My goal for the day was to get all the transplants in.
Ha!
No, I didn’t achieve that goal.
I did, however, get a LOT done, until the 34C/93F heat finally did me in. Enough that I’ll be breaking it up into several posts.
The start of the day was the same as it has been for the past while; after my morning rounds, everything got a watering in preparation for the coming heat. I was quite appreciating the new watering can, which holds twice as much as the breaking apart bucket I’ve been using! So that part of the watering went a lot faster.
Before I started watering the new asparagus bed, though, I did some modification. The landscape fabric or whatever it is had just been folded back to uncover the space I planted in, and the rocks I pulled out was just tossed on top. I lifted the folded side to shift all the rocks towards the opposite side, then laid the edge out close to the little wire fence protecting the strawberries. After weighing that down, I pulled the other end to cover a new section of what had been our squash patch in previous years.
There was still some grass clippings on the fabric, and that got used to lightly mulch the asparagus area, and heavily mulch along the wire fence. Once that was done, it all got a thorough watering.
The light mulch should be enough to protect the soil, while still making it easy for the baby asparagus to poke through. The heavy mulch should, hopefully, keep any weeds from coming back by the strawberries.
I’d left a couple of buckets filled with water to keep them from blowing them away. I noticed the cats have been drinking from them, often, so now I keep them full for the kitties. 😊
Next to the new asparagus bed is our garlic bed, then the potatoes.
The garlic is looking so good! We should start getting scapes soon. We are all looking forward to cooking with those!
The potatoes are coming up a lot faster now. When watering that bed, I noticed there are SO many frogs! They get startled when I water the potatoes, and jump into the netting. They seem to be able to get in and out just fine, though – at least when they’re not being scared by something!
Once all the watering was done, it was finally time to start transplanting things.
The weather apps say we’re anywhere from 24-26C/75-79F out there this evening but, strangely, it felt much cooler! Very enjoyable, in fact. Well. Except for the blood red sun from all the wildfire smoke.
I decided to head into the outer yard and check on the walnuts this evening; something I usually do in the mornings, but my daughter did the watering out there today. I was very thrilled to see this.
It was very hard to get the camera to focus on such a small spot! Surprisingly, it did better when I accidentally took some video. Of course, it didn’t help that I had cats pushing their way into things!
What we have here is our very first walnut tree leaf bud! It was taking so long, I was starting to think it might not have survived being transplanted. I’m so happy! No signs of anything from the walnut seeds, yet, but hopefully they will start emerging soon.
This evening I decided to take the cover off the winter sown bed in the east yard. It has the same mix of seeds as the high raised bed, plus lettuce from our own saved seed. The two beds could not be more different!
For starters, the one thing that is thriving in this bed is the Jebousek lettuce, which is the only variety of lettuce we planted this year. The rest is onions and root vegetables. There’s so much lettuce, though, it’s choking things out!
So I thinned some by picking a bunch out by the roots. I grabbed a couple of radishes, too.
We’ll need to thin the lettuce out more, as I could see scrawny beet greens being crowded out by them. There are some larger leaved plants in there I wasn’t sure of, so I carefully took a closer look at their bases. It looks like we have a few Zlata radishes growing! These seeds were gifted to me, and I’ve never seen them before. They are very round and have a yellowish colour to them. I’ve left them for now. The radishes I did pick are the longer French Breakfast variety. The first lettuce and radish harvest for this year! I ended up picking another French Breakfast radish from the high raised bed, the picked some spinach from the old kitchen garden. We’ve been using the spinach mostly in sandwiches, but we’ve got the makings of an actual salad from our garden right now!
And it’s not even June, yet.
Yeah, I’d say winter sowing like this is something we’ll be doing again!
It’s hard to be having a heat wave like we are now, and have to think about last frost dates before planting things! Our average last frost date was June 2, but this year it’s listed as a range from May 28-31.
On the one hand, I’ve been eyeballing the long range forecasts. They tend to change often, sometimes multiple times in a day, but we are no longer having predictions of overnight temperatures below freezing. So far, nothing lower than 5C/41F in the overnight lows expected in early June.
On the other hand, I’ve been eyeballing the dandelions. If you’ve been following Maritime Gardening, you may have heard his way of using the stages of dandelions to judge when to plant things. When the greens emerge, the soil is warm enough to plant cold hardy seeds like peas and spinach. When the flowers are blooming, the soil is warm enough to plant things that need a bit more warmth, but can still handle a night of frost, like brassicas. When the dandelions go to seed, the soil is warm enough to plant everything else.
