It’s supposed to start snowing later, so it’s a bit of a now or never day to get those beds mulched before the ground freezes! I’m so glad my mother decided to have me come over to her place tomorrow instead of today.
If you scroll through the Instagram slide show above, you’ll first see the carrots that we are overwintering in the soil, harvesting them as we need to, rather than harvesting them all at once and having to process them for the winter. Quite a few people swear by this, and say the carrots taste so much better when stored this way. There was the remains of a pile of grass clippings next to that bed, so it was the fastest to get done. I used up pretty much the entire pile – I didn’t bother digging too far into the snow around the edges – and piled it right on top of the snow layer. The snow will also act as an insulator, as well as add needed moisture, come spring time. I put the cover back on, partly as a way to store it, but also to keep the grass clippings from being blown away. This is the only bed where that would be an issue.
Next is the old kitchen garden. All the garlic now has a thick layer of mulch, plus the chamomile, thyme and strawberries grown from seed are covered.
I also finally picked that last big luffa gourd. I’d forgotten about it! It’s now sitting in the living room to dry out.
I also remembered to put a deeper mulch on top of the saffron crocuses, plus a nice, thick “donut” of mulch around the Liberty apple tree. Both are zone 4 plants, so they need extra protection in our zone 3 temperatures. Some time ago, I added the tree protector. It’s wrapped around the stem and the bamboo stake together until it reached the bottom branches, and then got wrapped around the bamboo stake. As the sapling gets taller, the wrap can be adjusted accordingly. This area also has the fencing wire around it, so it should be safe from deer, but this will also protect from rabbits and other critters. Mind you, the yard cats do a great job of keeping the small critters under control, so we don’t have any rabbit or mouse problems, but there are other creatures that might try to eat a nice, juicy young sapling!
All of this pretty much finished off the huge pile of grass clippings that was next to the high raised bed! There’s just the dregs along the edges, buried under snow. Those are really full of crab grass rhizomes, anyhow. I was pulling quite a few of those out of even the deepest parts of the grass pile!
Last of all, we covered the asparagus and strawberry bed, and the sunchokes. We ended up not harvesting any. I decided to leave them to propagate, and we’ll have more plants to harvest from, next year. In theory. Instead, I decided to use the loppers to cut the stems and lay them down while my daughter raided the straw pile for more mulch.
The surprise was discovering half the sunchoke plants had lost their tops! Some time between when I did my morning rounds, and when we came over to tend to the bed, a deer had come around and eaten them!
The straw we used is what had been moved off the area the trellis beds are going on. It had been used for our Ruth Stout method of growing potatoes and melons that instead got flooded out, in our 2022 garden. So it’s had some time to break down, and the pile was quite damp! We used most of it to make a nice, deep mulch over the asparagus/strawberry, and sunchoke beds.
In the spring, these mulches will be removed (the carrot bed should be empty before then) to allow for the plants underneath to get sunlight and warmth and start growing. In the wattle weave bed, the chamomile should have reseeded itself by now. The thyme in there might actually survive the winter. It’s hard to say, as they are close to the wall of the bed, which means they’ll get cold from the side. Even with the mulch, they might freeze too much. This is why I made sure to plant the garlic well away from the walls of the raised beds they are in.
If all goes well, we’ll have a nice head start to our 2024 garden!
Oh!!! I just found out our lysine order is in already!
The garlic had been curing on the picnic table and last night I trimmed, cleaned, strung and hung them, keeping the different varieties apart. Several couldn’t be hung and I brought them in to be used right away. We have so little garlic this year! A little is better than none, though. We’ll leave them hanging in the market tend for a while longer before bringing them inside.
The chamomile in the wattle weave bed is blooming nicely!
I got a picture of the developing gourds from the drum gourd and zucca melon bed. That is most definitely a zucca melon, not a drum gourd. I most definitely got mixed up with the labels. Which means we have no drum gourds developing at all. Not even female flowers.
We do have a couple of Caveman’s Club gourds, though! Well. One, so far. I just hand pollinated another one last night. We’ll see if it takes.
