After yesterday’s trip to the ER, my daughters have been absolutely brutal about me not doing anything.
Which was probably a good idea. I have been feeling really good today, which means I probably would have overdone it, if they hadn’t!
My younger daughter has been focusing on the outside stuff and taking over in the garden. She’s been doing the morning cat feeding and this morning she did a deep watering of the garden beds – something that probably won’t be needed tomorrow, as there are thunderstorms in the forecast. Then she went out again to dig up all of the potatoes. Which turned out to be a harder job than it should have been. She couldn’t find where I’d left the garden fork, which still needed to have its broken handle replaced, so she was using a spade. When I came out to see how she was, she’d stopped for a break in the shade, having brought my walker out to use.
She found that thing so handy, she’s now considering buying one for herself!
When I found out about the lack of garden fork, I got the new handle I bought, a screwdriver and the garden fork over. Unfortunately, the Canadian Tire handle turns out to be smaller than the handle on the fork, so she wasn’t able to get it all the way on. We’ll need to reduce the circumference of the handle by a small amount – small enough that just some sand paper would do the job – to get it all the way on. So she had to finish using the spade.
Most of the Yukon Gold got rinsed off with a hose then brought inside. The first photo above is after her sister used some of it for supper. The second image is the last of the Yukon Gold with all of the Viking potatoes, curing on the screen.
I’m not too concerned about curing them fully. There aren’t a lot of them and they will likely be finished off rather quickly, much like the cabbage harvested earlier are being used up now.
In the future, we would need to plant a LOT more to have enough to last us the winter and, hopefully, have seed potatoes for the next year.
My daughter removed the garlic from the screen to make room for the potatoes, and then she trimmed the roots and dirt off the garlic, getting them ready to bring indoors.
We’ll be sure to selected the ones with the largest cloves to plant in October. We will have plenty to choose from. We’ve got the largest garlic we’ve grown yet, this year!
I joined my daughter again shortly before she finished with the garlic, so we were able to walk around a bit. I did harvest some bush beans planted around the Arikara squash, while she looked for any ripe Orange Currant tomatoes. Later on, I also harvested the one Prolific Long Neck squash that was large enough to make it worth picking.
While walking around, I couldn’t help but notice this.
The tree removal company has not been able to come out with their stump grinder, with the rain we had last week. From the looks of it, we’ll be getting thunderstorms and severe weather through Monday and Tuesday.
Which means the elm has had time to start trying to grow back already.
Elm is very difficult to get rid of, which is one of the reasons why my brother is willing to pay for stump grinding.
So the girls have been wonderful about getting things done that I would normally be working on, which is appreciated. Even feeling as good as I did, and as lovely it was to walk around the yard to get some fresh air and sunshine. it wasn’t all that long before I started feeling warning signs that I needed to get back inside to sit down. I still managed to get a few easy things done, though I had to sneak that in after my daughter went inside with the garlic. 😄
I almost forgot to get a “before” picture, so the first image is after I’d already cut away a couple of cabbage heads.
I got a dozen heads loaded up in the wheelbarrow. I left the stems and outer leaves for now. Those will be composted into the bed, later on.
Everything was very wet with dew, so I laid them out on the table under the canopy tent to dry. They have since been brought in, but are still a touch damp, so they’ve been laid out in the cat free zone. A couple of them have very loose heads, so those will be used right away. My older daughter was thinking of making some cabbage soup, or even just roasting them.
We won’t have any purple savoy cabbage heads to harvest. None have formed. The leaves, however, are still edible. The youngest ones, at least. So I might find something to do with those at some point.
After the cabbage was laid out, I got the wire mesh divider from the basement and set it up on a couple of sawhorses, then took all the garlic hanging around the perimeter of the canopy tent down. They were rather damp, too, and one bulb was quite soft, so that one got set aside. The rest were freed from the cord they were hanging from, and laid out through the wire mesh of the divider. I hope that this will allow them to finish curing properly, and they didn’t get so damp from the rain that they rot or start sprouting, instead! The largest ones will be set aside for planting this fall.
Also, Gouda photo bomb. 🧀🐈
The insect netting that was protecting the cabbage actually had things growing through them along the edges of the bed. I got as much as I could out, while stretching the net out to full size on the grass. Later in the afternoon, I hung it on the clothes line and took a hose to clean it off a bit, before it gets folded and rolled up for storage.
I think I will harvest all of the Golden Boy celery next – except for the two that have gone to seed, which I will leave to collect later. My older daughter seems to be mildly allergic to fresh celery, so we haven’t been using it a lot. I’m thinking to dehydrate it, then powder it to make celery salt.
Hmmm… There’s only so much I can fit into my oven to dehydrate, so maybe I’ll just harvest a couple of bunches at a time to dehydrate. I’ve dehydrated celery before and it’s amazing how small the pieces get!
I was able to get a new handle for my garden fork today, so I’ll be able to harvest the potatoes relatively soon, once the ground is dry enough.
