garden plans

Analysing our 2022 garden: starting seeds indoors, and other physical challenges

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Okay, it’s that time! I’ll be working on a serious of posts, going over how our 2022 garden went, what worked, what didn’t, and what didn’t even happen at all. This is help give us an idea of what we want to do in the future, what we don’t want to do in the future, and what changes need to be made.

Our 2022 garden had a lot of challenges, and a lot of failures. Some of challenges and failures started well before we planted a single thing outdoors.

With our short growing season, we need to start a lot of things indoors. That, in itself, is expected and not a big deal. Our circumstances, however, have thrown in some major difficulties.

Fourteen of them, in fact.

Well. Sixteen, when we were trying to get them going this year.

Our indoor cats.

The other challenge is a combination of space and light. This house is oriented to the East. Our largest windows face the sunrise – with a grove of 60’+ spruces not far away. Our south facing windows are smaller and inaccessible for the purpose. The exception to that is the sun room, however the sun room is not warm enough to start seeds in when we need to. Plus, during colder weather, we allow the outside cats to use it for shelter.

Which means we need to figure out how to start seeds indoors, provide adequate artificial light, and protect the seedlings from cats that are determined to either roll on them, or eat them!

The first solution was one that we started doing last year. We have two aquariums that we have been able to convert into greenhouses, of a sort. When we moved out here, we brought our big tank, with a second light fixture to replace the kit light. Both work just fine, and provide adequate light for starting seeds.

The corner of the living room the tank sits in gets cold, so we added rigid insulation against two walls for extra protection. We were also able to get a warming mat to place under seed trays of things that needed extra heat. Since the lights can’t be raised or lowered, we used cardboard boxes under the seed trays to adjust the height, with new plantings closer to the lights, and larger ones lower down, rotating and adjusting as needed. We built frames with hardware cloth to cover the top of the tank, which both protected the seedlings from the cats, but also allowed more air flow.

This above picture was taken with the hardware cloth covers removed for access. As you can see from the bedraggled seedlings, we didn’t quite manage to protect them from the cats. More on that later.

The other tank is much smaller; just a 20 gallon tank. It, too, tended to get chilly, plus the light it came with was not as bright as having two lights, as with the large tank. It has insulation on three sides to protect from the chill walls, which also got covered in aluminum foil to reflect the light.

When we first started using this tank the previous year, we used the original lid it came with. The cats were incredibly determined to get at the trays below, and were able to reach through the opening for the filter, no matter what we used to block it, completely destroying the trays below. This year, we found some window screens in a shed, and used one of those as a lid, weighted down with hand weights. We removed the light from the bottom of the original lid and attached it to a foil lined piece of rigid insulation, and simply set it on top of the window screen. The cats still sometimes managed to knock the weights around and displace the screen but, over all, it did keep them out.

The problem with both tanks, but especially the little one, was air circulation. For that, we used a tiny fan we found in one of the basements while doing clean up. We could put it right into the big tank, or on top of the hardware cloth covers, aimed downwards. For the small tank, we could just set it on the screen, also aimed downwards. Ultimately, though, we used the small tank as little as possible.

We had an awful lot of seeds to start indoors, however. Way too many to fit in the tanks. Since the seeds needed to be started at different times, we could start the earliest ones in the tanks, then rotate them out when the next seeds needed to be started.

The question was, rotate them out where?

One of my daughters had bought a mini greenhouse for me the year before, so we brought that into the living room. We also bought a long, narrow, LED shop light to illuminate it better. That worked out well enough that we later bought a second one.

We set it up as close to the window as we could, on a chair to catch more light. The only way we could use the light, however, was to hang it from a plant hook in the ceiling above, so that it rested on the chair as well, oriented vertically.

The cats were absolutely determined to get into it!

They managed to squeeze in from under the chair, so we tried taping the plastic cover to the chair.

That wasn’t enough.

We added pieces of cardboard to block the spaces they were squeezing through.

It… mostly worked.

In the end, it was a combination of taping the bottom, the cardboard, and covering the back and sides of the frame with aluminum foil – which also helped reflect light onto the seedling better.

They still managed to get in.

I came out one morning and found cats had somehow squeezed through one of the zippers, pushing it open more, and rolled all over a couple of the trays.

It was such a disaster!

We did managed to save some of the seedlings, but not all. Thankfully, we had seeds left for some of them and were able to start over.

We were eventually able to keep the mini greenhouse sealed up well enough to keep the cats out, but it meant keeping the plastic cover on and closed up at a time when the seedlings didn’t need a cover. This meant no air circulation in there at all. Even so, there were times when a cat or two managed to get in, and try to eat some of the seedlings!

I was able to rig the little fan up inside the mini greenhouse, aimed at the walls in such a way that the air flow would be pushed upwards and around the whole space.

That little fan got one heck of a work out!

So we finally got that working, but there’s not a lot of space in between the shelves. Before long, some of the seedlings began to outgrow the mini greenhouse. They needed to be moved out, and the only place we could move them to was the sun room – but we had to wait until it was warm enough!

Eventually, we were able to move the largest seedlings onto shelves in the sun room, while other seedlings got rotated into the mini greenhouse, and newly sown trays were set up in the aquarium greenhouses. We had our seeds organized by when they needed to be started, with the earliest started 10 weeks before our average last frost date, then 8 weeks, 6 weeks and finally 4 weeks.

We still ran out of space.

In the end, we set up a surface to hold seedlings over the swing bench, and eventually we could move the mini greenhouse to the sun room – and finally take the cover off! The second shop light was hung above the plants over the swing bench, and we eventually hung the one from the living room on the inside of the shelf.

For a sun room, the sunlight doesn’t actually reach far into the room.

There were so many things that needed to be started indoors! In fact, most of what we were growing needed to be started indoors, with only a few things that needed to be direct sown.

