growing food

Our 2024 Garden: winter squash, melons, pumpkins – and our first Crespo squash!

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I just got back in from taking comparison photos in the garden. It’s just past 7pm now, and we’re just barely starting to cool down. We most definitely broke 30C/86F today, though I don’t know by how much, or what the humidex was. As I write this, we’re down to 28C/82F, with the humidex putting us at 30C/86F – which I think is off by a few degrees! It certainly feels hotter than that out there to me!

But, everything is looking good in the garden. The morning watering is keeping everything from wilting away in the heat. The corn has reached pollination stage, but we don’t have much wind today, so I’ve been shaking them to pollinate the silks, and can see clouds of pollen coming off the tassels! I am so looking forward to trying this variety of corn. Such a short growing season isn’t worth much if we don’t like the corn! 😄 I see some potential problems with growing them in with the winter squash, though; some of the vines have started to climb the corn! The stalks will not be strong enough to hold that kind of weight!

I did not do any comparison photos of the developing melons, squash, etc., using my hand as perspective, yesterday. So we’ll be looking at two days growth from the photos I last posted.

Except for this one!

This is our first Crespo squash! I hand pollinated it, and it took, so I put a brick under it to keep it from potentially getting a rotten spot on the grass. I would love to get even just one fully grown Crespo squash, but it’s the end of July, so chances of that are pretty low, unless September ends up another warm one without frost – which may be possible, this year.

Digging around in the leaves, I found at least one more Summer of Melons Blend melon developing. There are lots more female flowers and probably more developing melons hidden by the leaves, but these are the largest ones that I can find, so far.

In the pumpkins, where I’d put a board under two smaller ones, you can see that the smaller one is turning yellow and withering away. Pollination didn’t take on that one.

I’m really impressed by how many pumpkins we have from just these two vines!

Among the winter squash, I found one that looks like it took and put a board under it. I also got shots of a couple that may have taken, but they haven’t dropped their flowers yet, so I might be jumping the gun to include them here.

I’ve been looking through the Vesey’s squash selection to try and determine what the varieties are, but it looks like the seeds in their Wild Bunch Mix are not sold separately! At least not all of them.

This is the image from their website for this product. I recognize Red Kuri in the photo, which we’ve grown before and really like. The image includes a squash I know is called Turks Turban, which is one of the squash we’ve got developing, but that one isn’t sold separately.

Oh! I just realized I forgot to get a photo of one large one! Excuse me while I go back out and fix that…

Done…

I can’t believe I forgot one of our largest developing winter squash! It is completely covered by leaves, so getting to it, and getting a photo, is a challenge. I think I can see which it is in the product image, but I don’t see that one among the seeds they sell individually.

Well, once they are ripe, I’ll have to look around online to see if I can identify the other varieties. The main reason we got this mix was to see which ones we like the most, so we can buy just those in the future. Eventually, I want to get ourselves down to just a couple of varieties – three at most – that grow well here, and that we enjoy eating – so that we can save seeds. That’s sort of the goal for most of the things we are growing, really, including the Summer of Melons mix.

Anyhow. I’ll probably take these comparison photos every couple of days, even though some of them show visible growth just from one day to the next. Especially when they are smaller. I like being able to go through the photos later on and really see how much they’ve grown in such a short time!

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be doing the early watering again, before heading to the city for our Costco shop. It’s also local election day for our municipal council, so I’ll be sure to vote before heading to the city.

As an aside, I’ve been playing with the AI assistant function on WordPress. The “generate feedback” keeps telling me I need to break up my long paragraphs. So often, I’ve taken another look at my posts to see if my paragraphs are really that long. I don’t think they are, in the posts I’ve done this with, but the AI sure seems to think so! It also keeps telling me to use subheadings to break things up. I’m not that kind of blog! It suggests adding images, too, though a few times it does recognize that I’ve used Instagram to include images.

What’s really funny is using the AI to generate images based only on the content of the posts. The AI does not know what a vegetable garden looks like. Or strawberry beds. Or a grocery store! At least the cat and kitten images look not too bad. 😄😄 The post I wrote about the washing machine being somehow turned on by the cats and flooding our entry was probably the funniest. I wrote about draining the water with a hose extending through the door.

It decided we had a washing machine sitting outside the door, with decorative nic nacs on top. 😂😂

None of them have been useable for my posts, though. I haven’t tried to tell it what to make for an image manually since I tried to get it to create an image of a mosquito some time ago.

The AI doesn’t know what mosquitoes look like, either.

