growing food

Morning harvest, and tiny unit

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We’re getting high winds again today. Last night, I saw there was an expected high of 29C/84F by this evening, but now they’re saying a high of 26C/79F. At the moment, it’s a much more pleasant 18C/64F

Which made doing the morning rounds quite pleasant. Especially since the smoke is gone.

Here is what I picked this morning.

There are green and yellow beans on the bottom. Those seem to be winding down. There’s also an accidental onion that got pulled up while I was weeding!

The Romas are steadily ripening, and I got a few Indigo Blues this morning, too. I did pick some Black Beauties, too. The small one with the green was found on the ground. The others, I picked because they were starting to split.

I ended up picking a couple of Montana Morado corn, but the rest did not seem ready. From how the cobs feel when I check them, we had some pollination issues. We need some serious soil improvements before we can grow good corn in the main garden area again. I should probably pick a Tom Thumb popcorn cob, just to see how they look. They are being left to get completely dry on the stalks, but I’m still curious.

As for yesterday’s harvest that I picked for my mother, the reaction I got was pretty much exactly what I expected. The only thing she seemed happy to see was the garlic. Also, tomatoes should be red. Only red. When I reminded her she had actually asked for some of the others, she told me, “just to see!” Never mind that she told me to give some to her when they were ripe, while she was getting a tour of the garden and looking right at them. Of course, she waxed poetic about all the wonderful produce my sister gives her. When she saw the zucchini, she told me she thought she would be giving me zucchini, because someone had left some in the common area for people to take. While putting things away, I saw the zucchini she was talking about. They were huge, and looked like the hybrid zucchini we were gifted with last year. As for the brown pepper, she just laughed derisively. At least she didn’t have anything bad to say about the potatoes.

Ah, well. I tried.

I guess we’ll just have to keep our harvests to ourselves. 😉

Anyhow.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Morning rounds!

Kittens are, of course, running around all over the place. I got a picture of this teeny tiny unit.

For perspective, that’s a piece of paracord on the ground, next to it. This is one of the two kittens that were in the junk pile. It’s sibling is black with a tiny white patch on its chest.

It’s sibling is also easily twice the size.

This one does not appear to be sick in any way. Not even a little bit of leaky eyes. It’s just really, really tiny.

I’ve been trying to get close to it to touch it, but it won’t let me. All in good time. We’ll be keeping an eye on it.

For now, it’s time to bring the car over to the house and load it up for a trip to the dump. After that, we’ll be grabbing our empty water bottles for refilling.

Oh! I almost forgot! We had our first successful loaf of bread in the new bread machine yesterday. This morning, the girls got it going again. There should be fresh bread, ready to eat, by the time we’ve done our running around. It seems I guessed right; that first time, a cat much have climbed on it and accidentally shut it off. The machine is working just fine. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: a harvest gift, and taste test

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I’m heading to my mother’s this afternoon, then taking her to a medical appointment, so I thought I would bring some things from our garden to her.

I picked the potatoes from under just one Irish Cobbler plant, which had a pretty decent amount of larger potatoes. There were also small ones, so I just buried them and the plant roots again. There’s a few orange carrots, a zucchini we harvested earlier, some Roma and Indigo Blue tomatoes and a Sweet Chocolate bell pepper. While cutting some thyme, I noticed a shallot that got missed, so I grabbed that, then added a couple more we’d harvested earlier. I also cut some spearmint for her. I decided to add one of the Black Beauty tomatoes we harvested earlier, too. The softest one I could find among the lot. After bagging it up, I remembered to grab a head of garlic for her, too.

My mother being my mother, I expect to get a lot of snarky comments and backhanded insults. 😄 She’ll have issues with the brown pepper and different coloured tomatoes. She did ask me to give her some of the tomatoes to try, but then launched into a long speech about how bad it is to have not-red coloured tomatoes. And, of course, she’ll tell me how my sister brought her soooooo much from her garden, and it’s so much better, and she’s just one person, so it’s all too much, and how bad it was for me to bring more.

