I can’t say it was a good start to the day. I was awakened about about 3am, and the cats kept me from falling back asleep again. I finally got up around 7 to feed the outside cats, have some breakfast, then go back to bed for a few hours of real, honest to goodness, restful sleep.
I did the rest of my rounds quite late, and did get a few things done. As always, I checked on the garden beds. I remembered to bring along the Seychelle green pole bean seeds, to replant them because the Crespo squash. Since so few Carminate purple pole beans germinated, I planted some Seychelle in the gaps. We’ll see if there will be enough growing season left for pole beans! Assuming they germinate at all.
The Royal Burgundy beans that I replanted have quite a few sprouting right now – but only in one row. I’d planted two rows, on either side of the original single row, and there’s just a couple of those that survived. Now, there’s at least half a dozen sprouts coming up, but they area all in the row closer to the outside of the bed. The row closer to the middle has nothing. Very strange!
While going in and out of the sun room for my garden tools and whatnot, I got to see many babies.
The puffy one that’s asleep while through the cube wall is one of Adam’s tinies, and just too cute for words. It won’t let me near it. When it sees me, it immediately runs and hides. This tiny little fluff ball bouncing into the sun room. I want to scoop it up, so badly! 😄
Before heading inside, I gathered a bunch of rhubarb. This has been the best year for rhubarb we’ve had since moving here. The chives are looking amazing, too. We have quite a bit of cream cheese right now, and my daughters are talking about making a chives infused cream cheese spread. That sounds really good!
I’m trying to think of some way to put a barrier around the eggplant and hot pepper bed again. The plastic was completely destroyed by the wind, but I’m thinking what they might actually need is a bit more shade! They don’t seem to be growing much at all, and I think they’re getting baked. Which is odd, considering these are heat loving plants, and they’ve got plenty of heat. Both had done quite well int he wattle weave bed last year, and that bed is heavily shaded by one of the ornamental apple trees – both of which need more pruning, to open them up and let more air and light through. Honestly, I’d take them out completely, if they weren’t a food source for birds in the winter.
Anyhow, that’s pretty much the extent of my “work” today, and that was more fun than work. Sunday is supposed to be my day of rest, but it hasn’t worked out that way lately. We had to do as much as we could outside when there was a break in the rain, no matter what day that fell on. Now that those beds are shifted, and all the transplanting and direct sowing is done, I can get back to taking a regular day of rest. I seem to be really needing it, too. I had been planning to work on editing a video today, but for all that I did get solid sleep this morning, it’s been all I could do not to crawl back into bed all day! Even now, I can feel myself falling asleep at the keyboard. I don’t want to mess up my sleep cycle too much, though, and end up awake all night.
Anyhow.
The video editing will probably wait. It requires more mental focus than I can manage right now.
We’re supposed to get rain starting at about noon tomorrow, and continuing on through to 6am the day after. That would be as good a time as any to work on the video editing.
I don’t know why Instagram now cuts the sides off my photos, even though I select the wide image function.
I got about half way through the bed, sifting the soil, when I stopped for a break that ended up taking longer than I intended. Which is okay. It gave the soil I needed to move time to dry out a bit. Sifting damp soil is a lot harder and heavier. I’m amazed my home made soil sifter is still surviving the abuse!
By the time I was done fighting with my garden tour video and getting it uploaded, it was quite a bit later before I could get back at it. Thankfully, today has been cooler, with a pleasant breeze. I was greatly appreciating that!
The last bit of soil that needed to be worked on was the worst. This was the section full of creeping Charlie, and I was digging up and tossing large clumps of it. In the end, by the time I finished sifting the last of the soil from the old bed location, there wasn’t enough left to finish the new bed location. I ended up “stealing” soil from the last bed that will be worked on.
By then, it started to rain, but it was just a gentle shower, so I kept at it. Once the bed was done, I brought over the melons. I’d already gone through them and sorted them by type. I kept the Zucca melons aside, since they get huge. I’m thinking of using the kiddie pool as a raised bed, just for them, and setting it somewhere where they can spread.
There were a total of 16 melons to transplant, and I decided to dedicate the entire bed to them. I don’t know that we’ll be able to trellis them, since they will need stronger trellises than what we’re setting up for the beans and peas. If we end up not being able to add trellises, they should have room to spread on the ground and into the paths, if need be.
So this bed now has two rows of eight melons in it. As with the other squash and melons, I planted them slightly below grade and made hills of soil around them, so water would flow towards the plants rather than run down the sides of the bed and take the soil with it. The rain had pretty much stopped by the time that was done, so they got a good watering, too.
The bed still needs a mulch added to it, but it’s getting late, so that will be done tomorrow, when I will also started working on the next bed. That one needs to be shifted a lot, too, but it’s not as weedy and isn’t infested with creeping Charlie like this one was, so it should go somewhat faster. The hard part will be breaking the sod in the new location – and I don’t have anymore carboard that can be put over it, before shifting the soil on top.
This bed is where the last of the San Marzano tomatoes will finally be planted. There aren’t a lot of those left to transplant, so there will be room for other things.
Hmm… I should probably set up the kiddie pool and fill it with soil for the Zucca melons, first. They need to be transplanted more urgently than the tomatoes. That means sifting several loads of soil from the pile in the outer yard.
Once the transplants are in, I hope to be able to do some direct sowing, still. It’s getting really late for that. Our first frost date is September 10, so we’ve basically got July and August for things to grow, since if I plant things within the next 7-10 days, they will take the rest of June just to germinate.
What we don’t have a lot of is stuff that can be harvested throughout the summer. I’ve got three types of beans planted, and the very first Seychelle bean was sprouting this morning. The sugar snap peas are going to be awhile before there’s anything to harvest from them. The spinach is doing so poorly, I’m thinking of taking them out completely, and planting some chard or something, instead. I think it’s getting too late to plant more carrots, but I’ll check the information on my packages to be sure.
What I will likely do is direct sow more summer squash, since right now we just have some in pots. They haven’t germinated yet. Since summer squash gets harvested while still quite small, planting them in late June should be okay. As long as I can keep the slugs away! I haven’t actually seen slugs yet, so hopefully, we won’t have a bag year of them, like we did last year.