That’s not really going to be changing, so we need to figure something better out. How do we provide the seed trays and seedlings with the light, air flow and space they need, while also protecting them from the cats?

Well, the girls and I have been talking about it, and the only real solution we have is to find a way to keep the cats out of the living room completely, and turn the living room into a plant room.

The question is, how?

There are floor to ceiling cabinets between the living room and dining room. On one set, the living room side is completely covered. On the other, there is a “window” at one shelf that allows access from both sides. It’s a favourite lounging place for David! Between the cabinets is an open space somewhat wider than a standard sized door for access between the two rooms.

The only way to prevent the cats from getting into the living room is to build a barrier in that space, with a door in it, plus another barrier to cover the “window” in one of the cabinets.

Barriers which need to be strong enough to withstand cats trying to get through, yet still be easily removeable.

One of my daughters has drawn up plans for a barrier with a doorway, while the “window” will just need a simple rectangular frame to fit the space. It’s basically going to be all wooden frames and hardware cloth.

Unfortunately, we’ll need to actually buy the lumber for this, and lumber is extremely expensive right now. There is nothing in the piles of salvaged lumber in the sheds and barn suitable for what we have in mind.

It’s something we’ll have to figure out soon. Some things, like onion seeds, could be started as early as January. February at the latest. Honestly, I just don’t see how we can get the materials and build the barriers that quickly. We could start off using the large aquarium, which might give us until March to get it done, but… I’m not very hopeful.

It would be a lot easier, if the cats weren’t so absolutely determined to destroy the seed trays!

The Re-Farmer

Analysing our 2022 garden: strawberries and asparagus

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Okay, it’s that time! I’ll be working on a serious of posts, going over how our 2022 garden went, what worked, what didn’t, and what didn’t even happen at all. This is help give us an idea of what we want to do in the future, what we don’t want to do in the future, and what changes need to be made.

This is our second year for the purple asparagus. We should have one more year of letting them establish themselves before can we start harvesting anything.

I’d read that strawberries are a good companion plant for asparagus, so we bought some transplants this spring. Eventually, we plan to have a lot more strawberries as part of our self-sufficiency goals, but this was just a start. I hoped that we would be able to use runners to expand our strawberries next year.

I also snagged a package of 10 bare root, white strawberries as a spur of the moment purchase. We planted those in a new bed along the chain link fence, where the potato grow bags had been the year before.

The Results:

The asparagus and red strawberries may have been in a low raised bed, but the asparagus crowns get buried quite deep, and that bed ended up affected by the “moat” that formed around the garage with this spring’s flooding. (click on the images to see them full size)

The asparagus bed had been well mulched for the winter. When we transplanted the strawberries, the straw mulch was moved to around the bed, and wood shavings were added for a lighter mulch on top of the bed. That was done in early June and when the straw was moved, we could see that some asparagus spears were starting to make their way through the straw.

Then the flooding happened. I don’t think I’ve ever seen standing water that close to the house before! It’s hard to tell in the picture of the flooded yard, but the path around the beds at the chain link fence were filled with water, too.

Where the white strawberries were planted, however, was high enough that it wasn’t affected by the flooding in any significant way.

We did get a few red strawberries, but most of the berries ended up pretty misshapen and didn’t fully ripen. They just did not do very well at all. Lack of pollinators may have played a part in that.

As for the white strawberries, I thought we might have had some start to grow, but what I thought was a strawberry turned out to be a local weed that has leaves similar to strawberries. Not a single white strawberry grew, and I don’t really know why.

Conclusion:

With the asparagus, we are looking at 20 years of production in one place, so it’s not like anything is going to change, there – as long as they survive! There were fewer spears this year, than in their first year. I suspect that they have been set back at least a year, by the flooding.

Part of the plan had been to get more asparagus crowns every year, with both green and purple varieties, but that just didn’t happen for 2022. Finding a spot that can be given over to something for at least two decades is always a challenge, however with this spring’s flooding, that just wasn’t going to happen. We will have to keep in mind what areas so the most water collecting, and make sure to avoid them.

As for the red strawberries, the bed has been mulched, so hopefully they will survive the winter, and we’ll see better production next year.

The white strawberries were a complete fail. I would still like to try them again, but will likely order a different variety from somewhere else.

Strawberries can be planted under other things as a productive ground cover, so we have more flexibility when it comes to deciding where to plant them. We could order the roots in packages of 25, to be shipped in the spring. I’m thinking of getting at least one 25 pack, and planting them around the Silver Buffaloberry. Something we still have to decide on.

The Re-Farmer

Analysing our 2022 garden: squash, gourds and melons

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Okay, it’s that time! I’ll be working on a serious of posts, going over how our 2022 garden went, what worked, what didn’t, and what didn’t even happen at all. This is help give us an idea of what we want to do in the future, what we don’t want to do in the future, and what changes need to be made.

*sigh*

I had such high hopes for our squash and gourds for 2022. We planted SO many varieties of squash! We especially worked towards growing winter squash, with a focus on varieties that stored well for the winter. This is part of our working towards being as self sufficient as possible, and to have a good supply of food during the winter months when we can expect to be unable to get out, either due to being snowed in, or vehicles freezing, or whatever, for at least two months. Something we’ve already had to deal with, somewhat.

We also planted a variety of pumpkins, including 3 hulless varieties for their seeds, and summer squash, plus had both new and old varieties of gourds.

Almost everything was a loss, and what wasn’t a loss was still nowhere near fully successful.

We’ll start with our “fun” plants: the gourds.

I am wanting to grow gourds to cure them, then use them for crafting or to make useful objects out of them. Three that we had grown before were:

  • Tennessee Dancing Gourd, which did very well in 2021, even in drought conditions.
  • Ozark Nest Egg, which was set back in growth for quite time time, but when they did start to grow, looked to be incredibly prolific and would have done amazing, if they had not been killed off by frost.
  • Luffa, which had not done well before, but I really want to grow them for their sponges.

