garlic

Our 2026 Garden: survivors, cuteness and clean up

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Happy Mother’s Day to the moms out there!

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.

The Spring Blush peas have survived!

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.

The garlic is looking good!

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.

Time to go feed some kitties!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: beets, bok choi, dwarf peas – and Judgement!

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

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.

Which is when I realized, it was Judgement!

I haven’t seen Judgement in months!

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!

Not too shabby, I think!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 garden: winter sowing kohlrabi and cabbage, and prepping the next bed

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

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!

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: garlic is in!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Finally!

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!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: a nice harvest, and breakfast!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

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.

There were lots of Spoon tomatoes to pick!

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.

It was very good!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: first zucchini forming, a harvest for the day, and those trees have got to go!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First up, I spotted our first blooming female zucchini flower today!

There’s another one under it that bloomed and was done before I ever saw that it was a female flower.

There were no male flowers open at the time, so I grabbed a couple of older ones and tore off the petals so I could access the pollen and hand pollinate. The first one had water pour out when the petals were torn off, so I used a second one, too, just in case the first one didn’t have any viable pollen. At this point, it’s too early to tell if the one I missed had a chance to be pollinated before it was done blooming.

This afternoon, I decided to use up a whole bunch of odds and ends vegetables in the fridge, along with some fresh stuff, in the slow cooker. I’ve been leaving the potato bed for the past while but decided to dig some up for today’s use.

I had dug some up before under the potato plants that had died back the most, which was at the north end of the bed, closer to that row of self seeded trees my mother left to grow. The entire potato bed died back early, without ever developing flowers, but the north end of the bed had them dying back the fastest.

Well, I’ve pretty much confirmed why.

The potatoes in that basket are from under four potato plants that were at the end of that bed. That mass beside the basket is capillary roots from the elm trees nearby that came up while I was digging around for the potatoes. I was hitting more, larger roots as well. I’ve de-rooted these beds several times, and they come back so fast!!

Those trees have GOT to go! They’re killing our garden!

I dug up more potatoes closer to the middle of the bed, and was still getting a lot of capillary roots like that, but found more potatoes under two plants, than under the four I’d dug up first.

Since I finally had a container on hand, I harvested Spoon tomatoes. It’s been a while since I picked any, so there were plenty to gather. Thankfully, the mesh on this basket is fine enough to hold the tomatoes! Some of them were so small, they would have fallen through if they weren’t being held in place by the larger ones. I had to be careful to keep the potatoes from rolling over and squishing them.

Then I grabbed a few more carrots to add to what we already had inside, and the only ripe bush beans I could find.

In the last photo of the slide show above, it shows all the vegetables I prepared for the slow cooker, seasoned and tossed with avocado oil. All from our garden!

There are the potatoes, carrots and Spoon tomatoes, of course. Plus I finally used that one big turnip that I’d left to get big and go to seed, but the deer ate most of the greens. There’s kohlrabi in there, and more beans that we had in the fridge. It took three “harvests” of bush beans to have enough to make it worth using them in anything! Oh, and there is Swiss Chard and a whole bulb of fresh garlic in there, too.

We have a large Crockpot, and the vegetables almost filled it completely. They will shrink as they cook down, though. After I left for my mother’s, my daughter browned some ground turkey, along with some of the yellow onions we still have left from last year’s garden (they have lasted a really long time!!!) and mixed that in later on.

The slow cooker was set to high for 3 hours. Since I’ve come back from my mother’s, I’ve checked on it a few times and added more time. All those potatoes need extra time to cook through, as I deliberately left them in big chunks. For I still don’t know how it turned out!

The house is smelling amazing, though, and I’m getting hungry! 😄

The Re-Farmer

We have lost that battle! Plus garden stuff

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, yesterday, we finally admitted it. The battle has been lost. We’ve thrown in the towel and admitted defeat – for safety reasons, really.