We shall see how things work out! Hopefully, we’ll even get weather that will allow us to harvest more dead spruces and build the frames around these beds, and maybe even continue the trellis beds, by fall.
Much work to be done.
It’s a good thing I love this kind of work! Even if I do have to pain killer up for it.
Speaking of which… time to do that, before this broken old body starts to seize up! 😄😄
Okay, I am totally beat! It’s so hot and muggy out there, I had sweat dripping onto the lenses of my glasses while I worked. We’re at 21C/70F, with the humidex putting us at 26C/79F, and we haven’t even reached our high of the day, yet!
But, I got the third raised bed in the east yard planted, and I’m done!
I also took a chance on an experiment that has the potential to be a complete disaster.
Before I could even start, though, I had to deal with the water. There’s so much of it flooding the east yard, the the boards forming the path next to the bed I needed to work on, were floating. The year we put those in was a drought year, and we had no idea it would collect so much water! The path on the other side of the centre bed is gravel, though there isn’t enough of it. We were planning to eventually get more gravel from the pit, but I have no idea when we’ll be able to head out there to get a load with the truck. We do, however, have plenty of wood chips.
There’s too much water to use the weed trimmer around the beds, so I pulled them by hand. Then I filled our wheelbarrow as much as I could without spillages, three times. That path needed a really thick layer to weigh down those boards and get above the water. With the last load, I could add some to one end, and a bit around the other side. Eventually, more will be added, but for today, I just needed to be able to access the bed without trying to walk on slippery, floating boards!
Then I began the first part of our experiment. I needed to secure the box frame so that it wouldn’t blow away. I’ll explain why that can be good, or really bad, later! For that, I drove some posts salvaged from the Walmart market tent we had, until a piece of tree fell on it, into the soil inside each corner. Then I secured them to the box frame with twine. The box frame is tall enough that I can still tend the bed without needing to move it.
I also used the stirrup hoe and weeded the bed a bit, then started on the eggplant and hot peppers. west end of the bed, I planted the smaller Little Finger eggplants; of the 7 in the tray, two were too small and wizened to transplant. At the opposite end, I planted the Classic eggplant; there were only 5 of those. The last two in the tray died off a while ago. The Cheyenne peppers, however, had all 7 in the tray, though there was quite a difference in size from one end of the row to the other! I planted the peppers in between the eggplant, and the shorter ones on the south side of the bed.
Then, because I had material from the boxes I picked up at the grocery store, yesterday, I mulched the bed with paper. Mostly paper. Each of the boxes had a paper liner, and those are almost enough to cover the entire bed, with some overlap. I cut openings in the paper to go around the transplants. At the very end, after I ran out of paper, I broke down one of the boxes. Those had air circulation holes in them, but I was able to use the flaps to cover those. I ended up using one entire box, plus a couple of extra flaps cut from another one.
Then I got my daughter to come out to help me with the rest of it.
I did remember to bring out some of the supports I have for the peppers and put them in before the next steps. Though the soil was quite wet and didn’t need a watering, we did water the paper and cardboard, so it would settle against the soil more and not blow away while we were working on the box frame.
We took the plastic sheets off the arched covers, then secured them around the top of the box frame. We just used staples for that. The two sheets weren’t quite long enough to go all the way around, so there is a bit of a gap at one corner. We then took one of the arched frames and put it on top of the box frame, and the other over the bed with the German Butterball potatoes (which are coming up now!), mostly for storage. They were just sitting in the wet grass, so this protects them from moisture damage. One had been stored on the box frame, but with the plastic over it, the wind blow it off. That won’t happen again, now that it’s just wire mesh. Once the plastic was tacked into place along the top, the bottoms were weighed down with bricks and boards that we have around those beds, just for that sort of thing. This way, I can still access the bed by lifting the plastic from the bottom.
Adding the plastic around the bed is an idea I got from Maritime Gardening.
Last year we had one surviving Classic Eggplant that did surprisingly well, in the shelter of the wattle weave bed. The Little Finger eggplant were among the things that failed to thrive in the chimney block planters at the chain link fence, that we now know is because of the elm roots getting up into them.
This bed is much more exposed, so I figured they would need extra protection from both the wind, and temperature variations, but of the air and the soil. These plastic walls should help with both. The top is open to still allow rain in.
If we get high winds, though, the plastic around the box frame could potentially become a sail. Hopefully, the frame is secured well enough to the stakes, but it’s entirely possible the wind could pull the stakes out of the ground and the whole thing could go flying.
It’s a risk, but I think it’s worth a try, at least.
So this has been a productive day in the garden. Two types of tomatoes (out of four) are transplanted. Shallots and red onions were interplanted with one type of tomatoes – I don’t plan to have beds of just onions and shallots, but will interplant them as other things go in. Two types of eggplant and the hot peppers are now also planted.
We have one 18′ bed, the high raised bed, plus some space in the wattle weave bed, that’s ready for planting. We can potentially plant in the two shifted beds before they get their log frames. We just have to plant in the middle. Still, this is not going to be enough for all our transplants, never mind our direct sowing. There are three more low raised beds that need to be shifted over to their permanent positions, then they too can be planted in before they get their log frames. Then more beds need to be built, almost from scratch, for the trellis tunnels.
At this point, I honestly don’t know how much of a garden we’ll be able to get in this year. It all depends on how much progress we can get on those beds, in time!
Well, there’s only so much we can do, and there’s no sense fretting about things if we can’t get them done in time for planting this year. Things will continue to expand, year after year, so it will get better.
My eye appointment tomorrow is in the afternoon, and we don’t need to leave until 1pm. I was thinking I’d have time to get more done early, but it’s supposed to start raining in the morning, and keep raining off and on, all day. We are supposed to get almost 2 weeks with no rain after that, though, and even get some cooler temperatures, so that should be time to get things done in the garden. If we can get everything done by the middle of June, that should be enough time for our growing season.
One of the things I wanted to get back to today, was to work on the garden beds again. It’s getting a bit drier out there, though mowing the lawn is still out of the question, but I want to get at least something done.