Or I’ll get my daughters to do it, depending on how I feel after my surgery.
This little guy was waiting with the cats in the sun room when I came out. It seems to prefer this particular tray just outside the sun room, and was eating kibble where when I came out with the cat soup. It did not want to stop eating when I came close! Hungry baby. It did finally move but came back as soon as I moved on to the next tray. I find it amusing that Sweetie – who still behaves as if terrified all the time – is buddies with the skunk!
After feeding the cats, I hoped to water the garden but, after walking around and checking the beds, I was just in too much pain – and I had taken pain killers before I headed out. So I went in to have breakfast and hoped the painkillers would finally kick in.
They didn’t.
In the end, after waiting long enough, I took some more and tried lying down. That finally did it.
One of the things on my to-do list today was a trip into town. My younger daughter had her own list, so she came along. While heading to the truck and getting things ready, I had a surprise. The shed my brother had bought was up! I never heard a thing!
I had been wondering what could be done to create a base for the shed. After leveling the area, my brother salvaged an old steel door – for some reason, there are quite a lot of them scattered about! – to set under the shed. It is the perfect width.
I later found out that the shed is surprisingly light, so he wants to find a way to secure it to the steel door, so it doesn’t blow away in the wind.
I had a bag and a half of non-aluminum cans in that spot, and the cats were already starting to get into one of them. They are now in the shed. No more coming out to find cans scattered all over the place!
My daughter and I headed out soon after. I haven’t seen the renter’s cows for a while and I think they’ve been rotated out. We decided to leave the gate open and I made sure to send a message to let my brother and SIL know, so they knew it was us and left intentionally.
We had lunch first. While we were eating, I started getting a lot of notifications on my phone. It was the security camera at the gate. My SIL took advantage of the gate being open while she was mowing around the driveway. We had actually talked about that earlier and she wasn’t planning to mow, as we haven’t had rain lately and the grass wasn’t very long. The path to the barn that my brother uses a lot, however, was a fair bit taller, so she mowed that for them and just kept on going!
After lunch, we went to a nearby store to look for one of the things my daughter was after. She ended up finding a couple of things she needed, which was handy. Then it was off to the grocery store. I had a couple of the big water jugs to refill, plus a short list from my husband. Since we were there anyhow, I picked up some fresh fruit and a few other things that we would need soon that were on sale, and my daughter found a few things as well. I’m glad she was able to come along.
By the time we got home and everything was unpacked and put away, it wasn’t too much longer before it was time to feed the outside cats again, so I took care of that before doing the watering. This time, I also watered the trees and bushes in the food forest area. It’s been dry enough lately that they got extra watering.
After finishing watering the main garden area and the trees, I came around to do the south garden beds when I found my daughter going by with the wheel barrow. She had dug up the enameled bricks from around the fire pit and brought them closer to the house, where they are currently soaking in water to loosen the dirt before she scrubs them a bit. We were planning to take those bricks out and replace them with rocks that we’ve picked out of the garden, more of which needs to be brought over to the fire pit area. Knowing these were going to be taken out, she wanted to salvage them – to use in the basement! She is wanting to reorganize and do a keep clean in the living room. We’ve got that big fish tank we’d used as a greenhouse for seed starts in the past, and it’s in the way. We’d been talking about putting it in the basement, where I can use it as a greenhouse in the spring, but the concrete gets wet in the spring (parts of it are still wet now) because the weeping tile is probably full of silt and tree roots. Anything we set up has to be elevated, and we’d run out of bricks. Once she has these salvaged bricks cleaned up a bit, they will be used to set under the stand the fish tank rests on, so the wood won’t rot.
Getting all that out of the living room and down the stairs is not going to be easy. It will, however, free up a lot of space we need!
This was set up near the old kitchen garden so, once the bricks were soaking, that’s where I started the watering. While doing the wattle weave bed, I decided it was time to lift the garlic in there. These are from a bulb of garlic I’d found while preparing the rectangular bed nearby in the fall. This was well after I’d planted the garlic in the main garden area, and were clearly quite a bit smaller, even before I dug them up.
These are very young and small garlic, so we will be using them right away, rather than setting them with the other garlic to cure.
It’s a good thing I enjoy doing the deep watering, because it takes at least 2 hours – closer to 3, when the trees get watered, too. I was pretty tired, sore and hungry by the time I was done, and my daughters were sweeting enough to make me a supper when I came in.
Meanwhile, my brother has headed back to the city while my SIL stays here for a while longer. We never crossed paths in person today at all!
Anyhow.
Today has been a mixed bag, but I am happy with how much I was able to get done, in between dealing with pain. One of the things that came up while I was talking to my daughter about what I was feeling this morning was my doctor’s offer to start the process to get me a new pair of knees. I said no to that, as they aren’t that bad, really.
My left hip, however… that is something I should probably bring up, the next time I see my regular doctor!