Our dandelions have been blooming for a while, and lots are starting to go to seed.
So I should be able to direct sow or transplant pretty much everything right now, but I still want to be able to cover things if we do get a frost.
Since I didn’t want to render myself immobile again, today I decided to work on the tiny raised bed garden and transplant the herbs I bought a few weeks back.
This bed got prepped in the fall, so there wasn’t much it needed – other than finally reinforcing the cover that cats keep lying on!
I took the cover over to the garage, along with some leftover pieces of hula hoop, which is what is already being used in the cover, to add to it. I got one installed, but when I tried to set up the other, it kept snapping on me. Thankfully, I had a piece of pipe of some kind my brother had passed on to me, along with lumber, shelving and numerous other small items he knew I would find uses for. It was perfect for the job, and I still have some left over. There was also a short bamboo garden stake that I wove through the chicken wire across the top. That will both support the wire (and the weight of cats) and make it easier to carry the cover.
Then it was time to ready the soil. It had a grass clipping mulch that was set aside, then I used my little hand cultivator to loosen the soil so I could better remove the rhizomes. Unfortunately, I was also finding tree roots; this time, from the nearby ornamental crab apple. I think there’s actually a large root running under the bed, but if there is, it’s deep enough it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s the little capillary roots that can become an issue!
After a few years of amending this bed, the soil was really nice and fluffy, already. I did amend it more with the rehydrated coconut coir, plus some manure. The soil was insanely dry, so I made sure to give it a very thorough watering once the amendments were mixed in.
I then set the pots in and moved them around until I figured out where the herbs would go. I’ve got English Thyme and Golden Yellow Thyme that are kitty corner from each other. The other corners have oregano and Greek oregano. In the middle, closer to the walking onions, is lemon balm, with the basil across from it. Once transplanted, they got another watering.
After they were transplanted, I carefully scattered the mulch around them, making sure it was under their leaves and stems.
Then it got another watering.
Last of all, the cover was set in place. No kitties will be rolling around on or digging these up!
The next area I plan to work on is the wattle weave bed. The tiny strawberries in there are blooming up a store right now, so I’m not going to transplant them until the fall. They don’t take up a lot of space. I think there is enough room to plant both the eggplants and peppers in this bed. We’ve grown both in there before, and they did surprisingly well, so that should work out.
We’re going into the city for our first stock up shopping trip tomorrow, though, so that won’t happen for a couple of days. The transplants are all looking really strong and healthy this year – even the ones that got dumped upside down when the wind knocked the greenhouse half over! If things work out, we should be able to get all the transplanting and direct sowing done over the next week or two. I’ll be quite happy when that is all finally done!
I have to keep telling myself. It’s still only May. With the weather we’ve been having, it feels like I’m behind on things, but I’m actually ahead!
It was way too hot for this kind of work today, but once I started, it had to be finished!
I had picked up some asparagus crowns and bare root strawberries at Canadian Tire, some time ago. According to Instagram, I posted this 5 weeks ago (as of this writing).
The Purple Passion is the same variety of asparagus we’ve got in the failed bed (though some new spears showed up recently, so they are still trying to survive!). The plan had been to add a new bed of green asparagus the next year but, for a variety of reasons, that just didn’t happen. Which is probably for the best, as it gave us more time to learn the different areas and decide where to plant. The current bed seemed like a great place for something that’s expected to produce for 20 years. We had no idea at the time, how much that location was affected by spring flooding! We should have been able to start harvesting from there two years ago, at least. Instead, I’m shocked if any spears show up at all.
For green asparagus, I chose Jersey Giant. With the strawberries, I wanted to try the White Carolina again. We tried growing those a few years back, but not a single one survived. The spot we’d tried growing them in was overrun by grass and weeds almost immediately. Now, it is the resting place for one of the yard cats that passed last year. For the red strawberries, I chose another everbearing variety, Ozark Beauty. With most strawberries, it’s recommended to prune any flowers in their first season. That isn’t necessary with everbearing varieties.
Here is a slideshow of the new bed. Instagram is letting me do slideshows of more then 10 images now. I don’t know why, but I appreciate it!
