Gardening

Our 2023 garden: so many sprouts!

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I didn’t have time to post this before heading into the city. We had an excellent visit, and ended up leaving an hour or so later than we should have. It was dark by the time we left, and with all the reflections on the damp roads, it was extremely difficult to see where the lanes were. We also very quickly realized we needed to stop as soon as possible and clean our headlights! Thankfully, there is a gas station just outside the city on our route – and the prices were 5 cents cheaper than when we filled on the way out. Gas prices were really weird. In the town my mother lives in, where we usually stop for gas, the prices had gone up from 154.9 cents/liter to 160.9. Usually, the prices are cheaper in the city, but we were passing gas stations at 169.9! This one station outside the city is usually a penny or two higher than inside the city, so it was very strange to see it lower than everywhere else. My daughter was a sweetheart and cleaned all the headlights and windows while I got the gas, and my goodness, did it make a difference! It was still very cautious driving, though. Not because of road conditions – those were great. It was being on constant lookout for deer! Thankfully, we only saw one, running away from the road, but there are so many of the around this time of year, I consider that very lucky.

So what did I find that I would have posted about before leaving?

This lovely surprise!

When I turn the lights on in the morning, I would always lift the dome on this tray to check the pots while getting the condensation to drip into the tray a bit. There wasn’t a single sprout this morning. After making our second basket and putting it in the living room for safe keeping, I took the time to look at the tray that had been moved off the neat mat, to see if any more peppers had sprouts. None had, but I realized I was seeing green through the condensation of the dome on the new tray. I couldn’t believe how many tomatoes has sprouted in such a short time! I’m also surprised they sprouted earlier than the herbs. Those seeds are so tiny, they are practically surface sown, so I figured they would be visible first, for sure. Nope. Not a single herb seed has germinated yet.

With the tomatoes sprouting, though, the dome now stays off.

Now, if only more of those peppers – and any of the Classic eggplant – would start sprouting!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: starting a variety of seeds

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Today is another mild day – bright and sunny, with our high expected to reach -3C/27F, and we’re almost there as I right this. Unfortunately, we have insane winds today, and apparently for the next several days, too! My computers weather app is saying 32kmh/20mph winds, but to be honest, I think we’re getting higher than that. I’ve been eyeballing some of the trees in the spruce grove, wondering which one is coming down next, and I’ve already had to break trail through the main garden area to reclaim stuff that was being blown away. There was even a gust the blew the dining room door ajar! Not the storm door – that one stayed closed – but there was enough of a pressure change to force the inner door open. Thankfully, we have a bar latch on that door, too, so it couldn’t open very far.

Yes, the door was locked. We never use it except once in a rare while in the summer.

A daughter and I are going to be driving in this soon, as we head out to pick up some birthday pizza for her sister!

My main goal for today was to get some seeds going that need to be started much earlier. These were the ones that needed to be done.

I don’t have a “days to maturity” for the Crespo squash, which now seem to be gone from the Baker Creek website! Looks like I bought fresh seeds for this year, just in time. I still had 3 seeds left from last year, so I used those, plus three fresh ones, so there’s still some left for another year. We’ll see how the germination rate is.

I also chose only 6 Caveman’s Club gourd seeds. I took sandpaper to the large seeds to scarify them before setting them to soak. I had intended to start them soaking last night, but ended up on the phone with my brother and his wife for more than an hour, and it was quite late by the time I was done. It was worth it!

The other bowls are holding all the seeds from the packets, including both packets of Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes.

I had intended to use Jiffy pellets to start some of the seeds, thinking I had a full box of them, plus a partial box, from last year. I never found the full box, and the partial box had only one pellet in it, but I did have alternatives.

I was unable to find more of the larger biodegradable pots the last few times I’ve been shopping, so the 6 Crespo squash seeds were divided between my last two of those, while the smaller pots got two seeds each of the Caveman’s Club gourd.

These are my last two trays of biodegradable square cells. I decided to plant more of the Black Beauty tomatoes and give them a whole tray to themselves, while the Indigo Blue Chocolate and Little Finger Eggplant are in the second one. Each square cell has 4 seeds in it.