Too funny!

The Re-Farmer

[Ahahahaha!!! I just tried the feedback option for this post, and it suggested I use the AI to generate images for it. 😂😂😂]

Our 2024 Garden: first substantial harvest! Well, almost. Plus, good news

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With our garden not having the usual things that could be harvested throughout the growing season, the most we’ve had this year has been pretty small. The only real exception to that was the garlic scapes which, a much as there were and how much we enjoy them, is more of a flavouring than anything else. Aside from that, we’ve had handfuls of sugar snap peas, strawberries and raspberries. Much enjoyed, but not very substantial.

Today, I decided I wanted to cook with potatoes and carrots.

We don’t have any potatoes or carrots in the house at the moment.

A good excuse to see how the Red Thumb fingerling potatoes turned out! These are the ones we planted using potatoes from last year. They were small, even for fingerlings, and had been sprouting in the box they were hidden in (for some reason, the cats love playing with them!) for way too long. I shoved in as many as would fit in the leftover space, then dumped the rest in the compost heap. I honestly wasn’t sure they would grow.

Well, grow they did, and all of the, from the looks of it, unlike the Purple Caribe in the other 2/3rds of the bed.

The ones in the compost pile started growing later, are looking huge and are blooming right now. We’ll probably get more and bigger potatoes out of the compost pile than in the garden bed!

It’ll be a while before we can dig them up and confirm that, though.

I wanted just enough for tonight, so I only dug up a few at one end of the bed. There was a self seeded tomato in with them so, as soon as I had the space for it, I dug it out with a large amount of soil, so the roots would have virtually no disruption, then transplanted it at the very end of the bed. As I dug around for more potatoes, I built the soil around the stem a bit, then made the mound so that water would flow towards the stem rather than down the sides, where it would wash away the soil. I’ll put a mulch around it as soon as I have the materials to do it.

I ended up digging out three plants altogether, then went and harvested some carrots.

I had been wondering about the Uzbek Golden carrots. There’s lots of leaves, but there are no “shoulders” of carrots sticking out of the soil. Last year, they grew quite large, and we could see the carrot tops much earlier in the season.

Well, I found out why.

All the carrots I pulled up were still quite small!

Which is okay for a day’s meal. Still, what I harvested was almost a quarter of the carrots we planted, since we never had the space to plant more.

That’s what we get for starting ALL the mixed variety packs for winter squash and melons, and having an almost 100% germination rate. Plus extra melons! Plus transplanting all those overwintered onions for their seeds.

After harvesting these, they got hosed down a few times to get the big dirt off. Since they are so fresh, they just need to be scrubbed clean and the carrots trimmed, before being cooked unpeeled. Otherwise, I would never have kept some of the really tiny potatoes and carrots.

I did harvest the one ripe Purple Dragonfly pepper last night, but I don’t eat peppers, so the girls get to enjoy that.

I haven’t quite decided what I’ll be making with the ingredients I have right now. It’s still too hot to cook, so it’ll wait for a while!

On another note, my daughter’s transfers went through today, so she was able to etransfer to her father so he could use his credit card to buy her new computer. We were willing to drive to the city to pick it up at the local location, but it turns out they only have one location with pick up, and it’s in Toronto! So it will be mailed to us, by express post. Which means my daughter should have her new computer by the end of the week. Canada Post tends to be pretty good for that, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually arrived by Wednesday. Which would be awesome. I’m amazed my daughter has been able to keep her computer running at all! I don’t know if she got any sleep at all today, as each step of getting the funds transferred until the purchase could finally be made took longer than usual. But, it’s finally done. She still needs to keep her old computer functioning until the new one arrives, plus the time to set up the software she uses, make sure it can connect with her drawing tablet (that probably needs to be replaced soon, too) and both monitors, get the drivers updated, etc. until she can finally use it for work.

Even so, it’s a huge weight off her shoulders, just having it purchased and on its way!

I’d say today has been a pretty good day!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: how does the garden grow? and other updates

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We aren’t expected to get as hot today as the last few days, but it’s still supposed to get right up there, so I went ahead and watered the garden again this morning. As I write this, we are at “only” 24C/75F, but feeling like 28C/82F. Over the next 5 days, we’re supposed to be back at or near 30C/86F.

Considering how many heat loving plants we ended up with in the garden this year (not really our original intention), this works out. Most of them also need a lot of water, too. Especially the squash and melons.