The Purple Peruvian potatoes in their grow bags are looking absolutely lush! The Irish Cobbler are getting yellow and falling over, and the Red Thumb are getting into that stage, but the Purple Peruvian look like they’re going to be growing for quite a while longer.
Last of all was an unusual find, as I was checking the squash to see what might need pollinating. I found a double flower!
Today is the last day of July, and our growing season is quickly running out. I have seen people in my local gardening groups who are even further north than we are, posting pictures of their much larger squash. I wish I knew how theirs are so much further ahead! Things are growing well this year, but I still can’t shake the feeling we are behind. So many squash plants still aren’t even producing female flowers yet.
Ah, well. We’ll get what we get, and every year is another year to improve our soil and growing conditions.
Oh, something I forgot to mention. Last winter, a neighbour who is moving had offered us a shed they needed to get rid of, that I was hoping to use as a chicken coop. Unfortunately, it didn’t handle the rest of the winter well, and they ended up scrapping it entirely. Now that the renter’s cows have been rotated out, I should grab the wagon along with some tools and see about getting that antique wagon chassis in the car graveyard. I still have hopes to build a mobile chicken coop on there.
Today may be cooler, but we’re still staying above freezing, and the kitties are just loving it!
I only counted about 16, this morning. As things melt clear and my morning rounds are extending further out, I’m seeing the cats all over the place. The long haired tuxedo followed me all over the place, much like Pointy Baby did – just without actively trying to get me to pick him up and carry him!
I miss Pointy Baby.
The berry bushes we planted last year are almost completely uncovered. That old saw horse with the sticks is over the highbush cranberry the deer kept eating. I checked the other one and can almost, sorta, see leaf buds starting to form!
The main garden area is still mostly covered with snow. If all goes to plan, the area in front of where I’m standing will have at least a couple of trellis tunnels built.
The garlic bed isn’t quite clear, yet!
The standing water has receded more, so I was able to get to the storage warehouse (which I would really love to reclaim as a work shop again!!) and look around. With not being able to get to the dump as often in the winter, we’ve been storing our garbage bags in the old kitchen, where it could freeze. It’s getting too warm for that, now. We need to build a garbage bin outside that is cat and racoon proof to store the bags until we can make our dump runs. There are pieces of plywood and other random boards in the warehouse. With all my parents’ stuff jammed into there, none of it is accessible. Some of the stacks of boxes need to be moved around, anyhow, as they are starting to collapse and tip. That’s as good an excuse as any to move things around. Some of the plywood sheets, however, are behind a couch, and there are all sorts of boxes and bins that predate us on and in front of it. No matter. We’ll figure out how to get to them. I’d love to get rid of all the bags of clothes in there. They’re not even suitable for donating after all this time, but my mother still insists we don’t throw anything out! *sigh* She’s still all worried that someone might come in and steal her old underwear or something. 🤨
While in the shed, I noticed an old broiler pan that will work as a kibble tray. I don’t know why we’ve been finding broiler pans all over the place – no one ever used them for what they were made for – but they make great kibble trays, so I grabbed it. With a bit of readjusting of things, I was able to reclaim two of the baking sheets I got for carrying transplants around that were being used as kibble trays over the winter. There is still one more, just inside the cat house entry, but I will leave that for now. With the two trays I reclaimed, I’ll be able to pot up the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes now.
After I was done my rounds, I made a quick trip to the post office to see if a parcel had arrived. With so much snow gone, once I was back, I actually went to close the gate! I’m seeing our vandal walking by with his dog on the trail cam more often, so I wanted to have it at least closed. This makes it the first time that gate has been closed since the snow got too deep to keep clear, several months ago.
Well, now.
When my brother and I put the repaired gate back up, the two sides were even. That sliding bar holds the two sides closed, and I could put a pin through the pair of holes at the corner, which made sure the wind or whatever didn’t vibrate the bar off the end of the gate. Before winter, it was noticeably shifted, but we could still lift one side of the gate while pushing down on the bar and get the pin through. Now, it’s just too far off! We’ll have to come out with a level and see which gate post has shifted the most. I was thinking the north post was tipping away, but my daughters think the south post is tipping inwards. It could well be both. The gate posts were installed in such a way that they can be adjusted by adding washers to the bolts at the base. My brother had done that when he installed the new hinges that replaced the ones our vandal broke. I’d hoped it would be a few years longer before it had to be done again. It’s been about 3 1/2 years since these were repaired and replaced, so I guess that’s not too bad.