There were plenty of kitties coming out for breakfast, though I counted “only” twenty. Shop Towel came around, and his face is looking so beat up!! I did manage to let me get a big wood tick off the side of his head, and a few more around a wound on his side that looks like some fur was pulled out in a fight. No major injuries. His presence does make a few of the other cats very nervous, though.
I did get to visit Broccoli’s babies, straighten out their bedding, and leave food for her. They are getting much more active, which is a bit of a concern. There is a lot of stuff in there they can get into, and they’re getting mobile enough to climb out of their bedding. I’d like to set up some sort of box or bin for them to nest in, but I’m afraid if I do that, she’ll move them away completely.
The cherry tree near the house is in peak bloom now. It looks so pretty, nestled in between the lilacs and their purple flower buds.
Once the morning rounds were done, I came inside for breakfast, and was planning to head outside. Part of the problem is, I’m just not feeling well. I wasn’t able to get to sleep until past 3am – I can only partially blame cats for that! Butterscotch has finally stopped spending her days hiding under the chair, and is back to sleeping on the bed, though any time she sees Susan or Fenrir, she starts snarling. Mostly, though, she has decided that I am her bed! Which is fine, until she starts wriggling and squirming.
Meanwhile, the high humidity we’re having lately has been brutal on my osteo-arthritis. Usually, that’s not been an issue since we moved back to the prairies. When we were living on the West Coats, I could barely walk. Now, it’s all acting up again. The worst is an old elbow injury. Back in… 2010? 2011? I developed the equivalent of tennis elbow. I actually quit my job as a banquet server at the time, because I was afraid I might drop a plate of food or a pot of hot coffee on someone. It got so bad, I couldn’t even turn a door knob, and had to stop crocheting for a year. With physiotherapy, it did improve, but it’s never healed completely, and flares up every now and then, and has developed into OA. It’s my left elbow, and I’m left handed in a lot of things – like turning door knobs! It’s been flaring up a lot since we’ve had the rains, making some of the simplest actions, painful and difficult. At least it doesn’t really stop me from doing big things; it’s the small motions that are affected the most, but I should still be able to handle a garden fork.
But then I started getting messages and had to make phone calls, and then there were other unexpected tasks to get done. To top it off, my younger daughter is feeling even worse than I am right now. For other reasons, but she’s pretty much out of commission for most things.
We are quite the household of gimps!
I’m really fighting the urge to take more painkillers and take a nap right now.
Well. I can at least take the painkillers!
The frustrating thing is, if we don’t get things done today, it won’t get done tomorrow; tomorrow is our first stock up shopping trip in the city. The day after, we’re supposed to get more rain. Then we’re back in the city again, to meet up with a friend that’s back in Canada. Then another trip to the city to do the second stock up shopping trip… on the weekend? After the weekend? Somewhere in there, we’ll be getting contacted about the flat tire I dropped off at the garage, and if all goes well, we’ll be getting that put back on, and the spare stored again. By the time all that is done, we’ll probably be past our last frost date and need to start planting things!
So those beds have got to get done!
At least we do have some spaces ready to plant in.
So the rain started early this morning, and has been pretty constant, so far. The rainfall warnings include possible flooding in places, including our region. Our region is huge, though, and contains quite a few rural municipalities. Where we are is unlikely to have much, if any, where we are. The newly graded roads, however, are probably going to be a real mess!
With the rain, I did short rounds this morning and skipped switching out the trail cams, since I won’t want water getting into the cameras. Short rounds was good, though, because…
… a lovely surprise!!!!
My husband actually came out with me!!!! He caned it rather than drag his walker into the rain, but he did it! I could see he was really struggling near the end, but he did it. I honestly can’t remember the last time he went outside and walked around. It’s probably been at least a year.
As we went around, I checked the beds and we had a lovely surprise in the bed of Purple Caribe potatoes.
The first plants have emerged! Just two, so far that we can see, but this rain is going to be so good for them.
When I was mowing yesterday, I’d put one of the raised bed covers over the German Butterball potatoes, then forgot to take it off, so my husband helped me lift it off to the side, so they could get some rain, too. I had also forgotten to put the extensions on the eavestrough downspouts back after mowing. I’ll have to check the new basement later, and see if that caused any problems. The one corner was already damp and has a fan on it. That was the corner a rain barrel had been left to overflow during a wet summer, and is why we now have weeping tile problems. This basement used to always stay dry, even when the old basement was wet, but not anymore. My brother had found that corner so wet, for so long, there was mold. He cleaned it up with bleach, and when we clear the basement, we also bleached that entire corner, but it still gets wet at times.
So forgetting the extension on the downspout above that corner is not a good thing!
When feeding the outside cats, I didn’t see Broccoli, but we still went around to the garden shed. If I think she might be in there with her babies, I knock on the door, first. Opening the door still startles her, but she doesn’t always run out completely. She gets in and out through the hole in the back wall, and there’s an old chair in that corner. Sometimes, I can just see her butt under the chair, as she waits while I put food out for her. Today, she did actually leave the shed, so I took advantage of that to pick up her kittens and straighten out the self warming mat for them. My husband got to see them, too. If it hadn’t been raining, I would have passed them to him to hold while I straightened out the bedding. More human interaction would be a good thing, but not if they get too chilled in the process!
Speaking of chilled, as I write this, we are at 5C/41F – with a wind chill of -4C/25F! Our expected high for today is supposed to be 8C/46F According to the weather radar, we are under the light rainfall area, with the moderate rainfall passing by to the west of us, with a few places in the south and west of us, getting occasional heavy rainfall. In total, we’re expected to get 50-60mm of rain, which is roughly 2 – 2.5 inches. The rain, with another high of 8C/46F, is expected to continue until about noon tomorrow. Starting Sunday, things are supposed to warm up and we’ll have dry weather for at least a couple of weeks. Hopefully, that will be enough time for us to get those beds reworked and ready for planting! We should probably lay plastic down to help warm the soil up faster, too. Looking at the long range forecast, there are still going to be cooler nights in the second week of June. Not cool enough for frost, but cool enough that I’d want to find ways to protect our more heat loving transplants.
Which won’t even be in the ground for more than a week.
Pretty much everything we do, revolves around the weather.