Last night, I went around and took photos, with my hand as reference, of the developing fruit. At least the larger ones that have clearly been successfully pollinated. There were a few I saw that are still at the sage where they might wither away and fall off the vine, so I didn’t bother taking photos of them. I will see if I can stick to taking photos in the evening, though maybe not every evening, so I can have a progression on how quickly they are growing in this heat.

First up, the Sumer of Melons Blend melons in the trellis bed.

Digging around the leaves, I found more larger melons developing that aren’t easily seen, which was nice. There are lots of little ones all over, too.

The pumpkins are really something! There is one really big one, plus quite a few more developing on the two plants. If we were after growing the largest pumpkin we could, we’d prune all but the biggest one from each plant, but I’m not after growing a show stopper, so we will take what they give us. I even hand pollinated a couple more this morning. Last night, I noticed some were getting large enough that I put scrap boards under them, to protect them from getting rotten spots on the ground. There was even a pair of them so close together, I put a longer piece of board that they can both rest on, once their weight has them both lying on the ground.

I’m quite happy with the winter squash. I don’t know why I’ve become so obsessed with winter squash! There’s one really big one growing on the corner of the log frame. I’d put a piece of scrap board under it but, now that it’s getting bigger, it was starting to roll off the narrow board. After I took the photo, I found a wider piece to put under it, and tried to stabilize it so it wouldn’t roll off and break its own stem or vine. There’s a large green squash that had also been resting on a log, but I found it rolled into the bed. Thankfully, there was no damage to stem or vine, so I found a scrap board to put under it and stabilize it. I even put boards under some smaller ones, just to get ahead of the game.

We also have a single Purple Dragonfly pepper that has changed colour. This morning, it was even more fully purple. I suppose it’s ripe enough to harvest now, but with just one pepper, I’m not in any hurry. There are others developing among the other plants, but this one started forming much earlier. I might harvest it tonight or something.

While I was watering the squash and corn bed, pausing to hand pollinate more flowers and checking on the developing squash, I spotted a garter snake! I was so happy to see it! First one I’ve seen in the garden all year. It disappeared before I could try for a photo. Hopefully, it is busily eating all the slugs, and not any of the many, many frogs we have this year, which also eat the slugs.

They (the frogs, not the snakes) are absolutely everywhere, this year! I don’t remember ever seeing so many before. I love it! Most that we see are Wood frogs, though looking up our native frogs, it’s possible some are the Boreal Chorus frog.

This morning, I spotted this beautiful friend and was able to get a photo.

This is the gray tree frog, even though it’s green at the moment. They can change colour. Definitely one of my favourite local frogs! I love their round, round bellies. 😁 This one is sitting on a raspberry leaf.

It looks like our raspberries are starting to wind down for the season.

The last thing I reached to water this morning was the grape vines, and I found some damage. The weight of the vines has pulled down the wire mesh from the rebar that was holding it up. I was able to lift it part way back, but we’ll have to figure out a way to secure the mesh to the rebar more effectively so it will stay. The grape vines are definitely the biggest I’ve ever seen them get since we discovered them buried in the spirea!

I really want to transplant them into a better location, and onto more stable and permanent trellis. I’m picturing an arch over a bench would be awesome. I’d originally considered planting them against the chain link fence, so they can use the fence as a trellis, but we shall see. It will be a while before we get to them, so we have time to find a good spot for them and plan it out.

In other things, the kitties are doing okay. I was concerned when I didn’t see the one orange and white kitten anywhere, but as I was moving the hose to water the east garden beds, I spotted him on the tarp covered pile of boards, nursing on Caramel. I guess they still use their “nest” under there at times. I’m concerned about Button. He, and other kittens, are starting to get leaky eyes, but he’s so much smaller than the others it concerns me more on him.

Oh, that reminds me. It’s been a month since we tried to order the 4 pound bucket of lysine for a second time (the first one was lost and we got refunded, but it still showed up on Amazon as being on its way). There is no option to cancel the order for a refund by this point, but I’ve still requested a refund, since we never got it. Last information we got, it was hung up at the border. If it hasn’t arrived by now, it’s not going to. We ordered the stuff we got last time, which is very granular and doesn’t stick to the kibble was well as the fine powder that we can’t find anymore. I was hoping the 4lb bucket would be the fine powder, but even if it wasn’t, it would last us a good long time. We’ll see how that works. The next time I’m at the feed store to get their 40 pound bags of kibble, I need to remember to ask if they carry lysine, too.

