garden preparation

Fall clean up: starting the squash beds, plus… this could be bad!

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On my list of things to do today was to prep the squash beds for winter.

Of course, things happened, so I started much later than intended – past 2pm – and didn’t get as much done as I’d planned on.

Here is how it looked when I started.

The first thing I had done we pick up the bricks we’d used to weigh down the plastic we used to cover the beds in the spring, and again under some of the plants to protect the stems or support heavier squash.

You can really see which bed had the most successful plants!

Also, notice the raspberry canes to the left on the foreground? Or, should I say, the bare raspberry canes?

The deer have been nibbling the leaves off those, as well as the sunflowers!

I had brought out both the potato fork and the spade to see which would be better to work on the beds.

It turned out to be the fork. After a year under the mulch, the ground was a lot softer than before, but even with the fork, I had difficulties getting past the rocks. We have only one good spade. I don’t want to break the blade on a rock!

Here is how they looked when I finished for the day.

The bed on the left was still a real chore to dig up. With each section I lifted with the fork, I had to break up the soil by hand. That gave me the opportunity to pull out weed roots and the more in-the-way rocks. The bed on the right was much easier to work, and I had a lot fewer rocks that needed to be pulled out. The squash plants were also buried so they can compost directly into the soil.

I was really happy with how much easier the soil was to work with. To compare, I had pushed the spade into the ground next to the mulched area. After working for a while, I took off my jacket and hung it on the spade. A few minutes later, and a gust of wind turned my jacket into a sail and down it went. So I pushed it into the ground again, this time, standing on the foot supports and bouncing my ample weight on it a few times, then hung my jacket back on the handle. The next stiff breeze, and it fell over again! And I didn’t even hit and rocks when I was pushing in the spade! What a difference, working under the mulched squash beds. Not only was the ground much easier to work, I was finding SO many worms! What a great sign. :-)

The next area I will dig up will be the long row at the back, and then the pumpkin hills in the middle. The one hill nearest the back row, I might enlarge to create another longer bed, but the other two are so surrounded with crab grass, I’m just going to dig up a roughly 4′ x 4′ area and pull out as many rhizomes from there as I can.

The main reason I had to stop, though, we because I started to feel rather unwell. It took a while for me to realize something.

I hadn’t eaten yet, other than a couple of freshly baked cookies, before I headed outside.

Usually, I do my morning rounds outside, then have breakfast while going over the trail cam files. Today, I was out earlier to make sure the gates were open for the septic truck. (Which still hasn’t shown up.) Then I heard someone in the kitchen and with our kitchen being so small, I decided to wait until they were done.

Then my husband came over and informed me we were almost out of butter. He is having a good pain day today for a change, and was up to making cookies, not realizing we didn’t have enough butter to make them. Normally, we would have done our monthly shop by now, and there would have been a whole bunch in the freezer, but we had to take care of other things. We’ll be going in a couple of days.

So I made a quick run into town to pick up a few things along with the butter. I’m glad I did, because once I had a data signal, I started getting texts from our plumber. I’d sent him pictures of our well pump when I was in town yesterday, as he requested, and he was responding to them

*sigh*

The first thing he noted was that the new pump is 1/2 hp, while the old pump is 3/4 hp. My brother bought this pump and he knows the system very well, so I knew it would work. It’s just not as powerful. After seeing the pictures of the old pump, from various angles, he thought the problem might be in the well itself. This is something my brother and I had talked about, as he thinks the foot valve might be leaking. The problem is, this is a very old system. He has actually worked in there before – about 20 years ago! – and that was probably the last time anyone has gone into the well.

So aside from it getting harder to find parts for it, it’s going to be fragile. If he starts opening things up to see what’s what, we might end up with no water at all. I could go to a company that specializes in wells, but they don’t like these old systems, either, and he said we would most likely be told we need a new well drilled. We could instead replace the submersible pump in the well, along with the pump in the basement, and that would take care of all sorts of potential problems down there. I asked him for an idea of what those pumps cost, but before he could get back to me, I had to leave town and head home, where I would no longer be able to get text messages. I sent him a message to phone me later and headed home.

Once at home, I emailed my brother to pass on the info, since he knows the system way better than I do. We both agreed that we should just get the pump in the basement switched to the new one, then see how it goes. If we still have problems, then it would be time to have someone go into the well and see what’s what. I hope it doesn’t come to that. Over the years, the well cover has been damaged. It’s a concrete circle with bent rebar handles embedded in the concrete. At some point, one of those handles got broken right off, and the other is bent down against the concrete. I’m not sure how we would get it open.

So I ended up calling the plumber back and leaving a message about starting with switching out the old pump in the basement and seeing how that goes. I also called the septic company to see if they are still coming out today, but we’ve had no call back from them, either. Which is really, really unusual for them.

I don’t like have the gate not only unlocked, but open, for so long. At least I can keep an eye on it through the live feed of the garage security camera.

It’s still afternoon as I write this, but it feels like it should be several hours later, right now!