If the really long range forecasts can be trusted (they can’t), we’ll have only one day of rain in June, and none in July. June is supposed to have a few highs reaching or surpassing 30C/86F, but right now, July is supposed to have highs of 25C/77F, every day. Literally, every day except the first four, which are supposed to have highs of 24C/75F. So you know that’s going to change a lot by the time we get there!
Well, that should be good for all the squash and melons we’re planting this year! Plus the eggplant and peppers. As long as we can keep up with the watering. One of our best gardening years was a drought year with heat waves. I’m still amazed by how many melons we got that year. It was so hard to get them properly watered on the squash tunnel, and the plants were so spindly, and they they produced so well! This year, they will be closer to the house for easier watering, and have better soil conditions. I am hopeful that we will have a much better gardening year, this year, and actually harvest enough to do some canning and preserving of things other than tomatoes and onions!
Today, finally, we planted the German Butterball potatoes.
Orders of perishables like this get sent out in time for planting, which means we could have planted them weeks ago. The Purple Caribe had to wait until the bed they were intended for was redone. We hadn’t quite decided where to plant the German Butterballs, but today we decided to use one of the prepared raised beds in the West yard, where we also needed to tend to the bed with peas, carrots and spinach planted in it.
The first thing we did was weed the bed, again. My daughter went digging around with the garden fork first, pulling out the bigger stuff she found, while I followed along and dug deep with my hands and pulled out the smaller stuff. Once again, we were finding lots of tree roots from the nearby Chinese elm. We went over the bed twice, finding more roots, each time!
I did remember to use the pH meter to see if there was any change, before we topped up the bed. At this point, the bed was amended only with the sulfur granules. I was thrilled to see the needle was actually, ever so slightly, moved. It’s still pretty much at 8, but the needle is now just barely touching the green colour at the 8, instead of about as far as it could possibly go on the alkaline side.
We then added a wheelbarrow load of soil left over from amending the previous beds. This soil has more sulfur granules in it, plus peat. Once that was spread out, we worked it into the bed with our hands – and pulled out more roots. Then, while my daughter went to fill watering cans from the rain barrel, I used the stirrup hoe to stir and level the soil – and pull out more roots – before using my hands to create a broad trench down the middle.
There turned out to be exactly 32 potatoes, so we laid them out evenly in two rows. Yes, they are probably being planted too close together, but this is the space we have available, so it’ll have to do.
Once we had the potatoes set out where we wanted them, I went around with a garden trowel and dug a hole for each one, while my daughter followed along and watered the holes, then I followed along behind her, planting each potato into the watered holes. Once she was done, she went to get more water from the rain barrel, while I covered the potatoes and used the soil from the sides to create hills over them. They got a final watering in the trench between them, then we put a cover over the bed, so the cats won’t go in and use that nice soft soil as a litter box!
Before we’d gone outside, I set the sugar snap pea seeds I bought yesterday to soak. Unfortunately, I’d put them in the bowl last night, and it got knocked over by the cats. My older daughter and I found most of them, but from the 24 seeds I’d counted when I opened the packet, we were down to 21 – and only because I found one more this morning.
I’m not impressed with the inside cats right now! It’s been no end of them getting into things they shouldn’t, lately!
Once the potatoes were done, my daughter went to get the peas while I used a bamboo stake to make a row of holes for them. I planted the previous two rows of snap peas, so I knew where I could do that, and not be on top of the previous rows. There may, possibly, be a single pea from the first planting emerging, but I’m not sure, yet. Last night, I found that something had dug into the bed over where some peas had been planted, and there was no sign of any peas when I pushed the soil back. I think most, if not all, that first planting of peas died off for some reason.
Once that was done, I went to the garden shed to get the trellis netting. That’s when I spotted Broccoli’s babies! I got the netting out, as a tiny calico hissed silently at me, then called my daughter over to look. She had already finished planting the peas by then. We paused for a bit to move the babies to a carrier, then my daughter went on mama-baby watch while I continued. I gave the bed a watering, first, then set the netting up on the T posts. Then it was back to the shed, partly to see if Broccoli was looking for her babies, and partly to get some netting to put around the bed. I’d already grabbed a bundle of supports and set six of them up around the bed. Unfortunately, the bundle of netting I grabbed was not long enough to go all the way around. There’s about 2/3 of one side that’s not shielded by netting. The netting is there to keep things from eating the spinach that’s coming up, as well as to keep the cats out. We’ll have to go through our other bundles of netting to see if we have either something short enough to fill the gap, or long enough to go all the way around, and replace what I put up today.
Eventually, we will need to set up something outside the beds to secure the T posts. If the peas actually start to grow, their weight will pull the T posts inwards, so we’ll need something to keep that from happening. There’s no hurry on that, though, since we’ll only need it if the peas survive in the first place! I don’t assume anything, at this point.
So we did manage to accomplish the goals we had for before things got too hot – we’re now at 26C/79F. 28F/82F, if I go by the website instead of my phone app.
For all the warmer highs we’re getting, over the next week to ten days, our lows are expected to dip to 1 or 2C/34 or 36F, which means we could get frost. If the long range forecasts are at all accurate, we’ll start to bed overnight temperatures consistently 6C/43F or warmer, which is about the minimum we’d need for the soil to get warm enough for direct sowing anything that isn’t cold hardy, like the peas and spinach. Mind you, with plastic covered covers for the raised beds, we could plant things and the covers will protect them.
What we really need to get working on is harvesting logs to build the raised beds we need. It’s too windy to try and cut down dead spruces, but we can process the ones that are already down.
We’ll have to make sure we use plenty of bug spray before going into the spruce grove. Not for mosquitoes. Those aren’t out yet. For wood ticks! It’s been a really bad year for them, already. So far, I’ve only pulled them off myself before they’ve attached themselves, but I’ve been pulling lots of them off of Syndol. With his long fur, he can’t get them off his neck or near his ears on his own. The short haired cats that let me pet them have no ticks. Just Syndol. Which makes me wonder about the other long haired cats, that don’t let us handle them like Syndol does.
Also, while I was writing this, Broccoli has been seen around the kibble house and walking around the sunroom, to the back of the house, but she has not gone into the sunroom. With her babies sleeping peacefully and not meowing, she would have no way to know they are there!