The main thing is, the gate is now closed! Without being able to put the pin in the sliding bar, the chain is extra necessary to make sure they don’t swing open on their own. We’ll also have to touch up the paint a bit. I think I still have a spray can of it around. I’ll have to think about what I can put around where the chain and bar is damaging the paint so quickly.
Things are going to stay colder over the next 10 days or so, with daytime highs just above freezing and overnight lows dipping several degrees below freezing. We’re also getting smatterings of rain. I’d say it’s a good thing we didn’t plant those carrots, even if we did have the plastic to cover them until they germinated. I don’t mind, though. It means things will continue to melt and be absorbed by the ground slowly. I rather like not having to wade through giant muddy puddles to get to the garage. It will give us time to work on other preparations.
I’m just thrilled to be able to get outside and get working again, even if it’s just a tiny bit at a time!
I finally made my second trip to the city to do another stock up shop. After going over our list, I decided it was just a Walmart trip.
Then I got a message from my brother, we chatted a bit, and ended up arranging for me to visit! It’s been ages since I’ve been to their place. My brother has come here a few times, but I haven’t seen my SIL since the beginning of summer. She’s allergic to cats, so she can’t really come here. 😔
We had an excellent visit. Gosh, I love those two so much! 💖
Then I headed to the Walmart to get what I needed.
Well. Most of it.
This came out to just over $300. Almost half of that is cat related. I got four 10kg bags – the largest they had – of dry kibble. We now have enough to last us the month. I also finally picked up a covered litter box. Nosencrantz and Butterscotch still refuse to leave my office, but Nosencrantz has litter issues. She will go to the litter box to scratch away at the litter, the sides, the bottom, and the removable top part that is supposed to keep the litter inside the pan. She still manages to get the litter out. There have been times she’s almost ripped the top part off completely, and every now and then, she tips the whole thing onto its side!
What she isn’t necessarily doing is using the litter box. In fact, there are times when she’ll go to the litter several times, scratching away, then go into my closest and take a dump. Then, after I’ve chased her out and cleaned up her mess, she’ll go right back to the litter box and start scratching again.
So I now have a covered litter box, with a filter, in my closet, right where she keeps trying to do her business.
I did have another extra purchase that isn’t normally part of our budget. I picked up some artificial flowers. My younger daughter and I will be going to my MIL’s grave to tidy it up and leave some flowers, then take pictures to send to my FIL. He’s not physically able to get out there anymore. I’ve actually never been to the cemetery. My husband flew out for the funeral, with our daughter as his mobility assistant. The problem is, she was feeling quite ill during the funeral, and doesn’t have a clear memory of any of it. Still, I know where the cemetery is, though I’ve never been there, and hopefully she’ll remember enough that we won’t have to search too long to find the grave.
One other unusual purchase was a request from my husband: nacho fixings. Actually, only the chips are an unusual purchase. The cheese is something we regularly pick up; there’s just more of it this time. I got more Old cheddar, havarti, gouda and mozzarella.
We like cheese.
While I don’t pick up a large jar of olives every month, it’s still something we get fairly regularly. My husband loves green olives, just as a snack. As for the chips, I got 4 big bags, and hopefully we’ll get one batch of nachos out of them. They tend to be pretty broken up. When we make nachos, it’s in my big roasting pan. Enough for the four of us, and usually some left over for the next day. 😁
I remembered to get hot dog buns. I also picked up some rye bread, and some garlic naan. It’s cheap turkey season, but I only got one turkey. Looking at the other meats, none of them appealed to me, so that was it for meat. I wasn’t too impressed with the fruits and vegetables, but the cabbage looked good, so I got a head of cabbage. The Stove Top Stuffing was on sale for only 88 cents a box, so I got two. Thanksgiving is next weekend, and we’ve got a good start on what we’ll have for dinner. I also got a couple of 18 count cartons of eggs, and a couple of bottles of coffee creamer – pumpkin spice and maple flavours – for my daughters. I remembered to look for alcohol swabs for our first aid kit, but couldn’t find them. I asked a staff member and found out they now sell them from behind the counter! I even had to pay for it there. When I mentioned this to my daughters, my younger daughter, who was working at a pharmacy when the “15 days to flatten the curve” started, told me that they had to do that, too. People went nuts, and didn’t stop to read directions, so things like alcohol swabs, sanitizing gel, etc. all had to be hidden away to keep people from stealing them, or snagging them all for themselves. I know the other stuff is out and easy to get at, so I do wonder why the alcohol swabs would still be a behind the counter.