Not anytime soon, though. One thing at a time, and there’s three of us waiting for various surgeries right now!
So… I didn’t make it to the city again. I didn’t even make it to the garden to harvest until the late afternoon.
I will cover why in my next post.
When I did make it out, my daughter was there to help me with the walker and to harvest the bush beans. Then, as I was feeling well enough, she started doing the watering while I went to the old kitchen garden to harvest a bit more.
The amount of bush beans available to harvest has dropped quite a bit by now, so we didn’t have much to pick. I also harvested what will likely be the only kohlrabi we’ll get this year. Then a grabbed the two largest Green Benning scallop squash. We will definitely be getting more of those, later on! Those are looking really beautiful. Last of all, I grabbed a bunch of mint, to make fresh mint tea.
Then I decided I felt well enough to harvest the garlic. As I started on that, my younger daughter got a message from her sister asking what we were picking, as she was thinking to do a stir fry. So I told her where the colander with the vegetables was, then grabbed a few Swiss Chard leaves for her, for added greens. There wasn’t a lot of surviving Swiss Chard between the garlic large enough to pick, but enough to add to a stir fry.
I am so happy with the garlic. This is easily our best year for garlic, with SO many huge garlic heads! I believe the variety is Porcelain Music, if I remember correctly. They are from our own saved garlic, not purchased.
The first image of the slide show above is where I’d stacked them all while digging them up, on the mulch by the potatoes. There was one garlic head that broke off when I tried to pull it up, even after digging under it with the garden fork, with a snap so loud my daughter heard it while watering at the other end of the garden! I’m happy to say, I timed it right this year. Last year, I’d put it off longer and about half a dozen bulbs had starts to split. Which is fine. Those just got eaten right away. There were no split bulbs at all this time.
Yesterday evening, I’d set up the canopy tent and the folding table. You can see the bundle in the second image. In the last image, they’re all laid out with the bulbs off the edges of the table. I’ll leave them to dry overnight, then string them up to hang for curing tomorrow.
We have ourselves a downright cold day, for this time of year. As I write this, we’re at 11C/52F, with a humidex at 5C/41F Our expected high of the day is only 15C/59F
With that in mind, I decided to leave the transplants I purchased in their bins and will transplant them tomorrow. Today, I focused first on weed trimming around the main garden beds for as long as the batteries lasted. After I drained two batteries around the log framed beds, I switched gears to focus on the potato bed.
The potatoes had gotten big enough that they were pushing up the netting that kept the cats and elm seeds out. The first photo was taken after I’d removed the weights and ground staples holding the edges of the netting down.
There was enough debris and elm seeds on the netting that I took care to drag it well away from the bed before rolling it up. After the supports were removed, I got the weed trimmer going again. The battery lasted me long enough to finish around the potato bed and almost all the way around the garlic bed next to it.
With the potatoes, I brought out the wagon and started hauling straw from the round bale to mulch around the potato plants. It took 3 1/2 loads to get it all thickly mulched. Especially around the edges, where the crab grass and creeping Charlie keeps trying to invade.
Then, since I had half a wagon load anyway, I started mulching around the garlic bed. It already has a leaf mulch around the edges, but things are starting to grow through. A couple more wagon loads finished the job. The short distance that didn’t get cleared with the weed trimmer got an extra thick layer.
There is spinach and chard planted in between the garlic, and they are just not growing. I can see seedlings. They are there. They are just not getting bigger! I’ve had the same problem in previous years. The first time we grew spinach, we had three bed with three different varieties and they thrived. That was the last year we were able to grow really good spinach. Even the winter sown spinach we grew in the old kitchen garden were not as lush. That was also the only time we successfully grew chard. Every other time we tried to grow it, we’d get seedlings and that was it. They just stopped growing. I have no idea why.
The garlic is looking good, though. I’m looking forward to when the scapes start showing up!
When I was all done putting everything away and heading in, I was rather surprised when I checked the time. It was barely past noon. I hadn’t paid attention tow what time it was when I headed out, and the day felt like it should have been more like 5pm!
Checking the temperature again. It hasn’t changed, except for the “real feel”, which has dropped to 4C/39F. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 21C/70F, and it’s expected to be the hottest day for the next 10 days or so.
Today, my daughters took care of the morning routine, so I could sleep in, though “sleeping in” is rather different as the days get brighter so early now, and breakfast waiting for me.
I headed outside to take care of something and ended up staying out to get a few things done. One of those was to clean up under the green house frame, move it out and tiny up.
I think the cats are okay with losing their winter shelter.
The first image above is Fluffy (spayed), sleeping in the straw under the mock orange, which has become a favourite napping spot for her. We have huge progress with her. Yesterday, while I was coming around the north side of the old kitchen garden, she actually came running towards me, coming to a stop on a retaining wall block and waited for me to come over and pet her. After I got the picture above, I was able to walk up to her and pet her, and she stayed all curled up. Until recently, while she would sometimes allow pets while eating, she would otherwise not allow us to approach her. I would sometimes manage to sneak pets, but that was about it. Now, I can just walk up to her to pet her.