Moving them was a big risk. I hope she finds them, soon!
According to the Window 11 weather icon on my new computer, it’s 15C/59F out there. According to the other weather app that came with my computer (why is there two of them?), it’s 17C/63F. According to the app on my phone, it was 19C/66F, but has already cooled down to 18C/65F. The thermometer on the wall of the sun room says it’s 20C/68F in there.
I don’t think any of the apps are right, because when I walk out the sun room door, it’s like walking into an oven. The sun room is cool, in comparison!
We have high winds today, which suggests that it would feel even hotter outside, without it!
My plan to get to bed early then start outside before things got too hot, did not succeed. The longer I lay in bed, the more awake I became. By the time I finally fell asleep, it was starting to get light out. *sigh*
My younger daughter and I were talking about this, and how the temperatures are expected to continue to be about the same for the next while. She had the same plans that I was trying to accomplish; to go to bed early, then get up and work outside while it was still cool.
She’s been as successful at it as I have been.
Still, that’s what we’re going to try doing. Maybe it’ll work out better if we encourage each other about it!
I did manage to get some gardening related stuff done, though.
The last two trays of tomatoes have been moved out of the living room and into the sun room. I ended up rearranging the transplants a bit. The Crespo squash are getting so big, they were shading the luffa and drum gourd sharing their bin, so those got moved to a tray and are now in the window, while the Crespo squash have a bin to themselves. I also moved the Black Cherry and Florme de Coeur tomatoes in individual pots out of the plastic tray they were in, and onto a metal one. The plastic tray was just too wobbly, while carrying them. For now, I’m using the plastic tray for the luffa and drums, but I’ll switch that out to metal trays later on. We’ll be starting to harden things off, soon, and I don’t want to risk dropping any because of a bendy tray!
I also moved a tray of winter squash to the sun room, leaving the onions and shallots in the mini greenhouse frame. I was going to set the Summer of Melons tray out of the aquarium greenhouse and to the window, but decided to take them straight to the living room, instead. I put them on the bottom shelf at the window, where they would get the best sunlight – with the overhang of the roof, the lower shelves get more sun than the upper shelves. I’m trusting the cats will leave them alone.
The makeshift table under the lights got rearranged a bit to use the space more effectively. There is a wall about a food wide between the east facing windows, casting a shadow across the table, so I’ve left a gap between the trays and bins, moving one bin of peppers and thyme to the shelf between the south facing windows, next to the mulberry and the Butterfly Flower.
Oh, we might have some oregano, after all! When they didn’t sprout, I returned the seed starting mix to the big bowl I use to pre-moisten the mix before filling pots and cells, mixing it all together. Now, some of the tomatoes look like they have oregano growing with them! They’re looking pretty leggy, but I’m leaving them be for now. They’re not big enough to be a problem for the tomatoes. If the survive, we’ll just transplant them at the same time we transplant the tomatoes.
Some of the other melons and watermelon we pregerminated have emerged from their soil, so I moved those ones off the heat mat and into the mini greenhouse frame with the onions and shallots. I checked the remaining seeds set to pre-germinate. Still nothing on the remaining two Zucca melon seeds, but one of the Pixies had its radical, and another was open, so I planted both. Those got added to the tray on the warming mat, along with the other pre-germinated melons that haven’t emerged yet. I ended up adding water to the trays under the cardboard and peat pots a couple of times. The pots were drying out, and I didn’t want them sucking the moisture out of the growing medium, and wow did they ever absorb the water from the trays fast! These are needing to be watered more often, because of the pots. The transplants in the plastic pots don’t have this problem.
Tomorrow morning, the plan is for my daughter and I to prep one of the empty raised beds in the West yard, next to the peas, carrots and spinach, with the peat and sulfur amended soil left from other beds, and finally get those German Butterball potatoes planted. We then want to set up netting of some kind around the other bed, to protect the spinach from hungry critters, as well as from the cats walking all over it, but in such a way that we can easily left the netting to tend to the bed. There are still no peas emerging, but it would be a good time to add trellis netting to the support posts set up for it. By now, I’m guessing they all failed, and I don’t know why. We do have shelling peas to plant, but I think I might buy another package of edible pod peas for that bed. It’s starting to get too hot to plant peas, though!
Hmm… I just looked at the time. The post office is open for the afternoon, and my husband’s medical grade latex tubing arrived early. They have a seed display. I’ll check and see if they have any edible pod peas! We might even plant them tomorrow morning, after planting the potatoes.
What we try to do next will depend on the weather. If it’s not still windy, we might even try to take down some dead trees!
I got to bed “early” (which, for me, is anything before midnight), got actual sleep, and was outside and working while it was still cool out!
I even made sure to have breakfast before I headed outside, so that I could get right to work after finishing my rounds, though I did upload and check the trail cam files, first. Now that the weather is nice, I’m seeing our vandal going by fairly regularly, rubbernecking towards our place as he drives by on his quad. *sigh*
Anyhow.
My goal for the morning was to get the chimney block planters along the chain link fence ready to plant into, then maybe move on to the ones that form the retaining wall in the old kitchen garden. I thought I might have time to do both, before things got too hot for that sort of work.
Ha!
I should know better by now.
I took progress pictures and posted them on Instagram, since I don’t have the storage space to upload so many images onto Word Press anymore. I didn’t think to set up the tripod and take a time lapse video, as I do for other projects, because I thought this would be done quickly. I did consider taking the stills and making a brief video, with narration, but decided against it.
Let me know, though, which you would prefer. I know not everyone can see the images when I embed them from Instagram, without having to click on the embed area and go to Instagram to view them. Would you prefer a short video, even if it’s just a bunch of stills, and making a vlog post out of it? YouTube doesn’t have the storage limitations that WP does.
I remembered to take a “before” shot, too. There’s a bit of crab grass showing through the grass clipping mulch, but things didn’t look too bad. I figured, maybe an hour to get it done, give or take.
Then I removed the grass clipping mulch and tried weeding the first block.
At first I thought the soil was strangely compacted, but even using some tools to loosen the soil, it was still a struggle. There were quite a lot of roots in there… Way too many roots. I set the sifter up over the wheel barrow and started trying to lift handfuls of soil out, but it just wasn’t working. Finally, I just grabbed the entire block and tipped it off the soil.