My mother is very predictable. 😁

But I’m giving them to her anyways. Who knows. She might actually show appreciation for a change. 😄

We did have one really nice, ripe Indigo Blue Chocolate tomato for my daughter to taste test. I’d picked three and put them in my pocket so I could use both hands. One was so ripe, it split when I bent over, so it needed to be eaten right away.

My daughter found them absolutely delicious. Nice and sweet. Juicy, but not too juicy, with a rich tomato flavour. We have others harvested that will need to be eaten quickly, and I don’t think that’s going to be a problem at all! 😄

The Indigo Blues are an indeterminate tomato, so I can expect to be able to harvest small amounts of them more often, from now one. The Romas are starting to ripen in mass quantities, so I might just wait on processing the ones we’ve picked, so we can do larger quantities all at once.

On another note completely, we did try to use the new bread machine yesterday.

Something went wrong, but I don’t know what.

I came into the kitchen to check on it, and it was off. There was still power to it – the display was showing the exact settings I started with for a basic 1.5lb loaf. It should have been showing a count down on the time. It just wasn’t running. The bread dough had been completely kneaded and was just sitting and rising the pan, so I left it. Later on, my older daughter took the dough out and baked it in the oven, so we now have one, perfect little loaf in bread jail to try.

Hmmm… I wonder. We keep our bread in a bin – bread jail – to protect it from the cats. I wonder if maybe a cat stepped on the controls while we were not around, and shut it off? We’ve set the bread machine up on the counter near the microwave, where it could be plugged into an outlet on a different breaker, and plenty of space around it for when it’s hot and baking. It’s the one counter the cats are allowed on, as they like to sit and look out the window.

That’s about the only thing I can think of, other than mechanical failure.

My daughter plans to try again, later, so we’ll see!

Who knows. I might come home to some fresh bread to try. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Morning update

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At around 4am or so, we finally got hit by one of the many little thunderstorms that have been passing us by. It got very loud, and we had a bit of a light show, but it seems we only caught the edges of it. We had some rain, but not enough to bring the rain barrel to even half full again.

As I write this, my husband and I should be on the road to his medical appointment, but we got a call this morning to reschedule it to Thursday. I can’t say I mind the delay. With the van gone, we have to use my mother’s car, which is going to be an incredibly painful drive for my husband. There’s no getting around it until we can get a replacement vehicle, and that still won’t be for a few more months.

Then I found a text message from the garage asking if Thursday would work to get the oil changed on my mother’s car. It would be a morning drop off, and with only one vehicle, I’d have to stay in town until it’s done, so getting to the medical appointment takes priority. Hopefully, he can fit the car in soon after.

Pain had my husband up really early today, so he took care of feeding the outside cats at about 5am. That must have confused the kitties! 😄 When I went out later to do my morning rounds, I spotted this.

It’s Octomom, bringing one of her kittens to the kibble house!

We still haven’t figured out where she moved her babies, but from how active this little one is, we’re going to be seeing all of them, soon. Mama must be more than ready to bring them to where solid food can be relied on! There are two black kittens in this litter. My younger daughter has always wanted an all black cat. If we can get them socialized, we might bring one in, after Decimus and her babies are adopted out.

Oh, that reminds me! I was messaging with the Cat Lady. She’s still working on her husband about the two kittens she’s promised to take; Ghosty and one of the outside kittens that is sicker. She says she may have a placement for Ghosty, so long as she doesn’t turn out to have something major, like feline leukemia or something. That would be so awesome! It’s getting time to take good pictures of all the kittens to send to her, so she can pass them on to her contacts. Getting a picture of Decimus will be a bit more difficult. She is either moving around too much, or covered in kittens!

Anyhow…

Today has a high of only 22C/72F. According to my desktop app, we are 20C/68F right now, and raining.

There is no rain outside.

So I’m thinking I might be able to do some painting this afternoon, then start cleaning up and debarking the logs for the trellis bed. I want to make sure to cut away and smooth out any branch ends and sticky-outy-bits. That’s something I’ve noticed causing a surprising amount of trouble with the high raised bed. You don’t notice stuff like that, until you’ve stabbed yourself with a broken branch end you never even noticed! The netting we’ve got over the beans catches on everything, too, so the smoother we can make the logs, the better.