Despite my best efforts, Magda kept getting out of the isolation shelter. Once, I found a sliding window open, but most of the time, I could see nothing disturbed. The only way I could see how she could be getting out was through the roof, even though it was weighted down with bricks, and there is a ceiling of rigid insulation. I couldn’t see how she could be getting out the back, where it lefts, but how could she be getting out through the front, where it’s hinged?

Now, the insulation has been slowly scratched and chewed up through the winter, so there is a big gap where the two pieces meet. The gap between the insulation and the roof panels is very narrow, but Magda is so tiny. Was it possible?

Just in case, I found some boards and more pieces of scrap insulation that I slide in between the roof panels and the insulation ceiling. There were still spaces, but they were very small.

Once inside and in the kitchen, went to open the window, which is directly above the isolation shelter. I spotted Magda at one of the gaps in the insulation, scratching at the roof panel. When she heard me tell her to stop, she disappeared below.

Off and on, I would check out the window. Nothing was happening.

Then I looked out and found a very flat Magda, squeezed between the boards, the insulation and the roof panel, like a pancake. !!!

I dashed outside but, as I came closer, she slithered her way back into the shelter, flung herself into the cat bed and stretched out, looking at me as if nothing had just happened. !!!

I found some more scrap pieces of insulation and shifted the boards I’d added around, then kept checking out the window. I didn’t see anything.

Eventually, though, something about the insulation seemed… different.

I went out to check, and there was Magda, sitting on the lawn, looking at me. She had somehow managed to pull the insulation downwards enough for her to squirm through.

At that point, I gave up. She’s supposed to be recovering from surgery, and the last thing she should be doing is squeezing through tight spaces and dropping down from a height. Since we’ve finished the ear medication, and The Grink was looking fine, too, I opened the ramp door to the isolation shelter and let them out, putting the wind breaker box over the opening again.

Even so, when I came out this morning, I found that window open again!

While I was doing my rounds this morning, I had a whole lot of cats following me, including Magda! The second photo above was taken while I was checking the garlic bed. After I got the picture, she walked under Stinky to get to the other side of him.

She is so small, she didn’t have to duck at all to go under him.

Gosh, those two look alike. Given when he was neutered and how old she is, I suppose it’s possible he’s her daddy.

The garlic, meanwhile, is looking much better now!

Their finally turned nice and green and, with the netting in place, nothing it digging them up anymore.

Yesterday was such a gorgeous evening, I was able to do a few things in the garden, though I neglected to take photos. One of them was to uncover the winter sown bed in the old kitchen garden to give it a good watering. With the plastic cover, it didn’t get even what little rain we’ve had, and the sump pump that drains at the high end of the bed has yet to go off this year, so it’s not being watered from below, either. There was enough water in the rain barrel that I could give this bed a thorough watering. Once the cover was off, I could also see that there are quite a few seedlings in there, and what appears to be a couple of onions that I missed from last year!

Once the cover was back on and the plastic secured, I started watering the bed at the chain link fence that is now covered with mesh. I came back to the rain barrel to refill, and found two cats lounging on top of the raised bed cover!

I am not impressed.

The pre-sown bed at the chain link fence, plus the one among the east yard garden beds got watered, and I was still able to refill the watering cans to leave in the portable greenhouse to warm up during the day and add to the heat sink effect during the night.

Which doesn’t actually seem to be accomplishing anything. Whenever I check the thermometer in the morning, it’s reading the same temperature as outside the greenhouse. Still way to cold to be able to move our seedling trays into there!

In checking the other areas, I did some clearing around the walking onions. There are quite a few of them coming up right now. Unfortunately, so is the crab grass, only some of which could be pulled out for now. I check on the fenced off area where the tulips are and there are a lot more leaves showing now. Even the saffron crocuses look like there are more of them. While they never reached the point of blooming before they got choked out by weeds, clearly the corms have expanded.

After I finished my rounds this morning, I grabbed the turkey dinners I put together for my mother and headed out. I left early enough to swing past the grocery store to see if it was open today. It was, so I popped in to pick up a few things I knew my mother was running low on. I also picked up some instant oatmeal for her to try, since she’s having a harder time standing long enough to cook herself breakfast. I figured instant oatmeal would be better than boxed cereal. I got a package with three different flavours for her to try out. When I got to her place and was putting things away, I opened the box to read the instructions – she would have great difficulty reading them herself. Each flavour called for a different amount of water. Oops. Ah, well. I explained the instructions to her as best I could.