I feel like I’m forgetting something, but I think that’s all that I got today. Oh! I remember now. I got a 4L of milk, too. Usually we get 2L cartons, but we’ll be doing more baking over the next while. I also picked up a case of chicken flavoured ramen noodles for the stash.
What I didn’t get:
Butter. We still have some in the freezer, but with more baking on the horizon, I wanted to get a few more, but even their cheaper house brand is now more expensive than I could justify. Not when we still have a few pounds in the freezer, and a big bucket of ghee on hand.
The wood screws I needed. Not only did they not have the kind I wanted, but the small boxes of screws were insanely expensive.
I also did not get a new door knob. The knob on my door is probably about 45 years old, is missing a screw, starting to get stuck and generally becoming a problem. Worse, though, is that I’m starting to have problems opening my door – and we have to keep it closed, because when Fenrir and Turmeric come in, they both immediately start hunting down and attacking Nosencrantz and Butterscotch! Cheddar comes in and out, and now Leyendecker is accepted by the ladies.
Yes, Layendecker is doing all right! In fact, he seems fully recovered. Tonight, he gets his last dose of medication. We need to book him for follow up blood tests with the vet, but they are closed until they complete their move to a new, larger, location. They’ll even have their own parking lot now! So we will call to book the appointment on Monday (the day after tomorrow), when they are open again.
Cheddar and Leyendecker go in and out rather frequently, which means having to get up and open the door for them when they start scratching at the mat we have under the door to keep them from scratching the carpet. The problem is, my hands are hurting so much, I’m starting to have trouble turning the knob. There have been times when I couldn’t grasp the knob with my right hand at all because of the pain. Even today, while shopping, I’d reach to pick up a jar or something with my right hand, and would get shooting pains in my phalanges and simply couldn’t grip it.
Because of this, rather than trying to fix my door knob, I want to replace it with a lever style door handle. Something I can open even if my hands hurt.
The only ones they had were the heavier duty ones for exterior doors, complete with a deadbolt. Which, of course, is more expensive. There were no simple, cheap, lever handles for interior doors.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to find some at the hardware store when I pick up the screws I need.
Which I could have done today, but completely forgot when I had the chance. When I was done at the Walmart, I decided to check out a nearby Canadian Tire to see if they had any seed garlic (the only garlic at Walmart was imported soft neck garlic, which might be treated with something to keep them from growing).
It took a while, but I did find the display!
There were only two bulbs per bag, so I got two bags of two different types. The Nootka Rose (long storing variety) is a new one for us. The other is Music. The garlic we’ve already planted from our own harvest are Porcelain Music. Previously, we ordered our garlic from Veseys, which were packaged by weight, so it felt strange to be paying $6.99 for only two heads of garlic.
We will plant these tomorrow, in the same bed as the ones we’ve already planted.
And there we have it. We’re stocked up for most of the month, with a few extras added. The few things we didn’t get today, we should be able to get locally later on.
It feels especially good to have so much kibble on hand. If I can pick up extra later on, I will. When winter hits, the outside cats are going to be eating a lot more to keep their winter fat, and there are going to be more outside cats than before, too!
Hopefully, it will be mild winter, but we’re not going to be counting on that!
No, that’s not a typo in the title. Today, I FINALLY planted our garlic for next year.
This morning I first headed out to get my mother checked out of her hotel room, then took her out for brunch – she hadn’t had a proper meal since our take out Chinese food lunch, yesterday! – before taking her home. She did not have the energy to do anything else. I stayed long enough to make her bed up again with fresh sheets and blankets, and push some of the stuff back against the walls, before my mother sent me home. She would not allow me to run any errands for her, even!