The first couple of photos shows the location I decided on. This area was a squash patch for a couple of years. We dug holes and amended the soil to create hills for individual transplants, since it was impractical to do the entire area. The rest of the space was mulched with carboard, straw and grass clippings. A section of it has been covered with the black … landscape fabric? I salvaged from around the old wood pile, for the past two years. It came in handy to spread out grass clippings to dry in the sun a bit, before using it as mulch, so that was an extra layer to ensure no sunlight got to the soil. With so much crab grass, dandelions and other weeds, it took a lot to kill that off! Even so, it’s amazing how much I still saw trying to grow under there!
The new bed was to be built along the northernmost edge. It will get the most sunlight, there. Unfortunately, it’s also closest to the row of maple and elm trees my mother allowed to grow. She used to have a row of raspberries there. After a few years, she transplanted them to a new location, and these trees were found growing in between them. My mother decided to leave them for “shelter from the wind”.
Which wasn’t needed there.
I once estimated and calculated how much of the original garden space here was lost because these trees were allowed to grow there. It came out to roughly 1200 sq ft. What I didn’t know at the time, however, is just how invasive the elm tree roots are, and it’s been a battle to reclaim garden space from them, ever since.
Before I started preparing the soil, though, I set the roots and crowns into buckets of water from the rain barrel to hydrate. I wanted them to have at least an hour to soak, but they couldn’t stay in there for too long, either. Once they were in the water, that was it. There was no option to stop part way through, and continue tomorrow or something.
The soil under the fabric was pretty compacted, of course, so the first thing to do was simply go over it with a garden fork to coarsely break it up, starting about four feet away from the garlic bed. That bed will eventually have log walls around it, and I took that into account while pacing off what will be a four foot wide walking path.
This was also the start of taking out rocks and roots, but mostly I just wanted to get things broken up, from end to end. Unfortunately, there was a fairly large ant hill in the very last squash hill. It had been completely under the fabric, so I had no idea it was there until I started on this today.
Once the first pass was done, it was time to get the soil fluffed up and cleared out. Which involved straddling the worked on area and twisting the garden fork into the soil until it was broken up enough to get into it by hand. In places, there were entire mats of small tree roots to pull out. Then there were the thicker roots that needed to be cut with the loppers. And, of course, there were the rocks.
So.
Many.
Rocks.
Not even particularly large rocks. Yet, every time I tried to push the garden fork into the soil, I was hitting rocks. If I was lucky, the tines would scrape and slide through them. If not, I’d get jammed into a dead stop. Which could get rather painful at times!
The roots got tossed into the grass towards the trees. The rocks got tossed onto the landscaping fabric. We might find a use for them. They did keep the wind from blowing the folded over section back over where I was working, at least.
I worked on that, section by section, little by little. After about an hour, I still hadn’t reached the half way point! I’d set up the rolling seat in the shade and brought water bottles, but ended up messaging a daughter to see if more could be brought out, because I went through those pretty fast! It wasn’t even the hottest part of the day, yet. My daughter was a sweetie and brought me four water bottles, just in case. 💖
The roots and rocks were the worst at the far end, where the ant hill was. I was very thankful for gloves and tall boots, at that point! The ants were very angry.
We’ll never get any garden bed completely clear of rocks and roots, but I could at least make it better. Once I had done as much as was reasonable, I used the landscape rake to pull the loosened soil to one side and create a trench for the asparagus. That, of course, exposed more roots and rocks to clear out.
Once the trench was dug, I emptied the remains of a bag of manure along the trench, then used the garden fork to work it into the soil at the bottom a bit. Then, I filled with it with water, using water pressure to level the soil on the bottom of the trench, more or less. After a thorough soaking, I raked back a hill to plant the crowns on, and gave that a watering, too.
Each bag had 5 crowns in it, so I paced out and marked where to plant them, about a foot apart (they should be more like 2 feet apart, but the bed wasn’t large enough for that), from the ends. That way, there was a slightly larger gap in the centre, between the two varieties.
The Jersey Giant crowns were huge compared to the Purple Passion ones. You can see the Jersey Giant in the image showing the entire bed. The photo with just the one asparagus crown in it is of one of the larger Purple Passion crowns. A couple of them were so small that, once they were pressed into the dark soil, they practically disappeared!
The crowns got another watering, and then the rest of the soil was pulled back to bury them, creating a hill where the trench was. I used the landscaping rake – that thing is so useful! – tamping the soil down and leveling the top. The bags the crowns were in had wood shavings with them, so I scattered that on top. It isn’t enough to be a mulch, but it will protect the soil at least a little bit. These will be mulched thoroughly, over the next while.