The second image is Sprig, in what seems to be a favourite napping spot for her. I have a giant crocheted blanket I left on the kibble house roof over the winter as extra insulation. I’ve left it there because it’s heavy enough to not be blown away by the wind, and the cats enjoy sleeping on it.
Sprig is more feral, though not as feral as her mother. Sprig hangs out close to the house and in the sun room, whereas her mother goes elsewhere until it’s feeding time, and runs off if we come to close.
While I was watering late this morning, I heard a cat fight that was a real surprise for me. Judgement, who is neutered, was violently attacking Sprig, who is intact and has not gone into her first heat. (We really need to trap her!!!) He is about twice her size and probably more than twice her weight. Why he would attack her like that, I just can’t understand!
The third picture shows where the portable greenhouse frame was, and you can just see part of Sprig, on the kibble house roof, in the photo. I had to wrestle part of the frame loose from the tall grass draped over one end before I could move it. For now, it’s set up next to the shrine, against the chain link fence. It barely fits between the shrine and the white lilacs there, and blocks one end of the path, but it will not stay there permanently. I just had to get it out of the way. Once the frame was clear, I raked up the straw and dead grass that was under it, into the wheelbarrow. It’s been pooped in by cats, so it can’t be reused as mulch or go into the regular compost, so it went to the cat litter compost pile. The pots I’d tried growing luffa in were also thoroughly pooped in, so I emptied the soil into the wheelbarrow, too, and it went into the litter compost, too.
One of the pots somehow ended up with a hole cracked into the side, with a chunk missed. I’ve no idea how that could have happened, in that location!
The rotting wooden bench that I’d had against the back of the tarp to reduce billowing in the wind is now set up against the back of the kibble house. The wire mesh frame, now leans against it, resting on broken pieces of brick so it doesn’t have contact with the ground. That was made to be a summer “door” for the old basement, so we can keep it open for air circulation in the summer, and no cats can get down. Once things get warm enough, we might do that again. For now, it’s nowhere near warm enough.
Last of all, I move the folding table up to the kibble house, and all the pots and bins, and even the black garbage can I was using as a heat sink, fit under the table.
That scrap yarn crocheted blanket on the table is even heavier than the one on the kibble house roof!
Today’s watering has finally included the main garden beds, as I now have enough hoses set up to reach them all. I found a lovely surprise. High winds had blown the leaf mulch over the onions and the row I’d planted peas, so I gently removed it as I watered, and made the discovery.
They had already sprouted when I first removed the mulch, looking rather blanched from being buried by mulch. Then we got those ridiculously cold days and it seems that they had all been killed off. I even ordered more seeds, since there weren’t a lot in the packet of this variety, so I had no extra seeds to try again. Now, it looks like the peas have recovered and sent up new shoots!
Still no sign of the rainbow mix carrots, though. Under the boards was still damp, but the only sprouts I’m seeing are a few tentative weeds. With those, I do have more seeds, I believe, so it can be resown, if it turns out they didn’t survive the spring.
Their tips were blanched when I removed the mulch, and those tips did get damaged by frost, but now you can’t even tell where the damage it. A couple of them needed a bit of help, though. Their leaves were suck in a membrane that would normally have been the cover of the stem at the base, just above ground. It was already starting to split, just from the size of the leaves, but they were getting all twisted out of shape, so I carefully got them free. They’ll be standing straight in no time.
There’s no sign of the spinach or yellow chard, but it may be too soon to tell. It’s been too dry. Now that I’m able to, I’ll be watering them daily, so if anything survive the temperature lurches we’ve been having all spring, we should see something soon. There’s no sign of poppies yet, either, but I don’t expect to, yet. The plot does show evidence of cats walking all over it, though, so that might be a problem. I was also able to water the Albion everbearing strawberries that have survived the winter.
I’ll need to hook up more hoses, so I can fill the water barrel out by the plum, gooseberry and haskap. the gooseberry’s leaf buds are starting to unfurl already, but I can barely see the haskap at all. I’d be concerned they got eaten by deer during the winter, but I never saw any tracks around there. The snow was too deep. Hopefully, if I can start watering them, they’ll perk up and start budding leaves. The plum seems to be okay and is starting to show leaf buds. The plum still has chicken wire around the tall dollar store tomato supports I set up around it, after the deer got to it a couple of times last year.
I intend to get more of those supports. They are really handy. I might even use them for tomatoes at some point. 😄
According to the forecast, we might get some rain in a couple of hours, but only a 35% chance of it, so I’m glad I did the watering. What rain we got yesterday really wasn’t much at all.