I have such an urge to just go to bed right now.

The Re-Farmer

Fall planting; Bulls Eye Tulips

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I needed to head into town today, and when I got back, the girls were just finishing planting the last of the bulbs we had. Bulls Eye Tulips.

These have more finicky requirements. They are larger bulbs that need lots of sun, good drainage, and if we want them coming back year after year, deep planting; about 12 inches.

The area selected is in the West yard, among some crab apples and plum trees. This area was cleaned and cleared out of debris two summer ago. With all the dead trees and branches cut away, the ground does get good sunlight, while the remaining branches and surrounding trees protects it from hard rains.

While digging the holes, they found plenty of rocks – so they used them to mark out where the bulbs were planted!

The package came with 8 bulbs in total. When the back ordered items come in, there will be more tulips, which will also be planted in this area. I contacted Veseys, and we can expect our back order in the first or second week of October. Weather Canada has said to expect a long and mild fall and, from the looks of the long range forecast, we should still be good when they come in.

The girls got these in just in time. Shortly after, the winds started to pick up, and it’s blowing pretty good right now. We might be getting another rainfall tonight.

Drainage will definitely not be an issue in this location. In digging the holes for planting, they found the topsoil was only about 6 – 8 inches deep. Then they hit sand and gravel. As far as I know, this whole region is like that. I can remember when the will was dug by the house, after the well in the pump shack failed, and we finally got running water. A trench was dug towards the barn, and pipes laid to provide water to the barn and a couple of drinking fountains for the cows, plus the pipes that got diverted to the septic field. I was pretty young, but the top soil did look quite shallow, and I remember the trench being all through gravel and clay.

Another reason we want to build our soil up. Literally!

The Re-Farmer

Frost warning

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I’m happy to say, that a day of rest seems to be just what the doctor ordered. In fact, I felt so good, and it looked so beautiful outside, I decided to see if there was something I could get started on today.

Because I’m an idiot like that.

The beautiful looking day lied! :-D It was still cold and windy out there! Those lilacs are looking gorgeous, though.

When I went to check the forecast, though, I found a weather alert. We’re supposed to get frost tonight.

I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t get those transplants done!

The girls and I headed out to make sure everything was covered.

The squash bed was a challenge. I didn’t have very many of the plastic containers I was keeping to use as cloches for exactly this purpose. We did, however, still have the five gallon size water bottles from when I did a complete water change of the fish tank (which, I am happy to say, shows no signs of turning cloudy or that mass of algae growing back; it was definitely our well water that was the problem!). I cut a bunch of them in half, and we got all the squashes covered!

I don’t know that the bricks balancing on the necks of bottles will do much good, but it’s worth a try, to make sure the cloches don’t get blown away.

The girls covered the new garden bed with plastic, as well.

The plastic row covers are sandwiched between pairs of boards, so the sprouts won’t get flattened too much.

We didn’t bother doing anything with the potato beds, since the straw mulch will insulate them just fine.

Based on the long range forecast, this should be the last frost of the year. We’re going to start getting hot again, tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here are some more smiles for you! :-)

The girls went to visit with the kittens for a bit, but only Big Rig stayed still long enough for a decent photo. :-D

As David does so well with the kittens, the girls let him come down, too.

He seems entranced by his tiny doppelganger!

:-D

The Re-Farmer

Productive

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First, I must apologize.

I didn’t get a single kitten picture today, to share with you! I never had the chance.

I did visit the kittens, of course. One of the first things I do in the morning is head down there with fresh water for them. When I opened the basement door, Beep Beep was sitting in the window ledge above the stairs, waiting for her moment. As soon as the door opened, she launcher herself into the air and through the door!

In my hapless effort to block her, the door got left open a split second too long.

As Beep Beep raced into the dining room, five cats exploded into the basement.

The kittens, meanwhile, had come running to the stairs, as they usually do.

Fenrir has been the most dedicated at trying to get into the basement, but she does not like the kittens. As soon as she saw them, she bolted back up the stairs, then crouched in the entry, staring at the door, like a hairy gargoyle.

Keith was quite taken aback by the horde of kittens.

Keith is also a bundle of nerves and anxiety.

Next thing I know, Keith is hissing and spitting at a kitten, in total fear. The kitten – Nicco – was busily making himself look big, hissing, spitting and advancing on Keith.

Who ran away and hid under a table.

Two Face was running around, trying to snag a kitten to groom. Every now and then, one would come too close, and she would grab it, do a barrel roll as she wrestled it to the ground, before aggressively mothering it. It would take a few moments before a disheveled kitten would squirm it’s way out, and she would do it again to another one.

Cheddar doesn’t seem to know what to think of them. He kept going from kitten to kitten, sniffing and staring. Once again, it was Nicco who made himself look big, staring him down. Until Cheddar casually reached out with a paw and smacked Nicco vaguely around his head.

David, meanwhile, is totally chill with the kittens. He kept going around, sniffing and grooming and snuzzling, kitten after kitten.