What rain we did have last night was enough to water the garden well enough. I had to refill the rain barrel out by the Crespo squash, but the squash itself did not need watering. I neglected to take a picture of my little harvest this morning; beans, a green zucchini, and a few Spoon tomatoes were ready.

I’m really happy with how the squash patch is doing. Part of why we’re trying to many different kinds of winter squash is to not only see what we like to eat, but what grows well here. Right now, we have a couple of Boston Marrow squash developing, one on each plant. I think there’s only one, maybe two, Red Kuri, and one hulless seed pumpkin. For all the plants and flowers, we still have only one Honeyboat Delicata developing. There’s also only one Winter Sweet developing.

Then there’s the North Georgia Candy Roaster, and the Pink Banana! Both are now producing plenty of female flowers, and there seem to be quite a few squash that have been successfully pollinated. Though I’m seeing and hearing lots of pollinators – especially in the melon tower – I’m still hand pollinating the squash, unless I spot an insect actively pollinating a female flower. If things continue to go well, we should at least have a decent harvest of the candy roaster and banana squash, and enough of the others to at least taste them. That will go a long way towards deciding what we will try growing next year.

Weather willing, I will make another garden tour video soon.

But first, I need to make a quick trip to the post office and pick up some packages!

I’m kinda glad we didn’t end up going to the clinic today. I’m much appreciating the quieter day.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: morning harvest and how things are looking

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I didn’t pick any bush beans for a couple of days, so there was plenty to pick this morning!

I also grabbed a few Gold Ball turnips, Uzbek Golden carrots – a first harvest of those – and snagged a yellow zucchini. There’s some green ones starting to grow, and one that is almost ready to harvest, but not quite!

I uploaded other photos onto Instagram. As you go through these, can you please let me know if any of them look like the files got corrupted somehow? I am having problems with viewing batches of photos like this. They look fine as I go through the process, but after they’ve been published and I view them, there are usually visual changes to some of them. Some are so bad, I can barely see the image, so I delete the whole thing and start over. I had to do that with this batch, and I still see problems. The images are at least identifiable, though!

Please let me know if you see it to, or if it’s just my computer messing up!

The first image is of the North Georgia Candy Roaster squash that is getting SO big, so fast! It seems to be getting noticeably bigger, every day! There were also a lot of new female flowers among the candy roasters and the Pink Bananas.

There is a little patch of allium flowers that come up every year through a crack between sidewalk blocks and the laundry platform steps. They are in full bloom right now, and the bees loves them. I tried taking photos and just happened to catch the bee as it flew off to another flower head!

The earliest Sweet Chocolate bell peppers are turning colour quite nicely right now.

The next photo, of the chamomile flowers, looks like it has a block of purple over all but the top of the photo. Do you see that too?

The chamomile are blooming quite enthusiastically right now.

The very first luffa flower has opened – and is being pollinated!

Last of all is the first flower on the Classic Eggplant. Check out those spikes on it!

On another topic entirely, I brought one of the yard kittens in, so my daughter and I could wash its eyes out. They were completely stuck shut. As soon as the dried gunk was softened enough that the lids started to open, they started oozing more gunk! It’s nose was all gummed up, too, and somehow a tiny piece of flexible plastic was stuck to it! My guess is it was from the strips of plastic that covered the adhesive on the new roof tiles. We’re still finding them blowing around.

We got the kitten cleaned up as best we could, then set it outside again, but not before my daughter got a picture of it. The Cat Lady is going to be coming for Ghosty soon. I hated to asked, but I sent her the picture and asked if they would be able to take a second sick kitten.

She had to check with her husband, who was monitoring their cat that just came out of surgery not long ago. Their cat seems to be doing all right, so she will take the sick kitten. With its eyes gumming up so much, it tends to stay by the house a lot, so we should be able to find it and catch it, once we know she’s on the way.

The down side is, the rescue’s budget for August already done, having gone towards spays. Which means they’ll be taking on these two, out of pocket! They’ve already spent thousands on just two cats in the past, but they’re still willing to take on these two. The other downside is, once they’re all healthy, it’s been difficult to adopt cats out. Partly because she wants to keep them! 😄 I do expect Ghosty will get adopted out easily. She is a rather unique looking kitten. A bit freaky at times, too! She’s got blue eyes, and when the light hits them just right, her pupils glow red. We think she might have partial albinism. Her eyes are still sticky, too, but she has gotten much better since coming inside.

