growing food

Our 2023 Garden: moving day, finished!

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It took quite a few trips and a fair bit of rearranging, but all the transplants that were in the living room are now in the sun room!

There is a down side to not being able to close the outer door for the sun room. To keep the cats out, that means closing the inner door. The outer door has a screen window.

We reached a high of 21C/70F today, but the sun room reached 27C/81F! And the only air circulation is the ceiling fan. We are keeping the inner door into the old kitchen open. The outer door has a screen window, and with the old kitchen staying so much cooler, it should help at least a little bit. While it will help keep the sun room temperature down a bit, it will also warm up the old kitchen, so it’s a trade off.

Hmmm. I just remembered. I think we have a spare hook and eye closure somewhere. If I can find that, we can latch the outer sun room door from the inside. That would help. We’d still have to close the inner door for the night, so we don’t lose too much heat, but that’s okay.

Meanwhile…

I got the second light hung up and plugged into the first one. We are pretty much out of trays and bins to hold all the transplants, and I’m not finding more like the ones we have. We do still have a couple more of the black plastic trays, but they’re not very strong, and some of them have started to crack. I’ve been doubling them up, anyhow, just for the extra strength, and that way I can also use the cracked ones without leaking water everywhere.

There’s still a bit of room on the shelf! Those peppers had been in the big aquarium greenhouse and will need potting up, but I think they’ll enjoy being here for a while, first. They, at least, will really like the heat in here! I’m hoping the oregano and spearmint will do better here, too. They are not doing as well as the oregano and second variety of thyme we planted more recently are. I think the sad little luffa will like it better in this heat, too. In fact, depending on how things go, we might even try growing it in a pot in the sun room, instead of outside, this year.

We are expected to cool down a bit over the next few days, with Sunday being the coolest at 10C/50F. Tomorrow is supposed to reach 15C/59F, so it should be a good day to continue working in the old kitchen garden and finish that last bed. I’ll start hydrating my trays with the Jiffy pellets, so they’ll be ready for starting seeds the next day.

The priority for tomorrow, though, will be to go to the post office and pick up those raspberries that are in! We’ll want to plant those as soon as possible.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: moving day! and cat damage. 😥

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Today, we’re supposed to reach a high of 20C/68F. It’s not even noon yet, and we’re already 17C/63F. Considering that yesterday, while working in the old kitchen garden, I was getting too hot at 16C/61F, my plan was to start on the other bed earlier in the day, while things were still cooler.

My daughter, however, made so much progress cleaning out the sun room (even though she was not feeling well, she kept at it!) that I changed my mind. Living things take priority, and our transplants really need to be moved out of the living room!

After a bit more organizing, arranging and setting up, this is what the sun room looks like now.

The largest plants – the Crespo squash and gourds – went on the shelf between the smaller windows, where they have a combination of the most space, and the most sunlight. I’ve got a tray with our first peppers and the lemon grass there for now, but that will likely be moved, later.

The swing bench was removed completely and will stay outside for now. That allowed me to set up the “table” along the west facing windows. There is a light hanging above them, as this area tends to get darker faster, and a second light will be moved over later. The tallest tomatoes went onto here.

I should probably start hardening off the onions. They can be transplanted before last frost, and could actually be out right now. At least the shallots. They’ll be going into the tiny bed in the old kitchen garden. I have not yet decided were to plant the red and yellow onions. They will likely be planted in between other things. I figure at least some of them will be going into the wattle weave bed. We’ll see.

Three trays of the Roma tomatoes got moved over as well. If I can arrange things well enough, I hope to move all the transplants from the living room here, except the ones that need to be potted up. Then I can start the last batch of seeds in the next few days, as this Friday is 4 weeks from our last frost date.

Before setting the shelves up, I found a solution for how to hang the lights. I put a pair of cup hooks in the old kitchen wall, and another pair inside the window frame opposite. I strung a rope across the window. I then attached two more ropes to the first on, in such a way that they can easily be slid from side to side. Those lines went up and over the black shelf. You can see one of them in the photo above. The lights have hanging chains with carabiners at the ends. I’ve got a light with its chain hanging from one of the hooks in the old kitchen wall, and the other being held up by the rope set up. I took advantage of the hooks on the old kitchen wall to hold the extension cord up and out of the way. Last year, I’d put a hook in between the two west facing windows and had a power bar set up. I likely won’t need it. These lights can be plugged into each other, so that only one needs to be plugged into a power source.

It is so good to finally get the plants in here! Plus, we can leave the ceiling fan going, so there’s a breeze to help strengthen their stems. Some of the Roma tomatoes are not doing well, and I think we lost some of both those and the Spoon tomatoes. We have so many, though, we will still have lots. I’m hoping the sun room will be a better environment for them.

Of course, this means we have to keep the sun room door closed, and I made a discovery. We’ve had the doors propped open slightly all winter, so the cats could go in and out. Today is the first time anyone has tried to close the doors in months.

The outside door won’t close.

That’s the one we had to replace with a salvaged door. It seems the sun room has shifted again, because the door is now getting stuck at the top. We’ll have to remove some of the wood again.

There was only one down side to this morning’s progress.

Cat damage.

It seems there was an altercation in my room while I was away. The corner of my craft table, where I also now have the cat shelf under the window, is my tea station. I came in to find the cat blanket knocked off the shelf and hanging over my tea stuff. There happened to be one of those big A&W mugs on the table. It was on the floor, in pieces. I was in the middle of things, so I messaged the girls to take care of it for me.

Along with the broken mug, they found these.

My lizard incense holder has lost his head! Sadly, the lid to my (fake) sugar bowl was cracked and (fake) sugar was spilled all around. The matching creamer was among the things broken by the movers, but I think I can glue these two back together.

I really wish I could leave my door open!

Ah, well.

Later on, I’ll see about taking care of the rest of the transplants. The old kitchen garden can wait another day.

Oh! I just checked the post office tracking! Our raspberries are in! Unfortunately, today is Wednesday, and the store closes at noon, so the post office is, too. I’ll have to pick those up, tomorrow! The trees and potatoes tracker still says they’ll be in on on May 9.

I’m really looking forward to planting the trees and bushes!

The Re-Farmer

Pink blep, and new growth

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Things are warmed up nicely, so I’ll be heading out to work in the garden soon, but first I wanted to share this, from last night.

Would you look at this adorable boy?

You can see the mix of orange and grey fur that, in some lights, make Pinky’s fur look pink! He was eating like he was starving. He’s among the cats that don’t hang around quite as much anymore, and I suspect that by the time he does show up, most of the kibble is gone.

I am now sure about how adding the lysine powder to their kibble is working. There is, of course, no way to control the dose. Gooby (in the background) does actually seem to be less gooby. Of all the outside cats, he was the one that had the stuffiest nose and… well… there’s a reason he’s named Gooby! The other cats were never quite as bad, but some had issues with leaky eyes. As you can see, Pinky’s eye is leaking a bit, but it doesn’t look like he’s got problems with it. So… I guess it’s working? Talking to the Cat Lady about it, she says they would likely be worse without it. These respiratory issues are a major problem with all the outdoor cats in our province. We actually don’t have it as bad, simply because of the distance between other farm colonies. Not as much opportunity for cross contamination.

While doing my rounds, I also set up and prepared to work on the old kitchen garden, and also did a bit of clean up. Look what I found!

In cleaning out the retaining wall blocks, I uncovered quite a lot of chives that were completely hidden by last year’s detritus. The rhubarb in the photo is from the patch next to the chives and were easily visible. The patch at the opposite corner was completely covered, but when I raked up last year’s dead litter, I found there is a whole lot more coming up there!

I also cleaned up where the 50+ year old asparagus is, but there’s no sign of anything there yet. Very few spread show up when they do, and we just leave them to grow into ferns. Nearby is a patch of some kind of lily, which is showing little green leaf tips. Unfortunately, the invasive periwinkle looks like it’s already growing! I’m going to try and pull some of that up, so it doesn’t choke out everything else. I know we’ve lost this battle, but I want to at least keep them somewhat at bay.

I’ve received the last of my shipping confirmations. Our package of raspberries are still listed with May 8 as the expected delivery date, while both the trees and the potatoes are expected to arrive on May 9. Since these will be labeled as live plants on the packaging, I will not be surprised if they arrive by the end of this week. The post office does seem to prioritize living things for delivery! Either way, we need to be ready for them.

For now, though, I need to de-cat myself, head outside, and get some work done!

Sorry, Freya. I need to get up!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: winter survivors!

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But first, the cuteness!

I was able to zoom in to get a shot of Brussel and Sprout, sharing the tray under the water shelter. When I first came out this morning, I saw only about a 14 cats, but more kept showing up, including these two. I think I counted 22 in total, with some of them skulking around in the distance, waiting for me to leave the food area.

While doing my evening rounds, I took the winter mulch, which was corn stalks, off the asparagus and sunchoke beds. There is still no sign of the sunchokes or the asparagus, but…

… the four strawberry plants that share the asparagus bed were looking great! I wasn’t sure if they’d survive the winter. Not only did they survive, but they are looking better now than they did at the end of the season, last year! I’m hoping they’ll put out more runners this year, that we’ll transplant elsewhere. Strawberries are among the plants we want to have a lot of. They’re so incredibly expensive in the grocery stores!

Of course, I had to check on the crocuses and found this little guy.

The very first yellow crocus! There are a lot of purple ones blooming this morning, and a lot of white buds showing up, but still just the one yellow buds visible.

I should make a point of checking the bed I inoculated with morel spawn more often. May is the time of year they usually fruit. It would be cool if the giant puff balls emerged, too, but if they do, it’ll be later in the season.

It’s a good thing today is Sunday, which I try to keep as a day of rest. I didn’t do a lot when reclaiming the bed to plant poppies yesterday, but it was enough to increase the pain levels. It’s turning out to be a really windy day, too. So, tomorrow will be my day to really get into the manual labour needed in the old kitchen garden. Hopefully, at the very least, the winds will die down!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 Garden: poppies are in (video)

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Well, I wasn’t able to get progress images of what my daughters did, but I did get to set up another time lapse video later on. I was able to reclaim the bed by the chain link fence and sow one variety of bread seed poppies.

Having the rake handle break on me while I was clearing outside of the chain link fence was a bit of a downer! We had others I could have used, but I just kept using it, anyhow. It got the job done!

Also, I had a lot of cats visiting me while I worked!

I hope you enjoy the video. 😊 If you select to watch it on YouTube, you can hit the like and subscribe buttons, if you wish.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: spinach and alternative lawn mix

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My daughters were out early, taking care of some planting for me, so here are some “after” pictures. 😊

The first area they worked on were the bald patches in the maple grove.

These are where the branch pile we got chipped last summer had been sitting for about four years. The first thing they did was use the thatching rake to break up and loosen the soil, then raked it smooth. For the patch in the foreground, they made sure not to get too close to where we’ll be digging a trench to replace the water line from the house to the garden tap. I ordered two packets of alternative lawn mix, which they sowed and watered and tamped down. From the website:

This mix contains annuals and perennials of daisies, poppies, sweet alyssum, soapwort, nemophila, viola, thyme, chamomile, clover and fine fescue. 

Hopefully, they will not only fill in the bald patches, but will also naturally spread themselves in the maple grove, and maybe choke out the bell flowers that have been so invasive here!

In the time it took me to finish feeding the outside cats and switching out the trail cam memory cards, not only had they finished this area, but they finished planting the spinach, too!

The only thing left to do by the time I came out was to add the floating row cover. I bought a couple of these from a dollar store to try out. I’m not sure we’ll get more. It seems very fragile. At some point, I should buy a whole lot of tulle fabric. For the spinach, however, it’s more about keeping the critters from eating them than for insects. I just hope the cats will stay off of it. Otherwise, we’ll have to add hoops. I’m still shooting to build proper covers for these beds soon, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to pick up the lumber I need, so this will do until then!

The next cool weather crop I need to get in is at least one variety of bread seed poppies. I keep forgetting about them! I’ve decided to clean the vine off the chain link fence and put them in the bed we unsuccessfully tried to grow white strawberries in, last year. That can be the permanent spot for one variety. The other cool weather crop we can get in this early are peas, which will be planted along the chain link fence where we had tomatoes last year.

After that, things will need to wait until closer to our last frost date, so we’ll have time to prepare and finish more beds.

It feels so good to be able to get stuff into the ground!

Oh, and I got my first shipping confirmation from Veseys, for the smaller order that got processed a couple of days ago. It is our 3 pack of raspberries!

Royalty raspberries; image belongs to Veseys.

The expected delivery date is May 8, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they arrived earlier. I look forward to getting shipping notices for the apple, mulberry and potatoes!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 Garden: planting carrots! (video)

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Okay, this is a first. Planting something in April!

We had a bed prepared and covered with plastic over hoops for the soil to warm up more, so that is where I started. All of the carrot seed tape we made fit into the bed, with even a bit of room to spare. After that, another bed was finally prepared and covered with more plastic, and in a couple of days, it will get spinach planted in it.

I tried an experiment this time, setting up an old phone to take a time lapse video of both jobs.

Plus some random cat appearances.

The time lapse made for a short video. I hope you enjoy it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: garlic and crocuses!

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When doing my evening rounds today, I decided to do a walkabout, which I will post about separately. I was just finishing up when I got a message from one of my daughters, who had gone out while I was going in, with a picture of purple snow crocuses! She said there was garlic up, too.

They were not there when I did my morning rounds!

So I went back outside and checked it out.

While trying to find the purple crocuses she took a picture of, I found a couple of white ones. They’re so small, it was hard to get a good photo while zooming in, so this is the only one good enough to post.

I’m so thrilled to see them!

As for the garlic, I had been thinking about whether it was time to move the winter mulch aside, or to wait a bit longer.

Well, now’s the time!

I found the one garlic that had pushed its way through the mulch and began clearing.

Marking each end of the rows with sticks when we planted helped a lot!

In the process, I found quite a few more garlic sprouting. They will do much better, now that they will be getting more light and air circulation.

I am just so happy!!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: potting up tomatoes is DONE!

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Finally!!!

I was able to pick up more potting soil after helping my mother with errands yesterday, which means that today I got to finish potting up our tomato seedlings.

I actually was able to “pot up” the Black Beauty and Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes by topping the cups up with soil, first. Then I potted up the last 18 Roma VF tomatoes, which used up my last two plastic bins. I had to move things around, and move the onions right out, to fit everything. The taller seedlings hat to go either to the top of the mini greenhouse frame, or to the shelf, where the onions were. The rest are still short enough to fit in the mini greenhouse frame, though I’ve run out of space in there.

Next was the Spoon tomatoes.

I planted two seeds per pellet, and I made sure to do the ones that had pairs of seedlings first – though one of them had three! For each one, I removed the outer covering on the Jiffy pellets, then separated the seedlings. They’re still quite small, so the cups got filled only about half way.

I noticed the outer covering on the Jiffy Pellets is different this year. It’s more paper like. I remember it being more net-like, before. Those didn’t really break down, and I would find them in the garden while cleaning up at the end of the year. I’m guessing that has sometime to do with the change. With one pair of seedlings, a tomato had actually grown through the outer covering. As I was trying to gently remove it, I ended up breaking the tomato stem clean through! It’s a tomato, though, so I went ahead and planted the tomato top, anyhow. Changes are pretty good it’ll send out new roots and survive.

These are all 35 Spoon tomatoes (I’d mistakenly counted 36, before). I was able to fit 19 onto an oven liner tray, which will allow for bottom watering. The tray the Roma tomatoes had been in, which now had only the spearmint and oregano in it, could fit another dozen. That left only 4 that needed to be double cupped. I’ve run out of both trays and bins.

Those done, I did some more rearranging and removed off the watering can and extra cups, which allowed me to bring the onions back closer to the light. With all those, plus the bin with the Zucca melon and African Drum gourds in it, this surface is now completely full. I don’t even have my work space anymore! The light isn’t as good during the day on here but, early in the morning, it does actually get direct sunlight for a few hours.

The peppers in the large aquarium greenhouse still have new seeds germinating, so I won’t be potting those up for a while. Not that I have the space for it anymore!

I will need to monitor the overnight temperatures in the sun room over the next while. We’re supposed to warm up, but the overnight temperatures are still dipping below freezing. If the sun room can manage to stay at 6C/43F or warmer during the night, I should be able to at least move the onions over. They are about the only thing we’ve started indoors that can handle cooler temperatures. I’d love to be able to move the biggest plants out, which is mostly the gourds and Zucca melon, but they are the most cold sensitive plants we’ve got right now. Daytime temperatures in the sun room have been reaching as high as 20C/68F, which would be great as long as it didn’t drop too far. The times I’ve checked it through the bathroom window at night, I’ve seen the thermometer at around 10C/50F, which would be acceptable, I think. Plus, we’d be closing the doors overnight to keep the yard cats out of the plants, which means it would stay warmer overnight, too.

The cats are not going to be happy, losing their favourite bed on the swing bench, and private dining areas! I’ll be happy to not have skunks and racoons going in there anymore!

All in good time, though. It’s still only April, and a lot of these can’t get transplanted until the middle of June!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: herbs are sprouting!

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I planted chamomile and the second variety of thyme just a few days ago.

Two mornings later, when turning the aquarium lights, I spotted sprouting chamomile! By the afternoon, some thyme was coming up, too!

They were so tiny, though, I didn’t even try to get a picture until this morning.

They are still quite miniscule, but I can see more thyme coming up, while every single peat pellet has chamomile coming up.

I’ve never seen anything germinate this quickly! Meanwhile, I still have just a single oregano (I’m thinking of reseeding those) and just a few spearmint, that were started near the beginning of the month, and they are still barely any bigger than the chamomile sprouts are now! It seems the peat pellet trays are doing much better than using seed starter mix in toilet paper tube pots.

This afternoon, I will be heading out to help my mother with grocery shopping. Depending on the timing of things, I hope to pick up some more potting soil before coming home, so I can finish potting up the tomatoes.

I’m still just blown away by how quickly these germinated!

The Re-Farmer