garden

Our 2026 Garden: winter sowing spinach and Swiss Chard, and a small harvest

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I had a wonderfully productive day in the garden today, so I am splitting things up into a couple of posts.

I decided to shift gears today. After looking at what I was wanting to winter sow and where, I decided to leave cleaning up the last two beds in the main garden area for later. Possibly until spring, depending on how things go over the next while. I needed to move on to other areas. Areas I knew would be faster to work on, since I wouldn’t be dealing with the roots and rocks situation!

The priority was going to be the old kitchen garden, but first I decided to do the winter sowing in the garlic bed. I didn’t want to have the plastic cover over the garlic for too long, as I was concerned the mini greenhouse it created might mess with the garlic.

Here is how it looked, after the plastic was removed.

I’d already raked up as many leaves as I could stuff into the wagon and the wheelbarrow for mulching.

As for the plastic, I was going to roll it up for storage, but remembered the low raised bed I had recently cleaned up. The cats have been digging in it, so I tided that up, then just shifted the sheet over.

The boards and bricks that had weighted down the sides against the hoops before are now being used to keep the plastic snug against the soil, and from blowing away. I found a short log that I could roll the excess up into. Later on, I did take all those rocks you can see at the end, and set them on the plastic, under the roll. It is slightly elevated, and the wind was moving it around quite a bit, considering how litter wind we had today. The rocks weighing down the other end weren’t enough, so I found a short board I could wrap the plastic around and weighted that down with the rocks. If it were spring, this would be a good solarization set up. For now, it’ll just keep the soil a bit warmer, and keep the cats from leaving me more “presents”. 😄

Then it was time to get back to the garlic bed, and clear away the hoops. With the twine marking the three rows of garlic, I used those as a guide while using stick to create furrows in between. I went back over them with my hands to lightly compact the bottoms for better soil contact – and remove as many little rocks as I was able to!

For the varieties, I chose American Spinach and Yellow Swiss Chard.

I didn’t mark the rows, so this picture is to help me remember what I planted and where!

I chose this variety of spinach because, after reading the back, it seemed the most appropriate for the location, as well as winter sowing. The Yellow Swiss Chard is a new variety, with an unusual colour for Chard, so I wanted to give it a go. Both packets still have seeds left, so we could potentially do another sowing in the spring, after these have germinated.

The seeds got lightly covered, and gently tamped down, again for better soil contact. I had made the furrows deep enough to form shallow trenches. The soil was damp and didn’t need watering – I don’t want them to germinate too early! – but next year, the trenches will help hold water, in case we end up with another drought year. Plus, it makes it easier to see where the seeds were sown.

You can see that in the next picture, along with the “first” mulching of grass clippings taken from other beds. Because the garlic is so close to the outside of the bed, and the bed has no log frame, I wanted to give the sides extra insulation. When the leaf mulch is removed in the spring, the grass clippings will be left as erosion and weed control.

I was originally going to remove the twine and stakes marking the garlic rows, but decided to leave them, and put the leaf mulch right on top, which you can see in the last photo. I finished off both the wheel barrow and the wagon of leaves before it was done. I got another wagon load to finish mulching the garlic bed, and had just enough left over to mulch the Albion Everbearing strawberries I’d transplanted from their original choked out bed to beside the new asparagus bed. The strawberry plants were still very green! Hopefully, they will survive the winter and we’ll have nice, big strawberries next year.

So the garlic bed is now DONE!!!

With the stakes left behind, the bed will be visible after the snow falls. This area gets very flat with snow in the winter. If we can get at the beds this winter, I would want to dig snow out from the paths and onto the winter sown beds for even more insulation – and moisture – in spring.

That done, I started moving my tools and supplies over to the old kitchen garden, where I wanted to work next, but first, I decided to gather a small harvest.

I dug up just a few Jerusalem Artichoke plants around the edges of the bed, and this is what I was able to gather from under them. I will leave the rest of the bed to overwinter. Later on, I’ll use loppers or something to cut the plants, which are still very green, and drop them on the bed as a sort of mulch.

The Jerusalem Artichokes (aka: sunchokes) did not grow very tall this year, compared to others. I did water it at times but, I’ll admit, it was largely ignored this year. As with everything else, I think the heat, the drought and the wildfire smoke set them back. I think they also got less light this year. The Chinese Elm trees beside them had been pruned, but the branches have grown back. I want to get rid of them entirely, because of the billions of seeds they drop in the spring, but for now we’ll just try to prune them again, when we can.

As for the sunchokes, I noticed a difference this year. For starters, I didn’t find any of those grubs I found so many of, when I harvested this bed completely, last time. Sometimes, I’d find them half burrowed into a tuber – both living and dead! Other times, I’d see the holes, then find a dead grub inside when cutting open the tuber. I was not impressed! This time, I saw zero grub damage. Sweet!

The tubers themselves are actually less nubby, too. A lot of the ones we harvested at the end of the season last year had so many nubs on them, they were hard to clean. This time, there are a couple of nubby ones, but most are smoother. Which I much prefer!

With leaving the rest of the bed to overwinter, I hope that we will have a much better growing season overall, and a lot more plants to harvest from. That seemed to work out when we did it before, as last year’s harvest was quite decent.

This done, I could finally move on to the old kitchen garden and start on the beds there.

Which did take longer than expected, but for a very different reason this time!

I’ll share about that in my next post.

See you there!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: yes, there’s still things growing, and seed sorting

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Today turned out to be too damp to work on more garden beds outside. Another day lost when there are very few days left to get the beds ready for winter sowing. Hopefully, I’ll get more progress done over the next couple of days. After that, we’re supposed to have another day of rain, and then it’s actually supposed to slowly warm up a fair bit, so I should still have time to get beds ready and winter sowing done.

While I’m focusing on the main garden beds right now – they are the largest and most difficult, thanks to the tree roots I’m battling – we do actually still have things growing! The greens mix I sowed in the old kitchen garden still has a few things that have done quite well with the frosts we’ve had.

The most visible are the Swiss Chard. We’ve just been harvesting leaves from the larger plants as we want some, and they soon fill out with more.

The first photo in the slide show above show the two largest of them – the ones we’ve harvested from the most! There are other, smaller ones in the bed. These had germinated in areas where the kohlrabi was growing, so they got shaded out. Interestingly, I harvested a few kohl rabi but cutting the stems at the bases, rather than pulling the whole plant, and the stumps are growing new leaves!