Beep Beep, meanwhile, came down, then went back up, then came down and beep beep beeped at me with her distinctive meow that gave her her name.

Then her daughter, Two Face, started beeping, too.

She has a much higher voice than her mother.

I tried to cuddle Beep Beep, and she was reveling in the attention, but would soon run off upstairs again.

Eventually, I had to grab a broom to try and persuade Keith to come out from under the table. Then I tried to sweep the cats towards the stairs. I was finally able to grab them, one at a time, and toss them into the entry way, closing the door each time, so none would come back down.

Beep Beep ended up upstairs again, and I found myself alone with 5 kittens attacking my feet and trying to climb my legs.

I finally got their water changed, then took advantage of the situation and gave them a little packet of wet cat food. That distracted them enough that I could escape and find Beep Beep. As I suspected, she was looking around the food bowls upstairs. She was looking for wet cat food.

So I snagged her and managed to get her downstairs, where the treat was waiting for her.

By the time it was done, the whole thing left me feeling like I’d been spun in circles! :-D

So…

No pictures of kittens this time.

*sadness*

Today did turn out to be a nicely productive day. I made a trip into town to check out a place I’d seen ads for, saying they did lawnmower maintenance. If I could find a place I could take the mowers to, instead of having to go three quarters of the way to the city, to the place my brother bought our riding mower, that would be great. I never expected having trouble finding a small engine shop locally! There are probably quite a few, but no one that advertises. This place is connected to one of the hardware stores, and carries a lot of the big stuff, and even has a chipper that can be rented. For the amount of wood we need to get chipped, we’re going to go ahead and hire the company that did our trees for us, instead. This place also carries the garden soil, manure and peat that the hardware store itself just doesn’t have the room for.

Walking into the place is like heaven. Everywhere I turned, there were riding mowers, push mowers, weed wackers, all sorts of tools and…

Was that a chain saw display in the back?

Why yes! Yes it was!

I had had zero luck in finding a new chain for the electric chainsaw that we had checked out, last year. We never got to use it, nor the gas powered one, at all last year.

The first thing I asked about, was the lawn mower maintenance. When I told him I wanted to get some work done on our riding mower, his first question was, is it still working? I explained that yes, it’s running fine, but I just want to get some basic maintenance done and the blades sharpened. He told me that I could just drop it off – no appointment needed – but they are really busy with lawnmower maintenance right now. He said that, since it’s still running (not in need of any repairs), to just keep on using it and give them about 2 weeks before I drop it off.

I’ll just leave it for next month.

I then asked him about chain saw chains. He said he would need to see the chain saw to know if they carried the right chain, but they do have sharpening services, too. So I will bring it over one of these days for him to take a look at, and he’ll be able to determine if I just need to get it sharpened, or if I need a new chain.

I then bought a bale of peat and some bag of soil mix. He came out with me to help load it into the van, which was kind of funny, since the lift gate is still broken, and I keep a pole in the back to prop it open. I joked about it being something else I need to get fixed, as he deftly maneuvered around the pole to load the bags into the van.

That done, I decided a stop at the garage would be a good idea.

I asked about my mom’s car. He told me he was going into the city tomorrow, and going to a wreckers. Among the things he’s looking for is the part for my mother’s car. He’d hoped to head out this afternoon, but had too many cars to work on, already. I then asked him if he serviced AC systems. Our air conditioning was working last year, if not particularly well, but this year, nothing. The cost was very reasonable, so we went to book that on his calendar. Then I remembered to ask about the lift gate. Since we’re going to be hauling a lawn mower in the back of the van, using the nice new ramps my brother bought for us, it would be good to not have a pole in the way. ;-) These aren’t very expensive and don’t take long to install, so that’s going to get done, too.

I also remembered to ask him about the driver’s side door hinge. When we bought the van, the original door would drop when opened, and we would have to lift it to close it. Eventually, the latch on the door snapped. It was actually cheaper to replace the door, and the garage we went to at the time tried to find a second hand one for us, but never did. We spent most of the first year we owned the van with a Bungee cord keeping the door shut. Including the drive across provinces, during the move.

My brother had been able to find a door, but because the driver’s side door has the only key lock, he had to take both of them apart and cobble the two together. The original hinge pins broke in the process, but he’d snagged the ones from the vehicle he had salvaged the door from, so that worked out. The door does, however, still drop ever so slightly, and we don’t want to go through all that again. If we can get it fixed now, before it becomes a problem, that would be good.

The problem is, he would have to take it apart and see, in order to give me an estimate. But there are only two possibilities. One, we need new bushings. Two, they would need to take it apart, precision drill a new opening, and weld things back together.

If it’s one, that’s not a problem.

If it’s two, he basically says it would take so long, it might not be worth it, because it would be really expensive, just in shop equipment fees, never mind the time.

So the bushing kit, which is not very expensive, has been ordered, and he will check it and see. I’ll be dropping the van off on Monday morning, and just hanging out in town until it’s done.