These were grown from seeds left over from the previous year. They germinated well, though there were issues with the cats getting into the mini-greenhouse they were in and destroying many seedlings. I used the last of our seeds to try again, and we did manage to have a few survive.

New gourds included the canteen gourd, and apple gourd.

The Results:

I am really, really happy with how the Ozark Nest Egg and Tennessee Dancing Gourds did!

The Ozark Nest Egg gourds are absolutely beautiful! I just love the size and shape of them. The Dancing Gourds managed to produce a decent amount that were larger than those we collected at the end of the previous, drought stricken year.

As I write this, they are both in a bin, curing. The Dancing gourds have mostly turned a tan colour. The Ozark Nest Egg gourds were already almost white, so there’s not a lot of change in their colour.

I look forward to seeing what we can do with them, after they are fully cured!

Then there was the luffa…

They took such a very long time to even start blooming, and when they did, it was all male flowers for quite a long time. When the female flowers started showing up, there were no male flowers to pollinate them! So when we finally got both blooming at the same time, I made sure to hand pollinate them.

By then, however, it was just too late in the season. There was no chance for them to fully mature. When the frost finally hit, that was the end of them.

Conclusion:

I would definitely want to try all three again. Hopefully, I’ll have seeds from the Ozark Nest Egg we harvested, because I didn’t see them when I was ordering other things from the site I got them from originally. I may have just missed them.

As for the luffa, I think those will wait until we have a greenhouse or polytunnel before I try again. I really like them, and when the plants finally do start growing, they grow so incredibly fast!

Next, we have the canteen gourd and the apple gourd.

The canteen gourds ended up needing potting up a couple of times, and even then, by the time I could transplant them, they were getting way too big for their pots. I’d have transplanted them earlier, but had to wait until after our last average frost date (June 2). They were already showing flower buds when they were transplanted – which promptly died.

They never really did well after transplanting, staying long and gangly, and never filling out. They did bloom, but again, it was male flowers only. We did, eventually, get female flowers that I hand pollinated, but it was too late in the season.

The canteen gourds were planted at the tunnel trellis, which had been used the year before, but the apple gourds were grown in a completely new garden area. This squash patch had most of our winter squash and pumpkins. Each transplanted went into its own dug out hole that was filled with fresh garden soil before transplanting. Unfortunately, this area got heavily saturated during the flooding, and it was way too long before everything finally got well mulched.

Out of everything there, though, the apple gourds did the best.

It still took them a long time to get to the point of flowering and producing fruit – I would hand pollinated them, any time I saw new female flowers show up. The three surviving transplants began to produce quite a few gourds, but it was simply too late. Then, even with protection, they were pretty much killed off by our first frosts.

I know these grow in our climate zone. It was just a terrible growing year that set everything back so much.

Conclusion:

I’ve already picked up more canteen and apple gourd seeds. In fact, I’ve also picked up some drum gourds to try, too! Plus some Caveman’s Club. I am just determined to make it work! I want to make stuff with these, and there are other varieties of gourds I will eventually be trying to grow, for different purposes.

Then there was the summer squash.

*sigh*

We accidentally bought three, instead of one, variety pack of summer squash seeds, so we’ll have green zucchini, yellow zucchini, Magda and sunburst patty pan seeds for years to come. Summer squash was one of the first things we grew, in our very first gardening year, and even though we lost half of them to frost because they were transplanted too early, we still had so much summer squash, we were able to harvest them daily for a while.

They didn’t do as well during the drought of 2021, but we were still able to harvest enough summer squash to be able to do refrigerator pickles. Mostly, though, we enjoy eating them fresh and raw!

For 2022, we were accidentally sent a packet of G-Star patty pans, a green variety, as well. When the mistake was pointed out, we were sent the seeds we were supposed to get, and told to keep the ones we were sent by mistake. We were quite happy to try a new variety of patty pans!

The Result:

*sigh*

The Magda, yellow zucchini and sunburst patty pans were planted in a low raised bed together. Because we like them so much, we had twice as many sunburst as anything else. The green zucchini were planted into the new squash bed, right next to the low raised bed.

We planted as many of the G-star as we did the sunburst patty pans, but those got planted in another new bed, on the opposite side of the main garden area, along with corn, winter squash and hulless pumpkins.

All of these had been started indoors with an excellent germination rate.

None of the summer squash did well, though we did get more Magda squash than in previous years, when fewer plants survived. We quite like the Magda squash. Still, there were very few of them overall, and the plants did not thrive.

We got almost nothing from the green zucchini, and not much more from the yellow. Most disappointing of all was how few sunburst squash we got. Even with hand pollinating.

The G-star had a rough start, but once they got well mulched, they really perked up and grew very quickly. We were even able to harvest some, though the biggest, healthiest plant suddenly died, its stem completely cut through by an insect.

Conclusion:

Since we’ve had such success with summer squash in previous years, we know that 2022 was an exception for how bad our summer squash did. The question is, was it because of the flooding? Or where there other factors? I think lack of pollinators were part of the problem, but the plants also just didn’t bloom much at all.

We’ll be growing all these varieties again, and hopefully, 2023 will be a better growing year!

Now we go into what was one of the more disappointing things; our winter squash. I’m including the pumpkins with these, even though they actually did better.

Along with the three types of hulless pumpkins, which were transplanted well away from each other, we had a couple of free giant pumpkin seeds we grew in a hill we used for Crespo squash the year before, and some Baby Pam pumpkins from seeds left from the year before. Those had a zero germination rate the year before, but for 2022, we had a 100% germination rate!

In the new, big squash patch, we also had Teddy Squash, a tiny, short season variety we’d had seeds left over from the year before, Georgia Candy Roaster, and Winter Sweet. In the corn and squash patch, we had Boston Marrow, while Red Kuri was planted in a new bed by the chain link fence.