The Cat Lady commented that the strain causing these problems is particularly bad this year. Not just with so many sick cats, but so many kittens dying this year, too. So it’s not just at our place! We’ve found so many dead kittens this year, plus losing Question, even after bringing her inside. We’re still tossing the outside cats’ kibble with lysine to help their immune systems, but it’s the little ones that are suffering. The adults seem just fine, but with the littles, it seems that as soon as they start getting weaned, it’s just not enough.

Well, we do what we can! I feel bad asking the Cat Lady for help, though, but after Leyendecker, we just don’t have the budget to take another cat to the vet. The Cat Lady’s rescue runs on donations, but they do a lot out of pocket, too. Her husband, thankfully, makes good money, but it’s still a lot to cover out of pocket!

Ah, well. I’m just glad she’ll be able to take Ghosty and this other kitten. She is so awesome!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: morning harvest, and how things are growing

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Well, this morning sure didn’t turn out as expected, but I’ll write about that in another post. For now, here are how things are going in the garden.

I picked a lot of beans yesterday, so there weren’t many that needed picking today. I found three Gold Ball turnips that looked ready to harvest – one of them has even started splitting! I also harvested the big G-Star patty pan. My daughters had spotted it when they were out earlier in the morning, were really excited to see how big it had gotten and were wondering what plans I had for it. I have no interest in letting it get big enough to go to seed, as everything in the squash patch will likely be cross pollinated. I could have let it go larger, but as long as its there, the plant isn’t producing more squash. So I’ve picked it, and will let my daughters decide what to do with it! 😄

I posted more photos on Instagram, from last night and this morning.

While checking the Indigo Blue tomatoes last night, one of them fell off in my hand! So I guess it’s ripe. 😄 It was also very cool to see that radishes are already germinating!

In the squash patch, there aren’t a lot of squash forming, but some of the ones that are, are getting big fast. Like the North Georgia Candy Roaster. The squash plants in the compost pile, however, are really amazing. The mystery squash – there are two of them so far – bear no similarity to any squash we’ve grown before. Whatever cross pollinating happened, I can’t even guess which they might be. We had so few squash winter squash last year, and even fewer that would have had viable seeds that ended up in the compost pile. As for the three biggest and roundest squash, they are getting patterns on them, and I can now tell that they are a hulless seed pumpkin.

A surprise this morning was with that volunteer All Blue potato. The resent storms had knocked it over, but it’s still blooming and looking very strong and healthy. The other potato volunteers don’t seem to be growing, but this one is doing very well. It is also growing “berries”! Potatoes do go to seed, but this is the first time I’ve had one do it. I am absolutely going to let this plant go through its entire life cycle and harvest the seeds. With potatoes, if you plant the tubers, you get the exact same potato. They’re basically clones of the original seed potato. With seeds, however, you will get new varieties. I have heard of a single potato variety that has seeds that grow true to the original. Otherwise, they are like apples, and every seed will grow a new variety.

Someone in one of our local gardening groups posted pictures of their potato plant doing the same thing. From the conversation there, I read that when the seeds get planted, it results in only one potato, but if you plant that one potato, it will produce more. I have no idea of it’s true, but I’m willing to experiment!

The last photo is of our largest Crespo squash. It’s no longer a smooth, perfectly round ball. The mature pumpkin is supposed to have a warty texture, and it should be interesting to see how that develops over time. Still hoping to get a long enough growing season for them to fully mature! I know we started them indoors really enough but these plants are really spindly compared to the first year we tried growing them.

Some things still seem to be touch and go, but overall, I’m happy with how the garden is doing this year.

The Re-Farmer

Morning (and evening) in the garden.

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I’ve been working on another raised bed cover, with difficulty. I had to give up on plan A and switch to plan B, which involved stealing the hoops from the high raised bed. I left that for this morning, though. The beans still need to be protected from deer, though, so the raised bed cover I’d put over the carrots got moved over. With a daughter’s help, I was able to put it in place without damaging the beans, then drape the mesh over the fence wire.

