes time to harvest them next year, we will be looking to save the largest bulbs for planting. Hopefully, we’ll have enough large ones to have more to plant than what we started with.
Lats this morning I headed over to my mother’s place with a turkey dinner to have lunch with her.
On the way out, I spotted three sets of ears in the window of the cat shelter.
Tiny sets of years belonging to the little kittens! I didn’t dare go closer for a picture, though, because I didn’t want to startle them away. There may have been more cats inside with them that I couldn’t see, too. I’m so glad to see them in the shelter, rather than hiding under it!
My mother and I had a very nice lunch and visit (how visits turn out is always touch and go with my mother! LOL). I brought a mask exemption card to tape to her door, and another she can carry with her. Hopefully, that will help reduce the harassment from the caretakers. Unfortunately, I think more has happened than she is telling us, because she kept insisting she “doesn’t want a war” and even started asking me not to call the housing department responsible for her building to talk about the caretaker’s abusive behaviour. She wore a mask – under her nose! – to meet me at the side door that’s very close to her own apartment door, and even in that short distance, by the time she was back in her apartment, she was struggling to breathe. She had also mentioned to me on the phone, waking up and struggling to breathe again. So I brought a foam wedge we got for my husband that he ended up not being able to use. Depending on how it’s positioned, it can be used under the knees, to lean against while sitting up in bed, or to sleep in an inclined position. The doctor had recommended trying to sleep more upright to see if that helped. When she saw it, however, she flat out refused to even try it and told me to take it home. Eventually, she said it was because it looked ugly! Which I highly doubt is the real reason. Frustrating!
Still, it was a good visit and my mother was very happy I was able to come over. I think the pandemic social restrictions are really getting to her. There used to be many events and gatherings, either in her own building, or in nearby venues, that she attended. Now, there are none. It seems the only real “social” interactions she’s getting these days are with the nasty caretaking couple. The restrictions seem to be bringing out the worst in people. I think she is getting very lonely, and some serious cabin fever!
Once at home, I took advantage of the warmer weather. With the garlic ready to be picked up when the post office opens tomorrow, I was thinking of how I wanted to mulch the beds. The straw is not breaking down as I had expected, and I decided to try an experiment.
Using the new push mower to chop it into smaller pieces!
The bag filled up very quickly, but it wasn’t until I had already started that I realized I’d forgotten to check the height of the mower. It was at 7; the highest setting! So things weren’t quite as chopped up as I wanted.
I lowered it to 3 and that chopped things up much better.
It took only 2 bags to fill the wagon, it’s so fluffy. LOL I laid out a tarp near the beds the garlic will be planted it, to make it easier to work with when it’s needed – plus I can fold half the tarp over the pile to keep the wind from blowing it away.
Unfortunately, I had an unexpected problem.
The new lawn mower stopped starting.
Right from the beginning, it was harder to start, but every time I had to turn it off to empty that bag, it kept getting harder to restart it until, finally, I just couldn’t start it at all. It had been so easy to start, before! In the spring, when we had so much rain, I was using it a lot and had no problems. Then the rain stopped, and the grass never really got long enough to make it worth cutting again. So it’s been sitting in the garage for the last couple of months. That on its own should not cause the problem. I couldn’t find any reason for it. It just won’t start. After getting only 2 1/2 wagon loads done, I finally gave up.
I will just have to take it in to the small engine shop in town to get it looked at, later in the year.
So the experiment worked, as far as chopping up the straw to make a finer mulch. It was just the lawn mower that failed!
After giving up on that task, I took the time to take the sun room replacement door off in preparation for painting the frame. I plan to get at that as soon as possible tomorrow morning, then go to the mail to pick up our bulbs. I will get the garlic in, while the girls will be doing the digging to get their flowers in.
While working at the door, I spotted this.
That is two little kittens in there! One of the orange tabbies, and Creamsicle Jr. As I walked around after taking the picture, Potato Beetle came out of the entry. I hadn’t seen him at all in there!
So I decided not to go inside after taking the door off, and stayed to see if I could get the kittens to play.
I had a target in mind.
This little lady. In the interest of trying to reduce future litters, we are hoping to get her friendly enough to bring her inside.
Yeah. I know. We have too many cats inside already!
Nostrildamus, meanwhile, couldn’t get enough attention! It was only a couple of weeks ago that we were lucky if we could pet him at all. Now, he’s all over us, asking for pets! He still doesn’t like to be picked up, but he does like chewing on fingers!
The two napping in the shelter eventually came out to see what was going on, and joined in on the play. I was able to pet the little orange one – the smallest of the 4 younger kittens – and even managed to pet Creamsicle Jr. a bit. The calico, however, would not let me touch her! However, my daughter came out to join me for a while, and she tried to play with them. Not only did she get the calico close enough to pet, she was even able to pick her up! Only briefly, and she didn’t like it, but she didn’t run away after jumping down, either.
Aside from Nostrildamus, we seem to be having a better time of socializing Butterscotch’s second litter than the older kittens. Though it didn’t help that Butterscotch was around and growling all the other cats away, including her own babies!