I feel like I’m forgetting another winter squash. Maybe I’ll remember later. Oh, right! We also tried Crespo Squash again. Those tried to do so well the year before, but kept getting eaten by deer and groundhogs!

The Results:

Again, it was almost a total loss. Especially for the winter squash.

While the big squash patch didn’t have standing water during the flooding, the ground did get quite saturated. We lost some of our transplants completely. The squash and corn patch, on the other hand, so SO much more flooding!

Still, if we’d been able to well mulch the big squash patch better, I think it would have helped. Also, the south side of the patch got more shade than the north side, due to the tall trees between the garden and the house, which certainly didn’t help!

The Georgia Candy Roaster and Winter Sweet just didn’t grow. It’s like they never recovered from transplanting. The Teddy did a bit better, and even started to form tiny squash, but it was way too late for them to mature. The Baby Pam did surprisingly well, and we did get a few little pumkins (they only grow 5-6 inches in diameter). We got a couple of Kakai hulless pumpkins, too. The Crespo squash never even bloomed.

Probably the only really successful thing was the giant pumpkins. We made no attempt to get actual giants, but they still grew really big. We had two plants, and got two pumpkins out of it.

In the corn and squash bed, which got so much more flooding, I’m amazed we got any Boston Marrow at all. They took a long time to recover from flooding, but they did eventually start blooming and producing fruit. We did pick a few, but they were under ripe, and even the ripest one was much smaller than they should have been.

We did get some Lady Godiva and Styrian hulless pumpkins, though nowhere near as many as we should have, nor where they as big as they should have been.

The only real success was the Red Kuri (Little Gem) squash, that grew in the south yard up the chain link fence. They were still smaller than they should have been, but we did get an okay harvest.

Conclusion:

Well, our reasons for growing so much squash haven’t changed, so we’ll definitely be trying to grow them all again. There’s nothing we could have done about the damage the flooding caused. When we try again, we will have to take extra care to make sure they are well mulched, as that made quite the difference, once we were finally able to do it. We’re going to be trying pretty much all the varieties again. My source for Baby Pam pumpkins and Teddy squash no longer carries, them, though. I don’t remember right now if we have any seeds left, but if we do, we will try them again, too.

Among the things we are slowly working on is building high raised beds in the main garden area. When we get to building them where the large squash patch was, the extra height will also help get away from the shade problem on the north side .

Now we reach one more disappointment.

A total and complete loss of our melons.

We had made two new large garden plots, using the Ruth Stout deep mulch method. The north half of both had potatoes planted in them, and the south half got melons.

The previous year, we’d grown two types of melons. In spite of the drought, they did very well, and we got a surprisingly good harvest. We loved having fresh melons, so for 2022, we planted even more. Some were seeds harvested from grocery store melons. We also tried Zucca melon (a giant variety) and a short season watermelon, for six varieties altogether.

The Results:

When some of the transplants died, we filled the gaps with Yakteen gourds (the ones with the red arrows pointing to them).

The watermelons died almost right away. Of the ones that didn’t die outright, they just didn’t grow. It wasn’t until the very end of the season that a couple of Zucca melons started to grow, and even bloom, but it was just way too late by then.

Conclusion:

After the success of the previous year, this was such a huge disappointment. We all really love melons, but they are quite expensive to buy, so growing them would be well worth the effort.

For 2023, we’ve bought more Halona and Pixie melon seeds, which we had successfully grown the year before (we had saved Halona seeds, but not Pixie), plus we are trying a new cantaloupe type variety. We will also be trying the Zucca melon again, plus we still have saved seeds from other varieties.

The flooding we got last year was exceptional, so I don’t think we’ll have that happen again, but we will still need to work on improving the soil and planting them in, at the very least, low raised beds. The Pixie and Halon were planted at the trellis tunnel the first time, and are excellent climbers. We don’t plan to use that tunnel trellis again, but will be building new, permanent trellis tunnels closer to the house, with low raised beds at their bases. That should make a big difference in growing conditions – so long as the weather is cooperative!

The Re-Farmer

Analysing our 2022 garden: cucumbers, bell peppers and eggplants

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Okay, it’s that time! I’ll be working on a serious of posts, going over how our 2022 garden went, what worked, what didn’t, and what didn’t even happen at all. This is help give us an idea of what we want to do in the future, what we don’t want to do in the future, and what changes need to be made.

Here, we are looking at growing stuff that was new to us. When I was a kid, my mother did grow cucumbers here, but she never grew peppers or eggplants. Our own experience with growing peppers goes back to before our move, when the co-op we lived in built accessible garden beds, and we signed up for one of them. We tried growing a hot variety of pepper, and we were getting one that was developing really well – then it got stolen. I don’t know if I feel sorry for whomever took it and tried to eat it, thinking it was a bell pepper, not a hot pepper! We ended up potting it up and bringing it inside for the winter, and got many peppers from it, that we dehydrated.

I am not able to eat fresh tomatoes. They make me gag, and I’ve since learned this is a thing similar to how some people find cilantro tastes like soap. There’s something in fresh tomatoes that I react to, but not when they are processed.

Peppers is a bit different. It doesn’t matter if they’re fresh or processed. They make me gag if I can taste them. I’ve eaten things with peppers in them as an ingredient, without reacting to it, so it’s not an allergy, but if there is enough that they can be tasted, I can’t eat it. Oddly, I can eat jalapeno stuffed peppers just fine! As for fresh peppers, I love how they smell, and the crispness as I cut them up, but when I try to eat them, I just want to puke! However, my husband and one of my daughters both love peppers, so we gave it a try.

Eggplant is something that most of us like, but we rarely buy, so we decided to try growing them to see if we liked them enough to make it worthwhile to grow them every year. Peppers and eggplant are both heat loving plants, but as long as their growing season is short enough and they are started indoors, they can be grown in our zone 3. Our summers can get extreme heat as much as our winters get extreme cold!