The asparagus planted and watered, I made another shallow trench in front of them, from end to end. The covered asparagus crowns got another watering, then I used the jet setting on the hose nozzle to drill into the mini-trench for the strawberries. I emptied a couple of buckets of rainwater that the roots had soaked in, into the trench as well.
The white strawberries were planted in the half closer to the garlic bed. The packages had 10 bare roots each, so I placed a marker at just each end of where the varieties were planted. The white strawberries actually had a bit of growth starting on them! As with the asparagus, I started at the ends and worked my way to the middle. The red strawberries turned out to have a couple of extra bare roots in them, so the spacing got adjusted a bit. Of course, once they were planted, they got watered again. The bags the strawberries were in had what looked like peat in them, and I dumped that into the buckets the strawberry roots were rehydrating in, to soak for a bit. After the strawberries were planted and watered, I carefully emptied the buckets with the hydrated peat over the rows, too.
I used the packaging to label both the strawberries and the asparagus at the centre of the bed.
Then everything got watered again.
Last of all was protective measures.
I had a log that was meant for the trellis beds that was too damaged by weather, so I set that along the far side of the asparagus. Then I grabbed the wonky log in the old kitchen garden that is going to be replaced with wattle weave, and used that for the rest of the bed. This log is a lot longer, so there’s excess, but that’s okay. We just have to watch not to trip on it.
Then there were the strawberries. I raided the old garden shed for some old dollar store wire border fencing that was here when we moved in. I set those out almost right on top of the strawberries. Hopefully, that will keep any cats from digging in the loose soil and using it as a litter box.
All of this took over 4 hours to do. Probably almost twice as long as it would have taken on a cooler day, where I wasn’t making sure to stop and hydrate so often!
Over the next while, mulch will be added on and around where the plants are. Especially the asparagus hill, as those were not buried as deep as they should have been. I couldn’t dig any deeper, with all the rocks I was hitting.
I’m going to have to replace the handle on my garden fork again.
The main things it, it’s finally done! Now, we wait and see what survives!
It’s not even 6pm as I write this, and I am ready to go to bed right now. Partly because I had a terrible night last night, starting with Butterscotch deciding to pee on my shoulder and my bed. ???!!!??? I had just changed my bedding, too.
Fenrir, I found, was loafed beside the one litter box Butterscotch will use. Fenrir chases Butterscotch away when she tries to use the litter. When Butterscotch peed on my shoulder, I chased off Fenrir and put Butterscotch directly into the litter box, and she immediately started to use it.
While three tabbies suddenly converged in stalking mode, with her as the target.
I chased them off, only for Fenrir to come back and make a bee-line for Butterscotch.
In the end, I had to sit there with a spray bottle, standing guard over Butterscotch, so she could use the litter.
Then I snagged a daughter to help me change my bedding again, after I cleaned myself up and changed.
I finally got back to bed and even fell asleep when a cat crashed onto my head.
My first thought was that my glasses were broken, until I woke up enough to remember I wasn’t wearing them. I thought it might have been Butterscotch, but she was loafed in the shelf above my pillow, so I don’t know which cat dive bombed my skull. This morning, I actually spotted a couple of wounds on my forehead from it, though!
Eventually, I was able to get back to bed and try to sleep when…
… the next thing I know, Butterscotch is peeing on my bed, right next to my head, again.
Thankfully, I caught her fast enough that no bedding change was needed again. I chased her off, but she panicked and disappeared. I had to chase all the other cats out of my room for the night. Butterscotch was alarmed by my reaction and hiding. My older daughter helped me out with giving the cats treats to try and give me some peace before they started clawing at my daughter.
At this point, it was late enough that she offered to take care of the morning routine, including feeding both the inside and outside cats, so I could sleep in. With the kittens getting lysine laced cat soup now, I spent some time letting her know what the routine currently includes. I made sure that the morning feeding for Butterscotch was done right away, so my daughters wouldn’t have to open my door to do it, in the morning.
After all those hours in the sun in the garden, they’ll be taking over the evening rounds today, too!
During the night, I kept getting awakened by the sound of litter use. With the other cats gone, it was as if Butterscotch was testing out all three litter boxes! From the crunching noises, she seemed to be trying out the other food bowls, too! I keep food and water bowls, just for her, on my craft table, and the other bowls to distract the cats from her, but they always converge on her bowls, as if they somehow taste better than the same food in other bowls! So she doesn’t get any peace from them there, either.
Then she came over for aggressive snuggles.
At one point, I woke up and she was lying on top of me, her face pushed under my hand. Even in the dark, I could see she was watching me with an almost loving gaze. Well. As loving as a gaze from Butterscotch can be. 😄 She was really appreciating not having other cats around!