I made sure the soil was moist before planting the seeds, then once they were in the aquarium greenhouse, I spritzed their tops, then added water to the bottom of the tray. It’s awkward to get these long trays in, as there is a divider bar across the middle of the tank’s top. After this photo was taken, I put the covers and lights back, and plugged in the heat mat. The soil was feeling quite cold while I was working with it! “Room temperature” in our living room is definitely on the chill side.

It wasn’t until I settled down to write this post that I realized I didn’t need to put the covers back on the aquarium, since the cat barriers are now in place! Except when I came out this morning, I found Tissue sitting at the inside of the latched door, waiting to be let out. Yup. She managed to pull the bottom open and squeeze through! We’ve got it blocked in that corner for now, so hopefully, she won’t get in again.

As for the other seedlings, they’ve been moved to the shelves by the window. There’s a heat vent right there, so that will help, though now that I’m done with the new seeds, I’ll have to do some rearranging. The lights are too high, so we’ll have to find away to attach cords that will allow us to have them lower, and adjust the height as needed.

Hopefully, these will germinate within the next couple of weeks, because we’ve got another batch to start before the end of March, and they’re going to need that heat mat!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: seedling progress

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This morning I got a picture of some of our seedlings, after refilling trays to water them from below.

There are still only two little pepper seedlings. The thyme and lemongrass don’t seem to be growing much. I think this might be part of why they need to be started so early!

The two drum gourd seedlings in one pot are still the only ones to have germinated. With using these biodegradable pots, it’s been interesting to see how the pot the germinated seeds are in dries out so much faster than the other ones. Even the square cells the herbs are in show noticeable drying out in the ones with the most seedlings. For this reason, I still mist them as well as water from below.

Last year, I remember my first zucca melon seeds never germinated, and I had to try again. I’m hoping I won’t need to do that again this year. The zucca and the drums need as much growing time as we can give them.

We’re going to have to start other seeds soon. That means rotating things out of the aquarium greenhouses and, for that, we still need to make a trip to the city to pick up the materials we need to build barriers and keep the cats out of the living room. When picking up eggs yesterday, I noticed they had lumber in their truck and asked about prices. Lumber prices have gone down a LOT in the last while, which is encouraging. The prices are still high, but not astronomical anymore.

The trip to the city will have to wait until after the van’s date at the garage to get the temperature gauge sensor replaced.

Still holding out hope that we’ll qualify for financing on the Caravan, but if I’m going to be honest with myself, the odds are not in our favour. Mind you, our situation wasn’t much better when we got financing for the Grand Caravan we got, years ago. Oddly enough, my husband being on disability gives us a more reliable income now than when he was still working. Nothing like moving to a new city for a 2 year contract, only to have the contract end after 6 months, instead!

Ah, well. Whatever happens, happens. We just need to deal with what’s in front of us.

Which, at the moment, means turning the living room into a cat proof plant room. 😁

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: first drum!

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I spotted a hint of green while spritzing the pots in the aquarium greenhouse last night, so I was quite eager to check this morning.

This, my friends, is our very first African Drum gourd seedling!

I’m rather surprised that this sprouted first. The peppers we’ve got planted have yet to germinate, but here we’ve got one of the massive gourds breaking ground!

You can see the big, remarkably fuzzy, seeds on the far right of the above photo.

I’m quite excited by this! It’s going to be a challenge to get these to grow to full maturity, so the gourds can then be set aside to cure and dry for at least a year. The zucca melon are also supposed to get huge, but they are for eating, not crafting.

The inside of the tank is lined with insulation, and the tray is on a heat mat, but I do wonder if it’s still too cold for the peppers. They’re at the end of the tray right in the corner. I’ve considered rotating the tray, but if it’s too cold for peppers, then it would be too cold for the drum gourds and zucca melons. We have time to try again with peppers, if it comes down to that, but not the drum gourds or zucca melons. Maybe I can find a way to rearrange the onions and luffa seedlings, so I can shift the tray on the heat mat closer to the middle.