I’ll start with the cucumbers, though.

We chose a variety that was supposed to be good for both fresh eating and for pickling. They were started indoors, and were transplanted at one of the A frame trellises.

The Result:

In a word, frustrating.

As with so many other things, the cucumbers did not reach their full potential. However, they did grow and bloom and produce. We would even have had enough to do a few jars of pickles, but we mostly ate them fresh.

For the amount of cucumbers we planted, we had enough for our own use.

The frustrating thing?

My sister had a very productive year for cucumbers, and she dumped bags of them with us.

We made up a dozen jars of pickles, but she gave us so many, they started to mold before we could use them all, and ended up composting a lot of them. With so many cucumbers given to us, it made it harder to use up our own cucumbers, too.

As for the pickles we made, we used a garlic pickle recipe. They’re good, but we’ll have to try different recipes, and different varieties of pickling cucumbers, to find what we like best.

The Conclusion:

Yes, we will be growing cucumbers again. Hopefully, we’ll have a better growing year, with bigger, stronger and more productive plants. We’ll be trying different varieties and, as we grow more herbs and continue to grow garlic, we’ll hopefully be making tastier pickles, in the future.

I’m also going to have to tell my sister that, if she has another bumper crop of cucumbers, to please not pass on any to us! We like cucumbers and pickles, but we don’t like them that much!

With the peppers, we got one variety of purple bell peppers (Purple Beauty) that were supposed to be so dark, they were nearly black when ripe. They were started indoors and germinated quite well. They were transplanted into one of the low raised beds, surrounded by spinach on one side, turnips on the other (both of which failed) and onions (which did well). We also had them under netting for most of the growing year, to protect them from critters.

The Result:

These were definitely a fail.

We did get tiny little peppers that ripened to the dark colour they were supposed to become, but the plants never thrived. I think they would have benefited from being mulched properly earlier, but we just didn’t have the material to do it until it was probably too late. How much of a difference the mulch would have made, I can’t actually say, but I would guess it would have at least improved things a bit.

We simply had a really bad growing year, even aside from the flooding. The low raised beds were enough to protect what was in them, for the most part, even when there was standing water in the paths, but it’s likely the flooding was still too much for the roots. The peppers were in the bed under the mosquito netting, on the left of the above photo. It wouldn’t have taken much for the roots to be hitting saturated soil and starting to rot.

What’s amazing about that standing water is, our top soil is only about 6-8 inches deep in this area. Under that is rocks and gravel. Which would normally mean, really good drainage. We had so much water this spring, however, there was nowhere for the water to drain!

Conclusion:

While the peppers may have been a fail, we’re going to try again. Hopefully, we’ll have better conditions in 2023.

My daughter had mentioned she thought we’d be trying more than one variety of pepper in 2022, so for 2023, we’re going to try several different varieties, including one hot variety. We’ll be looking at what we can do to improve soil conditions – perhaps using a higher raised bed, and making plastic domes to cover them, for extra heat. And, of course, mulching them very well, much earlier!

In the process, if we have a good growing year, we’ll figure out what varieties are enjoyed the most, and eventually work our way down to just one or two varieties to grow every year.

Assuming we’re able to grow them at all! We shall see.

Last of all, are the eggplants.

We chose the Little Finger variety, because I liked their shape and, from all I’d been able to find, they were described as quite delicious. I got them from a seed source that is even further north than we are, so we could be quite sure that they would grow here.

Well, not quite.

In the above photo with the flooded paths, the eggplants were transplanted into the middle bed, where the front half is planted with garlic. The eggplants were planted in the middle, with spinach surrounding them (which failed) and onions around the outer edge (which did okay). We had hoops to hold up mosquito netting to protect them but, like many other things, we were not able to mulch them properly until late in the season.

As we were doing the last of the transplants, we found a couple of eggplants that were missed, so those got planted into a dollar store “raised bed garden” that was made of black felt. This was set up quite a ways away from the low raised bed, which turned out to be slightly elevated, and not affected by the flooding.

The Result:

These were mostly a fail.

The eggplants in the low raised bed did not thrive at all. It wasn’t until very late in the season that one of them finally started to bloom, and develop a tiny little eggplant. Covering them did not seem to help them at all. The lack of a good mulching for so long probably didn’t help, either.

The ones in the black felt bed did better. I suspect the black fabric warmed up the soil more, and that they preferred that. They still took a long time before starting to bloom and develop fruit, however. One plant did noticeably better than the other.

That handful was our entire harvest.

We left them to grow as long as possible. We didn’t get frost until quite a lot later than average and, when we did, we covered them to protect them and squeeze out as much growing time as we could.

The few eggplants we did get, however, where quite tasty!

Conclusion:

We are definitely going to grow the Little Finger variety again, plus we will be trying some “regular” eggplant – the size and shape we would typically find in any grocery store.

With what we learned in 2022, I think that we will perhaps try growing them in pots or grow bags, or higher beds. If we can do black fabric grow bags, that would be even better. With two varieties to try, we’ll see which ones we like better, and see if we use them enough to keep growing them, year after year.

In the future, we hope to have some sort of greenhouse or polytunnel to help extend our growing season, and provide better growing conditions for heat loving plants, such as peppers and eggplants. Once we have a really good growing season for them, we’ll finally be able to determine if we actually like them enough to be worth growing annually, or if these are things we would continue to buy only once in a while at the grocery store.

The Re-Farmer

Analyzing our 2022 garden: corn

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Okay, it’s that time! I’ll be working on a serious of posts, going over how our 2022 garden went, what worked, what didn’t, and what didn’t even happen at all. This is help give us an idea of what we want to do in the future, what we don’t want to do in the future, and what changes need to be made.

We planted three varieties of corn in 2022.

I think it’s safe to say, all three were a fail, though we did actually have a few cobs to eat from one of them.