It was a rather short trip into town, but it felt like I’d accomplished quite a bit in the process!

Once at home, we were getting into the hottest part of the day, so we stuck to inside stuff until things started to cool down in the evening. I didn’t even bother unloading the van until then. That wagon we got last month is awesome. I was able to haul the bale of peat and bags of soil, all at once, over to the old garden area. Then I started mowing the old garden area with the push mower.

I am so glad my brother was able to get that thing running for us. There is no way we could do this area with the riding mower. It would break in no time!

Also, that drill attachment sharpener I got for the mower blade has made a huge difference! When I sharpened it yesterday, I found it so bashed up, it was hard to tell which side of the blade was beveled, and which was flat!

I’m also so happy we found that bag attachment for this mower. It isn’t very big, and I had to stop to empty it often, which makes for much slower going. However, I am getting so many grass clippings, I decided to keep mowing into areas I would normally use the riding mower for, just so I could get more!

And since I had all these wonderful grass clippings, I decided to use them to mulch around where we planted the sunflowers.

The areas mulched are two wagon loads of clippings. I stopped after finishing this end of the old garden area, and then had to stop. After two hours, I was pretty knackered!

Also, I really need to remember to keep a water bottle with me when I’m doing this!

Meanwhile, after the girls finished what they were working on inside, they came out to remove the logs that were used to frame the area we chose to mulch last year, and where I am planting the squash this year. They have served their purpose, and now they are starting to be in the way as we go around with wheelbarrows or wagon, hoses and soil mixes.

We will not be able to continue this tomorrow, though. Tomorrow is our day to do the monthly shop in the city.

I am really hoping it goes better than last month. Last time was pretty brutal. :-( Even on a good trip, though, we’re pretty wiped out by the time we get home, unload and put everything away.

As for me, I am done like dinner! Time for a shower and, hopefully, early to bed!

Oh, wait. I should have supper first…

The Re-Farmer

Garden interrupted, and kitten status

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I’m going to have to try getting outside to work on things much earlier in the day. It’s getting too hot, way to fast!

I’m not sure I’m up to getting out there when it’s cooler at 5 am, though. :-D

Anyhow…

Today, I dismantled the kitty pool and brought it out to be dirty pool. ;-)

This is two bags of garden soil, two bags of compost, and the remainder of our bale of peat; about 1/3. The pool was just enough for all that, plus room to mix in water.

Which Creamsicle found absolutely fascinating.

The peat takes quite a while to absorb the water, so after spending some time mixing, adding more water, mixing, adding more water and mixing again, I decided to let it sit for the peat to fully absorb as much water as it could. Considering the hottest part of the day was still to come, I figured I would continue when it got cooler in the evening.

Which didn’t happen. :-D

I went into town to meet my daughter for lunch, then took advantage of the time to stop at a hardware store to pick up a few things, including a small coping saw and a file to sharpen our other saws that saw so much use in the last couple of years. It was hot and sunny when I went into the store. When I came out a few minutes later, it was still sunny, but the ground was wet. It had just started to rain.

On the way home, I seemed to drive out of the rain, only to drive straight into a massive downpour and thunderstorm! It wasn’t too bad while I was still on the highway, but a little more than a mile away from home on the gravel road, the deluge came down. I had to slow to a crawl and could barely see past the front end of the van! The rain was hitting hard, but… was that hail, too? I couldn’t tell.

It slacked off a little bit by the time I got to our driveway. I still got soaked as I unlocked the gate. I ended up just leaving it open and, after parking in the garage, left the garage door open, too, as I ran for the house with my bags. By the time I reached the house, I was completely soaked!

The storm didn’t last long, but one thing is for sure. That peat mixture is going to be plenty saturated! :-D

Later, I saw someone in our municipality posting pictures on Facebook, showing the lawn furniture in their back yard that had been blown around, and the marble sized hail that had drifted into corners of the building. !!!

By the time I drove back into town to pick up my daughter, it was down to a light rain. Just this one downpour made a huge, visible difference! It’s like every growing thing just perked up. For all that we still had standing water in ditches and ponds, we still needed that rain!

We’re supposed to get rain tomorrow afternoon, too, but if I can get to it early enough, I should be able to get the soil mix into the holes we dug, and the sunflowers planted, first.

Meanwhile, we have been making a point of visiting the kittens and Beep Beep as often as we can throughout the day. It was my turn to do the litter tonight, so I spent some extra time with them in the process.

Here we have Leyendecker, sampling the cat kibble in the container he’d knocked over, while Beep Beep is eating the kitten kibble. :-D

They seem to quite like all the run around space, even if they do tend to stay close to the bed frame/platform, and their little nest underneath!

I had some interlocking foam squares, like the kind sold as yoga mats or children’s rooms, that I used for blocking crocheted projects. I decided to give them to the kittens. The girls were kind enough to set them up on the concrete in front of the bed frame.

Because I’m a suck. That’s why.