I was, of course, awakened several times by cats scratching at my door.
*sigh*
This morning, I spent some time on Amazon, looking for cat calming things to try out. Hopefully, the postal strike won’t be a problem. They went on strike just before Christmas because, of course, and were ordered back to work by the government. The strike didn’t actually end, though, and now they’re talking about walking the picket lines again. They aren’t garnering much public sympathy at all, though. They already have high wages and massive perks that most people can only dream of. Demanding extras like free sex change surgery while 25% of the Canada’s population is needing to go to food banks right now is not helping their cause. The postal system needs to be revamped to match modern requirements, but as a crown corporation, that requires Parliament to act, and they’re just going into session for a few days before breaking for summer. Canada effectively has had no functioning government for the past 3 years, and Parliament has been out of session for months. We won’t be getting a budget this year, but the Governor General is still authorizing billions in spending that is supposed to be approved by Parliament. The GG doesn’t have that authority under these conditions, but our new dictatorship is just as bad as the old dictatorship, if not worse.
Needless to say, they don’t give a rip if Canadians stop getting their mail because Canada Post is throwing a tantrum to get their way.
Living where we do, it’s not like we have other options. So I could order something from Amazon on payday, but the chances of actually getting it aren’t very good.
Wow. What a ramble, brought on because we’ve got a super stressed out cat that needs help!
I, on the other hand, would just love to get a full night’s sleep, so I can get more work done!
I am very happy to have finally gotten those asparagus crowns and bare root strawberries in. I’ll take what progress I can get!
One of the things I was able to get done while it was still cooler this morning, as I was finishing up with watering the garden beds, we to finally mulch the potato bed.
This bed had the summer squash winter sown in it and I made a point of saving the leaf mulch along one side, to be added as the seedlings came up. Except they never came up. Now that the potatoes are planted here and have had a chance to, hopefully, start rooting themselves, and I think I even saw some potato leaves starting to poke through, I decided it was time to return the mulch. I will not be hilling the potatoes, just mulching them.
The bed got a deep watering, first. Then I lifted the netting along the one side and basically just tossed handfuls of leaves over the soil, trying not to include any dandelion flowers with it! Quite a lot of dandelions were growing right through the mulch on the one side, so I pulled a lot of that, too. Once the mulch was in place, it got another thorough watering.
The next thing I worked on was planting carrots on either side of the sugar snap peas.
That job required some damage repair, first. When I watered the bed this morning, I found something had been digging into the edge, all along one side, undermining things.
So the very first thing to do was put the soil back into the bed. I was going to just use a hoe, at first, but realized there was a lot of creeping Charlie trying to creep its way into the bed again, so after removing the protective boards, I went through it all by hand, removing as many of the roots as I could, before replacing the dug away soil.
There isn’t a lot of space between the peas and the edge of the bed, though. Just enough for one row of carrots. I created a slight trench to plant them in, as we are expecting drought conditions this year, and a trench will have any rainfall flow towards the carrots, rather than washing away down the sides of the bed. I used the jet setting on the hose to basically drill water into the trench. This both ensures the water gets quite deep, but the water helps level out the trench itself for planting.
This side got the Atomic Red carrots I got from MI Gardener this year as back up seeds. While we do have carrots coming up among the winter sown beds, there don’t seem to be a lot of them, and I do want to have quite a lot of carrots to store for the winter.
After the seeds were sown, I used the mister on the the spray nozzle to “bury” the seeds a little. Then I put boards back over the trench. Two of the boards that were there before were pretty broken up on the ends, so I traded them for more solid ones that were weighing down the plastic on the bed that’s still solarizing. Three boards wasn’t quite long enough, but I already had a short scrap piece for the last bit at the end.
The boards had been placed along the outside of the peas, and mulch down the middle of the bed, to keep the cats from using the bed as a litter box. They would still walk across the bed, though, and would end up moving the boards. Every now and then, I’d find a board rotates with one end over the peas and the other hanging off the edge of the beds. To prevent that, I got out some of the short bamboo plant stakes I picked up at the dollar store that came in packs of 25. I stuck a bunch of them into the soil along the boards, to prevent the boards from moving if a cat walked over it.
That still left the problem of whatever was digging all along the side of the bed. For that, I went into the stacks of short logs that had been used to frame these beds, before they were shifted over into their permanent positions. I dug out the straightest ones I could find and jammed them into the soil along the sides of the bed. Hopefully, they will be enough to deter the digging.