Two varieties were direct seeded in a new garden bed.

Sod had been removed and new garden soil brought in. In the above photo, you can see the squash that had been transplanted. There’s a triple row of sweet corn in the open area between rows of squash in the back, and a thin double row of popcorn between rows of squash in the foreground.

Eventually, this entire area did get well covered with cardboard and mulch, which helped a lot, but there was just nothing that could be done once the flooding started.

The Results:

The sweet corn started to recover quite nicely, though the green bush beans planted with them did not survive and another type was planted later.

Then the winds got them.

I was able to add twine supports to hold them all up and, amazingly, they survived.

It wasn’t much, but we even had a few mature cobs to pick.

No such luck with the popcorn. This was a variety that only grew to about 2 feet tall, but they never reached that height. Cobs started to form, but never had a chance to mature.

It was very sad.

Then there was the kulli corn.

These were planted in a low raised bed in the east yard, with yellow bush beans in between for nitrogen fixing. Unlike the other corn, these were started indoors and transplanted.

It took a while for them to get over transplant shock, but once they did, they got HUGE and seemed to thrive in this bed.

Eventually, tassels started to form at the top, but no cobs. Not a single cob formed, anywhere.

Kulli corn is a deep, dark Peruvian corn that I would like to acclimate to our area. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of information about them. They seemed to do so very well, and yet… not even a hint of cobs forming on any of them.

Conclusion:

This was such a terrible year for our corn!! Even the year before, with the drought we had, and the tiny, tiny plants growing in nitrogen depleted soil, we managed to have more edible cobs that were so sweet, I could eat them raw. I guess corn can handle drought better than flooding!

After this year, my daughters and I discussed skipping corn for a year or two, until we can provide better growing conditions for them. I did, however, end up buying one variety of sweet corn for 2023, plus I got the same variety of popcorn again. I intend to plant them in the two beds next to where the kulli corn was planted. Considering how well the kulli corn grew, even without forming cobs, I think the other corn should do very well in these beds, and I really love corn!

As for the kulli corn, I really, really want to grow them, but I think it will have to wait until we can create better growing conditions. We’re wanting to have a polytunnel, or something along those lines. That might be enough to make the difference. It may be a few years before we have a polytunnel, though.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Heritage Harvest seeds have arrived!

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These came in really fast!

The top row is all stuff we tried to grow in 2022. The only change is that the Candy Roaster seeds we got for last summer was from Veseys. We should still have some of those left, so if we wanted to, we could try both and see which does better here.

The middle row is also all stuff we tried growing last summer, except for the Chamomile, which is new for 2023.

In the bottom row, the Little Finger Eggplant is a repeat, while the Red Wethersfield onion and Mammoth Sandwich Island Salsify are new.

The Lemon Cucumber are our free package of seeds with this order. (Image belongs to Heritage Harvest) I had actually been eyeballing these as something new to try, but had decided against them for now. In fact, I wasn’t sure if we’d try growing cucumbers again at all this year. We did actually get cucumbers, and they would have been enough for our own use – but then my sister gave us massive amounts of cucumbers from her own garden, and we were overwhelmed.

We like cucumbers, but not that much!

Anyhow, if we were to order more cucumbers, it would be another dual purpose type, good for both fresh eating and canning. Now we have these, so we will at least have a fresh eating type! Plus, it’s something we’ve never tried before. I’m looking forward to it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 Garden: Veseys seed order is in

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One more order of seeds is now done! This is actually our second order with Veseys for next year’s garden.

We had intended to order our potatoes from here, as they have varieties we tried two years ago we really liked. Unfortunately, all their potatoes are currently listed as sold out. There were issues with this last year, when no potatoes were allowed to be sold out of PEI. I’d hope that wouldn’t be an issue, this year! This order ended up being just seeds. No trees or other such things that would be shipped in the spring.

One thing I noticed with their new inventory for 2023 is that their seed prices have increased substantially. I’ve seen increased prices across the board and was expecting it, but the increase seems quite a bit higher here. High enough that it actually affected some of our purchasing decisions.

As with our other seed orders, we have purchased a few things we’ve bought before. This includes the Pixie melon that we enjoyed so much the first year we grew melons, but weren’t able to save seed for, Lakeside spinach, one of three varieties we’d purchased as a collection, Lewis green beans and Merlin beets.

These are the new items and varieties we’ve ordered this time. All images belong to Veseys.

Purple Queen Improved Bean

The first variety of purple bush bean we’d ordered before did very well, even under drought conditions. In fact, all the purple items we ordered did better. I didn’t see it listed anymore, so I decided to try this similar one. The description notes that it has “amazing flavour”.

Red Swan Bush Bean.

These are noted for their exceptionally high yields, and long production season. It can be used as a fresh bean or a cooking (shelling) bean. I will have to remember to leave some of them specifically for shelling, while harvesting others fresh, so we can try it both ways.

Custard Bean

A new variety of yellow bush bean to try that’s noted for being prolific.

Yeah, we’ve got a LOT of beans on order this year. I like to have the different colours, and a mix of types to try. With how prolific these and the other varieties are supposed to be, we don’t have to plant a lot of each. There tends to be quite a lot of seeds in each packet, so we can likely have enough to last us 2 or 3 years, at least.

Dalvay Peas.

This variety of shelling pea is noted for its long pods, well filled with at least 10 peas per pod, and sweet flavour. We’ve had poor results with peas for the past two years, due to weather conditions, and I’d really, really love to finally have more than a snack’s worth of fresh peas! 😁

Sarah’s Choice melon.

This variety is described as the most flavourful in Vesey’s trials, and matures in only 76 days. Our first year growing melons was better than expected, while the second year’s melons were flooded out, so I’m really hoping we have cooperative weather for 2023. We really like melons in this household!