Leaving behind a packed cube.
A cube filled with tree roots.
Yup. Just like with the grow bags near the row of trees my mother allowed to grow after she transplanted her row of raspberries, roots from the nearby Chinese elm had made their way into the growing space from below.
After that first one, I just pulled the next block over, without even trying to dig into the soil, first. The soil cube stayed behind, held in place by all the roots below. Others came loose with the block, as the soil was so filled with roots, it stayed packed into the block, even as the roots were being torn from the ground below, and I had to force the soil cube out. Then there was breaking up the blocks on the sifter, pulling out handfuls of roots. There were some crab grass rhizomes, but even they seemed to be choked out by the tree roots!
Now we know why all the vining gourds that we planted there last year, failed so miserably. They were completely choked out by invading tree roots.
While I was working my way down the row of blocks, there was something else that was unexpected.
The distinct sound of kittens, mewing!
One of the other mamas has had a litter, and it sounds like they are in the old freezer lying on its side in the junk pile. I didn’t see any of the mamas, though I did eventually see a black cat come out of that area. I didn’t think we had a black cat that was female. I certainly didn’t notice any that looked pregnant. Not even the one tuxedo that I figure is female, after seeing the boys going after her. Mind you, the cat I saw might not have been a mama. All the cats like to take shelter and climb around the junk pile.
After a while, though, I guess they all fell asleep, because I no longer heard the mewing.
Once the blocks were all moved off and the soil sifted, I did as much weeding as I could in the soil underneath where the blocks were, but there were just too many tree roots. The best I could do with a lot of them was simply severe them.
Then I took a rake to the area, getting rid of the weeds and roots, before leveling where the blocks would go. We’ve been saving our cardboard that’s suitable to use in the garden, so I took some of that and laid down a double layer. Hopefully, it will be thick enough to discourage the roots from growing up into the blocks.
The carboard got a soaking, but it takes a lot to saturate cardboard. I got it decently wet, then put the blocks back.
This is where I really appreciate steel toed shoes! After lining the blocks up first by hand, the final touch was to kick them into place.
I’ve gotten way too used to wearing steel toes all the time. Every now and then, I’ll be out somewhere, forgetting I’m wearing normal shoes, and almost break my toes kicking at something! 😄
Once the blocks were in place, I walked back and forth over them a few times, using my own weight to settle them into place, then took the hose to them. The blocks helped by actually holding the water and letting it start to pool, rather than running off the sides, allowing the cardboard to become better saturated.
The next step was to start amending the soil.
The wheel barrow was pretty full, so adding the peat and sulfur granules was done in batches; enough to fill a couple of blocks before the next batch of soil was amended.
Since the peat made for greater volume, there was soil left over in the wheel barrel after all the blocks were filled. Each block then got topped with a couple of handfuls of stove pellets to act as a mulch. The blocks got a watering, then left for the pellets to absorb moisture and start swelling, while I watered the potato bed and haskaps, nearby. The one “Mr. Honeyberry” haskap has all sorts of flower buds, with some of them even starting to bloom! The two “Mrs. Honeyberry” aren’t anywhere near that point.
*sigh*
That took enough time for the stove pellets to swell to the point that the sawdust could be spread around a bit, before getting another thorough watering.
The very last thing to do before clean up was to return the support posts – they had to be hammered through the cardboard. We need to put something similar along the bed with the potatoes, so we can place netting of some kind over them. This will be to protect the beds and anything growing in them from being suffocated by the Chinese Elm seeds, when they start dropping in their millions.
What I thought was a job that might take me about an hour, ended up talking almost 3 hours – though I did take a hydration break, part way through.
By then, it was starting to get pretty warm, too; the perfect time to be done!
After that, my daughter and I headed into town. We had some parcels to pick up on the way home, but the post office closed shortly after I finished working, so we had to find extra things to do. That way, we could time our trip home for when it reopened again. We ended up going to the beach; something we haven’t done in at least two years! The lake is mostly clear of ice, but there were a few patches being blown against the beach by the winds.
It was all candle ice, and in places, you could hear it tinkling like wind chimes in the waves! I tried to capture the sound with my phone.
That area of the beach has quite a lot of rocks, making it our favourite part. We spent the entire time, trying to find interesting ones. We found quite a few, including some that sparkled amazingly in the sun. I tried to capture the sparkle in photos, but the camera just couldn’t pick up the glitter.
We had no problem at all, taking up the extra time we needed to, on the beach!
From there, it was a stop at the grocery store. I just needed to refill a couple of the big water jugs and get some eggs. My daughter had her own shopping list. That done, it was back home, with a stop at the post office to pick up a parcel.
Which turned out to be five parcels!
One was for my daughter, which arrived faster than she expected. A couple more for my husband arrived early as well, plus there turned out to be another with the courier company packages. I didn’t know anything about that one, but the store owner stopped me on the way out to give it to me.
There was one parcel that would have been great to arrive early but, alas, it isn’t expected until next week. My husband needs to replace the face part of his CPAP set up. He’s been able to replace the hose the runs from the machine to the face mask, and he was able to get new nasal prongs. The part of the mask he can’t get has the latex tubes that attach to the sides of the nasal piece. Over time, the latex starts to harden, turn yellow and, eventually, begin to crack. My husband tends to wait way too long before replacing them, so they’re at that point, now. The problem is, it’s not in stock, and hasn’t been for months. It’s starting to look like they’re not being made anymore. So he’s simply ordered medical grade latex tubes to attach to the fittings, which are still fine.
What he really needs is a new machine. Medicare doesn’t cover CPAPs. His insurance does, but it’s by reimbursement, so he’d have to have the funds to buy it first, then submit a receipt. Medicare does cover BiPAPs, though, which would be better for him, anyhow. For that, however, he needs to get a new prescription. It’s been so long, he’ll need another sleep test, first. Which his new doctor has started the process of getting done. When he was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea, we were living in this province (for the second? third? time) and he spent the night in a lab at the sleep research centre. They actually interrupted the sleep test after a couple of hours and put him on a CPAP, because they were afraid he would die on them. That lab is no longer there. I don’t know if it moved to another hospital or city or province, or simply no longer exists. Now, they usually do home tests. Which should be… interesting.