All of the winter sown seed mixes had onions seeds, which didn’t make it, for the most part. This bed has a few poking up, including a few clusters of greens. As those greens have gotten bigger, however, their leaves turned out to be flat! They look like garlic! Now, we did have a couple of garlic show up in this bed. In a previous year, we planted garlic in it, and it seems a couple of cloves that hadn’t germinated then, survived to germinate this year. The thing is, this bed was completely reworked to make the soil as fluffy as possible before the winter sown seed mix was added. I never saw garlic cloves. Looking at the clusters, if those are garlic, they look like they are growing out of a whole bulb of cloves, not individual ones!

I’ll be digging them up as I clean the bed and, if they are indeed garlic, they will be replanted and mulched for the winter.

One of the garden related things I did today was start going through the seeds I’d collected and set out to dry in the cat free zone, aka: the living room. Today, I started jarring some of them up.

In the first photo, I’ve got some of them in spice jars that were gifted to us. There are the mixed Jewel nasturtiums, radish seeds from whatever plants had pods ready (we had 4 or 5 different types of radish in the root vegetable seed mix), Super sugar snap peas, and the Hedou Tiny bok choy. I had to look up the name for those. I keep wanting to call them Hinou instead of Hedou, and I don’t know why!

In the next picture, I’ve separated carrot seeds out from their clusters. Same with the onion seeds, after that. The last picture is the Jebousek lettuce seeds I’d collected by trimming off the stalks. They are now separated out from their stalks and will be left to dry out some more. Some of them are still surprisingly green.

I’ve also started planning on where I want to do the winter sowing, and choosing what will go where. There are a number of things I need to consider. Some faster growing/maturing things will be planted closer to the house, while stuff that will take much longer before they can be harvested will be further from the house. Some will need extra protection from deer and/or insect damage. Others will be interplanted with things that will be sown or transplanted in the spring. I’m even considering things like which things will get harvested the most often, for the high raised bed.

Which means none of what I’ll be winter sowing. That bed is going to get bush beans again. Must easier on the back to harvest from there! I had bush beans in there a few years ago, and it was SO much easier to find and pick the beans.

I picked up so many seeds, taking advantage of MI Gardener’s sales on their already low priced (even taking into account the dollar difference) seeds, that we have lots of extras, and that doesn’t even take into account the seeds I already have in stock. We can pick and choose what we want to try growing this year. I’ll be going through them with my daughter’s, too, to see what interests them.

In other things…

We’ve heard from the company that’s replacing our door and frame. Today was out, because of rain, and the installers don’t do Saturdays, so Monday is the earliest it will be installed. Monday, however, has a 70% chance of rain, so it will likely be done on Tuesday. I have my eye appointment on Tuesday, and my daughter will have to drive me home, but it’s not until the afternoon, so that’s not an issue.

I’ve also been in touch with the woman who is taking 6 yard cats tomorrow, with a time and place to meet arranged. She says she has a kibble donation for us, too, which is greatly appreciated! The three littles are so small, they can go into the same carrier together. Being together will probably help keep them calmer, too. Four carriers in the truck will be much easier to arrange than six! Especially since I want to refill a couple of water jugs while I’m in town.

This evening, before the light was gone, I got my mother’s angel statue set up by the trail cam, facing the gate. I hope I’ve secured it to the block it’s on well enough. It’s rather top heavy. Ideally, it would be secured to a post hidden behind it. Maybe with something pretty, or at least a neutral colour to match the neutral colour of the statue, around her waist so it looks like it’s supposed to be there. When I’m able to, I’ll drag out some larger rocks to set around the bottom to hide the block it’s on for now. Eventually, the rocks will form the walls of a slightly raised flower bed around the base of the angel.

I’m even thinking of moving my mother’s Mary statue to be part of the display. It’s currently mostly hidden by the mock orange beside the laundry platform. Unlike the angel, though, this statue is concrete. It weighs anywhere from 80-100 pounds. No chance of that one blowing away in the wind!

This will be a longer term work in progress. It’s going to involve a lot of digging and the hauling of a lot of heavy rocks! For now, the main priority is to make sure the angel doesn’t get blown over. Especially now that we know how easily it breaks!

I haven’t told my brother that I’ve set it up, yet. I am pretty sure he’ll be coming out this weekend again. He still has plenty to do with his own stuff, but our motion sensor light over the door has stopped working. We thought it just needed a new bulb and tested it by turning it on manually, but it still didn’t work. I think he intends to replace it completely, since he asked me to send him pictures of it in daylight, after I sent him a video of the light occasionally flashing like a strobe light.

In the end, even though I didn’t get stuff done outside because it was so wet, I did manage to have a productive garden related day!

I’m really chafing about not getting those beds ready faster, though! 😄😄

The Re-Farmer

Victory, fixing an angel, wind damage, and finally done!

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I’d say I did have a productive day today, though not quite how I originally planned.

Being a warmer day, I was going to head outside to work in the garden earlier, but with my telephone appointment from the sports injury clinic in the afternoon, I decided I didn’t want to be working in the dirt before handling the phone.

So I worked with epoxy, instead.

My mother had an angel statue in her apartment for many years. It’s meant to be outdoors in a yard or garden, but she kept it in her living room. It’s about three and a half feet tall and, I’ve determined today, made of fiberglass.

My mother has been trying to get us to take things or claim things of hers for when she “goes up up”, and she decided the angel should go here to the farm. My brother and I decided that it will be set up by the gate, for our vandal to see the next time he gets all creepy for the cameras again. My mother loved that idea!

As we were taking it from her place, though, my brother discovered one of the wings was cracked. We didn’t want water to get in, so we wanted to use some epoxy on it to seal it up, first.

I decided I would do this today, so that we could get it outside by the weekend. We already have a spot for it, with a chunk of old side walk block for it to stand on. I just have to figure out how to secure it, or the angel will go flying in the wind!

I had picked up some clear epoxy for it. When my brother came out this past weekend, he brought me some clear epoxy for it, too – the exact same stuff that I’d picked up! So we have extra now. 😁

The type I got has a plunger that squeezes out both the resin and hardener in equal amounts at the same time, which made things easy. I mixed a bit up and applied it to the crack. There’s no way to clamp such an odd shape, though, so I had to try and press the edges of the crack together with my hands while the epoxy set.

Which is when the entire wing broke off.

!!!

So now I had to figure out how to set the angel so I could use gravity to help me hold the wing in place, so I could epoxy the whole thing together. At least we could see that no water would get into the body of the angel.

As I tried setting the angel flat on the floor, I heard another cracking noise.