Honeyboat Delicata Squash

I’ve been hearing rave reviews for Delicata squash, but I also saw warnings that they were not a good storage squash. So when I saw this variety was noted as high yielding and a great storage variety, I figured it was worth a try!

Talon Onion

I was planning to get the Oneida onion again, but choked at the price increase, so I picked these, instead. They are described as a great storage onion that does well in dry conditions, and matures 85 days after transplant.

Ambition Shallot

I was going to try the Conservor shallots again, but the price increase was even higher than the Oneida onions. There was another variety that interested me, but it was already sold out. We’ve had no luck growing shallots from seed so far. Our first attempts were destroyed by cats, and the second by flooding that even killed off the shallots we planted from sets. This variety is supposed to be easy to grow, and store extremely well. Here’s hoping we succeed this time!

Cheyenne Pepper

While we have quite a few varieties of sweet peppers, my daughter requested we get a hot variety, too. This is a high yielding variety of cayenne pepper that is ideal for growing in a pot.

Naval Carrot

I was happy with the Napoli carrots we’ve ordered before – I got two years out of the amount of pelleted seeds we got. However, their smallest size packets currently available was more than we needed, so I chose this variety, instead. It is described as keeping its sweet flavour even after months in storage, and as easy to harvest.

Espresso Corn

We actually discussed not doing corn again for 2023, and waiting until we had better soil conditions for such a nitrogen hungry plant, but I think I know where I want to grow these where they should do quite well – I hope! This variety matures in only 67 days, which solves another of our problems, too.

Classic Eggplant.

Yes, we have the Little Finger Eggplant, with their long, narrow shape, but I thought it would be good to have the more traditional type as well. It is described as having “tremendous yields”, and matures in only 75-80 days, so they should work out well.

Roma VF Tomato

Yes, we saved seed from the Cup of Moldova Paste tomato, and we do want to keep that rare variety growing, but they weren’t exactly a flavour power house. At least that’s what my daughter tells me (I can’t eat non-processed tomatoes). I still want a paste tomato, so I chose this Roma variety. I don’t know what the VF stands for, but they are supposed to be quite prolific, and mature about 75 days from transplant.

Lemon Grass

Another request from my daughters, for our culinary herb garden. It has a hardiness zone of 8-9, though, so this is going to be grown in a pot, and in a very sheltered area. I know just the micro climate spot to put it in!

German Winter Thyme

This culinary variety (they also had ground cover varieties) is a bit hardier, but still a zone 4 – 8, which means it will likely be in a pot, too.

And that’s it for this order – and for any other orders until next month’s budget! Those most of what’s left that we want to get is stuff like potatoes, and more sea buckthorn to replace the ones that died – stuff that won’t be shipped until spring. Still, we don’t want to wait to long to order them, as I expect things will be selling out quickly.

We’re ordering a lot more seeds than we actually need, but if there’s one thing we learned from our 2022 garden, it’s that it’s well worth planting more than we think will be enough. In fact, we planted with that in mind, and it still didn’t cut it!

Nature can be brutal.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Baker Creek seed order is in

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For most things, I try to order from Canadian seed companies. The chances of success is higher, for starters. Plus, there’s the dollar difference. Baker Creek has some pretty incredible stuff, though, so I’m ordering from them again this year. I don’t know if I’ll keep it up, though; orders higher than $20 will now get charged customs duty. I’ll see how much that turns out to be before I decide if it’s worth buying from the US again.

As with our Heritage Harvest order, there are some things I am ordering again. This includes the Red of Florence onion, Uzbeck Golden carrot (last time, these were the free seeds our order came with), plus both the Kakai and Lady Godiva hulless pumpkins.

New with this order, we will be getting:

Mammoth Sandwich Island Salsify

Yes, you read that right. The same variety of salsify that I ordered from Heritage Harvest. And yet, they look quite different, as is the taste description. I figured we can try both and see if there really is a difference, and which one we like better.

Indigo Blue Chocolate Tomato

An indeterminate variety for my tomato loving husband and daughter, for fresh eating.

Black Beauty Tomato

Another variety for my husband and daughter for fresh eating. The description neglects to mention if it’s a determinate or indeterminate variety, but apparently they are extremely tasty, and only 80 days to maturity. The description even says the flavour even improves with room temperature storage.

Sweet Chocolate Pepper

We’re going to have a lot of varieties of peppers this year! These are supposed to mature in 75 days, which should not be a problem for our area. I figure if we grow a few of each variety, we’ll know which ones we like best to narrow it down to in the future.

Well. My husband and older daughter will know. My younger daughter and I don’t like peppers.

African Drum Gourd

Have I mentioned I’m a sucker for punishment? And that I’m determined to grow gourds?

They can reach maturity in 90-140 days, so there is a possibility that it will work here. We have a growing season of about 110 days, on average.

On top of these, our order qualified for 2 free packets of seeds. It should be interesting to see what we get!

So that’s it for our Baker Creek order. I’ll be placing at least one more order for our 2023 before the end of November, but that order will include things that won’t be shipped until spring.

I think these planning stages can be some of the most fun in gardening!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Heritage Harvest seed order in

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It may be the end of November, and I may still be sick, but I can still do at least some garden things!

I got two seed orders in today. This first one is from Heritage Harvest Seed. We ordered from them last year, and I was very happy with them. Plus, they grow their own seeds, and are located even further north than we are, so we can be assured that, barring unusual circumstances (like the flooding we got in 2022!), anything we order there should be able to grow where we are.

Though we do still have seeds leftover for some things, I went ahead and ordered a number of things we ordered last year. Among the things I have re-ordered are: Tom Thumb popcorn seeds (we got none last summer, due to flooding, so for 2023, these will be planted in a completely different location, in a raised bed), Little Finger Eggplant, Canteen, Apple and Yakteen gourds, and Zucca melon (because I’m a sucker for punishment and determined to grow more gourds), Styrian hulless pumpkins and Boston Marrow. I am also getting Georgia Candy Roaster. Last year, we ordered those from Veseys, but I want to try Heritage Harvest’s seeds this time.