However he ends up getting tested again, he’s on a waiting list, and has been for a few months now. Who knows when he’ll finally get tested.
Until then, he has to find ways to make do with what he has and, right now, it looks like he needs to buy parts and pieces to replace the worn out ones. He can’t even use a different style of mask, as they are made for specific machines, and the fittings can’t cross over. At least, not with the machine he has now.
Hopefully, the tubing he ordered will fit. He did order some earlier, but it turned out to be the wrong size for the fittings. It’s something we can find a use for, though, so no loss there.
Meanwhile…
As I finish this up, we’re coming up on 6pm, and it’s still 18C/64F (the high was 19C/66F), with the humidex putting it at 22C/72F. Unless I look at my other map, which has us a couple of degrees Celsius warmer!
While talking to my daughter earlier about what needs to be worked on next, we were both rather depressed at the thought of getting the low raised beds in the main garden area clear. The crab grass is taking over with a vengeance and, in one of them, Creeping Charlie is also invading. The only way to really make a difference when it’s that bad is to either use an herbicide, or sift it all. Since we also need to amend the soil with peat and sulfur, sifting it would be the best choice. Which basically means, every one of those beds needs to be redone – and these are all beds we want to make into higher raised beds. My daughter suggested we just skip ahead to making the beds higher, if we’re going to have to remove all that soil, anyhow.
Which means, we need to shift gears and start harvesting more of those dead spruces. We currently have only two downed trees to process. We need more. Lots more, even if we’re just doing middle height beds, like with the trellis beds we’re working on. Those are only two logs tall, which means we need four 18′ logs for the sides and four or five (depending on the width) 4′ logs for the ends, per bed. With the largest of the dead trees, the bottom 10′, which would be too thick for a garden bed, will be set aside for the vertical supports for the outdoor kitchen we will be building (we need 10 of those). Depending on how straight and tall the trees we harvest are, that means 2 or 3 trees per raised bed. We need to rebuild… hold on… let me look out the window and count… five low raised beds. One of those has the onions growing in it, so that one won’t be done this year; it’ll just get weeded for now. So, four that need to be rebuilt. Plus the other 3 beds we need to make to make two trellis tunnels (two beds per tunnel). So we’re looking at a minimum 7 new beds at 2 logs high. If we assume 3 trees per bed, we’re looking at about 21 trees that need to be harvested. I’m pretty sure we do have that many dead spruces that need to be cut down; I’d counted 22 before we cut down the ones we’ve done so far, but there are a couple that have fallen on their own and are stuck against other trees that we probably could use, plus I’m sure there are others in an overgrown area we can’t walk through. If worse comes to worse, there are more dead spruces in the old hay yard. It’s further to drag the logs but, at that point, we can use the truck to drag them out.
Which means, weather willing, we need to start cutting down all those dead spruces in the spruce grove. If we focus on cutting the dead trees down first, then processing them to the sizes we need and dragging the logs over, building the beds themselves won’t necessarily take long. Prepping the spaces usually takes longer.
That electric chainsaw is going to get quite a workout.
Hmm… I wonder if I can talk to my brother into coming out with his gas chainsaw? He’s so busy with so many things, though, I hate to ask him. Especially since we’d have no way of knowing if the weather would be good on a day he can come out.
Well, I guess tomorrow, I’m getting the chainsaw out and making sure it’s working after a winter in the garage!
It’ll be good to finally get those dead spruce trees cut down. Then we can start transplanting new ones!
We finally have some warm and drier weather today! It’s already 14C/57F, and we’re expected to have a high of 16C/60F.
I think I counted 27 yard cats this morning, but they were running around so much, I can’t be sure. What was funny to see, as I was trying to count, was a skunk suddenly come running around from behind the storage house, just like one of the cats, going for the kibble house! Not the little one I’ve been seeing, but a big on. My guess, a pregnant mama. I scared her off with the hose, because I wanted to make sure the cats got the food first. I know she’ll show up later.
I was happy to see Broccoli – she even let me pet her! We’ve started to do more frequent, smaller feedings, so that there’s something there when she is able to leave her kittens in her secret place and come eat. I was even able to get a glance under her and, from what I can see, she has 2 active nips. I think the largest litter she’s ever had has been 3 kittens. Hopefully, that will be the norm this year, and not litters of 5, 6 or even 8, like last year! At least most of them turned out to be male, though we did manage to get some female kittens indoors. There’s just one I can’t get at that I think it female. The other females are mamas from last year.
We really, really need to catch these mamas!! They are not cooperating at all. *sigh*
Oh, I just got some updates on the Wolfman this morning. He eye is healed up well, and there are potential adoptees coming to see him.
Much to my shock, Wolfman has taken to hissing, flattening his ears, and hiding, any time strangers come be. He also only lets their youngest daughter pick him up – he used to love being picked up! – and always hisses at the Cat Lady’s mother, who helps care for the cats. The poor guy must be so stressed out from, first, suddenly being taken to a new place, then going to the vet so often, then having to get his eye treated regularly. Poor baby. It’ll take time, but that just makes it harder to adopt him out. Especially when people coming over don’t even get to see him, because he’s hiding!
All in good time, I guess.
But I digress!
My morning rounds now includes checking the various growing things. There is still nothing showing up with the peas and spinach. Not the carrots, either, but carrots do take much longer. I’m surprised about the peas and spinach, though, even with the cooler weather we’ve been having. Hopefully, the seeds have survived and things will start sprouting as we get warmer days again. These need cooler weather to germinated, though, so… we’ll see!
We have more snow crocuses blooming, including our first – and so far, only – purple one. We have a few more yellow ones showing up. Mostly, we’re seeing the white ones, as well as the white with a hint of purple.
The grape hyacinths won’t be blooming for a while, but we are starting to see their distinctive clusters of leaves showing up all over the area they are planted in. My daughter’s tulip patch is also looking pretty good. I’m really looking forward to seeing what those “new” tulips that came up next to the saffron crocus turn out to be. I’m about 95% sure they are the Bull’s Eye tulips, but there was another variety planted there, too.