As for Button, I’m seriously considering bringing him inside. If it weren’t for the fact that the mamas are still letting him nurse, and that’s the best for him right now, I probably would.

I did get an update from the Cat Lady about her son that’s in the hospital. He’s going to be there for a while longer. They’ve got a team of doctors working on him and trying to avoid surgery. Poor kid. So there’s no way they’re going to be picking up Button anytime soon. They’ve got too many other things to worry about right now!

On the home front, my daughter has been managing to keep her computer going enough to work on commissions – commissions that she needs to pay for a new machine! Usually, while working, she’s got Discord up, or a podcast playing in the background, etc. Right now, she has nothing extra running in the background as she works, is saving everything constantly, and is backing things up to her cloud storage AND a thumb drive every chance she gets. Once she’s done working, it gets shut off. No browsing or game playing with her online friends.

If all goes well, we’ll be able to get her computer ordered within the next few days, while the system she wants is still on sale. She’s ordering from Memory Express, and there’s a location in the city that’s easy for us to get to, so we could even drive in to pick it up, which might be faster than having it delivered.

Thankfully, she has really good customers, who are understanding if there is some sort of delay because her computer died!

We shall see how things work out over the next few days.

Meanwhile, I have my outside stuff and gardening to keep me busy and sane, and I am thankful for it!

The Re-Farmer

The difference a day makes in the garden, and another sad find

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Before I get into things, I wanted to share a couple of photos I took of a developing melon.

This is the largest of the melons that I’ve seen (there might be others, hiding in the leaves) from the Summer of Melons mix. This mix of seeds has early, mid and late season melons, and the early ones – whatever varieties they are – are definitely showing up in the trellis bed, where the first transplants went in.

I took one photo yesterday and the other today. What a lot of growth in just one day!

I think I’ll try and make a point of taking photos of the melons and squash more often, with my hand as a size reference. The winter squash and pumpkins has also been getting visibly bigger, from day to day.

Today, we reached our expected high of 29C/84F, but I didn’t notice what the humidex was at at the time. Tomorrow, we’re expected to hit 30C/86F, and the humidex is expected to reach 38C/100F. Our low tonight is supposed to drop to 17C/63F by about 3-5am. I’ll definitely be out early to do the watering again, while it’s still cool.

My husband and I had plans to meet a friend in the city today, but unfortunately, his pain levels were just too high. I am expecting to do our first stock up shop tomorrow, as CPP Disability is supposed to come in on Monday, and when the disability payments are due on a Monday, they’ve instead been deposited on Saturday. However, just in case, I went into town early this evening to pick up a few things to tide us over the weekend. There were some really good sales on, so I got more than planned, and was still in budget, which is always nice.

After what happened this morning, with having to bury 4 newborn kittens, every time I’ve gone outside, I’ve been looking all over, hoping not to find any more. After chasing some raccoons out of the sun room, I gave the cats their evening feeding, then stayed outside to make sure the cats got a chance to eat before the raccoons came back. There was one bugger that was watching me from behind a tree for a while, but I didn’t want to get too close to chase it off, as that would have scared away the more feral cats eating under the shrine. Tricky bugger! It did eventually leave, though.

Since I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes, I kept moving around, eventually going into the West yard.

That’s when I saw one of the cats in the lawn near the old kitchen garden. They’ve worn a path in the grass from the lilacs behind where the tulip bed it, and the corner of the old kitchen garden. There was something in front of the cat that was still there when she ran off. Other cats also went to see it, so I had to check it out.

Yup. It was another dead kitten. It looked to be only a couple of weeks old, and had been dead for a while. It seems a mama was bringing it to the house and it didn’t make it, like the one I found in the old kitchen garden not long ago.

That’s 5 kittens I buried, in just one day.

It’s getting to the point that every time we go outside, we’re nervous about what we’ll find. With this heat, the kittens by the house tend to just splatter themselves all over, in the grass, on the sidewalk blocks, in the sun room, all stretched out and sleeping, and we have been checking to see if they’re breathing!

It’s Button that really gets me. He will sleep absolutely anywhere, usually in high traffic areas. Since he is so very tiny, and has a forever home to go to, I’m the most paranoid about him! I chatted with the Cat Lady today and we have a tentative date to connect on Sunday, if she is able to come out this way. Unfortunately, she just had surgery on one of her hands not long ago, and it’s been hurting a lot, so she might not be up to making the trip.

Hmmm… if I do go to the city tomorrow, I wonder if there is somewhere closer to her place where we could meet, and I can bring Button with me? I’ll have to message her and find out.