After moving the portable greenhouse frame, I noticed that the white lilacs are starting to spread into the path, toward the chimney block planters, quite a lot. Normally, I’d prune them back, but I remembered that the renter’s wife had said she would like to have white lilacs, so I messaged her today, telling her she can gab as many suckers as she wants. She accepted the offer. Once she has an area prepped, she will come over and dig them up. I just asked her to let me know when she’s going to come, so I can water the area the day before, to make it easier to dig them up and transplant them. This is the perfect time of year to transplant them, since their leaf buds are just starting to form. Once she has taken as many as she wants, I’ll prune away any other suckers remaining.
Yesterday, I’d been hearing heavy equipment and the sound of cattle and thought they might have been moved to this quarter. I asked about it, since our basket will are going to be shipped at the end of May, and I’ll be transplanting them beyond the outer yard. I’ll have to make sure they are protected from the cows for the first few years. It’ll be about 5 years of coppice training before they produce useable switches, but I can use any sprigs cut away and plant them. Which means that, every year, there should be at least a few more new basket willows started. There are two more varieties I want to try, with differently coloured bark. I’d hoped to order them for this year, too, but the budget did not allow for it. Too many truck and plumbing repairs!
I got through to the septic guy today and he will be coming out tomorrow morning. I should still be here, but will probably be leaving early to go to the post office before it closes for 2 hours over the lunch period, so I might end up leaving before he’s done. Which is okay; the payment is already ready and waiting for him. Tracking information shows my new walker is now in the city, which means is should get to the post office tomorrow morning, even though it still says Wednesday for delivery. A friend suggested I could get a note from a doctor about it, which would allow us to claim it on my medical insurance. I should be able to get that done by the doctor at the sports injury clinic during my appointment.
Things are looking very calm outside right now. I think, after I feed the outside cats for the night, I might get a fire going in the pit and char those stakes for the chain link fence raised bed. I probably won’t have a chance to get more done on it tomorrow, but at least they’ll be ready for when I can.
I definitely want to start with the good news, before getting into the gardening stuff.
As I was putting things away in the sun room, I saw a cat in the cat cage jump out and meow a greeting. Nothing unusual about that, except that this cat had something around its neck that was flapping.
We had put collars on the cats that got fixed, to make them faster to identify, but I also made sure they were reflective collars, so they would be less likely to get hit by a car or something. Most of the cats lost their collars long ago. Judgement had lost one or two already, but he still had a ratty yellow collar still on him.
I took it off and threw it away!
Now I’m hoping to see Syndol back, too! It’s not unusual for cats to disappear for the summer, then come back for the winters, but sometimes they don’t come back at all. So this was a nice surprise for the day.
My priority for today was to finish what I started in the old kitchen garden. The rectangular bed in particular needed a bit more work. I was able to pull more weeds and roots I could no longer see when I stopped last night. I also found the gap under one log was quite a bit larger than the hole the cats had made, so I found more sticks to push in front of it. The gap extended all the way to the corner, though, so I used the scrap board I’d been using when hammering stakes into the ground to lay across the opening on the inside, then added a few more sticks to hold it in place.
Then I could use the rake to level all the soil again.
The section of the wattle weave bed I’d prepped yesterday needed some clean up again. I kept having to chase cats out of the garden beds because they kept wanting to use the nice, soft, fluffy soil as a litter box!
After levelling the soil in the rectangular bed, I marked out four rows with stakes and twine. This required repeated removal of kittens. In the second picture, you can see what I planted and transplanted. In the row north of centre, I planted the mixed beets, so they wouldn’t overshadow the Hedou Tiny bok choi I sowed on in the row south of centre. The bok choi can get quite tall, after it has bolted and gone to seed, but for harvesting, they should only be about 2 or 3 inches tall. I do plan to leave one or two to go to seed to collect at the end of the season.
In the outside rows, I transplanted a whole bunch of the onions I’d been finding. On one side, I transplanted the ones that were clearly bulb onions. On the other, I transplanted the ones that look like they might be white bunching onions, except I’ve never tried to grow white bunching onions before.
In the next picture, you can see where I planted one packet of dwarf peas. I got two packets, but this is a very short row, so I only needed the one. The peas went in the back of the bed (north side). I’d already transplanted some onions at the end and at the front near the corner before. Today, I took the two garlic bulbs I’d found, broke up the cloves, and planted them in line with the onions. They filled the entire remaining front space.
Once everything was in, it all got mulched with leaves. Then I mulched around the herbs in the tiny bed as well. I didn’t cover them, as we’re still using them as needed. Before the hard freeze hits, I’ll cover them completely with a leaf mulch, and we’ll see how they survive the winter!
I also moved the raised bed cover over the rectangular bed for the winter.
I didn’t take final pictures, though, as I decided to take garden tour video, instead. I’ll be going through them and putting together a garden tour video. If I’m satisfied with what I took. Otherwise, I might take new recordings tomorrow, before I head into the city for the Costco shop. We’ll see.