Which works out. As soon as could after I got home, I worked on the garlic. The first thing to do was break up the bulbs I’d set aside from our harvest this year.
Would you look at this giant clove!
I had set aside six of the biggest bulbs of garlic we harvested.
Out of those six bulbs, we got a whole 24 cloves.
Twentyfour big cloves, but still… we’re going to need a lot more garlic!
I used broken pieces of bamboo stakes to mark the ends of a row along one side of the prepared bed, then pushed aside the mulch. The soil is loose enough that I could just use a weeding tool to scrape a trough from one end to the other, then deepened it using the jet setting on the garden hose.
Which the kittens were absolutely fascinated by.
Once the garlic was planted evenly spaced down the row and covered, I pulled back a little bit of the mulch. Once things start to get colder, more mulch will be pulled over to cover it for the winter. For now, it’s just enough to protect the row.
From this guy.
This guy and several other little “helpers” that were so determined to dig in the fresh dirt, they ignored the hose I was watering with, until they got sprayed!
Silly things.
Anyhow. Our first garlic for our 2023 garden is in.
I am now going to start making tomato paste for canning, freeing up freezer space for our next stock-up shopping trip.
This evening, I headed out to see what I could to about fixing the wind damage in the garden. Particularly with the corn. I ended up stealing some bamboo stakes running across the hoops in a couple of other beds, but that still only gave me four. I did have one more, plus a stick, already in the sweet corn, supporting a couple of stalks that had fallen over previously. They were still standing, while the corn around them was flattened!
I ran twine between the poles from end to end of each row, wrapping the twine once around each stalk in that row to hold it up. Even as I was working, I had the wind pushing the stalks, so I scrounged up another pair of sticks. I set them up on either side of the middle, then ran twine between them, catching the support twine in between. This way, whichever direction the wind blows, there will be some support.
Some of the stalks where still trying to fall over, but I could only find one more stick. It was enough to add extra support to the twine in the rows.
The cobs are actually filling out quite nicely! Some of the silks are even starting to dry up, and they should be ripe soon.
The hard part while doing all this was trying not to step on the poor little bean plants on either side of the corn. Since I was there, I checked them over and found a pretty decent little harvest!
I didn’t have a container with me, but I managed to shove them all in a pocket. 😄
There was have it. Our very first harvest of green bush beans, planted late to replace the ones that drowned out.
When watering this bed, I do try to make sure to water the beans more directly, but as I was harvesting, I could feel that they could really use more water. We’ll have to focus in them a bit more!
The next area I worked on was the group of ground cherries that had been flattened.
I managed to find a couple more sticks – I think my daughters intended them as walking sticks! – and grabbed a couple of short pieces left over from hula hoops we used to make row covers last year. The ground cherry plants are a lot more delicate than other plants, and I felt the twine might damage them more, so I threaded it through the pieces. As careful as I was, I could hear branches cracking as I lifted them. I’m not sure all of it will survive.
They are, however, still covered with many flowers, so we’ll still be getting more berries developing.
Once these were done, I started on the kulli corn. I completely forgot to take pictures, though.
One side was fairly easy to do. I lifted the netting up, then used the existing scavenged T posts to hold the twine, which I wrapped around stalks to hold them up. This was on the north side of the bed, and the gust of wind had come from the north, so it was pretty easy to reach things.
The other side was far more difficult. We did lose the top of one stalk completely, and the others were leaning onto the nearby bed of tomatoes. If the net wasn’t there to hold it, they would have fallen onto the other bed, but instead they created a sort of arch.
The tomatoes themselves were outgrowing their supports and falling over. I had to add more support to those, just so I could keep working on the corn without breaking tomato branches. Some of the stakes were leaning over from the weight of the tomato plants, so I just zig zagged some twine between them to pull them together, which gave me enough room to work on the corn.
With the corn, I ended up doing much the same thing; zig zagging twine bank and forth, wrapping it around the top line of twine that was already there, to support the netting. I was able to wrap twine around a couple of the bigger stalks in the middle of the bed to give them extra support, but there really wasn’t much I could do for them. I can’t even guess how well they will recover from this. 😔
Then I went back to the tomatoes and added higher support from end to end to catch the newer growth. They’re looking much better now. There were even a few ripe tomatoes to harvest!