I think I’ll go do that now.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: planting garlic

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No, that’s not a typo in the title. Today, I FINALLY planted our garlic for next year.

This morning I first headed out to get my mother checked out of her hotel room, then took her out for brunch – she hadn’t had a proper meal since our take out Chinese food lunch, yesterday! – before taking her home. She did not have the energy to do anything else. I stayed long enough to make her bed up again with fresh sheets and blankets, and push some of the stuff back against the walls, before my mother sent me home. She would not allow me to run any errands for her, even!

Which works out. As soon as could after I got home, I worked on the garlic. The first thing to do was break up the bulbs I’d set aside from our harvest this year.

Would you look at this giant clove!

I had set aside six of the biggest bulbs of garlic we harvested.

Out of those six bulbs, we got a whole 24 cloves.

Twentyfour big cloves, but still… we’re going to need a lot more garlic!

I used broken pieces of bamboo stakes to mark the ends of a row along one side of the prepared bed, then pushed aside the mulch. The soil is loose enough that I could just use a weeding tool to scrape a trough from one end to the other, then deepened it using the jet setting on the garden hose.

Which the kittens were absolutely fascinated by.

Once the garlic was planted evenly spaced down the row and covered, I pulled back a little bit of the mulch. Once things start to get colder, more mulch will be pulled over to cover it for the winter. For now, it’s just enough to protect the row.

From this guy.

This guy and several other little “helpers” that were so determined to dig in the fresh dirt, they ignored the hose I was watering with, until they got sprayed!

Silly things.

Anyhow. Our first garlic for our 2023 garden is in.

I am now going to start making tomato paste for canning, freeing up freezer space for our next stock-up shopping trip.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: sweet potatoes harvested

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This morning I spent some time doing some clean up in the garden, taking off the netting from a couple of beds and removing the supports and twine. While I was at it, I decided to go ahead and harvest the Covington sweet potatoes from the grow bags. They did survive the frost, but with the cooler temperatures, anything there wouldn’t be getting any bigger.

This is it. Our entire sweet potato harvest.

They’re smaller than fingerling potatoes!

Now, I know we can grow short season sweet potatoes in our zone. In some of the local gardening groups I’m on, I’ve seen people posting pictures of their very nice sweet potato harvests. The soil in the grow bags looked good; there were lots of worms in the soil, and even mushrooms growing out the sides of the ones that tore; a sign of healthy soil. Like so much else this year, they just never really recovered from our horrible spring. This is actually more than I was expecting to find, to be honest.

Yes, I want to try growing sweet potatoes again. Whether we’ll be able to try again next year, I don’t know yet, but I do want to grow them. They would make a valuable, nutritionally dense, storage crop to help meet our self sufficiency goals.

What a rough gardening year it has been this year!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: harvesting squash and corn

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Well, the last of the stuff that needed to come in before tonight is done – at least as much as possible. The girls and I put bottles with warm water under the eggplants in the grow bag (the only ones fruiting) and, since they were right there, with the sweet potatoes, too. The eggplant and one grow bag with sweet potato got covered, but the sheet wasn’t big enough to cover the other two grow bags. The apple gourd also got bottles of warm water placed beside them, but we could only cover two of the three plants, so we covered the two biggest ones. As I write this, we are down to 9C/48F, and it’s supposed to keep dropping until we reach 1C/34F at about 7am. Between 6 – 8 am tends to consistently be the coldest time of day.

While I was harvesting earlier, I went ahead and grabbed a bunch of the Latte sweet corn, too. I don’t think they are quite at their peak, but I think they’re about as good as we’re going to get. There are still cobs on the stalks that were pretty small, so I left them be.

With the summer squash, I grabbed all the little – but not too little – patty pans, and the last of the zucchini.

In the above photo, the six pumpkins across the top are the Baby Pam pumpkins. The others are all hulless seed pumpkins. On the far left are four Styrian, in the middle are six Lady Godiva, and on the right are two Kakai. Tucked in with the patty pans are two Boston Marrow. There are so many little Boston Marrow squash forming, but they are just too small and have no chance of ripening after being picked. I’m not even sure Boston Marrow does continue to ripen after being picked!