Thankfully, for all the rain we had, the fan is still keeping the floor in the corner nice and dry.

It’s so nice and cool down there!

The Re-Farmer

Garden progress: setting up for sunflowers

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The winds finally died down today, and we were able to prep for the giant sunflowers we will be planting.

To recap, these are being planted for several reasons. One is to have seeds for the birds over the winter (and for ourselves, if we want). Another is to create a wind break and privacy screen at the far end of the old garden area. A potential bonus is that sunflowers are supposed to be good for improving soil, and the area can use all the improvement it can get!

Normally, like anything else grown from seed, the sunflowers would be planted closer together, then thinned out after they germinate. For these giant varieties, they would be thinned out to 2 feet apart.

We’re not going to do that.

I counted the seeds in the packets, and they each have exactly 25 seeds in them.

We will be planting one seed every two feet. If they don’t all germinate and we end up with gaps… well… we’ll just end up with gaps.

I also decided to plant them in a gradual curve rather than in straight lines. To do that, I used these.

The bundle of flags I picked up had 25 in it, so that worked out perfectly. I decided on where I wanted to have the ends and pounded a stake into the ground, with another stake to help guide the paracord, (which my husband had ordered a spool of that just happened to come in the mail today) and a tape measure to place a flag every two feet.

I attached the paracord to the two stakes in the ground, with about 3 feet of slack.

For the first flag, I eye-balled where I wanted it to be in relation to the first stake. The extra stake was used to hold the paracord taut.

I then slid the stake along the cord and used the tape measure to determine where to put the next flag. I continued to do this for each flag.

The hard part was making sure the cord wasn’t getting hung up on grass and weeds, which would mess up the arc! :-D

The end result was a long, gentle curve.

One of the things I realized as I was placing the flags was, there was no way I was going to be able to use my new soil auger. I kept hitting rocks, and even bent the wire of one of the flags!

My daughters were sweet enough to take over and dig the holes while I had to do something else. Then after supper, I got back at it. The first thing was to move the stakes in the ground over about 2 feet. For the second row, I started at the opposite end.

This will give us two overlapping rows that will stretch across the entire end of the old garden area.

Digging the wholes was certainly a challenge. Not using the soil auger was definitely the right decision.

This is an example of how many little rocks we had to deal with, at each flag, just on the surface. The holes ended up being somewhat varying in widths and depths, from having to dig out more rocks, as well as pulling out rhizomes. The riding seat we found in the basement and brought out last summer came in very handy, though the terrain was rather rough to roll around on, thanks to whomever botched the plow job however many years before we moved out here. Still better than bending and stretching!

Digging out the holes was made extra interesting by another battle.

Cartoon Mosquito Clip Art Clipart Free Clipart

Squadrons of mosquitoes were dive bombing me the whole time. Mosquitoes that seemed to treat bug repellent as nothing more than a condiment that was tasty and delicious!

(image source)

The two rows overlapped for 10 holes, at about 2 feet apart.

Tomorrow, weather willing, we will add a very damp soil mix into each hole, and get those sunflowers planted. :-)

Since the kitty pool didn’t work out, I’m thinking of taking it outside and using it to mix the bags of soil, compost and peat together. It’s big enough to fit all the bags we’ve got, and it will be much easier to mix it all together at once, than doing it in batches in a wheelbarrow. We should have enough left over to use elsewhere, too.

I’m really hoping planting the sunflowers like this works. We’re basically breaking all the “rules” doing it like this. :-D But then, pretty much everything we’re doing for gardening this year is an experiment.

As for the kitties, they are now settled with Mom in the basement. Lots of places were set up for them to cozy up into, and the girls were diligent in making sure everything set up for them was either elevated a bit, or at least not directly touching the concrete.

This would be why.

This was the corner my older brother found full of water and starting to mold, the summer before we moved here. A rain barrel outside this corner had been allowed to overflow right against the basement wall, through most of a very wet summer. He cleaned it up and bleached it (then we bleached it again a couple of months ago), and for our past two summers here, it was so dry, we never had an issue. Now, for the first time, water is starting to seep through the concrete – and we’ve had very little rain! Which means it is as we feared; the weeping tile is probably filled with soil and no longer doing their job, thanks to the overflowing rain barrel.

*sigh*

Another thing that will be a big, expensive, fix.

As for the corner, we already made sure the things we put there were raised off the floor. The only exceptions were the pieces of light figures, and the legs for a folding table. The plastic light cover is not a problem, but the metal piece is now raised off the floor, and the metal table legs were move out completely.

This would explain why, when we did a temperature and humidity check in the root cellar yesterday, the humidity was almost up to 80%! The temperature had gone up to about 13C. With a potential cheese cave in mind, the humidity would be good, but the temperature is now a bit too warm. It should be interesting to see if it gets any higher over the summer.

Meanwhile, we’ve now got a fan on the corner to help try it out. The old part basement already has had the blower for a while, to try and keep things drier there, too. We still need to rebuild the mesh cover for the window on that side, so we can open it up for the summer and not have to worry about critters getting in.