While today was just a day to visit, I of course did a little jobs for her, including bagging up her recycling. I noticed bean cans in there, which was something I’d got for her to try before, so I asked how she liked them. She was very enthusiastic in her response, so canned baked beans are now on the list of heat and eat things for her! 😁 Until now, she’d just been getting canned soups.

With the few things I picked up for her today, plus the dinners, plus her three days a week of Meals on Wheels, it turns out my mother isn’t going to need an actual grocery shopping trip for a while. It was, for the most part, a good visit. It wasn’t until the very end, when it was getting time for me to leave anyhow, that she started going off on a tangent. One was about how surprised she was that my brother didn’t phone her for Easter. I pointed out, he came over to visit her because they were going to be out of province this weekend, to spend time with the grandbabies. “Oh, two weeks ago”, she scoffed. Except it wasn’t; it was last weekend, and he spent a long time with her going over her financial stuff, as he regularly does, along with bringing her stuff for her basket and an Easter card.

Then she started going on about my daughters, and how terrible I am for keeping them “tied” to me (she doesn’t get that they actually chose to move out here to help maintain this place) and even back to ranting about how they “know nothing” because we homeschooled. She doesn’t know the girls at all, has made no effort to get to know them (she has only ever wanted to control them and get them to perform for her), but assumes she knows everything about them and about our life in general. Basically, making scenarios up in her mind and assuming they are true, then blaming all the bad stuff on my making parenting choices she didn’t approve of. It’s been decades, and she still does it! I swear, in her mind, the girls are still 10 yrs old or something.

It was definitely time to leave.

By the time I got home, it was getting close to when I would normally go out for my evening rounds, so I was soon back outside to enjoy the gorgeous weather we’ve been having. According to my weather app, we’ve been raining all day, but it was bright sunshine and warm temperatures. After feeding the cats – and playing with the kittens a bit – I ended up taking some April garden tour video. It’s been a month since the last ones I took, so I figured it was about time. I’ll be checking those soon and seeing if I need to do it again or not! 😄

Tomorrow is supposed to be quite a bit colder, with a mix of rain and snow starting in the afternoon. On a day when I have no outings planned and want to get work done outside, of course. 😁 We’ll see how things actually turn out. Some jobs I want to start require power tools and extension cords, so if we’ve got rain or snow, those will wait a bit longer. There is always something that can be worked on, though. I actually have a whole week ahead of me, with no scheduled outings until our first city stock up trip! What a remarkable thing! I might actually get some real work done outside! Gosh, that would be nice!

We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Analyzing our 2024 Garden: what we planned vs what ended up happening

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

For the next while, I’ll be going through my old posts and videos about our 2024 garden, looking at how things worked out, and use that information to decide what we will do in our 2025 garden.

So, to start, here is my post from 2023, where I review and reset my goals for 2024.

Boy, did things change. 😄

I first looked over our plans for perennials, our food forest and the fall garlic, which had already been planted by then.

The garlic hasn’t really changed. We’ve got next year’s garlic already planted – this time using garlic we harvested, rather than buying more.

The crocuses… that was an experiment that I’ll talk about more, later.

For fruit and berry trees, we just didn’t have the budget to buy more, but we did at least get the two Trader mulberry saplings transplanted. Of the other things we hoped to be able to do, getting everbearing strawberries were the only thing we managed.

For root vegetables and tubers, we did have the potatoes, which turned out different than planned. While we intended to skip things like beets, radishes and turnips this year, I had intended to plant a lot of carrots. Instead, we planted very few, simply because we never got the space to plant more.

The plans for onions and shallots were hit and miss, but we did get them in, with some bonus onions that I will talk about later.

We intended to scale back on tomatoes, but ended up with way more than planned! There were some distinct differences among them that I will have to note for the future.