The angel is holding a bird in its hands. I just broke a wing tip off.

*sigh*

I was able to lean the angel against a shelf, applied the epoxy to the wing and had to stand there and hold it in place for at least 5 minutes, which is what the packaging says is the set time. It was probably closer to 10 minutes before I felt I could let it be and could go do something else for awhile.

While I was standing there, holding the wing in place, I could see on the other wing why it broke off so easily. The wings were added onto the angel separately, and I could see a seam where the wing joined the body.

You can see on the second picture, how it looked before I finally dared straighten the angel back up again. Then I mixed up a bit more epoxy, and attached the broken wing tip onto the bird. I had to sit there and hold it in place, too. This time, I remembered to use the timer on my phone. After 5 minutes, I moved away to start putting away the epoxy syringe into its packaging when I heard a clunk. The wing tip fell off! So I held it for another 10 minutes. It seems to be holding fine, now.

When it gets set out, I’ll probably just find a way to tie it down to the concrete base to keep it from blowing away, for now. Eventually, I will make a little flower garden around it. Since that area is lower and tends to flood in the spring, I am thinking to dig out some of the sod in the lower area, where I can see someone started to make a ditch at some point, and use that as the base to build up soil around the agnel. I am thinking of bringing rocks to frame the flower bed. Digging up sod from nearby will create a deeper, mini-pond like area for the spring run off to collect in, and maybe I won’t be slogging through water when switching out the trail came for a change!

That is for the future, though. The important thing is so make sure the wind won’t carry the angel away!

Like it tried to do with this tree I noticed while doing my evening rounds today.

We never heard it go down, but it clearly came down during the recent high winds. You can see the difference in the wood from the freshly fallen tree and one that fell many years ago.

This tree is one of the ones I wanted to harvest for raised bed walls. It’s hung up on other trees, but pretty low to the ground, so I should be able to harvest it to use in the garden, still.

Anyhow…

After I got the angel done, I basically just stayed indoors until I got my call. The doctor was right on time, too! It was a very quick call. When the doctor asked how I was doing, I was able to give him a glowing report on what a huge difference the injection made for my hip. From the sound of his voice, I don’t think he gets such an enthusiastic response very often! 😄 In the end, all he had to do was tell me to get back to them should I have issues again in the future, and we were done.

When it was time to head outside, my daughter came out with me to help put away the things I organized last night. I fed the cats first, and she took advantage of that to try and pet as many kittens as possible. There are a few that are starting to allow touches, if not outright pets.

There was, however, a major victory.

She was able to pick up and cuddle Smokey!

Smokey was purring and snuggling and enjoying every minute of it!

Oh, she is going to make someone very happy when she gets adopted out!

Just a few more days, and she’ll be off to the rescue with her brother, along with four others, for fostering as they get prepped for adoption. She and her brother, plus one other cat, are large enough for spays and neuters. The three littles we’ll be snagging will need to grow bigger before they are ready.

Once my daughter sadly put Smokey down, she went ahead of me to the old garden shed to make some space in it, and get the rolling seat in, first. From there, I started bring stuff over for her to put away in an organized fashion. She’s very good and Tetrising things!

Once everything was put away, I wanted to finally finish off the garden bed I’ve been working on for way too long now! Between being pulled away to other things, and the weather, it’s been very slow going even without the issues with roots.

It is, however, now finished!

I had so little left to do, but there were so many tree roots in there! I can’t believe how bad it was! No wonder the peas and carrots didn’t do as well as they could have. It wasn’t just drought conditions! I’m amazed they survived at all, with so many roots choking them out.

Once the bed was leveled out some more – the back of a fan rack is great for that – I brought out the plastic that was used to cover the winter squash, folded in half, so the big hole was not an issue, and set that over the bed, to protect it from cats until I can winter sow into it. Even while I was working on it, not only was I finding “presents” the cats had left, but when I stepped away to do things, like get the loppers to cut the larger roots, I came back to find fresh presents in the soil! Grommet (you can see him in the second photo) was particularly interested in what I was doing and, at one point, was about to use the spot I was working on, like I’d dug it out just for him to use as a litter box, while I was right there, picking out roots, weeds and rocks!

What a cheeky bugger!

That done, it was time to head inside for sustenance and hydration that my daughter prepared for me. I didn’t head out again as, by the time I was done, it was getting too dark.

Meanwhile, I’ve heard back from the company about our main entry door replacement. The door was delayed during the pre-painting process, but it will arrive tomorrow afternoon (Thursday). The guy was working on booking the installers, but it’s expected to rain on Friday, so he’s hoping they can come in on Saturday.

*sigh*

I’m looking at the forecast now. It has changed, of course. We are now expecting to get rain starting tomorrow afternoon, continuing off and on through Friday.

Which means that if I’m going to get more beds cleaned up and ready for winter sowing, I’d better be getting out there much earlier tomorrow!

Hopefully, the remaining beds won’t be as ridiculously full of roots like this one was, and they will go faster! There are four beds left to do in the main garden area – these are the 18′ long ones, so I want to get them done, first. There is a 9’x3′ bed, plus a 4′ square bed to do in the east garden area, and then the old kitchen garden needs to be done. Once the main garden beds are done, the others should go a lot faster. Aside from being smaller beds, they shouldn’t have as many tree roots growing up into them!

Looking at the long range forecast, it does look like we’ll have the weather to get this done. Amazingly, it has changed from the possibility of snow in the last week of October (I can’t believe the month is half gone already!), to warmer temperatures, and even a day that’s forecast to hit a high of 20C/68F! Then it’s supposed to rain during the last 5 days of October. That’s when we’ll be doing our city stock up trips, so that actually works out for me.

Of course, the forecast will change when I look at it again, tomorrow. I’ll take what I can get for pleasant weather, though. It’s not as pleasant as the one fall where we got our first frost in November, but still better than getting snow storms, like some have gotten up north already, but I’ll take what I can get!

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: winter squash and garden clean up

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When I was doing my morning rounds, everything was still covered in frost, as we dropped below freezing last night.

I noticed the cover on the winter squash, which I haven’t lifted for awhile now, looked rather different.

Yes, there was frost on the cover but, if you look at the next photo in the slide show above, much of that frost was coating the inside of the cover!

I waited until things warmed up after I’d run my errands today before taking the cover off to see. In the third photo, you can see that all the plants were killed by frost. The next few photos are of the winter squash that seemed to have survived the cold. Two Baked Potato and three Mashed Potato squash made up the littler harvest you can see in the last photo of the slideshow above. The little ones should still be okay to eat. I am curious if the largest one has mature seeds inside. These are not varieties that produce large squash, so that one might actually be the full mature size.