We shall see what tomorrow will bring.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: morning in the garden and NOOOOooooo!!!! *sniff*

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I headed out early this morning, while it was still relatively cool, to do the watering and make use of the grass clippings that had been collected and spread out on the black tarp.

I was getting near the end of watering in the main garden area, about to move on to the strawberry bed, when I realized…

I wasn’t seeing any strawberry plants.

At all.

Noooooooo!!

Yup. A deer got to them!

I have to admit, I was complacent. I’d seen a deer around the garden area a few times, but it never went to any of the beds and stayed in the tall grass. We’ve got spinners and flashy things and other distractions all over. It seemed they were making a difference…

Now, this.

Obviously, it’s late in the game, but I put a net around the bed so it won’t happen again. The plants will recover, and the runners are still there and rooting themselves. The main thing with the netting is to be able to lift it, as needed, to tend the bed. It’s held down with ground staples in the corners

*sigh*

The next time I can get to a Dollarama, I will see if I can pick up more of those green, plastic coated support posts. They are very handy!

The netting was put up last of all, though. Before that, as soon as the watering was done, I started filling the wheelbarrow with grass clippings and mulching things.

First I laid a pretty thick layer around the edges of the tomato and onion bed. Then I did the onion, shallot and summer squash bed. Setting handfuls of grass clippings between every onion took a while!

These two beds took up most of the grass clippings, but there was maybe half a wheelbarrow left, so I mulched around the onions going to seed, and around some melons at the end of the bed where the bush beans are trying to recover.

After that, I just had to get some photos of the huge vines we’ve got now!

The pumpkins are blooming enthusiastically, and I even hand pollinated a couple more. There’s one pretty large pumpkin developing, plus a few smaller ones. I got a picture of just the largest one.

There are lots of drum gourd flowers, but no female flowers, yet.

The winter squash that are developing right now are getting so big, so fast! So far, the only one I can identify – I think – is what is likely a Turk’s Turban squash. It will probably be a while before we can identify the others – two of which I think are the same variety. I was able to hand pollinate a couple of winter squash, too.

I also got some photos of the Forme de Coure tomatoes.

I think having the sump pump hose draining at one end of the bed is making a difference. A lot of the water does end up flowing down one of the paths, but the bed itself is benefiting from being watered indirectly like this. The tomato plants are lush and bushy, and the tomatoes seem to be growing much faster than other varieties.

It was about 17C/63F when I headed out to water the garden beds, at about 6:30-7am. It’s now coming up on 11, and we are at 24C/75F with the humidex putting us at 27C/81F. We are expected to reach a high of 29C/84F, with highs of around 30C/86F starting tomorrow and staying at or near that range into August.

Which means I’ll be out watering the garden in the cool of the morning pretty regularly.

Most of the prairies are under heat warnings and/or air quality warnings. We’ve got an increase in wildfires up north, but really, we’re doing all right, all things considered. Alberta is being hit hard, and Jasper had to be evacuated and seems to have mostly burned down! Thank God, there don’t appear to be any injuries or loss of life. The most recent article I can find, as of this writing, is here. (link will open in a new tab)

And that is why having a “bug out bag” is a good idea! As well as having emergency supplies in your vehicle, if you have one.

So we will do what we can with our own heat, and be thankful that it’s all we have to deal with!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: hot peppers and first corn silks!

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We’re looking at another hot day today, so I made sure to give the garden a good watering while it was still cool.

We have a couple of hot peppers developing, just on one plant so far. I also spotted our first corn silks this morning!

I found some new female winter squash and a pumpkin blossoming and hand pollinated them. Today was the first time I found a female squash blossom in the squash bed with the corn, which got transplanted after the ones with the peas and beans. The area around the pumpkins and winter squash is getting hard to walk through to water, the vines are getting so big! I need to find a way to set up supports for the hose above ground at each bed, so it doesn’t get dragged on top of the vines. I really should have set up the soaker and sprinkler hoses around the beds before they got so big.

Quite a few things that were looking wimpy and behind are starting to perk up, too, like the last onion transplants and the melon bed. Most of the tomatoes are getting big and bushy. I have not been on top of the pruning this year and, at this point, don’t really intend to do much of that. I’ll take off some of the lower leaves, but the stalks that grow out of the leaf “elbows” just got away with me. I figured I may as well leave them, since they will produce fruit. The black cherry tomatoes are vining so tall, the double lilac bush with branches above them is actually helping to support them! That group will need extra support around them, though.