With corn, peas and beans, that changed a lot. I had intended to plant many different varieties of beans, including shelling beans, but that just didn’t happen. Among the ones that did get planted, much went wrong. It was similar with the peas. As for the corn, we did plant one short season variety that actually did pretty well, under the circumstances. There are things I would want to change with growing corn that way, though, and while I’d like to plant another short season variety next year, we’ve already jumped the gun in other areas – more on that when I write about our winter sowing!

With peppers, herbs and greens, that was all over the place. We ended up planting more peppers than intended, and they did quite well, even if they were behind in maturity, like just about everything else was this year. We ended up planting very few herbs and had issues with the greens.

It was our melons and winter squash that really changed how our garden went this year, as we ended up with so many! Way more than expected, even though we ended up not planting some varieties at all. The summer squash, however, was a very different story. We did try a couple of gourds. One of my regular experiments that our spring weather did not give a chance to succeed.

We did manage two types of eggplant, with moderate success. We wanted to try salsify, sunflowers and possibly cucumbers for fresh eating, not pickling, but that didn’t pan out.

So many other garden related things ended up not happening. More raised beds, rebuilding the garden tap, starting a new garden shed build… none of that happened.

I’d hoped to start reclaiming garden beds in the main garden area from the previous year and continuing on the trellis tunnel builds. Instead, a priority was put on shifting the existing beds to what will be their permanent positions. That gave us longer, narrower beds, as they await the logs we need to harvest to frame them. We still managed to fit quite a bit into them, and the narrowing of these low raised beds made them easier for me to reach into.

All in all, this turned out to be a very different year than expected, with spring weather playing a major part in slowing down growth. Every year, we learn a little bit more about what we need to do to better protect our garden from the elements, with even the low raised beds turning out to be a major element that saved our garden.

And so, to start, here is our spring garden tour video for 2024, taken on what turned out to be a rather cold day!

I hope you enjoy this series of garden posts. Do feel free to leave feedback in the comments, too!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 garden! Garlic is planted, and clean up continues

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Yay!!

Today, we were expected to hit 15C/69F, making it the last really warm day of the year. We’re expected to his 11C/52F in a few days, that that will likely be the last double digit Celsius temperatures we’ll get.

My goal was to get the garlic into the bed that was already about half prepared and covered with plastic, to see if we’d be able to get any solarization happening.

There was a slight side trip, though. The rescue had ordered a kibble donation from Amazon that was supposed to arrive tomorrow. Amazon deliveries – at least those sent by mail – tend to come early, so I went to the post office, just in case.

I’m happy to say, they were there! I don’t know what kind of promo or coupon the Cat Lady took advantage of, but it was for three smaller (compared to what we usually get) bags of indoor cat food.

The outdoor cats don’t care!

When I let her know, with thanks, that the kibble had arrived, the Cat Lady told me they now have FIVE large bags of kibble for us! That is so amazing! The challenge right now is to stock up extra kibble for the winter, in case we find ourselves unable to get out. I do not want to run out again!

The outside cats, however, have enjoyed their warm morning kibble softened in sludgy bone broth (I removed the meat from the bones, put it back in the stock, then blitzed it with the immersion blender) so much, I’ve got more being made in the slow cooker right now, since the last of the first batch was finished this morning.

The kibble picked up – and a feeding done so I could drive out of the yard again – it was time to get to the garden.

First job: preparing the rest of the bed.

The first image in the above slideshow is the “before” picture. The second picture if after removing the plastic, and the grass clipping mulch in the part that needed to be cleaned up.

The part that was covered in plastic did have a few weeds in it, but didn’t need much work to get that cleaned up. The rest of it had one really bad patch of crab grass, but was otherwise pretty good – except for the very end, where some Creeping Charlie was staring to invade.

There were also elm tree roots, of course.

And rocks. There’s always rocks!

I wanted to amend this bed with some trench composting. I made the trench in the middle, from one end to the other, with the spade. The soil in this bed is not anywhere near as compacted as I’ve had issues with in other beds, so no actual digging was needed.