Oh! I’m remembering wrong!
It’s a good thing I’m journaling all this, here on the blog. I just looked up what I wrote about it, back in the fall of 2020. Only Bull’s Eye tulips were planted there.
We got them as a newly available tulip from Veseys, but they carried the variety for just the one year, I think. I suspect a lot of people did not have success with them. If I do a search, I can find other places that carry them, though, and they are listed as being zone 3 hardy. Well, we’ll see! It’ll be awesome if, after all this time, they actually show up! The idea that the bulbs would survive all this time, without any growth emerging, would be pretty amazing. Actually, I think some did show up that first spring, but the deer decimated the tulip patch, so for any tulips to show up after that is pretty amazing. It’s a bit of an eyesore to have the wire fencing around it, but there isn’t much choice!
More and more garlic is starting to come up, too! I’m quite happy to see them, after thinking most may not have survived the winter.
I’m not so happy to see how much crab grass is growing in the tiny raised bed, though. We pulled as many rhizomes as we could find at planting time, but it’s pretty much impossible to get it all. They’ll come back from the tiniest pieces.
I’m quite looking forward to having scapes to harvest!
After the garlic bulbs are harvested, which should be in late June or early July, this little raised bed is going to get refreshed and amended with the granulated sulfur and peat. We’ll be able to do that with the long bed against the retaining wall, too, as well as the short section of the wattle weave bed, as those will not have anything else planted with the garlic. The bigger rectangular bed in the old kitchen garden has garlic growing all down the middle, so there is room to plant other things on either side. I do hope to be able to amend the sides before we plant anything with the garlic.
Things are looking dry enough that we should be able to finally plant potatoes in the bed that’s been solarizing. The plastic is still there, but I don’t know how much solarizing actually happened, considering the rainy and overcast days we’ve had, since it was laid down. With the bed made narrower, though, it’s actually got more soil than the brick edging can contain. Since we don’t have the materials to raise the bed higher, yet, plus I want to work peat and sulfur into it first, it looks like I’ll have to actually remove soil from the bed. Which is okay. The excess can be used to top up the chimney block planters nearby.
So that’s my goal for today. Get that bed amended and planted with potatoes. I might actually be able to get both types of potatoes in there. We do still have Red Thumb and Purple Peruvians from last year that we could plant. They were so small, though, we didn’t really use them often. The fingerlings are also odd shapes, so getting them clean in preparation for cooking was not worth the bother. That’s why we still have some left! However, if we can increase the acidity in the soil enough, they might actually go much better. It might be worth trying, somewhere.
First things first, though. Gotta get the ones we bought, into the ground!
We now have various melon seeds set to pre-germinate above the heat mat – indirect, so they don’t get too warm.
As with the Wild Bunch Mix of winter squash, I wanted to do all the seeds in our Summer of Melons Blench, There were four more of the Wild Bunch winter squash ready for potting first, though. There were still some seeds left, but I put those in the compost bucket. Some were looking like mold was starting to grow on them, and others were looking slimy, so I figured they were done for. Which is fine. We have so many from the Wild Bunch mix that successfully germinated, we won’t be starting any other winter squash this year, as much as I’d like to. We just won’t have the prepared space for that many large plants, even with trellises.
All of the smallest and not quite emerged Wild Bunch Mix squash are now together in the one half of the aquarium greenhouse. The larger ones got moved to the mini greenhouse frame at the window. The larger ones that were already in the mini greenhouse frame in the window were tucked into a bin and, together with the bin that had peppers and herbs in it, are now in the sun room. The cats like to sit on these shelves to look out the window, but the bins should protect the transplants.
The tray with the hot peppers and eggplant is now on the shelf between two windows in the sun room, along with one of the tomato trays. There’s also space for a cat to sit by the door, as a few like to do. These trays will get plenty of light through most of the day. I’m taking a chance on putting them there, but last year the cats were good about leaving the transplants alone, for the most part. They were more interested in getting at the window, so as long as they can still do that, the transplants should be okay.
Once the space was made in the mini greenhouse frame and the aquarium greenhouse, I made some decisions as to which melons I wanted to start.
The Summer of Melons Blend was the only for-sure choice. The package had 21 seeds, and I set all of them to pre-germinate.
For the others, I decided to try the Zucca melon again. It’s been rough going for these, even though we’ve had success starting them out, so I’m hoping to actually get some this year. They are supposed to get quite massive in size. The seeds are pretty huge, so they got where the only ones to be scarified to help with germination. I decided to try only 4 seeds, with plenty left to try again next year, if it doesn’t work out this year.
The Pixie melon is one we’ve grown successfully before, during a drought year, which is what we’re supposed to be getting this year, too. They are a small “personal size” melon. I set out only 5 seeds, which left another 4 in the package. If we have the space, I might try direct sowing the last seeds, since they only need up to 75 days to maturity. The plants are very productive, though, so even if we only have a couple make it, that should still provide us with a decent amount of little melons.
The Sarah’s Choice is one we tried last year, but I think only 2 seedlings survived to be transplanted. They were planted together with some other melons and, to be honest, I’m not sure which variety was which, the vines were so interwoven. The plants did well, but they didn’t start producing both male and female flowers at the same time until quite late in the season, so we didn’t get very many that fully ripened before frost hit. So I want to try them again. This year, I’ll make sure we plant them away from other melon types, so we can tell them apart. Again, I started only 5 seeds, which was a little under half was what was in the package.
I had two types of watermelon to choose from, and I decided to go with the Cream of Saskatchewan. Both were short season, cold climate varieties, but I only had one container left. 😂 Again, I picked out 5 seeds, which was half the package.
The 7 day forecast has changed, and we’re now looking at a cooler day tomorrow, with possible rain, and only slightly warmer days after that. We won’t be back into highs in the double digits (Celsius) until next Monday, if the current forecasts are anything to go by. Which I don’t mind too much. Unless the winds are a problem, the cooler days make it more pleasant do to manual labour in, and we’ve got garden beds to prep, and new ones to build! We need to make room for all those transplants, plus the stuff we want to direct sow!
The Re-Farmer 