Little by little, it’ll get done. :-)

At least we were finally able to get prepping for the sunflowers checked off the to-do list!

The Re-Farmer

Garden progress

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This morning, when checking the soaking carrot seeds, I FINALLY spotted some roots!

For those who are new to following this blog (welcome!), this video shows the technique I am trying.

The first thing I needed to do was make the conrstarch gel. I noticed in the comments that people found the ratio in the video made too thick a gel, so I used 2tsp cornstarch to 1 cup of water. I made more than I needed, since I figured if it worked well for the carrots, I would use it for other things with very small seeds.

It took a while to cook the mixture down to gel state, and I think if I do it again, I would increase the cornstarch a little bit more.

Once the gel was cooked and cooling down, we started getting the new garden bed ready.

I had already raked the soil to even it out, and we gave it a thorough soaking. Then I added a bit of peat to each section and raked it out evenly. After the above photo was taken, it was given another thorough watering.

The gel took a while to cool down so, in between getting things ready outside, I put some of the gel into slide lock bags to cool down after. Then put them in the fridge, and finally putting them in the freezer. They didn’t have to get cold, but they at least had to be cool enough not to harm the seeds.

I prepped 4 bags. One for each variety of carrots, plus one for the parsley.

The instructions for the parsley said to let the seeds soak for a half hour, so that was done while I worked on the carrots. I used a measuring cup to hold the bag of gel up.

Also, the cats somehow managed to knock one of the dishes of carrot seeds upside down. :-( It was the deep purple variety. I was able to salvage most of the seeds, but there was a fair bit of seed loss, too. :-(

Once the seeds were added, I squeezed out as much air as I could, then smooshed the package around to evenly distribute the seeds in the gel.

When it came time to plant the seeds, a corner was snipped off, to make like an icing bag, and the seeds were squeezed into the prepared soil in short rows. By the time that was all ready, the parsley had soaked long enough and those were planted, too.

I’m using a combination of techniques, and one of them is based on square foot gardening. Rather than long rows, they’re being planted in squares. I’ve got the carrots planted in alternating sections, and the parsley is in the middle of the group of three.

I found a roll of plastic in the basement (I think it’s for roofing), so we used some of that to cover and protect the seeds. Those will be removed as soon as sprouts can be seen.

The squares seem very close together, but there really is a fair bit of space in between the plantings.

Also, my daughter is a sweetheart.

She trimmed some branches and made labels for me. :-)

The way things are looking, and using the square foot gardening method, we might be able to plant more here than originally planned. The three varieties of beets will go here, plus I ended up buying some kohl rabi. I don’t know if we’ll have much success with the fennel transplants; there really isn’t much improvement there. What few have sprouted can fit here. The parsley and fennel was originally going to be planted in the old kitchen garden, but I think we’ll continue to build up the soil in there and save that for next year.

Today turned out to be surprisingly hot, so we didn’t stay out for too long. We were forecast to hit 22C (71F) this afternoon, but we ended up reading 26C (78F). We will continue planting tomorrow. I think it is safe for us to start planting things that are supposed to wait until after the frost date. Looking at the long range forecast, we seem to have passed that point early.

Which reminds me. I was hoping to use the fire pit and burn barrel in the next while, so I checked the municipal website to see what the burn bad status was at. We are now on a total burn ban, which means no fire pits or burn barrels, either. That sure didn’t take long! And we still have standing water in the ditches and ponds. Ah, well.

The next few days are going to be very busy ones, as we get more things out into the gardens! I’m looking forward to using that soil auger to prep where we will be planting our giant sunflowers. :-) My mother also gave us some pumpkin seeds that were being given away for free at her local grocery store. They had tiny little envelopes, each with 3 seeds in them, and I had grabbed one, not realizing my mother had already included 2 packets in with a bag of stuff she’d prepared for me to take home. I don’t know what variety they are, but my mom tells me her town has annual pumpkin growing contests, so these might be a giant variety.

I think we’ll just plant them and see what we get! :-D

It should be interesting to see how our first year of gardening since we moved here will turn out. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Change of plans, and a new crib

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

So it looks like my plans to plant the potatoes today is not going to happen. We were expecting rain, but it has turned out to be colder than forecast. While the rain has been light, it has been pretty constant. Which is fine. It just means we have to spend less time soaking the area we’ll be planting the potatoes in, tomorrow.

It might be cold and dreary outside, but Sarlac, the aloe, is enjoying things just fine. That flower spike is just inches from the ceiling!

Of course, one of the first things in my morning routine is to check on the kitties. We’ve been talking about how we wanted to change things up for them, as they get bigger and more active.

In the top right corner of the photo, you can see the crate we’ve been using to put their little nesting box in.

You can also see the dampness, under it.

With the rain today, and more forecast here and there over the next week, this will only get worse. While the crate keeps the kitten’s box from being directly on it, the increased humidity is making the basement feel noticeably colder. We do have a heater down there, but it’s not something that should be left on, unattended, for long.