Still, we have made some socialization progress!
The other little orange kitten came by later. That one, the gender is still in doubt, but from what little we’ve been able to see, I suspect it is female.
I thought it was supposed to be rare for orange tabbies to be female, but here, they seem to be the majority! Of the older kittens, Nostrildamus is the only whose gender we are sure of. His one confirmed sister is now inside, but with the luck we’ve been having, his other sibling and Rosencrantz’s baby are also female! And we can’t get anywhere near any of them. :-(
Ah, well. We will just have to do what we can. Mostly, I’m just really, really glad the little kittens are going inside the shelter.
I have been using the food and water bowls outside to slowly get the little kittens used to coming to the cat house, where they will hopefully get curious enough to go inside and discover how nice and dry and warm it is in there.
There had been quite a crowd at the food bowls earlier, but they ran off as I walked around. There had been a couple of Butterscotch’s kittens there, though the others were hanging around near the door to the house, where one of the containers had been for the past week or so.
Nostrildamus is comfortable enough with me to not run off. Normally, Little Braveheart would be there, too, but…
I’ll get to that in a bit.
Yesterday, I was going to take a break from digging garden beds. Partly because I still haven’t decided if I want to make a third one, and partly because it feels like I’ve pulled all the muscles in the backs of my legs. Nothing major, but I figured a couple of days rest would be a good idea.
Which was good timing, because I got a call from my mother, asking if I could drive her for groceries. It was a bit chilly to walk.
So I headed out in the afternoon and did that. I’d forgotten that her municipality is under a mask mandate now. Even in the lobby of where my mother lives, they are supposed to wear masks. Which is so bizarre and arbitrary. Especially considering how low the numbers are right now. But, the goal posts have been moved again, and masks are now the thing.
The problem is, my mother shouldn’t be wearing a mask. She has long been complaining about breathing problems, and we haven’t been able to track down why. I tried to talk to her about it, when she asked if I had one and I told her I can’t wear masks, but it was not a conversation she could handle. She put it on before we left, leaving it under her nose, but as we were driving, I could really hear her struggling to breath. Meanwhile, no one batted an eye at my not wearing one. *sigh*
Unfortunately, my mother was in “fine form” this time. While chatting before we left, I tried showing her some pictures of the garlic beds I was working on, and she became incredibly angry. I shouldn’t be doing any of this, because it should be plowed or tilled. She saw the straw layer and, even as I tried to say I’d added compost first and what I was doing, she kept cutting me off and asking why there was straw under there. Then she got mad about the wood walkways, and said I need to take those out and plant things there, because it was a waste of space. Because apparently, there shouldn’t be room to walk in a garden. ??
That was just the start of things. After shopping, she wanted to go to a restaurant for a quick bite, and that got cut off short when my not living the way she wanted turned into a racist rant (my husband is Metis).
It was not a good time.
When I got home, the girls had the van ready and filled with stuff for the dump, so I basically switched vehicles and did that. When I was finally able to come inside to stay, I noticed the door to the new part basement was closed. Since all the cat food and most of the litter boxes are down there, I commented on it. I was informed that my younger daughter was down there.
With Little Braveheart.
While they were loading the van, she was able to pet and pick up Braveheart and Nostrildamus. She was also able to confirm that Nostrildamus is male, and Braveheart is female.
In the interest of reducing the number of future litters, Braveheart was brought inside.
We now have 15 cats in the house.
Braveheart is semi-feral – and still more feral than semi – so she’s been spending most of the time hiding somewhere. While in the basement, my other daughter would slowly introduce other cats downstairs. Braveheart had been meowing plaintively when Two Face first came down. They instantly got along, and meows became purrs as they ate together. Over the next while, she met the other cats and seemed to get along much better with the dudes than the dudettes! Fenrir does not like her, but she isn’t particularly friendly with any of the cats, so that’s not unusual. Beep Beep batted at her, but Beep Beep is in heat and has been randomly batting at all of the cats.
I’ve been putting the word out on local Facebook groups to try and adopt cats out, but have had zero responses. No one wants cats right now, apparently. Our next step is to print out posters and drive around to different towns in the area and put them up.
Today I hope to finally get my day of rest. I did start soaking down the garlic beds last night; I plan to do that again today, and will continue wetting them down over the next while until the garlic comes in. I want them to be soaked through the compost layer before planting. I’m leaning towards not doing a third bed and, if the two beds we have now are not enough, we can plant garlic in the retaining wall blocks in the old kitchen garden. Of course, that assumes our back order comes in in time!
I have also been keeping an eye on the various materials I’ve been finding lying about, and I think I have what I need to make a quick little shelter for the outside food and water bowls. I want to keep those by the cat house, but don’t want them to be buried in snow. We’ll have the heated water bowl plugged into the second outlet in the cat house. The cord should be just long enough to reach outside the entry, so I’ll want to set something up there to keep it from getting snowed under, too. Last year, it was set up inside the sun room, so that wasn’t an issue. I will be working on plans for that, today, and hopefully will start building something tomorrow, when it’s expected to be warmer, and not raining.