The tomatoes growing in the concrete blocks, both at the chain link fence and the retaining wall, are not getting bushy, though. They are starting to produce tomatoes, but the plants themselves are not as strong and bushy as the others.

I’m going to have to rethink what we grow in those blocks. Perennials like the mint and chives are doing great. We did successfully grow cucamelons in the retaining wall blocks, though their vines remained spindly. They did not do well at the chain link fence. Onions and shallots don’t seem to do well in them, either, which is odd considering how well the chives are doing.

So it looks like we should be looking at saving the blocks for things like perennial herbs. The old kitchen garden is meant to eventually be a combination herd garden and kitchen garden, for both annuals and perennials. Basically, mostly things that we’d want to harvest as needed throughout the summer. I want to see if we can grow things like rosemary (which would be an annual, in our short growing season), sage or savory, which we tend to use quite a lot. We know now that chamomile will self seed nicely. We’re not using the thyme we have right now, as we don’t have a lot of it, and I want to see if it will either self seed or survive the winter, if it gets mulched well enough. In the fall, I want to find someplace to transplant those “wild” strawberries out of the wattle weave bed to where we can just let them do their thing.

Ah, the fun thing about gardening. I’m always thinking years in advance!

I rather enjoy that.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: tiny harvest, and first pepper showing

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I just got back from my evening rounds, and a bit of a harvest from the garden. Since I was focusing on watering the garden this morning, I didn’t bother checking to see if anything was ready to be picked. It’s really just sugar snap peas and raspberries to pick right now.

I have been leaving the peas to get a bit bigger between harvests, as I find they are tastier on the larger side. I got about a handful harvested (minus the ones I ate!), and a decent amount of raspberries.

I also got a picture of our first bell pepper; a Purple Dragonfly. I can see other peppers forming, but they are still barely larger than the flower buds.

A couple of the winter squash that are growing nicely were lying directly on the ground, so I grabbed a couple of bricks to set under them and protect them from the soil. The others that are currently developing have naturally set on the log frame, which is handy.

According to my weather app, we got a bit of rain this afternoon, but it seems to have missed us. I now see that we are supposed to get rain from about 9pm to midnight. If I look at the weather radar, the system that’s supposed to reach us by then is large enough we should actually get rain, and it should continue past midnight by some hours.

We shall see!

Right now, it’s over the lake to the north of us, and there’s quite a lot of lightning happening in parts of it. Mostly over the lake. There is no rain at all over where the fires are, though.

At least we are finally starting to cool down a bit.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a little harvest, and odd blooms

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That whole “get outside early, before it gets hot” thing is just not working. After finishing my morning rounds, it was already 25C/77F, with the humidex putting it at 31C/88F! As I write this, it’s actually cooled down a tiny bit, but it’s going to go right back up again this afternoon.

One of the garden beds that has me a bit perplexed is the eggplant and hot pepper bed. I have not tried to replace the plastic around the box frame, that got shredded by the wind, so they’ve been exposed to the wind and temperatures like everything else beside them. That bed does get a bit more sun than the other two beside it. The peppers and eggplants, though, just don’t seem to be growing. This seems like more than transplant shock. They’re just stagnating, and I don’t know why.

Which makes what progress I am seeing in them a bit surprising.

As small as they are, I am seeing flowers opening up among both the Classic eggplant, and the Little Finger eggplant. There are flowers on the Cheyenne hot peppers, too, but I would almost expect that. These peppers were started the earliest. They should be big and bushy and have fruit developing by now, so having a few flowers appear is late for those. For the eggplant, though, would have expected flowers to appear after they’d gotten much better. Especially considering how large the fruit is supposed to get at maturity. The normal fruit size, even for the Little Finger variety, is bigger than the plants are now!

Aside from that mystery, I found a couple of ripe strawberries among the older plants in the asparagus bed. Yesterday evening, I’d picked a few from the bare root strawberries that were planted this spring, and the tiny strawberries grown from seed in the old kitchen garden. The strawberries in the asparagus bed are having the hardest time of it, because the deer keep eating the leaves, so anything out of there is bonus.

There are sugar snap pea pods developing, and I’d picked a couple last night. This morning, there was just one, ready to pick. I’m only picking these because, the more they are harvested from, the more they will produce.

The real bonus this morning was the garlic scapes!

Almost all of the scapes were ready to be harvested. Of the ones remaining, they should be ready to harvest in the next day or two. So we’ll probably have one last harvest, and then be done for scapes for the year.