At this point, the only bed I was considering winter sowing into is the small bed off to the side where the Albion Everbearing strawberries had been last year. It still needs to be cleaned up, and I plan to sow bread seed poppies there. That can wait until spring, though, if necessary.
As it stands now, other than mulching the transplanted strawberries and little things like that, the garden can be done for the year. The winter sowing is in, and anything left can wait until spring if I can’t get to it in the next while. We’re getting a bit of rain right now, and the next couple of days are supposed to be dry and cooler, but Sunday and Monday are supposed to get warm again, with plenty of sun, so there’s still the possibility of getting ahead of things for next year.
So, to recap, we have winter sown for next year:
Purple savoy cabbage White and Purple Vienna Kohlrabi Daikon Radish White Egg turnip Rainbow Mix carrots Spring Blush peas American spinach Yellow Swiss Chard Garlic Hedou Tiny bok choi Assorted Mix beets Tom Thumb Dwarf peas
Then transplanted miscellaneous onions and garlic that were found during bed prep. Plus seed onions.
Last year, I scattered seed mixes and they did surprisingly well. This year, I’m hoping the more orderly plantings will survive the winter and give us a nice head start in the garden next year!
I got back from the city early enough, and it was still warm enough, to get some progress done in the garden.
My first priority was to winter sow in the east yard low raised beds. Two of these beds were already prepped, but not covered in any way, so they did require some clean up. The cats have been using them as litter boxes!
Some of their “presents” were astonishingly huge.
Ew.
My original plan had been to do the kohlrabi and cabbage on the outside of the beds, then have peas down the middle of one, while leaving a gap in the middle of the other to plant pole beans in the spring.
I forgot. The kohlrabi and cabbage will need to be covered in netting to keep them from being decimated by flea beetles and cabbage moths. Having something growing on a trellis in the middle is probably not a good idea!
In the first picture below, the beds are cleaned up, leveled and rows marked out.
In the second picture, you can see the planted rows of purple and white kohlrabi. If I had gone ahead with the plan to grow pole beans down the middle, these rows would have been further apart. I decided to stick with just the two rows and moved them closer to the middle. These raised beds are more prone to freezing than the beds in the main garden area, simply because the boards are so much thinner than the logs used in the longer beds. We’ve lost almost entire beds of garlic over the winter due to excessive cold, even with a mulch. I’m hoping that, with sowing them closer to the middle, deep mulching them with leaves, plus the predicted milder winter we’re expected to have, they will survive. The plant spacing for these, according to the package, is 4-6 inches, so I tried to scatter the seeds with my little hand seeder fairly lightly. If they survive and germinate, they will still need to be thinned later on, but not by too much. Hopefully, if I have the space, the will be thinned by transplanting.
In the next picture, I have the Purple Savoy cabbage. This is the first time we’ve tried to grow cabbage. I originally planned to have two rows on the outside, then peas in the middle, but decided to do three rows of cabbage. As they need about a foot per cabbage for spacing, I tried to scatter two or three seeds every foot or so, though a few spots accidentally got quite a bit more! You can sort of see a grid in the soil, from where the seeds were covered and the soil gently pressed down, while the rest of the rows I made with a hoe remain untouched.
Grommet REALLY wanted to “help” me with the sowing!
I had made sure to rake up plenty of leaves into the wagon and the wheelbarrow before I started, and was able to give the beds a good mulching for the winter. Then I transferred one of the raised bed covers for the winter. There is another one on the third bed I could move over, but I decided against it. That cover’s wire mesh does not have hoops to support it. Cats would knock that flat and out of shape in a heartbeat. So it’s up on top of the box frame one the other bed, which I’ve found surprisingly useful. I plan to make more 3′ x 9′ covers like this over time, but we need to buy more lumber for it, first.
That done, it was time to shift over to the old kitchen garden.
The cats have been having a field day in the cleaned up wattle weave bed, so that got a clean up, first. My plan is to winter sow dwarf peas in the back of the south facing section of the wattle weave bed, and transplant any onions, etc that I found in the rectangular bed in the front.
That… might not quite work out! At least, not so much for the onions part.
The first thing was to harvest the remaining Swiss Chard. It wasn’t until I uploaded the pictures onto Instagram that I realized I forgot them outside! They should be okay overnight.
In the second picture, you can see an area on the south side of the bed, where the cats dug into the dirt. I suspect there was a mouse or something that got their attention for them to dig it out that much. There had been grass clippings chinked in the gap between the logs, but that disappeared. It’s been filled repeatedly, and the cats keep pulling it out. So one of the things I needed to do was find a way to block that gap in a cat proof way.
Once the chard and remaining kohlrabi roots were cleared out, it was time to loosen the soil, pull the weeds and set aside any little onions I found.
I found so many, I started just tossing them with the weeds after a while!
What I really wanted to find out is what was going on with what looked like a cluster of garlic coming up, and another cluster of what I thought were onions but, as they got larger, the leaves started to look like some sort of ornamental allium, instead.