That done, I then started working on gathering up all the hoops and stakes and netting and protective collars. The plastic cover that was over the winter squash got folded up length wise – it has a hole in it but, folded in half lengthwise, it should still be useable – a couple of times before getting rolled up.

Folding a very long, damp sheet of plastic took quite a while! Thankfully, there wasn’t much wind, but what little breeze there was sure didn’t help!

The trellis netting and the stakes holding them got taken down. Finding a way to store the netting, which has 4″ squares, without getting it all tangled took some doing.

For the past while, I’ve been putting the material together by the tree stump bench near the old garden shed. Aside from what is still covering the garlic, I think I’ve been able to gather everything from all the garden beds. I’d already partially sorted and bundled some of it. Today, I worked on finishing off the organizing, bundling and collecting it all.

The first photo above is how the garden looked, after I took all the stuff down. The garlic bed will be done after I’ve winter sown something with it, then give it a thick mulch of leaves. Until then, the cover is needed to protect the bed from cats wanting to use is as a litter box!

The next photo is all my bundles of stakes, hoops, the hoop nets I can still use, and even the twisted up wire hoops. I’ve got my soaker hoses all rolled up. The garden hoses will be done soon, too, but they are still being used. Ties, clips, short stakes to hold the Pexx hoops in place, and even the pieces of pool noodle used to go over the support posts that had twine threated through them, when used to hold netting over a bed to keep the cats out. I’m even hanging onto the water bottles that were set on the tops of stakes to rattle in the wind and hopefully startle deer away. I’ve got a bundle of 8 metal posts I found at the dollar store in there, too. Four of them had been used to support a trellis for the melons that they never grew big enough to grow up on. The other four were ones I found more recently and have not been used yet.

In the future, I intend to get more of the tallest, plain metal stakes, but I also really liked the taller tomato cage sets. The sets are three posts with connectors. The shorter ones came with two connectors per post, the taller ones with three connectors per post. The same connectors can fit both lengths of posts. I have two sets of the larger ones currently around the plum tree, supporting chicken wire, to keep the deer from eating it. I have shorter sets around the gooseberry bush and apple tree. I used several sets of the taller ones to make a deer barrier in front of the pea trellis. I can see being able to use them in a lot of other ways, too. They are surprisingly sturdy for a dollar store purchase, and I plan on getting more in the future.

The last picture has the collection of protective collars on t-posts, to keep them from blowing away. The round wire tomato cages that were used for the pepper and eggplant are all stacked up, with a large plastic bottle covering the sharp points. The water bottles used to help keep the frost at bay under covers are hanging off a smaller stake set into the wire cages to hold it up. The water bottles with their bottoms cut off that were used to deep water the summer squash are stored on there, too. There’s a couple or rolls of the black netting, plus a couple of roles of wire mesh, as well, plus the rest of the T-posts.

Now that I have all these sorted out, I need to figure out how to store them. Some can fit in the old garden shed, but the rolling garden seat needs to fit in there, too. I’ve got more stuff to store than last winter, plus there are the hoses and the garlic bed’s hoops and cover to add to the pile, and it won’t all fit in there. That shed is in serious need of replacing, too. Lots of rotten spots in the walls and roof that are slowly getting worse. In the last photo, you can see part of it. The door is a simple piece of plywood, and it’s comping apart in layers from weathering!

I’ll figure it out.

The next couple of days are supposed to be warmer. Friday is supposed to be the warmest day, but it’s also supposed to be raining off and on all day. If the long range forecast is at all accurate, aside from the one rainy day, we should have about a week and a half of decent, if chilly, weather to finish preparing garden beds and getting the winter sowing done. That’s the priority. After that, I can work on finishing the wall on that garden bed in the old kitchen garden that I’ve decided to do slightly differently. It would be nice to finally get that bed finished!! I can’t believe how long it’s been taking to get it done. That’s what happens when a job gets worked on piecemeal. 🫤

So while I didn’t get any progress on preparing beds for winter, I did actually get a lot done. By the time I was done with all the sorting and bundling for storage, it was getting pretty darn cold out there (we’d already passed our high of 8C/46F by the time I started). I’m hoping to get an earlier start tomorrow, partly because I have an afternoon telephone appointment with the sports injury clinic about my hip. Not only is it expected to be warmer tomorrow, but we’re supposed to stay at our high of 11C/51F for about 6 hours, rather than the eye blink of time we were at our high today! We’ll be dropping down to 8C/46F again by Saturday, then warming up a bit again. I will be delivering cats on Saturday, anyhow, so that works out!

All in all, I’d call it a productive day.

The Re-Farmer

A quiet day

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Well… quiet-ish.

Being Sunday, we were able to mostly make it a day of rest. I didn’t even do my full morning rounds, because I have a terrible habit of starting things and not coming in for a couple of hours. 😄 Mostly, I made sure the outside cats were fed, then went back to bed for a couple more hours, since it was still pretty dark out.

I did go into town this morning to refill water jugs, as we were on our last one, and picked up a few things my daughter requested and sent funds for. Then I went to the hardware store to find an epoxy to repair the crack on the garden angel my mother sent home with me, yesterday. The hard part was finding one that dried clear.

I was about to head home when my daughter messaged me – her timing was perfect. She ended up sending more funds and treated us to Dairy Queen. She had plans to roast lots of vegetables and do bread baking today, so she didn’t want to have to do more cooking or dishes before hand. 😄 Meanwhile, her sister has been in a lot of pain lately, so she’s been in recovery mode for the past two days.

I did check on the garden, as usual. The old kitchen garden needed a watering, but I’d watered the winter squash before we covered them last night, and never uncovered them this morning, so they would have been fine. Pretty steamy, actually. We ended up hitting 27C/81F today. For the past while, our daytime highs have been higher than predicted, while the lows have been colder than predicted (we dropped to about 5-6C/41-43F last night, instead of the 10C/50F we were expecting). The next few nights are supposed to be a fair bit warmer, so I might be able to uncover the winter squash tomorrow morning and leave them uncovered over night for a while. At this point, we should have at least one, maybe two, mature squash to harvest, if I can keep them alive long enough.

Speaking of squash…

The one pumpkin we have was on a dead vine, so I brought it inside. The underside of it was rather funny.