We need to plant more garlic. 😄

The mint that keeps trying to take over the bed is managing to get into the raised rectangular bed with garlic, tomatoes, onions and shallots in it. Since I was weeding them out, anyhow, I picked enough for a day’s use.

It’s not much of a harvest, and this year, it doesn’t look like we’ll get much that can be harvested through the summer. The bush beans have been decimated by slugs, so I don’t expect anything from them anymore. They mature fast enough that I could replant, but there’s no point, unless we can get rid of the slugs.

I should pick up some cheap beer for slug traps. Even the last Zucca melon is getting decimated, and it’s of a size they normally wouldn’t be able to damage that much. There is evidence of slug damage on some of the melons and winter squash, and at least a couple of melons have simply disappeared, but they seem to really like the Zucca melon – enough to get up into that kiddie pool raised bed it’s planted in!

The shelling peas are of a size that they need to be trained up into the trellis netting. There are very few pole beans, but they are getting tall enough that trellis netting needs to be added on that side of the bed, too.

The hot pepper growth has been stagnant, but so have the bell peppers in the high raised bed. They’re not getting any bigger, though they certainly look healthy, small as they are, and some of them are starting to bloom, too!

Most of the tomato varieties are also showing blooms. The only ones that aren’t are the last San Marzano transplants. Considering how much later they were planted, that’s not a surprise. The ones planted in the old kitchen garden almost all have flowers and are getting tall enough we’re going to have to start clipping them to their bamboo stake supports.

Along with all that, we need to get the weed trimmer and lawn mowers out before the grass gets too tall again. We still have standing water in places, and the ground is still saturated in others, but we should still be able to get at least some of the mowing done. That will give us grass clippings we can add to some of the garden beds as mulch, too.

Also on the list it so finish assembling the log frame on the one low raised bed. I was able to accumulate more cardboard that I plan to put under the logs, first. So they’ll need to be rolled away, the ground under where they will go needed to be levelled off more, the carboard laid down as a weed barrier, then the logs rolled back and permanently attached to each other. I just plan to cut notches in the shorter end pieces to fit them over the ends of the side pieces, to set them snug against each other. I still have some broken pieces plant supports I got a few years ago. They were hollow metal tubes coated in plastic, and with so many rocks in our soil, they broke very easily. I’ve used some of them, already, on the current trellis bed. I used an auger bit on my drill to make a hole through the logs at the short ends, then drove the broken lengths of supports in, to hold them together. I plan to do the same thing when assembling the new frame. It needs to be done very soon, as the winter squash is starting to grow into the paths, and will soon be too big to move out of the way without damaging them.

Meanwhile, the temperature and humidex is already starting to get hotter again. Our humidity levels are supposed to reach over 90% at times. I’m amazed we have an only 25% chance of rain this evening. I would have expected thunderstorm warnings. We do have a small system with storms in it passing us to the north, but not anywhere near where we are.

Well, summer is summer, and I’d better get used to the heat, if I’m going to get anything done.

The mosquitoes, on the other hand, are something I will never get used to!! Mosquitoes, horseflies, deer flies… they’re all just brutal this year!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: direct sowing chard and summer squash

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What a gorgeous day today!

We didn’t get too excessively hot – our high was 19C/66F – which made a huge difference. As I write this, we’re at 17C/63F, with a “feels like” of 15C/59F. That’s more my kind of weather!

Best of all, we had a break from the rain. We should have another break tomorrow, and then it’s supposed to rain for another two days.

Still, we got enough sunshine to dry some things out.

Today, I wanted to get some direct sowing done – finally!

I decided to plant chard where the spinach is done. That required first removing the netting I set up that turned out to not be long enough to go all the way around the bed. Once that was cleared and put away, I pulled the sad little remaining spinach plants – I wish I knew why they did so poorly! – and weeded the bed. We don’t have a lot of carrots, unfortunately. The cats would go in where there was no netting to keep them out, and use that corner of the bed as a litter box, digging up quite a few carrots in the process. I’d hope to plant more, but it’s too late in the season for carrots, now. Of the overwintered onions that had been transplanted at one end, there are three that survived the transplanting, and they are starting to go to seed!

Speaking of seed, I had both Bright Lights (a rainbow variety) and Fordhook Giant seeds. The cats had gotten into them and chew through the packages, so now they’re all mixed up in the a Ziplock baggie. These are not new seeds, so it will be interesting to see how well they germinate.