In the next picture, you can see that there were two entire bulbs of garlic that somehow got missed! I planted garlic in here a couple of years ago. This year, two garlic bulbs grew among the seed mix in this bed. They grew into nice sized bulbs that got harvested.
Now I find two full bulbs of garlic that somehow got missed over two growing seasons! I will probably separate the cloves and transplant them.
Next to the garlic is the cluster of alliums growing near by that did turn out to be onions. Several of them were growing together like bunching onions, rather than bulb onions, but I’ve never grown bunching onions. They are large enough that I will probably transplant them, too.
In the next photo, you can see most of the other onions I found while cleaning the bed. There were so many tiny ones! One red onion was quite large. I will transplant the larger ones, but I don’t know if I’ll bother with the teeny ones.
While working across the bed, I was finding a surprising number of roots. Some were definitely from the rose bush at the end of the bed, but it’s possible others were from the ornamental crap apples and the double lilac. It definitely made the job take longer. As I worked my way up the bed, I took advantage of having lots of old stakes handy from the bed along the retaining wall, before the wattle weaving was added on top of the retaining wall blocks. Some of the largest, strongest ones were used to stabilize the top side logs, as their supports were getting old and starting to break.
To block the gap, I used some flat pieces of scrap wood that were in the corner, then a whole bunch of old stakes, on the inside of the wall. Once the bed is done and ready for planting, these will be mostly buried and hidden from view.
As you can tell by the last picture, and the flash needed for the pictures of the onion and garlic, I had to stop before it was all finished. It was simply getting too dark. I was working by the light of the shop lights at the sun room window by then, and those were on only because their motion sensors were being triggered.
I don’t have anywhere to be at tomorrow, so I’ll be able to finish the job then, and do more winter sowing. I should also be able to clean out that little bed off by itself in the main garden area, where I’ve decided to plant bread seed poppies. Since I didn’t winter sow a variety of peas I’d meant to plant between the cabbage, I’m considering finding somewhere else to winter sow them. Once the dwarf peas are planted, that’s two varieties of peas that are winter sown, so leaving the third variety I was planning to winter sow for the spring would be fine, too. I also have our own saved sugar snap pea seeds that can be sown in the spring.
The rectangular bed that’s being cleared now will have beets and tiny bok choi winter sown in it, probably interplanted with some of those onions and/or garlic I’ve been finding! I was thinking of planting something down the middle, but I can’t for the life of me remember what that was right now. I’ve got diagrams drawn out, but those are in the basement, along with my seed inventory.
So that’s the garden and winter sowing status, for now. We should have a nice head start into next year’s garden, if this works out.
I will also be making what will probably be my last garden tour video of the year. Last year, I ended up doing my October video using video recorded on November 1, because the video I’d taken on October 31 was done too late in the day, and everything was too dark. So I want to make sure to get it done earlier, and earlier in the day.
Thankfully, it looks like the weather will hold for a while yet, and I should be able to get other things done before the snow flies. We’ll see how that works out!
Last night, we apparently dropped to 2C/36F. There were no frost warnings. Yet, when I headed out to do the morning cat feeding and rounds, there was frost everywhere, not just in the shady areas.
Which meant we had to wait until it warmed up a bit before we could start on the garlic. I had limited time, as I needed to go to my mother’s today and would be there for a while, so my younger daughter came out to give me a hand.
The bed that was ready for the garlic has been covered in plastic for some time, so the first thing we had to do was unroll it. Then, while my daughter broke up garlic bulbs, selecting the biggest cloves and setting the smaller ones aside for the kitchen, I marked off three rows for the garlic.
The twine and stakes will stay in place until after I winter sow something in between the rows.
In the second photo, we laid out the cloves where they would be planted, more or less. We ran out before filling the bed, so I went in to get more of the biggest bulbs from our stock.
Sir Robin was helping.
Breaking the bulbs apart was surprising difficult. Hard neck garlic and be that way sometimes. We also found that there were very few small cloves! We were more selective than usual – in the past, I would plant every single clove unless they were super tiny. We are now at a point where we can be fussy about it, so the kitchen got quite a few decent sized cloves!
I forgot to take a photo of the all the cloves in place, so the next photo is after we started burying them.
Grommet and Havarti “helped”.
We were pushing off the cats so constantly, it was clear we would need to give the bed extra protection. Normally, I would mulch it heavily with leaves right away, but I will do that after the winter sowing is done, some time in the next week or so. Until then, that’s a lot of soft, fluffy soil that cats would just love to dig in!
Well, we did just take off that plastic cover, so we decided to use it again.
I got some hoops from the pile of stuff being set aside and organizes for winter storage while my daughter gave the bed a heavy watering. The soil was still damp, but more water is good at this point. We do want the garlic to actually start growing a bit, before the ground freezes.