That done, I checked the late garlic in the next bed and decided it was time to dig them up.
The two by themselves on the left are the only two survivors transplanted from the bed the tomatoes are now in. I didn’t bother keeping them separate when I moved the bundle to the canopy tent. We’ll let them dry a bit, then brush the biggest dirt off and either lay them out or hang them up to cure. I’m kind of impressed by them. They’re pretty big, considering what a rough time they had of things! It’s a shame. The bed where only two survived had 90 cloves planted in it. The other one had over 80 cloves planted in it. This is all that made it.
This fall, the garlic will be planted elsewhere. I kept the biggest bulbs from the one bed that did so well, but would really like to plant more. We shall see how it works out, when the time comes.
There is some lovely growth happening in the garden right now.
While we have lots of Cup of Moldova and Sophie’s Choice tomatoes ripening on their vines, these Yellow Pear tomatoes are looking to have a good crop, too. They are actually turning out larger than I expected for this variety. It should be interesting when they finally start turning colour!
These Carminat bean pods are getting so very long! I love their gorgeous dark purple.
With the purple pole beans, we can see quite a few pods developing, though the vines are still trying to extend their reach, and blooming all the way. The green pole beans (sheychelles) have wispy little pods forming, too.
Then I started weeding and discovered a hidden surprise.
There are ripe pods hidden among the greens! It turns out these beans start developing right near the ground, unlike the Carminat, which have no flowers or pods at all near the ground.
Awesome!
After finding these, I made a point of looking more closely at the Blue Grey Speckled Tepary beans – the shelling beans – too. They’ve been blooming for a while, but are still such tiny and delicate plants.
Sure enough, I found time tiny pods starting to form. Since these beans are for shelling only, they’ll just get weeding and watering until the pods are all dried.
We actually have yellow zucchini this year! Last year, I was sure we had at least one germinated, but after transplanting, all we got were green zucchini. So I am happy to get some this year. Especially since we still don’t have any green zucchini developing! We did have female flowers, but there were no male flowers blooming at the same time to pollinate them.
We are finally getting more Sunburst patty pan squash, too. There was also one Magda squash ready to harvest.
All the squash are SO far behind. The squash patch, which is mostly winter squash, and the summer squash bed should be enveloped in plants. It’s unlikely we have enough growing season left for most of them, but we should still get something from the smaller varieties.
Here is this morning’s harvest!
Yes, the peas are still producing! There was only a handful to harvest from the second planting, but it’s the most I’ve been able to pick in one day, this year. We have both the yellow bush beans, and the green pole beans.
With the lettuce, we normally just go in and grab however many leaves we want. This time, I harvested the plants in one area of the L shaped bed in the old kitchen garden, so that the space can be used again.
I was planning to plant fall spinach elsewhere in the main garden area, but changed my mind.
It’s just a small area for now. As more of the bed gets cleared, I’ll plant more.
We got another harvest in this morning, too.
This is the garlic from the bed in the main garden. There isn’t a lot, but they are much larger than last year’s drought garlic!
The other garlic is quite behind, so it might be a while before we can harvest those.
The freshly picked garlic is now strung up under my daughter’s old market tent, where it can get plenty of air circulation as it cures, and we won’t have to worry about it being rained on.
The sour cherry tree by the house has lots of ripe berries, ready to be picked. I’ll have to get the girls to do it, though. A ladder will be needed to reach the ripest ones at the top. This is the most cherries we’ve had since moving here.
We got a pretty decent amount of yellow bush beans this morning. Not enough to make it worth blanching and freezing, never mind canning, but enough for a couple of meals this time.
The purple pole beans are getting more pods, though they are still very thin. I saw the first of the green pole bean pods this morning – tiny wisps of pods! Still no sign of pods, or even flowers, on the red pole beans, while the shelling beans still have lots of flowers, but no pods that I can see.
We should be able to harvest the garlic from this bed pretty soon.