That mesh catches on EVERYTHING!!!

I got a bit of a surprise, though. That bed is supposed to be 9′ x 4′ on the outside, to match the low raised beds, so the covers can be interchangeable. The low raised beds are 9′ x 3′, but with the log walls, the growing space is closer to 3′ than 4′, so that’s okay.

What I didn’t expect was for the cover to be almost 6 inches longer than the bed!

It works, though. Plus, the fence wire is open enough that I can just lift the mesh to reach in to weed and harvest, without taking the whole cover off. I also can use the ground staples to secure the mesh to the fence wire, which was not yet done when I took the above picture.

I did get a decent harvest this morning, though!

The green beans are really starting to recover from being eating by deer – they got hit a lot worse than the yellow beans. I finally picked that first yellow zucchini, and a G-Star patty pan. There is still a larger one that I’m leaving on the plant.

Last night, while doing my evening rounds, I discovered that the Black Beauty tomatoes needed help! The storm we had yesterday morning probably added to the problem. The tomatoes are getting so heavy, the entire support structure was starting to lean over with the weight, as well as more tomato laden branched hanging down. I’ve been tying them off regularly, but some still manage to escape. I’d already had to add a second support stake at the end, and last night I had to add three bamboo stakes, diagonally, to push back and hold the vertical supports.

The other photos in the slide show are from this morning. There are Spoon tomatoes starting to turn red! The earliest Sweet Chocolate peppers are starting to turn brown. (Most of the other short season varieties I started indoors later aren’t even blooming yet.) Some of the grapes are starting to turn colour, too!

I didn’t take photos, but there are more winter squash showing up, and I hand pollinated what I could. There is a single green zucchini that burst into bloom this morning – a female flower, with no male flowers blooming at all! I ended up hand pollinating it with a winter squash flower because none of the summer squash had male flowers available. Hopefully, that will be sufficient.

I salvaged some welded wire hardware cloth from the old squash tunnel this morning. Once I’m done with the raised bed cover I’m currently working on, there is one more frame left. I think I can use the salvaged mesh for that one. I’ll see if it will need hoops to support it, too. I hope not, because I’m out of useable hoops for that! There are still 2 more sections of hardware cloth on the old squash tunnel to salvage, which should be enough to wrap around the box cover over the popcorn bed. The cobs are developing nicely, which means the deer and racoons will be after it, soon!

High winds had started to knock down some of the purple corn, so they ended up getting stakes to support them. Their cobs are developing, too, but I don’t really have anything to protect that bed. I could use the fence wire for that, but it would be really difficult to manipulate and support that around the bed – and once it was up, we wouldn’t have access to tend it. Plus, the racoons would be able to climb over or squeeze through it, anyhow.

We’re looking at a high of 30C/86F today, and no rain, so hopefully I’ll be able to get some painting done today. The humidity is at 76%, though, and that certainly won’t help. Still, it needs to get done, and it’s one of the few things I can do in the heat. We’re not that hot yet, though, so I want to head back out right away and get as much done as I can before it gets unbearable!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: spinach, beets and radishes

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I finished preparing the bed we harvested the garlic from, and sowed for a fall harvest.

I chose Cherry Belle radishes and Bresko beets. I wasn’t sure how many seeds I had left, so I brought two different varieties of spinach. I was able to sow the Lakeside variety, which is what we planted in the spring. I was so impressed with how they didn’t go bitter, even when they started to bolt, I definitely wanted to sow those again.

I used the boards I’d brought out to shelter the tomatoes from the wind in the spring and laid them out around the edges, where weeds are such a problem, as well as across the middle to divide the bed into three sections. I ended up adding a couple more boards at the ends, too. Aside from hopefully keeping the crab grass at bay and dividing the bed, they also give me something to step on while tending the middle rows.

The first thing I did was give the entire bed a watering, using the cone setting on my sprayer for more even coverage. Then I used a hoe to trench out three rows in each section. Those got a watering on the jet setting, because I wanted to drive the water deep. Even though I’d already watered the bed, the moisture didn’t get very far, and the trenches were quite dry. The water also leveled out the soil in the trenches, so they weren’t so deep.

Next, I used grass clippings to mulch along the boards and in between the rows. Once the mulch was down, I used a broken piece of bamboo stake to make the rows the seeds would be planted in.

I picked up a seeder at Dollar Tree, and this is the first time I used it. It worked rather well. In the photo are the beet seeds, which were easiest. The rounder radish and spinach seeds did sometimes get a bit out of control, though! 😄

The beets went into the middle sections, the spinach at the end closer to the house, and the radishes at the far end.

Once the seeds were in and lightly covered, I used the flat setting on the hose to water each row and settle the soil further around the seeds. The grass clippings were toasted dry in the sun, so I used the cone and shower settings to soak the mulch. Last of all, I used the jet setting to clean the loose grass clippings off the boards.

What I will probably do later is put some kind of cover over the whole thing. I think we have some mosquito netting long enough for it. I mostly want to keep the insects from eating the greens. Last year, the radishes seemed particularly vulnerable. As they get bigger, they will definitely be tempted for the deer, too!

We were at 26C/79F while I was out there. Another reason to make sure the bed got extra watering! The two northernmost rows of squash were wilting in the heat again, so I’ve got the sprinkler going on those. Squash need a lot of water, anyhow! I had been concerned that the two southern rows would have trouble because they get so much more shade, while the two northern rows basically get zero shade from sunrise to sunset. With this year’s heat, that shade it turning out to be helpful! Last year, with the flooding, it was the other way around. The squash that were in full sun strove mightily to recover from the flooding, while those in shade basically had no chance at all.

For the next week to ten days, we’re going to see increased heat. Depending on which app I look at, we’ll either have no rain at all, have several days or rain, or several days of thunderstorms! It’s awfully hard to plan things with such conflicting information!

The Re-Farmer

Some progress outside

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I didn’t get back to the trench with anything to cut the roots, yet. I wanted to wash away as much of the soil as I could. First, to uncover the roots to better see them, but also to get a better look at the pipe itself.

I just don’t know what to make of this!

There are sections of the wider pipe, all along the main pipe (I agree with 53old; it looks like irrigation pipe). Once I get the roots cut away, I will take off one of the couplings I put on in my attempt to repair the pipe, and I should be able to take this length of the pipe out, all the way to the tap. Then I’ll be able to take a good look at what is under those wider sections of pipe.

The only thing is, I have yet to find the end of the pipe. I’ve been digging around at the bottom of the tap but keep hitting roots and rocks, and that end of the pipe is quite a bit lower than the rest of it. My brother will be here tomorrow morning, and I hope he’ll have time to see this!

I also managed to get the bed the garlic was harvested from almost completely ready for planting.

The first photo in the series is the “before” picture.

After clearing away the grass clipping mulch, you can see that there is a fair bit of weeding to do, mostly along the edge. That crab grass comes up from under the log border. I broke up the entire bed to weed it, and was finding plenty of rhizomes making their way into the middle! Then I added a bag of manure to work into the soil.

Because the edges are where the most trouble is for weeds, once the manure was worked in, I raked the soil away from the log edges and into the middle. Then I took some of the grass clipping mulch and packed a thick layer tight against the logs. They won’t be enough to choke out the weeds, but they will at least make it harder for them to get through. Plus, it’ll make sure we don’t accidentally plant too close to the edge.

Last of all, I raked the soil back towards the grass clippings and leveled it off a bit. There are a lot of hard clumps, though, so I’ll have to come back to it with the cultivator tool and break those up. Once that is done, it’ll be ready for planting.

What we’ll most likely do is plant in three blocks, square food gardening style, with the beets in the middle. The radishes are a fast crop, so having them near an end makes sense. The spinach is a cut and come again crop, so having them near and end also makes sense. While the beet greens can be eaten, we’ve don’t tend to eat them a lot, their roots will take the longest to reach a harvestable size. We will likely harvest them all at once at the end of the year, so they can stay in the harder to reach middle zone.

Once these beds get converted to high raised beds, reach won’t be as much of a problem. The lower the bed, the harder it is to reach the middle of it. If you’re short like me and thinking of growing in low raised beds, I would recommend not going more than 3 feet wide for that reason. Ours are 4 feet wide, which is great for a high bed, but gets pretty painful on a low one! Even the box beds, two of which are about a foot high, it’s still uncomfortable to reach into the middle and actually do anything of substance.

That’s where we’re at now! Once the bed prep is finished, we just have to choose which varieties we will be planting. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Kitten status and garden gathering

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We’ve reached our predicted high of 26C/79F today, with 54% humidity. Tomorrow, we are supposed to hit 30C/86F.

The first thing I want to share with you is this adorableness.

I even got a bit of video.

This was the first time she nursed the babies in the comfort of my bed. She is so tiny!

And filthy. Especially her belly. Those kittens get her very dirty! She has gotten to the point where she actually enjoys being held and cuddled, so chances are pretty good we should at least be able to take a damp washcloth to her.

These next photos are from yesterday evening.

I spotted the two kittens in the junk pile, without mom around, playing. When it saw me, the black one went and hid, but the other one stayed and watched me while I took photos. The black one has a single small patch of white on its chest that I could see.

The third photo is of a kitten I’ve never seen before. I saw it again this morning, with two other kittens of similar size that I didn’t recognize. I have no idea which mother they came with. There are several of the more feral mamas that had kittens quite early in the spring, and I was wondering when their babies would start showing up.

Beside the main garden, there is an area we’ve allowed to grow wild that is now tall with what I thought was a type of alfalfa but, when I tried to look it up, I couldn’t find any images with white flowers like them.

Whatever it is, it was just buzzing with bees last night, and I managed to get a decent picture.

I also got a picture of our first fresh garlic – after cleaning it off with the hose!

The squash is our first Honeyboat Delicata. The one I hand pollinated from a different type of squash, as there were no Delicata male flowers blooming. There still aren’t. So far, it looks like the cross pollination took. Hopefully, we’ll have at least one Delicata to try and see if we like them, and if the Honeyboat variety really does store well. If so, we will plant them again – with purchased seeds, though, since the seeds from any we grow this year will likely all be cross pollinated.

And finally, a handful of Royalty raspberries I picked this morning! Most of those were from one plant, with a few from a second. The third is the smallest, and its berries are still unripe.

I’m still amazed we got any at all in their transplant year!

I forgot to get a picture, but one of the African Drum gourd female flowers was blooming this morning, so I made sure to pollinate it with one of the male flowers from another African Drum gourd. If it works out, it should be interesting to see just how fast the gourds develop, and if we have a mild enough fall for them to reach full maturity.

In other things, we’re concerned about Leyendecker. He’s getting his medications, but he’s still refusing to eat. We even mixed the new food with the food he’s used to, and he won’t eat either! He also spends most of his days just lying around, but that could be from the medications. This morning, while staying with him in the bathroom, trying to convince him to eat, he just sprawled tragically at the closed door. I took the opportunity to palpate his abdomen. He not only tolerated it, but shifted so I could reach better as I was pushing around where his bladder is. He had just gotten his medications, so it would have been too soon for the pain killers to kick in. If he were having blocking issues, my poking around would have been very uncomfortable for him, and I would have been able to feel an over full bladder. Neither was an issue. So we’re not sure what’s going on with him right now. 😟 We will continue to monitor him.

For now, I’m going to go help my daughter with juicing those cherries we picked. By request, we will be making jelly with them!

The Re-Farmer

Morning… er… afternoon finds

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Well, I did get some sleep last night! The kittens did tackle me, but I almost slept through it. I really, really have to watch myself, though. I leaned forward in bed this morning, and something moved. Turned out I had a kitten curled up right against my belly!

My daughter, unfortunately, did not get any sleep at all last night. Big Rig would not leave her alone! So she was up and about early to find Leyendecker for his morning medications. As I was getting up to help her, I realized I was hearing pouring rain over the sound of my fan! We were not supposed to get rain today. That’s why I watered the garden yesterday!

My daughter went on to feed the outside cats while I supervised Leyendecker, trying to get him to eat his new food. The first time my daughter gave it to him, he ate it hungrily. Now, he won’t eat it at all. We’re not sure what’s going on. Even when he’s around the main food bowls, which we now keep empty between feedings, he hasn’t even really been looking for more food. It’s likely the medications are causing him to loose his appetite, but I don’t remember it happening when he was on them before.

Since it was pouring so hard out, I went back to bed. My sense of time is now completely messed up! I went out to do my “morning” rounds a little while ago, but it was about 3pm. It still feels like morning.

Anyhow, here are some of my finds of the day!

When I saw Octomom heading for the kibble house, I checked on her babies. Usually, they’re asleep when she leaves, but not today!

It took me watching this a couple of times, counting and recounting, before I finally spotted the eighth kitten, under the two black ones! 😄

While finishing my rounds, I spotted the kittens in the junk pile with their mama.

Looks like it’s just the 2 of them, and they’re starting to go further afield! I expect we’ll soon be seeing them eating in the bowl under the shrine. 😊

I managed to get a picture of the tuxedo with the messed up eye. This photo is cropped closer, to see it better.

I’m really surprised. That eye is clearing up really well! The inner eyelid is swollen like crazy, but I was sure he was going to lose that eye completely. I am happy to say, it looks like I was wrong!

Meanwhile, I had a first in the (very well watered!) garden today!

Our very first ripe Roma tomato! It picked itself. This was the first tomato to show up, so no surprise it ripened first. I reached out to touch it and it fell off the vine into my hand!

The next picture is of ripening Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes. Now I can see where the “chocolate” part of the name came from!

I didn’t get a picture, but I saw a female Crespo squash in full flower, and I made sure to hand pollinate it. In the photos above, you can see the female African Drum gourd flowers are getting larger. The male flowers have been blooming consistently, so I expect to be able to pollinate those by hand when they finally open.

The last picture is of the G-Star patty pans, and we’ve got a switch on that one! The female flowers are blooming, but the male flowers just buds right now. Which means those lovely looking squash are not going to develop fully. There aren’t even any other summer squash blossoms I could use to pollinate with. I suppose I could try using a winter squash blossom, but I don’t know if they are similar enough for that to work. The G-Star plants are doing very well, though, so I expect we’ll have both male and female flowers blossoming at the same time, fairly soon.

I’m thinking it might be time to harvest the garlic. I want to give the bulbs time to get nice and big – we have so few of them this year – but the stems are drying out, which means they probably won’t get much bigger than they are now. That will free up an entire bed for something else, if we harvest those soon.

In the wattle weave bed, I transplanted 4 different early peppers, just in case we didn’t get a chance to transplant more in the grow bags. When watering last night, it looked like one of them has suddenly died. I could not find a reason why, but it’s wilting away. Nothing else around it is affected. There is no insect damage that I can find. It even looks strong around the stem and roots. I hope it perks up, but I don’t think it will. Everything else in that bed is doing well. Even the chamomile is starting to bloom. That first luffa we planted in there is getting so big, it has started to climb the lilac above it, and clusters of flower buds are starting to appear.

My sense of time is not just messed up about today, where I feel like it’s so much earlier in the day. I also get that sense, in reverse, when tending the garden. “Spring” arrived so early this year, it feels like we’re heading into fall, when we’ve still got half the summer to go. I keep thinking I should be harvesting things from the garden regularly by now. I’ve looked back at photos I took in July over the last two years to get some comparison, and we weren’t harvesting much at all at this time. When we grew melons successfully, 2 years ago, we had baseball sized fruits developing at this time. This year’s melons germinated so late, they’re just starting to bloom right now, and just male flowers so far. Some of the corn was behind what we have now, while others ahead. No surprise the summer squash was ahead compared to this year, since this year we have barely any and did direct sowing instead of transplants. I’m glad I took so many photos. It helps me get a sense of what to expect now, more or less, based on how things did in past years. Taking into account that 2 years ago was a drought year with heat waves (which the melons loved!) and last year a lot of things were lost to flooding in the spring.

I guess I feel better after looking at the photos from previous years. Some things, I can’t quite figure out why there is a significant different between them and this year. Others, it’s pretty obvious!

At least we’re not having to deal with groundhogs eating everything again! They seem to have moved on and are staying away, and I’m quite happy with that!

Now we just have to worry about racoons! Especially when it comes to the corn.

The Re-Farmer