Once the watering was done and the hoops were in place, pushed down far enough that the 5′ width of the plastic could cover it with enough slack on the sides to be secured, a length of twine was run across the tops and pinned snug at each end. The hoops and the pinned end of the twine was kept on the inside of the stakes marking the rows, so the plastic could be pulled down in front of them. Then we unrolled the plastic in the path next to the bed and simply lifted it over.
So glad my daughter was able to help with that!
The excess plastic at each end was twisted to close up the opening under the hoop at one end, then weighted down with bricks. Once one end was secured, I pulled the sheet as snug as I could, then did the same thing at the opposite end. Once that was done, I could send my daughter in. She was caning it again today, and her back was really killing her by the end of it. I used the boards that had kept the plastic from blowing way earlier to secure the sides and added bricks and rocks as weights to hold them in place, which you can see in the last photo of the above slide show.
There was quite a bit of soil and debris stuck to the damp plastic, so I hosed it off before calling it done. I got inside with a whole half hour left to clean up, change and head to my mother’s!
I hope the garlic will be protected enough, but also that it won’t get too warm under there. We’re dropping to 5C/41F tonight, but tomorrow is supposed to have a high of 17C/63F, with a low of 11C/52F, then Sunday is supposed to have a high of 19C/66F. It can get pretty hot in those plastic covered rows even at those temperatures! The temperatures are supposed to drop right down again after that, including overnight lows below freezing.
When the time comes to mulch the bed for the winter, I will be focusing on a thick mulch along the sides of the bed as well as the top. Even though the bed is raised only a few inches, the outer rows could potentially get hit with winter freezing quite a bit more than the middle. In one of our first few years growing garlic, I planted in the low raised beds in the east year. One bed didn’t survive the winter, except for a handful of cloves, because it froze through the side walls. The other had mostly bulbs in the inner rows, while the other garlic planted closest to the walls didn’t make it.
Live and learn!
I’m quite happy that we finally got the garlic for next year planted. There has been so many last minute delays!
I won’t be able to get much, if anything, done in the garden tomorrow, though. I’ll be doing a dump run, then I need to go to town to pick up some prescription refills and do a bit of shopping before Thanksgiving. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get back to cleaning up that bed so full of tree roots, then get started on the other beds that need to be prepped for winter sowing.
I wonder how full of tree roots the other beds will turn out to be!
This morning I collected our largest harvest yet, for this year!
I had some help, too.
When I prepared to transplant the melons, I set up a trellis for them using Dollarama steel fence posts and welded wire mesh salvaged from the old squash tunnel from years ago. When the Spoon tomatoes were planted in the other half of the bed, I use bamboo stakes to make them their own trellis.
Well, with the melons barely growing at all, they’re not going to need the trellis. So, with my daughter’s help, we pulled the posts, with the wire still on them, and moved them over to the corn and Arikara squash bed. It’s loosely set up for now, but the 4′ square bed will get a wire fence around it – the mesh is just long enough! – to hopefully keep the raccoons from getting into the corn, when the cobs are ready. I’ll probably have to put some sort of cover over it, too, or they’ll just climb up and over.
The corn bed has plastic netting around it. Hopefully, they will be dissuaded from the corn rather than tearing their way through.
After moving the melon trellis away, the Spoon tomatoes can now be reached from both sides, so my daughter helped me pick tomatoes on one side, while I did the other.
I’m glad I remembered to bring a separate container for the Spoon tomatoes!
There was also a whole two Royal Burgundy beans to pick, from the three surviving plants. I did pick a small handful of yellow bush beans last night, though, so there was enough to actually use. While checking last night, I noticed some ripening Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes and this morning, one was ready to grab.
After that, I dug up some potatoes, then winter sown carrots from the high raised bed.
In the next image in the slide show above, you can see a very wonky potato!
That was from roots.
These potatoes were picked from about the middle of the bed, so at least twenty feet away from the trees. My garden fork was digging up more roots than potatoes.
Those trees have got to go.
Then I remembered we have herbs and stuff, so I went to the old kitchen garden, where I gathers some lemon thyme, lemon balm and oregano. In the winter sown bed, I grabbed a few Swiss Chard leaves. I even grabbed some bulbils from the walking onions, since we don’t want them to spread any further.
Once inside, the longest time was spent getting all those little green bits of stem off all those Spoon tomatoes! I also set aside some of the ripest looking ones to collect seeds from, later. Their seeds are so tiny, I’ll have to consider how best to do that!
In the last photo – which looked much better and in focus on my phone, I swear! – it what I made with it. There’s still potatoes and Spoon tomatoes left, plus the one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, but I used up all the carrots, julienned, a handful of bush beans cut small, the onion bulbils and a whole head of garlic. We still have fresh garlic left of the ones that were too far along for curing and winter storage. Then there was the chard and herbs.
When I went into town to get kibble yesterday, I also picked up some chicken legs and thighs that were on sale, which my older daughter prepared last night, so breakfast (brunch?) was the vegetables gathered this morning, plus oven roasted chicken legs.
The Re-Farmer 