New for 2023 are:

Red Warty Thing.

Gotta love that name! I wanted to order these last year, but they were out of stock when I was placing my orders. I wanted to make sure I had some seeds for this year. According to the description, they are great for soups and roasting.

Pink Banana Squash.

This is another one that I had wanted to order last year, but they were out of stock.

Mammoth Sandwich Island Salsify.

My older daughter requested we try salsify, because it apparently tastes like seafood. More specifically, according to the description, this variety tastes like oysters. Apparently, they can be very difficult to harvest and break easily, so she plans to grow them in something deep, like garbage cans (we have a remarkable number of garbage cans around here), so they can be just dumped out to harvest.

Red Wethersfield Onion.

Last year, I was torn between ordering these or another type, so I’m trying these ones for 2023. They are noted as being a good storage variety. There are only 50 seeds per packet, so I ordered two.

We’ll be ordering a lot of different onions for 2023. We just can’t seem to grow enough of them!

Chamomile.

Lawn chamomile grows wild where we are, but this is the larger type that is what you would find in the chamomile teas you buy in stores. Over time, we will be planting a tea garden, and this is our first start!

I’ll be doing an assessment of our 2022 garden later, but we had a lot of failures, especially with the squash. It is unlikely we will have the level of spring flooding we had this past spring again next year, so I hope things will have a better chance of surviving. I was really looking forward to trying the different varieties of winter squash we’d planted, but we’ll just have to try again!

The Re-Farmer

Wet, wet morning

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While the Western parts of the prairies got walloped with snow yesterday, by the time the system reached us last night, it was rain. Some places even got thunderstorms, apparently.

When I headed out this morning, it was still raining pretty heavily, so not a lot of kitties were coming out for kibble! Quite a few of them were inside the cat house, though, so that was good to see. As I went to switch the memory card for the driveway trail cam, I had to walk on the grass to the side of the driveway because it was covered in water.

We seriously need more gravel on that driveway.

While we have not finished winterizing the sun room, we did get the broken glass cleaned up, so I’ve been allowing the kittens to go in. When I topped up their kibble last night, some of them were still in the sun room, so I rigged the doors so that they were mostly shut, but the kittens could still get in and out. Then, because racoons remain a problem, even if we don’t see them, I used my husband’s walker to brace the kibble bin in its shelf, then took the two big bags of kibble my BIL and his family so generously gave us, and tucked them into the old kitchen.

Well, I forgot to put the breaks on, on the walker! This morning, I found the walker had been pushed aside, and the kibble bin open and almost knocked onto the floor. Thankfully, the bin was only half full, so while it was on its side, hung up on some buckets (with a kitten sitting in the kibble!), the kibble wasn’t spilled onto the floor.

Before moving things around, I’d had a shallow bin, designed to fit under beds, on the top of the shelf we used to hold the kibble bins to catch water from the leaking roof. Well, that shelf isn’t there anymore. I wasn’t expecting it to rain this heavily, so there was just stuff set aside against the wall until we could finish cleaning and winterizing the sun room. I had to move those out – and my husband’s walker that had been pushed that far back – so I could set up a bucket to catch the drips.

I will be so happy when that roof finally gets done, though my brother and I are both on pins and needles, afraid our mother will suddenly decide not to pay for it after all. She tends to do that at the last minute, though, so I expect that once the roofers are actually here and the final bill is being tabulated (the total will likely be higher than the estimate, as I expect them to find rot from leaks that needs to be repaired), she’ll try to refuse to pay it. Much like she tried to do after promising to pay for the movers so we would move out here to take care of the place for her.

There was water on the sun room floor, of course, but it’s a concrete floor and not going to be a problem. Seeing how it all flowed across the room to the opposite corner, though, really shows how much the room has shifted since the concrete was poured, and how much that one corner has been undermined.

Speaking of which…

Something knocked the diverter off the downspout above the rain barrel. It had not been full before, but it sure is now, and was starting to overflow. I got the diverter back in place, so it’s not an issue anymore. Getting that barrel empty and set aside for the winter is going to have to be done soon. The girls are going to have to clean the eavestroughs (aka: rain gutters) out again, too. I did pick up rolls of mesh to cover them, but those won’t be put on until after the roof is done. I also picked up a spray sealant to be used after they’ve been cleaned. There are a couple of places where they are leaking. The roof is supposed to be replaced, but I don’t think that includes the eavestroughs.

Looking at the short range forecast, we’re supposed to get a couple of chilly days, with highs barely above freezing, then it’s supposed to warm right up again for about a week, with several sunny and dry days. That will be a great time to get more progress on things, and to finally be able to finish cleaning out and winterizing the sun room. Cleaning the other half of the sun room will require removing the swing bench, the table saw, and a couple of shelves, along with all the stuff in them, outside. Because overnight temperatures have already been going below freezing in there, all the remaining squash have already been moved to the living room. Some of them are still ripening, so they won’t be going to the root cellar, yet.

In putting the stuff back, we need to keep in mind that we’ll be using the sun room as a greenhouse again in the spring. I want to come up with a way to be able to hang those lights we used last spring, more efficiently. If we do it right, the same set up can then later be used in the fall to hang things like strings of onions and garlic to cure.

Wow. I just realized that, if we’re going to be doing things like starting onions from seed again (which we likely will be), we’ll be needing to get those going in just a couple of months. Onions should really be started indoors in January in our area.

The girls and I will go over how the garden went this year and, taking into account the failures due to flooding and other issues out of our control, what worked, what didn’t, what we want to keep doing, what we will stop doing (if only temporarily), and what we don’t want to ever do again! 😄

We have lots of work to get done before the snow flies, and then lots of planning for next year to get working on.

It’s going to be fun!

The Re-Farmer