We’ve been very fortunate this fall, so far. Last year, we already had a snowfall by this time, and a blizzard on Thanksgiving weekend. The long range forecasts have us warmer, with rain every now and then. I’ve heard predictions for both another bitterly long and cold winter, and for a long, mild fall followed by a milder winter. So far, the longer, mild fall seems to be the one that’s coming true.
When I cleared out the old wood pile from the yard last year, the soil I found below was a very pleasant surprise. Still, there was a whole lot of clean up that needed to be done this spring, before we could plant anything. We were still finding some pretty strange things in there! The biggest challenge was all the tree roots crisscrossing the area.
Now that we’ve had our first vegetables growing in there, it was interesting to see what was coming up along with them! After being buried by a wood pile for decades, there were still seeds and root systems that managed to survive and sprout. There was plantain (the weed, not the banana!), which is not surprising; that stuff can grow anywhere and is very hardy. Clover was more of a surprise, but there was also a lot of some long, delicate green plant that I didn’t recognize at all. I thought it might be a flower of some kind, but it never had any. There were flowers that came up, too, and since they came up where the khol rabi failed, to, I let them bed until today, when they were basically done blooming, anyhow.
All this meant that in digging over the beds, I was basically stopping with every fork full to break up the soil with my hands, so I could pull out as many weeds with their roots as I could.
I also found tree roots I’d missed in the spring!
While fighting with the roots, my feet sinking into the soft, soft soil, I kept thinking about where and how we would plant the garlic. The spaces to walk on, in between the beds of carrots and beets we’d planted, was packed down harder than the rest, of course, and it almost seemed like wasted soil!
Also, I discovered that, like the girls had discovered when planting deep bulbs, it seems even here, there is only about 8 inches of topsoil before I started hitting a lot of rocks.
We’ve got three kinds of garlic coming, which meant three beds. How and were did I want to arrange them?
Then I remembered I still had a 4’x8′ frame from the goat catcher we’d built.
Those are coming in very handy!
I dragged it over, and the area I’d worked on turned out to be almost exactly the size of the frame!
That’s when I started to go a bit crazy.
I started to dig out the soil inside the frame.
Hitting more roots, of course.
By this time, plan had started to form in my mind.
All the stuff I’d added to the compost a little while before?
It ended up in the space I’d shoveled out, along with some damp straw that I raked up from around the old dog houses, where they had been used as insulation around them.
When it came time to return the soil to the space, I kinda went overboard again…
I kept digging.
The vague plan in my mind took into account walking paths, and I didn’t want to be sinking in the soil. The pieces of wood I’d used to walk on weren’t very stabled, but what if…
What if they were laid down on an area that was dug down and leveled to just above the gravel?
So after I used a hoe and rake to even out the mound of soil, I used them to even out the pathway and started laying down boards.
This is how far I got before stopping for supper.
This is where I pause to say how much I appreciate the girls. While I’m outside doing stuff like this – which I consider fun – they’re inside taking care of the cooking and housework – which I loathe.
Then I went back to finish the job, and this is how it looked.
The wood I was using was salvaged from the junk pile in the spring, and some of if was slightly wider. I used the wider ones to make “walls” on either side of the path, then laid down three layers of boards in the middle. This made them a lot more stable to walk on, and also made the path the same thickness as the height of the “walls”. I had to cut a few to size to fill in gaps at the ends, which worked out all right.
This is old wood, some of which was already starting to rot. If I’d had the option, I would have put down gravel or something. These will do the job for now, and perhaps some day we’ll replaced them with flagstones or something.
When the girls came out to see how it looked, I snagged one of them to help me move the frame to the other side of the path.
This is where the second bed will be.
With 3 varieties of garlic, it looks like I’ll have to make three of these. It looks like there is just barely enough space to do that, before reaching the metal ring around the compost, though I could put the third one at a right angle to the others, instead.
I don’t know if I’ll be up to doing three of them! I don’t know how many cloves we’ll get out of a pound of seed garlic, each. If I do only two, I could split one variety between the two beds.
We shall see, after the second one is done.
I made a whole lot more work for myself by doing this, but… I think I like it better!
Before heading outside to do my morning rounds, I spotted 3 kittens out the window…
… playing on the roof of their cat house!
Of course, as soon as I went outside, they ran off, but mystery kitten stayed to spy on me.
It was so funny to see her hide behind the frame, pop her head up, hide, peek, hide, peek… watching me as I brought out some kibble for the outside cats.
In checking out the squash bed, I just had to go looking for our one birdhouse gourd that was developing.
The one, sad, squishy little gourd!
The frosts have completely decimated all the squashes, so it’s time to prep the beds for the winter. I don’t know that we’ll plant squash in the same places next year, but we will definitely plant them again. With what we learned this year, I hope to be able to do more to protect them for late and early frosts.
The squash beds will not be cleaned up today, though. After lunch, we will be planting flower bulbs in the maple grove, in areas that are the hardest to mow around.
The Re-Farmer 