We had already considered using one of the large boxes my husband’s new computer came in, to make a sort of “play pen” for the kittens. On seeing how much larger and wetter the damp spot is, I started thinking of alternatives. We had intended to place the box itself over a sheet of rigid insulation, which would have prevented any sort of damp puddle from forming at all, in the first place. However, the larger space would be harder to stay warm. The current little nest is well wrapped and small enough that Beep Beep’s, and their body heat alone could keep it nice and snug. Not so, in a larger space.

So…

They are now upstairs. Just a couple of feet from me, as I type this!

We’ve got two boxes set up, one inside the other, so half the space has a “roof” over it. There’s lots of padding on the bottom to keep them soft and warm. Beep Beep wasn’t sure what to make of things when we walked off with all her babies, but once we showed her the new set up, she settled right in.

The babies were very quick to explore their new space, which is about triple the size of what they had before. Then they went right back into a pile on their familiar little bedding. :-D

So far, the other cats have been curious about the new set up, but easily discouraged away, so they won’t jump in. With the box set up between my desk and my crafting table, I can keep a close eye on them.

This means we can start leaving the new part basement door open all the time, and slowly start moving all the litter boxes, food and water bowls, downstairs. There’s plenty of space to store the cat food and litter, too.

I’m looking forward to not having cat litter and kibble tracking all over the house… :-D

Since working in the garden was out, I went into town to run some errands. Since I was in the area, I stopped at the garage to see if they’d been able to look at my mother’s car.

Yes, they had.

Yes, it does need a new differential.

*sigh*

The owner was in the process of trying to track down a second hand one for me. Until then, though, I booked an oil change for Saturday, then asked about tires for our van. Being May, we should be able to safely rotate out of our winter tires by now. ;-) I have our summer tires bagged and waiting, but I would kinda like to get new ones, so I asked for a price on that.

It turned out to be quite out of budget, so when I bring the van in for the oil change, I’ll also bring our summer tires, and get those switched over as well.

One of my other stops was at the hardware store. I was hoping to find replacement hinge kits for the gates in the chain link fence. I was showing a photo to one of the staff when the guy who’d helped me get what I needed to fix our sump pump hose walked by with another customer, and paused to ask how the fix went, and I was happy to tell him what a success it was. He then took a quick look at the photo I was showing the other staff member, who was new enough to not know they don’t carry anything for fences and gate, and was able to recommend other places in town I should be able to find them, then continued on with the customer he had been helping.

With that question answered, I went into the paint section. We have decided to go ahead and paint or stain the old picnic table. It’s not in the best shape, but we could probably get quite a few more years out of it, if we treat the wood. After talking to the lady in the paint department, I decided to go with paint, rather than a stain. My daughter and I had been talking colours, so with that conversation in mind, I chose a bright teal blue. While a quart would probably have been enough, I figure we’ll be painting other things, too, so I got a gallon. It was funny to see how excited the lady who was helping me got when she saw which colour I chose. Apparently, bright colours are not typical choices people make, but it’s something she prefers herself. She asked to see pictures of the table when it’s done! :-D

I got a business card for one of the managers, and have already emailed her to tell her how great the staff has been. I know stores get complaints all the time so, if I can, I try to make sure to give credit and commendations, whenever I can!

While there, I was also able to pick up some peat and composted manure. I want to put some of that down first, then put the potatoes on it, add a thick layer of straw, then add some peat on top, more to keep the straw weighted down, but also help retain moisture. None of the videos I’ve seen about this way of growing potatoes has suggest this, but we have definitely noticed that wind can be an issue and figured, it at least couldn’t hurt!

Hopefully, I will be able to get this done tomorrow. We now have rain forecast for tomorrow afternoon, but it’s also expected to be much warmer – and staying warm – than today, so the potatoes should be fine.

Over the next day or two, I hope to get those carrots and parsley seeds in, too.

Weather willing! :-)

The Re-Farmer

I know what I’m doing tomorrow!

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

Today I took my husband into the city for a medical appointment, but of course I had to check the kitties, first!

They are getting more and more active! We’re going to have to put them in something deeper, soon, so they don’t start crawling around the basement. At their size, there are too many things they can get into, that we couldn’t be able to get them out again! :-D

My husband and I left early enough to hit the post office, first, and ended up swinging by home again to drop things off. My husband had finally got his retroactive disability tax credit, and he used some of it to get a much needed new computer. Not something we wanted sitting in the van while we were in the city!

His appointment went well, though the drive was quite painful. It was for some tests in Nuclear Medicine, in the same hospital as the cardiac clinic. I was not allowed to come in with him, though. We arrived early, as is our habit, and I expected to have lots of time to walk around on a beautiful day, playing Pokemon Go. They must have taken him in early, because he was done much faster than I expected. Which is a nice change, even if the reasons for it are not to nice. :-/

His computer was not the only thing to arrive in the mail. I got a parcel I was expecting to come in tomorrow.