Can you tell that it was supported by a mesh sling? 😄

Later this evening, I had a chance to message with the new rescue. As the females we need to spay are mostly still nursing, I asked about being able to get help adopting out some of the indoor cats. I explained how we sort of ended up being a “rescue” ourselves, with cats needing surgery, a couple with amputations, or being sick, plus females that we managed to snag before they were old enough to go into heat. This rescue has just officially opened their doors, and I knew they were struggling to find fosters, so I made sure to tell them I’m not looking to foist cats on them. We need help with the spays and neuters with the outside cats, and with adoption, but we are already taking care of them now. I also made sure to say we want to avoid attention. They had started talking about going to the media to bring attention to just how many cat colonies there are out here int he boonies that need help. I was all, nope. Nononono. No media. That last thing we need it that sort of attention. Obviously, with our vandal, that’s an issue. I also explained I don’t want the RM or province involved, as that’s just going to lead to a whole lot of dead cats. What I didn’t mention is that, after many years of first hand experience, I simply don’t trust the media. They often either get even the most basic details wrong, or lie outright.

They ended up asking about the outside cats and kittens. How many kittens, how many adults, how many need to be fixed, how many males, how many females.

It was really hard to answer. I tried to do a head count of the littles this morning and counted 11, but I didn’t see Slick’s 6, and who knows how many others. We never see all of them at the same time. As for the females, I tried to think of how many we’re still seeing regularly. There are quite a few that have simply disappeared. Brussel, Caramel, Ink, Slick’s white and grey companion, and Magda, just to name a few – and Magda was spayed. There are a couple that are skittish to the point that we don’t know if they’re male or female.

I answered as best I could and, at their request, started sending pictures.

I think I sent them into a bit of a panic. There are so many!

…

I did eventually get a chance to say that, in our situation, we actually have a lot less this year. I’d already mentioned that we have more in the winter than, then they take off again in the spring. I told them that one winter, I was counting about 45-50 for a while. Then spring came and most of them disappeared permanently. I mentioned last year was the worst for kittens. Not just with how many there were, but how many I had to bury, including miscarriages I had to euthanize. Even this year, I had to bury a few, but nothing like last year.

As they are completely full, the woman that started the rescue has said she would contact some of the other rescues. There are some that will come out and trap. Which would be great, if we could get those mamas! Not while they’re still nursing, though.

If there was someone who could take Frank and her three, plus the fourth she’s been nursing as well, that would be fantastic. They are the youngest, tiniest ones, and winter is coming.

If that works out, and we end up with the outside cats trapped and taken in for adoption, that would be a huge help for us. Outside cats need more food than inside ones do. Especially in winter. The cost of cat food is built into our grocery budget, and there have been times where we’ve spent more on cat food than on food for ourselves.

I had just been hoping to get help with spays, in particular, and mostly adopt out some inside cats (I’ve been asked to provide photos and information on them). It would be amazing if we could finally get our numbers down. I’m not counting on it too much; it’s been really hard for all the shelters and rescues to get adoptions. Still, every little bit will help!

Anyhow. That’s my excitement for the day! 😄 I think now I might do something really radical, and go to bed before midnight. 😂

The Re-Farmer

Catch up time, and garden progress

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I am finally able to settle in to start this – though I’m also waiting for a phone call and might be making a trip into town, still, so we’ll see if things get interrupted!

My plan had originally been to drop the truck off this morning, then use the courtesy vehicle to do the stock up shopping in the city. CPP Disability came in yesterday, though, so I figured I may as well do that right away, and not have to worry about driving a strange vehicle in the city. I’ll do another post about the stocking up.

Once home and everything was put away, I grabbed a quick supper, then headed outside. I really wanted to get that bed cleaned up and finished.

Of course, it took longer than expected.

I started working my way down the unfinished side from the North end, closer to the trees. Almost immediately, I could feel I was hitting something not rock with the garden fork. I kept working my way down and around it, but it was a while before I could actually uncover it and start moving it around with my hands.

Yeah, it was a big ol’ tree root.

In the first photo, I’d worked maybe 8 ft down the side before I could uncover it and not have the soil immediately fall and cover it again. The further down I went, the more I could get under it and loosen things up around it.

In the next two photos in the slide show, I’d finally reached a point where the root veered off to the side and out of the bed.

Yes, Sir Robin was helping me the entire time. He was really, really interested in where I was digging!

One I cleared a bit more of the root into the path, I went and got the loppers to cut it. With all the digging I’d already done, it was pretty easy to pull the rest up. It didn’t all some out, though. About a foot or so from the end, it broke free. I think this was actually a piece that branched off an even bigger root, further down!

Before we planted potatoes in this bed, I trenched it. That root was not there in the spring!

Given how far I got before it veered into the path, I can certainly see why I was finding so many tree capillary roots at the south end of the bed.

I got the bed done, though – with another bumper crop of rocks – and used the landscape rake to level the soil and make it all niche and even, as much as I could.

I then hosed it down before I got my second package of painters plastic drop sheet. It’s 10′ wide and 25′ long. It was really calm at the time, so I was able to open it up, then fold it in half, lengthwise, so it was only 5′ wide. Then I covered the bed and made sure to get everything as tight and snug as possible, with the excess length folded over at the south end. I took boards that were around the carrot bed to weight down the ends, rolling the boards in the excess plastic and pulling it tight again, before using the remaining boards I had to weight down the sides. The plastic has good contact with the soil surface, which means it should solarize properly, unlike when I’ve tried to do it over less level beds, or over areas with grass stubble on it. Well. Maybe not “properly, but at least better!

As you can see in the next picture, taken with flash, it was dark by the time I was done.

I stayed out longer to cover the winter squash, summer squash, peppers and remaining eggplants. The overnight low they were predicting had changed again, and we were to expect 5C/41F.

I am so glad I covered all the beds.

We dropped to 3C/37F last night.

The last picture in the series was taken this morning, while I was doing my rounds. It was still too cold to uncover them, though, so it got left until later.

I then headed out to town to drop the truck off at the autobody place for the insurance repairs. Before taking the courtesy vehicle – a 2020 Caravan – we did the necessary paperwork, and I signed an insurance waiver. If I were to get into some sort of accident or damage the vehicle, I’d be responsible for a $750 deductible. Or, I can sign the waiver and pay a little under $8 a day to cover that.

I’ve got the van for four days, or one day. Looking at the time as I write this, I’d say, four days. There was the possibility that they’d get the frame repaired and painted today, to a point that I could bring the truck home while it cured. I would then bring it back on Monday and they’d install the new cover. I would get a phone call before they’re done for the day to find out. I’m pretty sure they close at 5, and it’s past 5 as I write this, but maybe they close at 6. I can’t remember.

I was warned about some unusual things on the van. The first, I misunderstood. She was telling me where the shifter was, and I thought she meant it was behind the steering wheel on the column, like our truck, instead of in the front of the console between the seats, like my mother’s car.

It was neither. It’s behind the steering wheel, on the dash.

It also has a “square” key, which I’d never heard of before. Instead of a metal key, it has a plastic square that gets inserted, just like an ordinary key. The disorienting part of that isn’t just the shape of it. On one side of the square is the bright red panic button!

After spending a bit of time figuring out where things were and adjusting my seat, I headed off to the town to the north of us to pick up more 40 pound bags of kibble. I had just parked when I got a call from the autobody place.

The tech working on my truck, on seeing the condition of the rails that would be painted (only the rails, not the sides and fenders, as that would not be covered by insurance because of the rust), he wanted to know if I preferred to have it done with flatbed paint, instead. There would be no extra cost, and he felt it would give more protection to the rails. After talking about it for a bit, I agreed. It should be interesting to see how it turns out!

I then went into the feed store and paid for four 40 pound bags of kibble. The woman who processed my sale then came and helped me grab the bags. I’d mentioned it was the first time I’d driven this vehicle and, as we came out with the first two bags, I realized I didn’t even know how to open the back of the van. Was there a handle, or would I have to use the key fob, which I would not be able to reach without putting down the bag of kibble?

There was a handle. 😄

Once the bags were loaded, I tried to close it manually, but it didn’t want to close until it got past a certain point. I looked around later, and could see no buttons or anything to make that easier.

When I parked in the garage and took the key out of the ignition, though, I accidentally opened the back of the van! I did figure out how to close it using the fob, at least.

I couldn’t bring the bags in right away, though. It’s been a while since we had to store that many bags of kibble, so I had to organize and make space in the old kitchen, first. Which I did, after finally having breakfast.

Much of what I had to deal with was cardboard. Some was meant for the garden. Others had glossy coatings on them, so they needed to be sorted out. Normally, they would have gone to the burn pile, but we haven’t been able to do a burn in over a year. Between things like the weather, or fire bans, I already had quite a mess to clean up recently. I plan to take it all to the dump, but I won’t be doing a dump run until we get the truck back.

After sorting that out, it was back to doing clean up in the yard and garden. The garden beds got uncovered, though high winds made that a challenge! Then I started working on things like taking down the wire that was used to trellis the peas, and to protect the Arikara squash from critters.

For now, I’ve been putting all the garden stakes, poles, ties, netting, etc. in one spot, before they get a final organizing and bundling and putting away for the winter. I’d put the bent up wire supports that failed to hold up netting under the weight of playing kittens. One of the things I’d done as we emptied the sun room was hose down a cat cave that kept collapsing. I ended up rolling down the sides to try and make it into a sort of nest, but it keeps getting bend out of shape. The “cave” itself is basically around, thick bag with a drawstring cord to close up the top.

Those bent up wires might not be useful for holding up the netting, but I decided to try something with several of them. It’s a heavy gauge wire, but still flexible enough to bend into shape, and keep the shape.

I ended up using three of them to make a wire support for inside the cat cave. Two were formed into rings, with the top ring slightly smaller than the bottom, and a third was wound and bent and wound some more, to hole the top and bottom rinds apart. Then I stuffed it into the cat cave and closed up the drawstring top.

With the top ring where it is, the to can’t close completely anymore, but that’s okay. The sides are now being held up.

The ultimate test will be what happens when the kittens decide to climb all over it. So far, it’s holding!

I’d used three of the wire supports to make that, but had brought four, just in case.

I found a use for that one, too.

Yesterday, I’d picked up replacement sump pump hoses to replace our broken one.

The hose runs along the base of the house to drain into the old kitchen garden. That bend to go to the side instead of straight out (which is how it used to be, before I replaced the old one) was enough to finally break the hose.

Taking off the broken bit and replacing it was easy and fast enough, but I wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again. If only I had something strong, yet flexible, to brace the hose at the bed…

Enter that fourth wire support, some wire cutters and electric tape.

In the last picture, you can see that I set two lengths of the wire on either side of the hose. I taped it to the piece coming out of the wall, first, just to secure it while I worked. The lengths of wire were give a gentle bend, then got taped into place. Only then did I give the hose, which was already stretched along the base of the house, I final straightening out and setting it in place. The new hose is slightly longer than the old hose (which I’d bought from a different company). Which will come in handy in the spring, if it’s wet enough to trigger the sump pump. It reached the rectangular garden bed in the old kitchen better. I’ll want to make a larger, longer, opening under the logs at the end of the bed, and it can then be set right into the opening to drain under the bed, instead of running down the paths, and water whatever gets planted in there from below.

Aside from that, there was just a lot of small things that got done around the yard. It was so incredibly windy, it limited some of the things I could work on. Thankfully, the winds seem to have died down a bit since then.

My daughter, meanwhile, has been going all out on cleaning the sun room – way more than I would have done, I’ll be honest! She even got a household step ladder and a small hand brush to get into less accessible areas. When it comes time to bring things back in, she plans to scrub, then oil, anything with wood. Since we can’t take the cat cage out without dismantling it, she floor can only be washed one side at a time. With the cat cage going on top of interlocking mats, to protect from the cold concrete floor, it has to be thoroughly dry before things can be moved over and the other side can be done.

While she was working on that, I took the hose to pressure was the larger plastic shelves that supported the platform above the cat cage. The bottom shelves, in particular needed a thorough cleaning.

We need to figure out some way to keep critters from using the corners of the room. There’s no room for litter pans there.

Oh, I just got the phone call I was waiting for – and it came after they closed!

We’ve got the van for the weekend.

I also got a final tally on what it will cost. There’s the $500 deductible, of course, but the “betterment” will cost $193.92 after taxes. Add in the waiver I signed, as extra insurance should I get into an accident with the van, there’s another roughly $35 on top.

That’s a solid Costco shopping trip right there. 🫤

It will be so good to have that fixed and a cover on the truck box again. I hate having things in there without a cover, when driving at highway seeds – even though I know that there’s nothing I put back there that might blow away! It’s more that things can be seen and walked off with. Granted, it would take some effort for someone to walk off with a 40 pound bag of litter pellets, but not so much for a 9kg bag of kibble.

So there’s all that caught up with!

Next, we’ll take a look and what my stock up shopping trip looked like for the money.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: last of the potatoes, prepping beds and a bumper crop

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I’m happy to say I was able to get some progress in the garden yesterday evening, and again today.

I did not continue cleaning the sun room today. My daughter will finish that, but she will restart tomorrow. It turned out that, after trying to keep up with me yesterday, she hurt her back! I keep forgetting, I’m the most able bodied person in the household right now. The kittens, meanwhile, have been piling into the cat cage. It got a bit chilly last night – cold enough that I covered the winter squash, but not cold enough to cover the summer squash, peppers or eggplant – and they was a whole crowd of littles in the cat cage’s cat bed. Most of the other cat beds they could access are outside right now. Only one of the smaller kittens has figured out there are cat beds on the platform, and is able to climb up the shelf to get to them. With the floor now dry, I did put one of the cat beds and the self heating mat on the floor for them to use.

This is what I was able to get done yesterday, before it got too dark.

This is the bed that had three types of tomatoes, bush beans and self seeded carrots in it. I pulled the remaining stems and roots of the tomatoes an the bush beans and set them aside. They will get buried in the bed later on. In the second picture, you can see the finished bed. Most of what I pulled out of there can’t go into the compost, as their roots will spread. In the last picture, you can see the bonus Uzbek Golden carrots that were large enough to keep. The greens will also be buried in the bed. I’ll be doing some amending later one. I’ll be using this bed for winter sowing, but have not yet decided what I will put in it.

This afternoon was pretty hot, so I chose to harvest the last of the potatoes, then work on that bed. At this time of the year, and at that time of the day, most of the bed was shaded by trees, so it was a lot more comfortable to work on.

This is how many potatoes I found in the remaining two or three feet of the bed.

I was really surprised by how many tree roots I was finding while I dug them up. That’s quite the distance! I thought that maybe they were from the other direction, but the nearest tree on the south side is the chokecherry tree. They spread through their roots, but the suckers all come up close to the main trunk. As I worked on the bed, though, it was clear what direction the roots were coming from.

I ended up making a short video when I was done.

I cleaned up only one long side of the bed before I had to stop for hydration and sustenance. I’ll probably work on the rest tomorrow. At the end, you can see all the rocks I “harvested”. !!! Keep in mind that this bed had been amended several times, the soil sifted several times, most recently when all the beds were sifted over into their permanent positions. Not only that but this bed was winter sown with summer squash, which did not take, so it was trenched and cleaned up before we planted the potatoes.

All those rocks were what we “grew” since the potatoes were planted in the spring. Just the bigger ones that were easier to pick up, and I know there were plenty that got missed because they kept getting buried in the soil while I loosened it and pulled as many weeds and roots as I could.

Before I headed in for a break, I just had to check out the blooming asters.

Sir Robin was already checking them out.

Still no Cosmos, but there do seem to be a few more flower buds trying to develop.

Tonight is supposed to be a bit warmer, so I don’t plan to cover the winter squash again, unless that changes. The next couple of nights are looking chilly enough that I might cover the other beds, too. Unless I decide to harvest the Turkish Orange eggplants, first. The peppers can stay for a while longer, as long as the weather holds.

I have decided the bed I’m working on now will be where I plant the garlic in a few weeks. This time, I’m thinking of making sure to mark exactly where they are planted, and then interplanting with something else before the ground freezes. Maybe spinach and/or some other greens. In theory, the garlic should protect any greens growing with them from the deer, same as onions can. The greens would be finished before the garlic is ready to harvest, and could be succession sowed with something else that’s quick growing. Bush beans, perhaps. We shall see.

It’s not a lot of progress. As usual, it was a bigger job than expected. Particularly as I got closer to the north end of the bed, where both the tree roots and rocks were so much denser. Still, a little progress is better than none at all!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: they’re alive!

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No surprise that last night’s low was colder than originally forecast. We dropped to at least 1C/34F, and probably hit 0C/32F.

It did make for a pretty morning, though!

The first two shots above were taken from the gate. The field across from us always looks so amazing when it’s foggy like this.

The third photo was taken from the main garden area. The sun through the trees at the edge of the property was so dramatic!

There was still frost visible in the shaded areas while I did my morning rounds.

The first shot was just some of the weeds and whatnot in where the area I’ve been slowly getting mowed. The second is of one of the Hopi Black Dye sunflower seed heads. That’s among the largest seed heads, too. This frost seems to have finally done them in.

*sigh*

The coldest part of the night tends to be around 6am, so it was still chilly while I did my rounds. I didn’t uncover the garden beds until the afternoon, when it was finally getting decently warm.

Warm enough to uncover the winter squash bed.

They survived!

In fact, they’re looking pretty darn good. In the next two photos, you can see some of the developing squash are actually getting bigger, too! I had some concern that the pollination didn’t take and they’d just wither away, but nope; we actually have winter squash trying to mature!

Tonight’s low is expected to be 10C/50F. Since the actual overnight lows have been trending lower than forecast, though, I’m still going to cover the beds again for tonight, and probably the next two nights as well. After that, the overnight lows are expected to stay above 10C/50F, so they should be okay without covers – except for the winter squash, which I will keep covering.

While planning on what we need to do around the yard over the next while, I checked the RM (Rural Municipality) website and found that we are no longer under any fire bans. That means we can use the fire pit, if we want. I’d like clean it out and reset the fire bricks we set up for the Dutch oven to stand on. These are larger fire bricks I found while cleaning up around the yard, not the ones we’ve been slowly stocking up on for when we build our outdoor kitchen. It’s been such a long time since we’ve used the fire pit. We also now have two Dutch ovens. There’s a traditional round one on three legs that we got a while back, and now we have a smaller, square one I got on clearance at Canadian Tire this summer. I’m hoping we can have a family gathering and cookout, probably in October, before things start getting too cold. My husband hasn’t seen his family in a long time because he couldn’t physically handle the trip to and from the city, plus the time for a visit, for the last family dinner we were invited to. Kinda scary to think his father, who is in assisted living, is probably more mobile than my husband is!

We’ll see what we can work out, as we get the place ready for whatever winter throws at us!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: cold damage

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I found myself staying up late very last night, which meant I was up to see what the weather was doing. So I was not at all surprised by what I found in the garden this morning.

The first picture in the above slideshow is the Arikara squash, which only recently had its first female flowers start to bloom. I’d wanted to grow these specifically to save seed, as it’s a rare variety.