This was a good time to remove more weed and elm tree roots.

And rocks.

Then I used the landscaping rake to widen and level the trench some more, while also removing more roots.

And rocks.

So many rocks!

The next photo shows the filled trench. I took advantage of this and emptied the compost buckets from the kitchen directly into it. Then I pilfered the compost pile, taking most of the Crespo squash vines that were in there.

Last of all, I scattered some dried grass clippings over the whole thing, then tromped back and forth on it a few times, to tamp it down.

That done, the soil was pulled back over the compost materials, evened out and leveled. For some reason, there was quite a bit more soil at the south end (away from the elm trees) than the north end.

There was still some bits of squash vines poking through, but that’s okay.

In the process of all this, I did find little surprises!

There were three yellow bulbing onions that had been missed, and a whole bunch of little shallots! These will be transplanted elsewhere and allowed to go to seed, next year.

Finally, it was time to plant garlic!

I’d selected a dozen of our biggest garlic bulbs from this year’s garden to plant. As these beds will eventually be framed with logs (at least, that’s still the plan!), the actual growing space is being kept fairly narrow. That makes it a lot easier to reach with my short little arms! 😄

After laying out the garlic bulbs in short rows of three, they didn’t make it all the way to the end of the bed. I will find something else to plant in the remaining empty space.

When I pause to take a photo, though, I realized something.

Garlic grows relatively shallow. Which means they won’t be affected by the elm tree roots at the north end of the bed, where there are the most roots.

So I moved the garlic from the South end of the bed to the North end.

Once the garlic was laid out, it was just a matter of pushing the root end into the soil. Once they were all in, I used the back of a fan rack to cover them.

After just a couple of passes, I stopped and got a broken piece of bamboo stake to mark how far the garlic was planted in the south end of the bed. Once the soil was raked over the cloved, there was no other way to tell how far they went!

Once the garlic was covered, I raked up several wheel barrow loads of leaves to created a nice, thick insulating mulch. Then I topped that with a thin layer of grass clippings, more to weight the leaves down, so they don’t get blown away!

After that was done, I took the time to rake in between most of the garden beds. While weeding, I generally toss the weeds and roots into the path. I wanted to get rid of that, so things like crab grass didn’t accidentally end up back in the low raised beds.

At that point, I didn’t have the energy for more digging and bending, so the next bed had to wait.

Instead, I started working on the old kitchen garden.

I didn’t bother taking any before shots.

I was quite surprised by what I was seeing in the wattle weave bed. The wild strawberries are looking quite green and healthy. The thyme was also looking great, and the chamomile actually had some fresh flowers blooming!

In the second picture of the above slideshow, you can see my garden helper. 😁

I’m saving the plastic rings that went around the tomato and luffa plants to use another season. I quite liked how that worked out.

The bed with the Forme de Couer tomatoes had a soaker hose in it. Once the tomato plants were removed, I took that out. I don’t know that I’ll use it again. It took forever to do any level of watering, and I’m not sure why. It’s possible our super hard water is clogging pores.

All the support takes were gathered up and set aside, except for the two broken ones I’m using to hold the plastic rings. The tomato and luffa plants were pulled and set aside – they will likely be trench composted, too.

That that was as far as I got today.

I’ll have to weed the tiny raised bed again. I see all sorts of grass coming through the mulch. I’m thinking of planting the remaining Red Wethersfield onions that I found among the Forme de Couer tomatoes in or near the tiny raised bed. These will also be allowed to go to seed, so I want to find a permanent spot for them.

The long, narrow bed against the retaining wall needs a bit of work, and I’m thinking of replacing the very crooked top log with wattle weave, if I can find enough materials to do it.

By this time, I had to stop. I’d completely forgotten to eat lunch, and it was getting to be supper time!

I won’t be able to continue this tomorrow. CPP Disability comes in tomorrow, so I’ll be heading into the city for our first stock up shopping trip. I’ll be using the car my brother and SIL lent to us. We haven’t heard from the garage about the truck. I think I’ll phone them in the morning. At this point, all I want to know is what’s wrong with it, and an estimate on getting things fixed. When the time comes to pick up the repaired truck, I will need to drive to the city first, to get my SIL, drive back with her to get the truck, then I can take the truck home while she takes their car back to the city.

