garden tour

Our 2026 Garden: more scapes, garden tour video and a couple of surprises

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Today, we’ve had rain off and on throughout, with a brief period where the sun actually came out. As I write this, we are under a severe thunderstorm alert, which is a whole lot better than the tornado alerts other areas were getting. Large swaths to the south and west of us got storm damage and at least one tornado touching down. We are very fortunate in our location. Even today, I could hear thunder, but all the storms went around us. Our weird climate bubble has protected us again!

I did get a chance to do my morning rounds, if a bit on the late side, in between rain. I was able to harvest more scapes.

At this rate, I’ll have enough to dehydrate a bunch, which will then be ground to a powder. I did that last year and it was the handiest thing ever!

Some time back, I had moved the seed tray of winter squash, melons and cucumber off the portable greenhouse frame and set it in the open on our front steps. I don’t know why I bothered, and yet…

Look what I found today.

The first image is of a Golden Hubbard seedling from the second sowing that finally germinated. The second image is a Canary Yellow melon.

Yes, I’ll transplant them somewhere, even though the chances they will produce fruit that reaches maturity is very low. Especially the Hubbard squash, which needs 95-110 days for maturity. The melon needs 80 days. We have maybe 70 days before our average first frost. Still, we have had years where we didn’t get frost until well into November. This year is supposed to have a Super El Nińo which, in our region, usually translates into heat waves and drought.

I actually poked around in the seed starting mix in the tray, and it looks like we will actually have more things popping up!

Yes, I will transplant anything that does. Chances of them reaching maturity may be low, but possible. I’d rather give them the chance. It certainly doesn’t hurt to try.

This afternoon, during that brief period we had sunshine, I got out the shake and feed fertilizer we picked up during our Costco trip. The instructions say to work the granules into the top couple of inches of soil, but that’s not really an option. Especially with the mulched beds. So I just scattered it. This stuff can also be applied in water. Between the rain we’ve been having and watering the garden in between, the plants will get something out of it. The granules are supposed to be a slow release over 3 months. Every little bit will be a help.

We shall see soon enough, I guess!

Meanwhile, I finally got around to editing the garden tour video I took on the last day of spring. I got one of my daughters to watch the video when I was done to check for any errors I missed or let me know if anything should be fixed or changed. When I messaged them to ask if one of them could come down, my older daughter was able to do it.

Apparently, it’s hilarious. She burst out laughing several times. Mostly because of the cats, but a few other things, as well. I wasn’t trying to be funny, which is probably why it actually was. It just finished uploading onto YouTube, so here it is now!

I hope you enjoy it.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: May garden tour video

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Today, I’ve been pushing to get things in the ground. Normally, I wouldn’t even try doing the transplanting until after June 2, when the risk of frost is theoretically past. Instead, we’ve got the heat and a thunderstorm coming in a few days. Soil thermometer tells me the soil is more than warm enough for direct sowing and transplanting – too warm, for some things. So I’m going for it.

I got as much as I could before it started getting too hot. It’s past 6:30 as I write this, and we’re still at 28C/82F. I’d hoped to get back out later today, but we’ll see. Aside from getting things planted in the garden, the lawn seriously needs to be mowed. It can’t be done in the cool of the morning, as the grass is too wet, and I needed to focus on the planting.

My brother and his wife had stayed the night in their caravan, though, and he was an absolute sweetheart. He checked on the push mower and the riding mower they have available for us to use and tested them out, saving me the time of having to do the maintenance checks myself. I can just start them up and get going.

I got a lot done, which I will write about later. Today, when forced inside by the heat, I finally got the video I took on the 20th put together into a garden tour video. It’s was hard to go through the clips and not what to start over – so much has changed in 10 days! We went from cold, rain and even snow, to brutal heat waves.

I resisted.

So, here it is. Our May garden tour video.

Enjoy!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: March garden tour

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Today being the first day of spring, I just had to do a garden tour video.

😂🤣😂🤣

Well… it was warm, sunny and things were melting all over, at least. The snow is getting super soft, which made it actually harder to walk through, even where paths were shovels, as it would sometimes give way under my feet and I’d sink when I wasn’t expecting to.

With conditions like that, it made for a pretty short video. I hope you enjoy the tour!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: August garden tour video

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I’ve been trying to take recordings on the same day every month – usually the 21st, as that’s usually the first day of spring. I did take recordings yesterday, but I waited too long and it was getting too dark, so some of the videos really sucked.

So I tried again this morning, and here we are! There has actually been a decent amount of growth since last month. Enjoy!

After doing my morning rounds, I made a small shopping trip to the nearer city – we were running lot on kibble again, so it was a good time to pick up a few other things we would run out of before our first stock up shopping trip next week. By the time I got home, we were getting hit with intermittent rain throughout the afternoon. Even a brief downpour that had me waiting things out in the garage until it was done!

In checking the basement, though, it really show how dry things have been. In the summer, the old basement, which has no weeping tile, can get very wet, and it’s not unusual to have pooling water that I sweep into the floor drain. Even the new basement has a corner that gets quite wet. The weeping tile drains past the floor drain into the septic tank, and we sometimes see flowing water in the floor drain from under the new basement. We keep blower fans and pedestal fans going to dry and keep things dry, and the sump pump gets quite a work out.

This summer, we have had some damp areas, but mostly it’s been in the corner where the well pump is, and that is from condensation. We haven’t been running the dehumidifier as, when I did get it going, it started making some rather unfortunate noises. It is very old, so we would be better off replacing it.

I checked the basements today, and even that corner is almost completely dry, with just one fan running. The floor drain is barely damp, so there’s pretty much nothing draining from the weeping tile under the new basement. This tells me that, while it’s been raining enough that I haven’t had to water the garden lately, the water table is still really low, and the ground is still really dry, in spite of the wonderful rain we’ve been having.

We’re not expecting rain here again for quite some time. What we are expecting, on Sunday night (two nights from now), is for the overnight temperatures to drop to 5C/41F. That wasn’t supposed to happen until the first week of September. Which means I want to at least cover the peppers and eggplant, and hopefully the summer squash, too. It’s supposed to warm up again, with very pleasant overnight temperatures, but all it takes is one cold night to kill the more tender plants.

Of course, the forecasts change so often, it might not be an issue – or it might get even colder than predicted.

We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess!

The Re-Farmer