One of the Baby Pam pumpkins is starting to turn colour. This variety doesn’t get much bigger than this. From the looks of it, these are going to be the only winter squash we get out of this patch, other than maybe one kakai hulless seed pumpkin. Even the Teddy squash, which are a very small variety with only 55 days needed to maturity, will likely not get a chance to produce anything. The green zucchini still isn’t producing; they did have female flowers, but no male flowers bloomed at the same time to pollinate them. We do have some golden zucchini developing, though, and some Magda squash I should be able to pick in a few days. Maybe even a yellow pattypan squash or two.
The paste tomatoes, at least, are coming along nicely, with more of them starting to blush.
I was able to harvest more green onions from the high raised bed. Most of these will be dehydrated, and there are lots more I can harvest.
The handful of pea pods are almost all from the second planting. The first planting is, amazingly, still blooming!
Most of the onions seem to be growing well. Some of the red onions have very different shapes, and they are starting to be noticeable. I’m thinking of picking one or two for fresh eating, just to see how they taste.
The one surviving type of turnips are finally starting to have visible “shoulders”. We might actually be able to pick some, soon.
I don’t know what to make of the potatoes. They’re done blooming and we should be able to harvest young potatoes now, but I want to leave them as long as I can. The plants themselves are nowhere near as large as potato plants normally get. There was so much water in that area, I’m sure it stunted the growth of the ones that survived. I still might dig one plant up, of each variety, just to see what there is to see. Will the lack of foliage translate into a lack of potatoes, too? I was really hoping to have a good amount of potatoes to store for the winter. It certainly wouldn’t be enough to last the entire winter for the 4 of us, but it will help us decide if these are varieties we will get again or not.
Every time I’m in the garden, I’m thinking of next year’s garden. One thing is for sure. It is nowhere near big enough to meet our goal of providing sufficient amounts of food to last us until there is fresh produce again. We planted so much, with the expectation of losses, but this year the losses are just too great. Which has really surprised me. I did not expect to get less productivity this year, compared to last year’s drought. Mind you, during the drought, we were watering the garden beds every day, twice a day. This year… well, adding water is easy. Keeping water out is not. Still, even if everything had gone well, we would still probably need double the garden size to meet our long term goal. Short term is to have enough to supply our needs for at least 3 months – the hardest winter months, when we might find ourselves snowed in or the vehicles frozen.
Every year we garden, we figure things out a bit more, from what weather extremes we need to work around, to how much of anything we need to grow, to what we like enough to grow year after year. More me, half the enjoyment of gardening is analysing the results and using that information to make decisions for the next year!
That’s one good thing about having hard gardening years. You do learn more from it, than from years were everything goes smoothly.
Yes! Finally! Major transplanting was started today. :-)
The first thing I needed to finish was topping up the low raised bed they were going into.
Since the snow melted away, we’ve been adding our kitchen compost in the trench, which already had some straw in it, and I even tossed in the soil from various pots we had, from house plants that died, to seed starts from last year that didn’t germinate. The last layer before adding the soil was some fresh grass clippings.
This is the first time this pile of garden soil has been uncovered since last year.
So. Many. Thistles!
And those roots go all the way though the pile.
Which meant I had to bring the makeshift soil sifter into service, so get as many of the roots as possible out. It was long and tedious, but at least it was made a bit easier by scavenging a couple of scrap boards out of a pile to support the steel mesh, rather than the found branches I was using before. Sifting the soil had to be a gentle process, because there were SO many worms.
I kept the worms for the new bed. :-D
After the soil was added, stove pellets were scattered across the top and hydrated so act as a thin mulch. It won’t stop any weeds, but it will help keep the soil surface from compacting. After several soakings, the sawdust was spread evenly with the back of a fan rake.
It took a couple of hours, but I could finally transplant the kulli corn!
They had a major root system going! It made it difficult to get them out of the bins, then pull apart the tubes. The toilet paper really wanted to come apart!
With the larger bin, it was even more difficult to get them out, and the whole thing ended up falling out and apart. I think only one corn plant actually got broken, though. We’ll see if it makes it.