The pumpkins are now all set up in the sun room. We cleared a shelf in the window, and all but one of them fit in there. The last one joined the onions on the screen. I think it should still get enough light there.

The hulless seed pumpkins are grown just for their seed, not their flesh. The flesh is probably edible, but there would be less of it than for an eating pumpkin. I will give them time before we crack any open to see what the seeds are like. At least we do have the one tiny, fully ripe kakai pumpkin harvested earlier that we could try any time we feel like it.

We planted so many different winter squash, and it was such a horrible year, I’m thankful we have as much as we do. Hopefully, next year, we will have better growing conditions. I made the mistake of calling my mother before I started this post, and talking about our garden. I mentioned that our beets did not do well this year. She started lecturing me on how to grow beets, and how they need to have the soil loosened around them, etc. I told her I knew how to grow beets (this is not our first year growing them!); they just didn’t do well this year. We didn’t even get greens worth eating. My mother then launched into how she always had such big beets, and always had such a wonderful garden (this after she’d mentioned to be before, that some years things just didn’t work) and how she only grew the “basics” and everything was just so wonderful – and the reason my beets failed was because I don’t garden like she did, and that I shouldn’t be gardening “from a book”. Whatever that means. I reminded her that I tested the soil and it is depleted. We don’t have good soil here anymore. She got sarcastic about that, and basically made it like my not having a perfect garden like she did was because I’m not doing things her way. As she got increasingly cruel about it, I called her out on it. I told her that just because she can’t understand something like soil science – which she doesn’t need to – that didn’t make it okay for her to be cruel to me over something she knows nothing about. Nor would I put up with being treated like that. I even asked her, why couldn’t she try being kind for a change? Maybe say something like “I’m sorry to hear you’re having problems”, instead of basically saying “I’m better than you.” She went dead silent, so I changed the subject, and the rest of the conversation went okay. Then she cut the call short because she saw the time, and her program on TV was started, so she had to go.

My mother is pretty open on what her priorities are. 😕

Ah, well. It is what it is. I’m just so thankful she is no longer our “landlord”, and that my brother now owns the property. There was a point, before the title was transferred, that we briefly but seriously considered moving out because of her.

Funny how something as ordinary as gardening can bring out the worst in her, though.

The weird thing is, when I spoke to my brother after he’d visited her to talk about the roofing estimates, apparently my mother had lots of positive things to say about how well we’re taking care of things here.

I guess that doesn’t include the garden! 😄

Well, I guess I should go see what I can do about that corn! 😊

The Re-Farmer

2022 garden: morning in the garden

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Just a little big of progress in the garden.

The sour cherry tree by the house has lots of ripe berries, ready to be picked. I’ll have to get the girls to do it, though. A ladder will be needed to reach the ripest ones at the top. This is the most cherries we’ve had since moving here.

We got a pretty decent amount of yellow bush beans this morning. Not enough to make it worth blanching and freezing, never mind canning, but enough for a couple of meals this time.

The purple pole beans are getting more pods, though they are still very thin. I saw the first of the green pole bean pods this morning – tiny wisps of pods! Still no sign of pods, or even flowers, on the red pole beans, while the shelling beans still have lots of flowers, but no pods that I can see.

We should be able to harvest the garlic from this bed pretty soon.

One of the Baby Pam pumpkins is starting to turn colour. This variety doesn’t get much bigger than this. From the looks of it, these are going to be the only winter squash we get out of this patch, other than maybe one kakai hulless seed pumpkin. Even the Teddy squash, which are a very small variety with only 55 days needed to maturity, will likely not get a chance to produce anything. The green zucchini still isn’t producing; they did have female flowers, but no male flowers bloomed at the same time to pollinate them. We do have some golden zucchini developing, though, and some Magda squash I should be able to pick in a few days. Maybe even a yellow pattypan squash or two.

The paste tomatoes, at least, are coming along nicely, with more of them starting to blush.

I was able to harvest more green onions from the high raised bed. Most of these will be dehydrated, and there are lots more I can harvest.