My Yukon Gem potatoes have arrived!

Which means I need to get them planted right away. Looking at the forecasts, tonight we’re supposed to reach 0C (32F), and that’s the coldest it’ll get overnight from now on.

I had been thinking about where and how we would plant the potatoes. With our rock hard soil in most places, I decided to go with a completely new and different method from what I’m used to. Here are some videos about what I am going to try.

The only thing is, I don’t have hay, nor was any available. I just have straw. I hope it will do as a substitute. I’ve seen other articles and videos that used straw, so I think it should.

With this in mind, I made use of the frames from the goat catching pen we’d made. The long sides are roughly 8 ft x 4 ft. A perfect garden bed size. So I am using them to mark out where I want to put the potatoes.

I will remove them, after I’ve finished covering the seed potatoes. For the 6 pounds of potatoes I have, this should be enough. I soaked the areas thoroughly, and will soak them again tomorrow before we start again. We are expecting some rain tomorrow (I hope!), but it won’t be much. By Sunday, we are supposed to hit 21C!! (70F) so I want to make sure it’s all thoroughly covered and watered before the heat hits.

We are also going to have to watch out for the Potato Beetle!

He kept us company while we started on the future potato beds.

I had considered setting them up where we’d covered with straw last year, as I am sure we won’t be having as many squash to transplant as I had hoped. There’s still a possibility that more seedlings will come up before the end of the month, so I figured I may as well just go off to one side, instead.

How well this works will help us decide what to do as we increase the amounts and varieties of potatoes we grow in the future. If we can get a good crop, without having to plow or till this hard, rocky ground, that would be really awesome!

The Re-Farmer

A bit of prep and clean up

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Yesterday, the girls were able to take our two black tarps and set them up on a future garden bed area.

We mulched this area with straw last year, as a start to try and amend the soil and add organic matter to it. The old garden area had been plowed probably the fall before we moved in. I don’t actually know. It left the entire area very rough, but the ground itself is incredibly hard and full of rocks. I remember as a child, we were constantly picking rocks out of here, though one section (now full of trees) was so bad, my parents stopped trying to plant anything in it.

We want to amend the soil by adding organic matter to it, but we have also not decided where we will be permanently adding garden beds. For much of this area, we are already planning of eventually putting fruit and nut trees, though for this year, outside of the section in the photo, we will be planting giant sunflowers.

The black tarps are there just to warm the soil faster. Along the North side, I plan to plant birdhouse gourds in a row running East to West. In front of it, we will plant pattypan squash and the zucchini mix, in rows running North to South, all with trellises.

That may change, if none of the birdhouse gourd seeds sprout! Still no sign of them right now.

After this year, I hope we will have cleaned things up and worked things out enough to decide where we want to plant raised bed gardens. And by “raised bed”, I don’t mean the ones I’ve seen videos of, where people just border an area with rocks or a layer of bricks that get referred to as raised beds. I am thinking of beds that may be as high as 3 or 4 feet. Accessibility is what I have in mind for these, as my body ages and I know my mobility in my hips and knees will continue to decrease. This means finding permanent locations, and from what I’m seeing, this may end up being on the South side of the house, rather than the North.

We shall see.

Among the other things I finally got to today was dismantling the cat condo I put together out of cardboard boxes and rigid insulation. The remains of the boxes went to the burn barrel area, but I wanted to keep the insulation for potential future uses.

I am amused by the very defined areas that cats used it for scratching! These pieces were all in the backs of each “condo”, and the scratches near the “ceiling”.

No wonder other pieces were falling inside. I cut them in sizes that would support each other. That doesn’t work if they get moved around by enthusiastic scratching! :-D

Another thing I finally set up for a bit of cleaning was the large crocheted blanket that was set up on my dad’s old swing bench, to help the cats keep warm.

The peed and crapped all over it. :-(

I’d already draped it over the sawhorses and gave one side a thorough soaking and de-pooping with the hose. Today, I did the other side on the clothes line.

The blanket, on its own, is already pretty heavy. Full of water, it probably weighs more than 20 pounds. It stretched the clothes line until the bottom was piled on the ground. The clothes line is on a pulley system, so clothes can be hung from the platform at one end, and the line moved as needed. (When I was a kid, there were three lines set up, but there’s just the one, now.) So I used some rope to tie the top and bottom parts of the line closer together, then slid that over to lift the blanket off the ground a bit.

I had actually tightened the line before putting the blanket on it, too!

We have another, smaller blanket we use for the cats. It was covering a shelf, so it didn’t get filthy like this one did. It, too, got a soak from the hose to try and clean it. Both are way to heavy to ever put into a normal washing machine, so a hose is the best we can do, right now!

I am hoping that, sometime next week, we’ll finally be able to empty the sun room to give the floor a thorough cleaning. We should be able to continue cleaning out the old kitchen, too, so we can turn it into a pantry.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer