growing food

Our 2021 garden: tending the old kitchen garden

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As much as I love all the rain we’ve been having, I was happy to have a mild, sunny day to get some work done outside. I finally got around to tending the big L shaped beet bed in the old kitchen garden.

This bed has had almost no tending, since we put the floating row cover on it to keep the critters out. This is how the two sides looked before I started.

Here is how it looked after a good, solid weeding!

There actually wasn’t a lot of weeds in there. After fighting my way through all the beet greens, following strands of weeds to their bottoms so I could pull them out by the roots, I found that there wasn’t much to pull out. The beets were actually choking out the weeds! Most of them were long and leggy and spread out, trying to reach the light, so when I pulled something out by the roots, I found I was removing quite a lot more plant than expected. The exception were all the sprouting Chinese Elms. It’s remarkable how deep and solid the roots are for a sapling that’s just a couple of inches high.

The beets themselves did not need any thinning, though I did accidentally pull a few out with the weeds. I wasn’t seeing a lot of beet roots developing, though. Hopefully, all the rain we’ve been having will result in a growth spurt!

When it came time ot put the netting back on, I took advantage of the big package of tent pegs I found in the garage. The sides of the netting was pulled tight and snug to the ground, so nothing can casually push its way under the netting. No more rocks and bricks to try and keep it down. For the ends, I wrapped the netting around boards, then weighted those down. There is lots of slack in the netting for the leaves to grow, though I don’t expect them to get much taller than they are now.

That done, I worked on the carrot bed next. One of the inner hoops had come down, the doweling holding it in place breaking off completely. Another was well on its way down, too.

Which made for a good time to tend the carrots, too.

There are two types of carrots in this bed, and these ones have been going to seed. Carrots do to see in their second year, so it seems the grounhogs eating their greens has fooled the carrots into thinking they are in their second year.

Carrots gone to see do not produce much of a root!

These carrots got weeded, but did not need any thinning. The other variety did need thinning.

Check these out!!! This is a variety from Baker Creek called Lounge Rouge Sang.

The two orange ones at the top of from the other carrots that had gone to seed, but had enough root that I wanted to keep them.

I checked my records, and those are supposed to be the Deep Purple carrots, from Veseys!

Here you can see what the Longue Rouge Sang carrots should look like, when fully mature. I just love the colours in them, and am happy to see that even the little carrots that got thinned out are showing them.

I’m so excited to see carrots! After the groundhog devastation, I really didn’t know if they would recover enough for us to have any at all. It’s a shame we couldn’t cover the larger carrot bed in the main garden area, too!

Once the bed was cleaned up, and I found new sticks to use to hold the PVC pipe hoops in place, the sides were pegged down tighter to the ground. The only places I used rocks to weigh the netting down was at a couple of corners, where there was excess netting to gather.

I still don’t know what the big green thing in the middle of the bed is. I had hoped it was the White Vienna kohlrabi that was planted there, but I not longer think that’s what they are. I’ve seen them pop up in a few other places, too. They don’t look like a weed, is about all I can say! I’m leaving them, just to hopefully see what they are. I’ve also left quite a bit of the mint that has been making it’s way through. In time, I hope to transplant them somewhere contained. For now, I just try to keep it under control so it won’t take over the garden – and we will still have at least a bit of mint to harvest if we want! :-)

There is still one more bed of beets by the retaining wall, covered in netting, that needs to be cleaned up, but that will have to wait for another day.

The Re-Farmer

One of “those” nights

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Last night turned out to be one of those odd nights. I’d stayed up late to finish of part of a crochet project, then work the set up on the next part of it, before going to bed.

I didn’t sleep a wink.

This wasn’t even a sleepy night of tossing and turning or interruptions, but just plain, “hmm. I’m awake.”

The problem with such sleepless nights is that I end up feeling hungry. So by 4am, I finally gave up and got something to eat, then watched some Midsomer Murders on Tubi. By 6am, I figuring I could actually fall asleep, but it was getting light out, so I did my morning rounds, first.

As early as it was, Rosencrantz was already waiting for breakfast! :-D

While checking on the garden beds after switching out the memory card on the garden cam, I was very happy to see these.

The one Red Kuri (Little Gem) squash is changing colour so nicely! One of my crochet projects has been to make mesh hammocks for the squash and melons. We have all smaller varieties, so the vines can hold the weight. The hammocks are more to ensure that, if they do drop off their vines, the ones that are higher up won’t hit the ground.

After all this time, we FINALLY have another winter squash developing. Possibly more, but this is the biggest, and shows no sign of dying off like so many others have done. Which is, on the one hand, quite exciting to see. On the other, it’s a bit frustrating. Our first frost date is September 10, and it’s already August 24. Hopefully, we won’t actually get frost that early, but that chances of this, and any others, reaching full maturity before first frost is low. These varieties were chosen specifically for their shorter growing season, but even with our watering and fertilizing, the drought has set so many things back. Now, after all that heat, it’s our cooler days and almost cold overnight temperatures that are slowing things down again.

Ah, well. We shall see what the fall brings us.

Meanwhile, I did manage a few hours of sleep. It’s drizzling outside, so I think I’ll continue on the crochet projects I’m working on.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: evening harvest

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While doing my evening rounds, I was able to gather quite a substantial harvest from the garden!

The yellow beans are, as could be expected, winding down right now, but there was still quite a lot of them. There were plenty of green beans, too, but it was the purple beans that stole the show! There were so many ready to pick this time!

I picked a few sweet corn that seems like they might be ready, just to see how they were. Though their silks are drying, they are still quite immature. My expectations are on the low side for these, given how nitrogen poor the soil is, but we shall see as time goes by.

I was really happy to have so many sunburst squash and zucchini! I also had to straighten up a lot of the support poles, as the wind had blown them over somewhat. However, I can definitely say it was much easier to find and harvest the summer squash grown vertically! Last year, I was picking sunburst squash and zucchini pretty much daily, but this is the first time we’ve had a substantial amount to pick. They did not get eaten before we could get to them! The cayenne pepper is definitely working!

I applied more over everything after I finished picking things. The rains would have washed it all off by now. We might get more rain today, then off an on over the next week, but I don’t expect to get much here, so I wanted to make sure the garden beds had their spicy protection.

There was enough picked that we could blanch and freeze some more, but this time I’m keeping them for having with our meals. In fact, I’m enjoying some of those beans with my lunch as I write this, sauteed with our Purple Stripe garlic (crushed and chopped) in butter, then braised until tender, then seasoned and stir fried with rice and some of the grass fed beef we got with the package we ordered a while back. It turned out very well!!

It may almost be the end of August, but we’re finally getting to where we can probably eat from our garden every day. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Perfect!

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Last night, we went ahead and had the larger of the two Halona melons that were ripe enough to come off their stems.

When we taste tested our first melons, they were too early.

You can see how green the inside of the rind is, in both the Halona (top) and Pixie (bottom) melons.

What a difference three days can make!

There is almost no green visible, and the knife just slid right through. It was also incredibly juicy! After scooping out the seeds, there was enough juice in the cavity, it could be drunk!

The flesh was smooth and soft, but not so soft as to be mushy. The flavour was very much a cantaloupe flavour, and llightly sweet. The small size makes it perfect for a late night snack, too. :-)

Since it was so nice and ripe, I’ve kept the seeds to clean and dry for planting next year. It is definitely a melon worth growing again!

The Re-Farmer

One last post for the day – just for fun!

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How can you tell it was nice out today? I got so much done outside to post about! :-D

I just wanted to share some of my finds today. Like this adorable little guy.

The tree frogs seem to really like the sacks we’re using to grow potatoes! I keep finding them, all tucked in and napping. :-)

Though we have almost no grapes at all this year, the few we do have are managing to survive and ripen.

I am just loving how the colour is changing on this squash! Our one and only winter squash. Though there are many little ones growing, even if they don’t all die off as they have been, I don’t think there’s enough growing season left for them to fully ripen.

The melons, on the other hand…

The Halona melons turn orange as they ripen! I’m sure that was obvious on the seed packet photo, but I didn’t even think to look.

There was something I missed completely when I took this photo, though.

I saw another one that was starting to turn colour, too, and lifted it to check the weight, only to see the stem come off. So I went back to the first one and realized it was completely detached from its stem already!

Aren’t they adorable?? <3

After picking one of each melon type to taste test, and they both turned out to be under ripe, I look forward to seeing how different these ones taste.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: fixing the beet bed, and last things

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One of the things we’ve done to protect some of our garden beds from the groundhogs and deer was to use mosquito netting as row covers. The edges were weighed down with whatever was handy; rocks, bricks, pieces of wood… that sort of thing.

The beet bed near where the garlic had been planted has been recovering very well. So well that the greens were tall enough to pull the netting out from under the weights that were holding it in place, in spots.

More specifically, out from under this board and the rock that was weighing it down. A grog took advantage of the gap and had a bit of a snack.

There wasn’t a lot of damage. The netting still did its job.

I took advantage of the situation to do some weeding and pick the onions that had been planted around the beets as a deterrent.

The down side of adding the netting was that the onions were rather squished, as they were planted so close to the edges of the bed. A few ended up on the compost pile, but there were still a few good enough to harvest! These last onions joined the others that are curing under the canopy tent right now.

I picked the beets that had the most of their greens eaten, plus a few more while I was weeding, which left me with some greens to harvest as well.

They got to join the corn I’d picked earlier.

This is pretty much the last of the Dorinny corn. There are still a few little cobs out there. I figure I’ll just leave those, and when we clean up the beds in the fall, we might have some seeds to save for next year, perhaps.

I just wanted to share how the first Mongolian Giant sunflower to start blooming is progressing, too. :-D

Back to the beets!

They are looking a lot better for a bit of clean up! There are some pretty big ones forming in there, too. It should be interesting to see what we get when it’s time to harvest the entire bed.

Then the netting was returned. I made good use of the bag of tent pegs I found in the garage, and pegged the sides down snug along the length, but close in to the beets, so that there would still be slack over the bed, with room for the beets to continue to fill out. I rolled boards into the excess netting at the ends and tucked them close under the leaves as well, so there would be no gabs in the corners for critters to get through.

The beets in the big L shaped bed in the old kitchen garden are starting to lift their floating row cover as well. I spotted a small gap where the rocks weighing the edge down had rolled off, and there are a few nibbled on greens at the very edge. There are heavier weights on either side of the gap, so a critter the size of a ground hog isn’t getting any farther. Tomorrow, I plan to uncover the bed, give it a thorough weeding, pick some more beets, then peg the netting down like this one, so it is more secure.

The beets planted against the retaining wall in the old kitchen garden don’t have this problem. They have not really recovered from when they got eaten. I think it has more to do with low light levels. That area is more shaded by the ornamental apple trees than the rest of the old kitchen garden. I’ll be uncovering them to at least weed them, and get a better look at how they are doing in the process.

As for what was picked today, the corn was added to the summer squash and teeny tomatoes the girls had picked earlier, and roasted in foil with some olive oil, granulated garlic, salt and pepper. The beets got roasted in another foil, with some chive blossom oil, salt and pepper. That way, I could roast both at the same time, in the same pan, without the beets turning the other vegetables all purple! :-D It turned out very well!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: yesterday and today

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Yesterday ended up being even hotter than was forecast.

We also didn’t get the thunderstorms that were predicted. :-(

I still ended up outside to take care of a few things. One of them was to check on our curing onions, shallots and garlic.

They are not cured yet, but they’ve dried enough that I took the time to brush off the soil from the shallots, then kept right on going, doing all the onions and hanging garlic, too.

Quite the difference!!

They will probably need at least a few more days, probably a week, to cure, but I might be able to trim and re-string them and hang them in the root cellar to finish curing. We shall see what the conditions are like. They really shouldn’t be hanging outside in the heat like this, though they are at least dry. I found out from my SIL that my mother would braid her garlic and hang them in trees, so I guess this should work out fine, too.

Though we did not get the predicted thunderstorms, we did have high winds from the south all day.

High enough to break a heavily laden tomato branch that didn’t have enough support. :-( I spent some time adding supports to the tomatoes, and found others that were bent, but not broken like this one. This one was still attached, so I tied it upright, but by this morning it was wilting. It’s likely a lost cause, but I went ahead and took it off completely, then stuck the end into the ground.

After adding support to the tomatoes, I picked the ripe ones – there are three different types of tomatoes in this photo – and picked the largest cucamelons, too. We’re still getting just enough for snacking on. :-)

Speaking of cucamelons, check this out.

This morning, their vines were reaching even higher past the top of the fence. How these are not falling over, I don’t know! The vines are clearly much stronger than they appear!

For the past while, I’ve been watching the sweet corn grow, wondering that there were so may tassels forming, but no cobs. When I went to water them yesterday evening, it was a relief to finally see silks emerging on several stalks. We might have corn to eat, after all!

This morning, I was able to pick some more beans, too.

The yellow beans seem to be getting into the height of their production, and I even found green beans large enough to harvest, but only one purple bean large enough to pick!

With how many we planted, I had hope to have more, but with our drought conditions, I’m happy that we have enough to eat fresh with our meals.

Also, do you see the drops of moisture on the colander in the photo?

That’s not from rinsing the beans.

Those are rain drops.

Yes! We have rain! It started to rain lightly just as I was finishing up with my rounds, and has been raining off and on ever since.

So exciting!

Even my older brother is getting rain at their place. They’ve had even less rain than we have. They get the same weird weather phenomenon that we do. As the systems move over us, something seems to just push them to go around, or even cause them to dissipate. Our theory was that it has something to do with being between such large lakes, but my brother’s place is well past the southernmost tip of the lake. So it can’t be that

We are just so happy for the rain we are getting right now. I can’t wait to check on the gravel pit this evening, to see if there’s any water at the bottom of the new dig!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: first taste, and getting big!

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This evening, our first real harvest of beans was prepared to accompany our supper, and did a taste test. Though we’d picked a few beans before, they were so few, they just got chopped up and added to a hash.

For these, they were first steamed until almost done, then pan fried in butter with fresh garlic (our own, of course!), then seasoned with salt an pepper.

The purple beans turn green when cooked, and I made a point of tasting them individually, to compare the flavour.

Honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference. As far as I could tell, they tasted the same! :-D Which was very good, I might add. :-)

I forgot to follow up on how the Dorinny corn tasted. We had those last night, wrapped in foil with butter, salt and pepper, then roasted in the oven, next to a ham.

I really liked the Dorinny corn. If you’re a fan of really sweet corn, it probably wouldn’t be your thing, but it had a good, solid corn flavour. It was also wonderfully toothsome. As much a pleasure to eat as to taste. I don’t think we’ll be able to save seeds from these, there are so few of them, but I will definitely want to pick up more for next year’s garden. In fact, I think I will get two packets this time.

While heading out to check on the gravel pit, I paused to look at the cucamelons and had a lovely surprise.

Hiding behind some leaves are some really big ones! Not quite big enough to harvest, but very close.

Yes, this is “big” for cucamelons. :-D

So awesome!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: soil protection

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We are quite pleased with the new garden beds at the chain link fence. They are working out very much as we intended, and the chain link is providing support for the plants, just as planned.

There is just one real problem.

Erosion.

While scavenging for wood I could use to make raised bed boxes for where the garlic was harvested, I noticed some other old wood in the barn. Today, I decided to grab a few boards and use them to help keep the soil where it belongs.

This is where the cucamelons and some gourds are planted. The ground slopes a bit here, so the bottom of the chain link fence has more of a gap under it. When we lay cardboard down first, we put flaps up against the chain link, but once the soil was added and things were being watered, the cardboard slid under the fence and the soil started to erode away.

It had been intended to place more of the chimney blocks along this section, to use them as planters like the ones we’re using as a retaining wall in the old kitchen garden. We still haven’t taken the last of those blocks out of the old basement (hauling those up the stairs and through the house is going to be difficult enough on its own, never mind no top of having to keep the cats out of that basement). We still intend to do it, though, and once they are in place, this will no longer be a problem. All that’s needed right now is to keep the soil from washing away under the fence, and taking the plants with it.

So for here, I just used a hoe to move enough soil to level things, then pushed boards under the bottom of the chain link from the outside. After that, I just tried to return some of the soil through the bottom of the fence, to hold the boards against the chain link. Otherwise, they would just lean inwards.

The boards were placed as far as the chicken wire critter barrier at the far end, making for a bit of overlap. It only needs to last until the end of the growing season, so as long as the boards keep the soil where it belongs, it’s doing its job.

More boards where then slid between the tomato plants and the chain link fence, though I did need to go back to the barn for another board. Erosion was not as much of a problem, here. There is much less of a gap between the bottom of the fence and the ground, so the cardboard flaps are still holding the soil in place. However, I wanted to add more soil under the tomatoes, and I didn’t want to be losing that.

Once the boards were in place, I was able to add quite a bit of soil, without having to worry about it sliding through the fence.

In time, this bed will get some sort of frame as well. What it will be made of will depend on what materials we end up acquiring. I’m leaning towards brick, partly because we are looking to use paving stones or something similar on the paths along both new beds.

The boards are just a stop gap measure for this season. Like most of the other wood I’m finding in the sheds and barn, it was reclaimed from somewhere, and has various levels of damage. They’re solid enough to do the job for the rest of the season, though, and I’m glad to have it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: harvest firsts

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This evening, I went over our beans and made our first real harvest!

We’ve picked a couple of beans, here and there, before, but this is the first substantial amount we have been able to gather. The yellow beans, for all that they are the smallest plants, are maturing the fastest.

A few purple beans, at the very end of the row, look to be newly nibbled on, but of the entire row, I could only find these few that looked mature enough to pick. As for the green beans, there are lots of them, but I don’t think they’re quite ready for picking. With the yellow beans, it’s at least easy to tell when they are ready. They turn from green to yellow. The green beans just stay the same green! :-D

After picking these, I stopped to look over other parts of the garden, including the Dorinny corn. These are the ones that were planted before last frost, and are the most mature. With the weather, they have had a hard time, but some of the cobs did seem to be ready to pick.

A whole four of them, including one that had its tip nibbled on by a deer a while back!

Generally speaking, they seem to have had good pollination; just the one cob that got its silks nibbled away has fewer kernels, which makes sense.

I had moved the garden cam to face the Dorinny corn and one side of the squash tunnel, in hopes of seeing what is eating the winter squash. One of the things I’ve done, after the last time a deer got into the Dorinny corn, and the one row of transplanted sunflowers, was move some of the distractions by the tulips, over to these garden beds. Two of those distractions were long strings of twine with jingle bells on them. I took our last couple of bamboo stakes and set them up along the side of the Dorinny corn block, with the bells strung between them.

I didn’t catch anything on the garden cam going after the winter squash, but I did catch a deer on several video files. It was nibbling at the ground in front of the string of bells, but never tried to go past it.

That was encouraging, at least.

Meanwhile, I currently have the corn in the over, wrapped in foil with some butter, salt and pepper, and am looking forward to tasting one! The beans will be enjoyed tomorrow. :-)

The Re-Farmer