The handful of pea pods are almost all from the second planting. The first planting is, amazingly, still blooming!

Most of the onions seem to be growing well. Some of the red onions have very different shapes, and they are starting to be noticeable. I’m thinking of picking one or two for fresh eating, just to see how they taste.

The one surviving type of turnips are finally starting to have visible “shoulders”. We might actually be able to pick some, soon.

I don’t know what to make of the potatoes. They’re done blooming and we should be able to harvest young potatoes now, but I want to leave them as long as I can. The plants themselves are nowhere near as large as potato plants normally get. There was so much water in that area, I’m sure it stunted the growth of the ones that survived. I still might dig one plant up, of each variety, just to see what there is to see. Will the lack of foliage translate into a lack of potatoes, too? I was really hoping to have a good amount of potatoes to store for the winter. It certainly wouldn’t be enough to last the entire winter for the 4 of us, but it will help us decide if these are varieties we will get again or not.

Every time I’m in the garden, I’m thinking of next year’s garden. One thing is for sure. It is nowhere near big enough to meet our goal of providing sufficient amounts of food to last us until there is fresh produce again. We planted so much, with the expectation of losses, but this year the losses are just too great. Which has really surprised me. I did not expect to get less productivity this year, compared to last year’s drought. Mind you, during the drought, we were watering the garden beds every day, twice a day. This year… well, adding water is easy. Keeping water out is not. Still, even if everything had gone well, we would still probably need double the garden size to meet our long term goal. Short term is to have enough to supply our needs for at least 3 months – the hardest winter months, when we might find ourselves snowed in or the vehicles frozen.

Every year we garden, we figure things out a bit more, from what weather extremes we need to work around, to how much of anything we need to grow, to what we like enough to grow year after year. More me, half the enjoyment of gardening is analysing the results and using that information to make decisions for the next year!

That’s one good thing about having hard gardening years. You do learn more from it, than from years were everything goes smoothly.

The Re-Farmer

Scything and mulching progress

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There had been predictions for more rain this afternoon, but when things stayed dry, I headed out with the scythe.

I worked on the area where the hay is still upright, and not flattened to the ground by wind. I took this picture when I thought I was done with scything for the day, but ended up cutting one more swath.

This means we can now access the shed we want to dismantle, now that the roof collapsed over the winter. We still need more space to stack things. I suspect much of it will go into a burn pile, but I know there is some good lumber that can still be salvaged in there, and I want to make sure there’s someplace to put them that’s off the ground. Once the remains of the roof is cleared away, I’m thinking of dragging out the old metal garage door that’s leaning against one wall and laying it on the ground, and using that to stack lumber on top of. If all goes well, we’ll have the materials to build a chicken coop that can handle our winters. I’d really like to build one on wheels, so we can set it up in different places, as needed. I hope to use the chickens as part of our gardening plans, as well as for eggs and meat.

We shall see how that works out.

Meanwhile.

In the foreground of the photo, you can see some of the dried hay from when I tried using the weed trimmer to cut this. I gathered all the previously cut hay into the wagon and hauled it to the garden.

The Boston Marrow really, really needed some help with all the grass and weeds that had grown through the straw mulch. I have not been able to get more cardboard, however…

I did have the box from when we bought the new lawn mower last year in the garage. It’s a really, really heavy cardboard, and there were so many strong metal staples in two of the corners, it was easier to just cut out that part of the cardboard, after removing all the tape I could.

Because the cardboard is so heavy, and I had just one box, I cut it up into many smaller pieces. Then, for each Boston Marrow, I cut a piece with an opening in the middle, to fit around the plants. Once each plant was done, I filled in the spaces in between with the remaining pieces.

I was short one piece to finish!

Ah, well. Close enough.

The dried hay in the wagon, however, was not enough to mulch all the squash, however. So I went back and got the freshly cut hay.

Thanks to the net that came with the wagon, I was able to jam all of it into the wagon.

It was enough to almost completely finish mulching the area.