I counted the seedlings, then marked three rows of 20 evenly spaced spots for the corn. The actual total was 58, including some smaller ones that may or may not make it. We ordered 100 seeds, and there were extras, so we’re looking at roughly 50% germination rate. Which I don’t mind. We would have had trouble finding space for more. They are quite closely planted, as it is. Which should be good for improving pollination.
Of the remaining rolls, I broke apart the cardboard and rifled through it. No sign of the remaining seeds that did not germinate. The carboard went into the compost pile, while the remaining soil was used to top dress any seedlings that looked like they could use it.
I had also grabbed a bag of bush beans from last year, picking the one that looked like it had fewer seeds. That was the yellow “Golden Rod” variety. We still have some green bush beans left, too.
I counted the bean seeds and there was 38 – which was perfect! I could plant two rows of 19 beans, in between the corn.
As they are “old” seeds, I don’t expect 100% germination. This bed is very densely planted, but they should be complimentary.
The corn, however, needed to be protected. The question was, how?
I made a trip to the barn and dug out the T posts I spotted in one corner, a while back. There turned out to be 6 of them, all different lengths. :-/
I had to dig holes to be able to set them, using a garden trowel, since a spade would have been just too big. Within inches, I was hitting water, then rocks and gravel. After placing the posts and trying to push the soil back against them, there was literally water, shooting out from the ground, as I stomped on the soil!
We have no post pounder, so I found a heavy hammer to try and drive them deeper. Especially the longest one, but I think that one ended up hitting a rock. Being the short person that I am, for the taller once, I had to stand on the corners of the bed to reach. Even with a board across the corner to stand on, I was wobbling all over the place! LOL
Once they were in, I strung some twine around to further support the net, once it was added. That was a job that had to wait for when the girls were available.
In the two garlic beds, the nearer one had only 6 remaining garlic coming up – and one of those was barely there. I could find no sign of the few others that had emerged, as well.
I decided to transplant those 6 garlic into the other bed. That one has a lot more garlic trying to grow, but there was still plenty of space at one end to transplant the remaining 6 of the other variety.
The left a bed available for planting into, which we did end up doing.
The main challenge was, how do we cover the bed with netting, yet still be able to access the plants, easily, for weeding and eventual harvesting of yellow beans.
Piece of pool noodles were added to the tops of the posts, so they wouldn’t tear apart the net. When the one on the tallest post fell off, I left it. If it tears, it’ll only go down to the twine, and will actually line up better with the rest.
When I brought the T posts out of the barn, I also grabbed a stack of narrow pipes. I have no idea what they were for, or why they were stored there, but I figured the might make good supports. The short ends of the net are wrapped around those pipes and zip tied into place. For the long sides, we zip tied narrow fence posts we found… somewhere, to weigh down the netting. Any gaps were further secured with ground staples. If we want to tend the bed, we can remove the ground staples and lift the poles to get under the netting.
Hopefully, that will work out.
The corn can potentially grow to 8 ft tall, which is higher than the netting, but if they do get that tall, we’ll deal with it, then.
That was my big job for today, but it wasn’t the only one we got accomplished! I’ll write about that, in my next post. :-)
I’m mentioned in previous posts, that two of our garlic beds are not doing well. We planted all three beds at the same time, last year.
While doing my rounds this morning, I caught one of the yard cats being… inappropriate… in one of the low raised bed and chased it off. On checking the damage, I saw it had dug up one of the cloves we planted last year.
That is most definitely a dead clove. You can see that it had started to sprout, which would have been the fall growth before the snow fell. It does seem like cold killed a lot of these off.
This garlic is from the bed planted with Rocambole garlic.
There were 90 cloves planted in this bed. This morning, I counted maybe 7, including what looked like a tip just barely breaking through.
The bed with Purple Stripe in it is doing a bit better, in that there are more emerging, but it still looks like less than half have survived the winter, and they are all so very tiny.
I am curious as to why these beds did so poorly over the winter, while the Porcelain Music planted in the low raised bed in the main garden are doing to very well right now. Could it be, that the slightly higher boxes offered less protection than the lower, log framed bed?
Well, whatever the reason, I hope what few have survived manage to do well, even if they are quite a bit behind in growth. It may just mean we’ll be harvesting them later in the summer.