Once the planting and weeding was done, I grabbed one of the new nets I picked up at a dollar store and set it up around the bed. I added a couple more support posts around the perimeter. These are salvaged from the frame of a canopy tent a tree fell on, so they all have screw holes in them. Very handy to string line through, to hold the netting in place and keep it from just sliding down the supports! The netting is wide enough that it can reach the trellis netting in the middle, as well as to the ground outside the raised bed. I didn’t bother fastening the netting to the middle, since it’s mostly to keep the cats out. Once the netting was in place, it got some ground staples to hold it down, since it kept wanting to creep back up!

That done, it was time to go to the main garden area, and the last bed that got shifted over. The empty space between the shallots and the yellow bulb onions needed something in it!

The white patty pan and Magda squash that was planted in pots in front of the house did not germinate, so I replanted them there. I also grabbed the G-star pattypan seeds, and planted all three varieties between the onions and the shallots. I used broken bamboo stakes to mark were I’d planted pairs of seeds. I hadn’t pre-soaked them or scarified them, so I made sure they got a deep watering. Then I raked up some of grass clippings and used it to mulch around where the seeds were planted. Then I dampened the mulch, too!

I completely forgot that I wanted to replant the Seychelle pole beans by the Crespo squash. I can do that tomorrow. It’s really late for pole beans, but I’m going to take the chance.

Aside from that, the garden is now finally all in! There are no other beds to plant things in. That will be our next focus: build more beds for next year! Especially the trellis beds. Plus, of course, harvesting more dead spruces to frame all the beds.

Once that was done, I tended to the tomatoes in the old kitchen garden. I didn’t bother taking pictures, since it’s hard to see. They’re starting to get big and bush, and starting to flop. So I grabbed some jute twine and wove it around the pairs of bamboo stakes at each tomato plant, and the tomato stems in between. That was more finnicky work than I expected! The leaves are so dense the jute twine is mostly hidden, but it’s doing its job, and holding the vines up between the support stakes.

I also took some video of the raised beds that got shifted over. I’m planning to do a progress video. I was going to do it tonight, but I’m falling asleep at my keyboard, so I think I’ll call it a night, and work on it tomorrow.

All in all, it turned out to be a decently productive day! Not bad for it starting out as such a bad pain day, this morning. Not bad at all!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: transplanting DONE! onions and shallots

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Yes!!!

It’s official! I am done with the transplants.

Except the Orange Butterfly Flowers. I have no idea where to put those. I might just stick them in a pot or something.

I was very happy for a pleasant breeze to cool me down while I was working. I got the last of the bed turned and weeded, the boards laid out to mark where the log frame will go, and the soil evened out and leveled off as best I could.

Since I was wanting to finish off the onions and shallots, I decided to work in a grid instead of rows. I marked off 5 rows lengthwise first,, about 3 or 4 inches apart, then made cross rows, also every 3 or 4 inches apart.

Once the lines were marked out, I used the jet setting on the hose to drive water into all the marked lines. It makes it messier to transplant into, but it evens out the soil and gives deeper moisture for the roots to reach for.

After that, I just laid out the transplants where the lines crossed, starting with the yellow bulb onions at one end. I got to about half way down the bed, maybe a little more, before I finished them. Then I planted the shallots at the opposite end. Last of all, I used the grass clipping mulch I’d removed earlier today, to scatter a light mulch around the transplants.

I was very happy to see that this left me an open space where something can be direct sown. I’ll go through my seeds to see what I’ve got that will mature in less than 2 months, since we basically just have July and August left for a growing season.

This is really late for onion transplants. My intention had been to interplant them with other things, but that doesn’t really work out with the winter squash and melons, since those will get bigger and overshadow the onions. At least I got some in with the tomatoes.

We shall see if the weather holds long enough for all these onions to fully mature!

I’m now going to let my self breathe for a bit. I have some direct sowing to do, including where the spinach was planted, and that’s about it. After a break, I’ll get back to working on the trellis beds. Hopefully, we’ll dry out a bit and the winds will die down, and we’ll be able to harvest more logs for the raised bed frames. The forecast of rain to start this evening and continue for about 4 hours has changed. Now it’s saying we’ll get some rain for about an hour, around 10pm. On Friday, though (today is Tuesday), they’re still saying rain all day, starting about 5am Friday morning, through to 1am on Saturday morning. Aside from the brief rain we’re supposed to get tonight, though, we’re not supposed to get any rain at all until Friday.

I might actually be able to do some mowing! How exciting!

The Re-Farmer