Speaking of which, I was expecting them to drop off another load today, but I haven’t heard from them at all. There was just small stuff left. Perhaps they decided to take it to their new place, instead. They were talking about coming here, though, and my brother was going to look at the hot water tank for us after unloading. I’m quite surprised to have not heard anything from them, either way.

Well, they certainly have their hands full right now, so maybe that’s not surprising after all.

I’m just happy I got my main goal for today accomplished.

Our garlic for next year is in!

There is still lots to do. While things are expected to be cooler, the next couple of weeks should still be mild enough to get more garden beds ready for the winter, and to try our winter sowing experiment. I’m thinking I might do one or two went sown beds in the main garden area and, maybe do a third bed in the old kitchen garden.

I’ll have to go through my seeds and decide which to plant together, where. I plan to do a sort of organized guerilla gardening. I’ll be selected in what gets planted where, but once it’s time to plant, the seeds will be mixed together and scattered about.

But first, the beds need to be prepared, and there’s going to be just a few days when I’ll be able to work on it before things start to get too cold! Once the winter sowing is done and mulched, the other beds can be done at a more leisurely pace.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-farmer.

Our 2024 Garden: cat damage and garlic

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

While we no longer have cat food bowls in the sunroom, we do still allow them in, and I keep an eye on things through the critter cam.

I checked it shortly before heading out this morning, and had an unpleasant surprise. The extra board we put over the cat cage was on the floor. From what I could see, so was at least one of the bins.

I rushed out to see what could be salvaged and didn’t stop to take any before pictures. Thankfully, it was just the one bin on the floor – the one with only two pots with the Crespo squash in it. There was a tray that had a couple of pots knocked over, but the damage was nowhere near as bad as I feared.

The Crespo squash that has a pot to itself had a bent stem. I was able to use a couple of sticks and some plant wires to make a splint around it. I think it will survive. We’ve had one with worse damage last year that survived.

The cats did not actually damage the plants directly. The problem is that we have to keep one of the sawhorses holding the table at an angle. The board is there to cover the cat cage, but also gives them a ledge they can lie on, and not try to squeeze in between the trays and bins. One of the heavier cats must have jumped up onto the corner of the board that doesn’t have the sawhorse under it, and knocked the whole thing off. As it fell, it took the one bin down with it, but only jarred another tray, knocking over a couple of pots. One squash and it soil was almost completely out of it’s pot. Hopefully, it will survive being put back. A peat pot had a piece broken off and lost a bit of soil, but is otherwise fine. I will find a plastic pot of an appropriate size and pop the whole thing in, to hold it together. A couple of other pots are broken above the soil line, so they should be okay. It could have been a lot worse! I rearranged a few things so that, if the board gets knocked off again, it won’t take any trays with it.

Once that was fixed up, I did my morning rounds and checked the garden beds. The garlic continues their growth spurt!

I can see gaps in some places, particularly in the larger rectangular bed, that shows some cloves didn’t survive the winter, but most of them have made it.

The walking onions in front of the tiny raised bed are looking really strong and healthy. This is the second year for the bulbils I’d planted there. They produced their own bulbils that are just resting on the ground; we didn’t try to plant them, and are letting nature take its course with those. The only thing is to keep them from spreading into where my daughter had planted some irises, though we don’t know if they’ve actually survived. We’ve seen some try to grow, then disappear. It would seem they didn’t make it, but we do have those tulip bulbs that we thought had died, suddenly emerge this year, so it’s possible they survived, too!

The rhubarb in the south corner is also getting pretty big. Those ones always do better than the ones at the north corner. One of these years, we should transplant the lot of them, away from those apple trees, so they have better growing conditions. We typically get just one decent harvest per season, out of them.

By the time I was finishing up my morning rounds, my daughter was outside and starting on our project for the day, but that will be for my next post!

The Re-Farmer