Not going to happen this year.

Thankfully, I do have a few seeds left and can try again, next year.

The next two pictures are of some of the pumpkin plants. It’s a bit hard to tell in the photos, but the leaves are that darker colour they get from cold damage. In one of the pictures, you can see the leaves starting to droop, too. We do have the one pumpkin in its sling on the trellis. It does not appear to be frost damaged, but it might take a day or two before we can see for sure.

The next picture is of the summer squash, still under their covers. They actually seem okay, even though they aren’t completely covered. I did not try to check on the winter squash, under their plastic. They should be fine, and I don’t plan to uncover that bed at all today.

I didn’t uncover anything this morning. It was still too cold at the time. It’s not going to get much warmer, though, and now it is supposed to rain all day. From what I could see, the peppers held out fine under their sheet. So far, the eggplants do, too, but they tend to start dropping later on. It’s the plants at each end, that are the most exposed, and take the brunt of the cold. I’m hoping the jugs of hot water we set beside them helped, but it’ll be a while before we can tell, one way or the other.

Last night, I worked on getting the radish seeds out of their pods, which ended up taking a VERY long time. I stayed up a while longer to monitor the oven, so my daughters could go to bed. Which is why I was up to check the weather apps and get the screen captures in the next two images.

So much for a low of 4 or 5C/39 or 41F. We were expecting it to be colder, to be honest. We did end up hitting 0C/32F. There were no frost warnings.

I’m actually thinking of turning the furnace back up for today! I do have one of the heat lamps in the sun room turned on – the one with the 250F bulb, not the 150F lamp. It hangs above the space in front of the new cat cave, and the sun room littles have definitely figure out that this is a good spot to hang out! 😄

Our daytime highs are supposed to increase quite a bit, about half way through next week, and stay high for about 2 weeks. That will be the time to empty out and clean up the sun room for the winter, and do things like bring the isolation shelter back near the house, put the heat lamp back in and get it set up, so we just need to plug it in to the outdoor outlet there, as needed.

I am not looking forward to winter. My daughters love the colder weather. I can tolerate cold a lot more as I get older – it’s heat I’m having a harder time with now! – but I don’t like the season. Too many things that need protecting from the cold – including the house itself – and too many things that can go wrong that, in the summer, would be just an annoying but, in the winter, can be dangerous, or even deadly.

Having one of these sure would be nice.

One can dream!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: some final harvests, and we do still have a “hot house”!

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Today was definitely on the chilly side. Even overnight; apparently, we dropped to 3C/37F last night, which is colder than was forecast. I’m glad we got that plastic over the winter squash!

We’re supposed to drop to 4C/39F tonight, which means we can expect it to get colder. I never removed the plastic cover on the winter squash, though. We got rain last night, which means the squash didn’t get any natural watering, but I do have the soaker hose still set up with them. I rarely used it, as filling their collars with water several times was more efficient. Today, however, I lifted one corner of the cover, hooked up the hose, then covered it again, letting the soaker hose run for an hour.

We did reach our expected high of 12C/54F this afternoon, so the girls and I took advantage of it to get some final harvests done on some things.

I started off in the East garden beds, pulling most of the corn (I left some stalks just to have a bit of protection for the bush beans). There were very few cobs to harvest and, as you can see, they were very small. I did find some yellow bush beans to harvest, though, then later found a few of the Royal Burgundy in the main garden area.

The chocolate cherry had the most to pick green. There were a few Black Beauties and Sub Arctic Plenty to pick. These are now sitting near the window in the cat free zone (aka, the living room) to ripen.

I also picked as many dried super sugar snap pea pods as I could find, as well as the dried radish seed pods. The girls, meanwhile, pulled all the spoon tomatoes, then sat with the plants to pick up the ripest ones. That took long enough that I finished first, then joined them. We made sure to not have any little stems on them before adding them to the bowl. It’s a lot more difficult to get those off if they’re left for later! With the Spoon tomatoes, we did NOT harvest the green ones. They’re so tiny, it really wasn’t worth doing it. So those went into the compost with the vines.

I suspect we’re going to have another year of compost tomatoes next year, and that most of them will be Spoon tomatoes!

Later on, before covering the eggplant and peppers for the night, I harvested a couple of kohl rabi and Turkish Orange eggplant. I have no idea if the eggplant is right, but at this point, it’s unlikely the greener ones will finish ripening, even with protective covers. The plants were already drooping from last night’s cold, in spite of the cover and bottles of hot water to help keep them a bit warmer. I chose the two that looked the most orange, but the rest still have green on them. I don’t think eggplant is something you can pick and will ripen indoors, like tomatoes and peppers can.

The kohl rabi I picked are pretty small, and there are just a few left, but I wanted to snack on them. That bed is almost done.

While the day was chilly, it was quite warm in the portable greenhouse! We have kept the “door” rolled up for quite some time but, yesterday, my daughter unrolled it half way and pulled the zippers down.

The thermometer in there was reading over 30C/86F, late this afternoon!

I’d moved our succulents and coffee plant into there yesterday evening. I’m glad I remembered to, as they likely would not have survived the night, but they would be very happy with the heat they got today! I’m hoping to keep those outdoors as long as possible, as they seem to be doing much better than in our living room.

In the next photo, you can see our first male luffa flower starting to bloom. They fell off when I moved a leaf to get the picture, but there were ants climbing around the stem and base of the flower. Which means, pollinators are still getting into the greenhouse. I still plan to hand pollinate, should the opportunity arise.

My daughter and I were checking on it when we spotted our first female flower buds starting to form. No visible baby luffa yet, they were were too small, but we knew they were female flowers, and those form in singles, while the male flowers form in clusters.

As of now, we no longer have any tomatoes in the garden. There are still bush beans, which will probably be killed off by the cold tonight. I’m debating when to just pick the green peppers and bring them in. I’m really surprised by how well the summer squash is holding out. I don’t expect things like the pumpkins, melons, bush beans, the stalled pole beans or sunflowers to survive tonight’s cold, but you never know. Things like the remaining radish plants that still have greener pods on them, the root vegetables, kohl rabi, chard, and even the tiny onions we’ve got growing in the old kitchen garden, can handle frost. We harvested some herbs at the last minute but I haven’t covered that bed with anything. The basil probably won’t make it, but I think the other herds might. We shall see in the morning.

Meanwhile, I’m now going to find some suitable containers, set up something to watch, then start opening up those dried pods and collect their seeds!

The Re-Farmer