Because there was no mulch on top of the cardboard I’d already laid down around the green patty pan squash and the hulless pumpkins, not only did the cardboard dry quickly in the sun, but pieces kept getting blown around. In this bed, it was bad enough that I weighed them down with some boards, as best I could.

Thankfully, there was enough hay to mulch all the individual squash plants, but not enough to finish filling in the spaces between the hulless pumpkins, nor to fill in up to the corn. It will be sufficient for now, though. Once the hay was down, I wet it enough that the cardboard below would be damp, too.

The green patty pan squash plants are so tiny, they’re completely hidden by the hay! I did make sure they were not covered. Honest. 😄 As small as they are, after all this time, there is still the possibility of a crop out of them. They have only 55 days to maturity. I’m hoping that, now that they’re mulched and not fighting for nutrients – and they’re no longer drowned out! – they’ll perk up, and we might have something to harvest by the end of August.

The cardboard being blown around is a problem in the big squash patch, too, but there was no more hay. I decided to use some of the remaining straw bale.

I only got one load done. Just enough to mulch two Baby Pam pumpkin plants.

This is one reason why. The handle on our new garden fork broke off!

The other reason is, while pulling the straw off the bale, there were clouds of what look to be mold spores being kicked up. I really didn’t want to be breathing that stuff!

Well, there’s a whole area just north of the garden that’s too overgrown to mow. I’ll start scything that to use on the nearby squash patch, so that I’m not having to use the wagon to bring it over.

But not today. Probably not tomorrow, either, as I will be out and about for much of the day. Saturday is supposed to hit 28C/82F, but if I get started scything early enough, I should be able to escape the heat. The hottest part of the day is typically around 5pm, so there should be plenty of time.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

A rare sighting

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While putting the kibble and water out this morning, I found the bitty kitties playing on top of the board pile. I managed to catch a picture of a kitten that usually runs off before I can get a good look at it.

There were six kittens from this litter in the branch pile, but since they’ve been moved to the board pile, I’ve only been seeing 5 at a time, and that includes the calico that is from an older litter.

I can usually count on seeing this one around the kibble house or laundry platform, often by itself. While I saw its calico sibling with the bitty kitties, I saw one of its other siblings later on. Mama had gone onto the laundry platform, and the darkest kitten of this litter appeared out of nowhere and practically pounced on her, going for the nip, barely giving her a chance to lie down! 😁

Oddly, I didn’t see a lot of adult cats while doing my rounds this morning, but I did see the black and white kitten near the pump shack when I brought kibble that way, then later saw a tabby eating the kibble I leave on the table by the door.

I suspect something other than kitties has been around during the night. When I came outside this morning, I found the diverter for the downspout above the rain barrel on the ground – along with the screen cover for the rain barrel, and the board and bricks that support the diverter and hold the screen over in place. My guess is, something heavier jumped onto the board and knocked it all down. The shelf on the other side of the door has two shelves for the cats to shelter in, while the top shelf is full of various stuff. Something had gone into there and knocked things about, too. Even one of the bricks that are part of the counterweight for the cats’ house was knocked out and onto the ground. My guess is racoons, since none of the cats are heavy enough to knock some of this stuff about, and skunks can’t climb up to some of the other stuff. Even some of the board at the top of the board pile that I’d straightened out, after the groundhogs knocked things askew while pulling down the old tarp that had been covering it, were pulled aside. At least the wood and water trays were still on the pile and not on the ground.

One of the things I got done this morning was use the slow-release granulated fertilizer on the garden. It’s an organic fertilizer made from chicken manure, designed for tomatoes and vegetables. There wasn’t enough to do everything, so I focused on the heavy feeders, and the things that seem to be struggling the most. I ran out before I could do all the squash in the squash patch, but I was able to get everything in the corn and squash patch, the tomatoes and the bell peppers. The fertilizer releases nutrients when it gets wet, but we’re not expected to get rain again for a few days. With how damp the ground it, it’s unlikely anything will need to be watered before then. Ah, well. It might take a while, but it should be interesting to see how the plants that got some of the granules will do, compared to the ones that didn’t.

The Re-Farmer