I repeated the process on the other side. On this side, I used our home made seed tape with Uzbek Golden Carrots. These are older seeds, though, so I doubled them up. Thankfully, the wet soil was enough to keep the wind from blowing them away! A final misting, and they got covered with boards, too. Only one of these had to be traded out. I found more short logs to set on that side of the bed, too.
Over the next while, we’ll keep checking under the boards to make sure things are damp, and to remove them as soon as we see seedlings starting to come up.
Eventually, more protection will be added to this bed, to make sure the deer don’t eat the peas. I still haven’t decided just how to do that, though.
One job down! How many more could I get done today?
The bigger kittens are really enjoying the cat house. They’ve pretty much taken it over, and the adult cats are letting them have it. Even the moms just go into nurse them!
The second photo shows all eight of the older kittens in the two cat beds. Just adorable!
It will be a few weeks before Poirot’s bitty babies are big enough to start moving around. I’m hoping that, at that point, Poirot will finally accept her babies being in the cat cage, rather than up on the shelf, or they’re going to end up falling to the floor!
In other things…
I checked the tracking on our plum and haskap this morning, after the post office was open for a while, and it said they were still in the city, and expected tomorrow. Dang. I was really hoping to get those in the ground today!
This morning, while checking on the garden beds, I took a change and removed the plastic cover on the high raised bed, just tucking it all on one side.
It also gave me a chance to very carefully weed anything I was absolutely sure was a weed, that could be removed without damaging any seedlings. In the first couple of photos above, you can see seedlings for beets, radishes and carrots. Possibly turnip? Plus some tiny onions. Others, I just can’t tell, yet.
The last photo was taken much, much later.
My goal for today was to finish with the weed trimming around the house. Before doing that, I grabbed the ice scraper to clear the overgrown areas between the sidewalk blocks and concrete in front of the sun room. It does a great job. Unfortunately, my body was making it very clear that, after yesterday, I was pushing my limits. So I shifted gears and got out my brother’s riding mower. I could at least work on the southeast and east lawns, where I’d weed trimmed yesterday. It still took quite a while to get done.
When I did as much as was ready for mowing, I decided to go around to the food forest area, where the plum and haskap will be planted. The plum has a space prepared already, but I’m still not 100% decided on the haskap. I could put them in line with the three current plantings, or use them to fill the space just to the north of them. The apple and plum tree would partially shade them there, but not enough to be a problem.
Hmmm… I think I’ll plant them in line with the others, and plant something that gets taller to the north of the plum and apple. As long as it’s far enough away from the buried telephone line, we can get away with planting taller trees there.
The taller grass had a lot of thatch in it, so I went over that a few times with the riding mower. The clippings, a mix of dry and green grass, will make excellent mulch.
By the time I was done all my outside stuff, including taking care of the evening yard cat feeding, it was past 5pm.
Which is unfortunate.
It turns out the plum and haskap did arrive at the local post office today. They closed at 5. I won’t be able to pick them up until tomorrow.
Ah, well.
In other things, I got a call while I was making a lunch before heading back outside. It was the insurance company about the online claim I made for the truck. When I mentioned that I’d called around and no one was quite sure if the insurance could pay for a truck box cover, she was all “oh, yes, of course it does…” 😄
So I now have an appointment for an inspection and estimate on Thursday (today is Tuesday) morning. I’ll be meeting up with the inspector in town (they come out one every two weeks for appointments like this) and they’ll make any final decisions. It’s still possible that, while the damage to the truck would be covered (the cracked tail light and the twisted metal of the box frame), the box cover might not be. If, for example, the inspector decides there was pre-existing damage or something that contributed to the cover being blown off. Once the inspector makes his determination, we’ll decide on next steps.
If the claim proceeds, we’ve got a $500 deductible that will be paid to the company we take the truck to for the work. I was also informed that they do not cover the cost of a replacement vehicle to use while the truck is in the shop. Hopefully, that will not be an issue. Ideally, the company would order everything they need and it’ll just be in the shop for a few hours. I can just hang out in town while it’s being worked on. If it takes longer, we might have to borrow a car from my brother again, and I really don’t want to do that to them again!
I do hope this can be done fairly quickly. We haven’t done a dump run since we lost the box cover. If we have to, we can use a tarp or something to secure the load. A lot of people don’t bother – I certainly see plenty of trucks at the dump, with no box covers and nothing to secure their loads.
I’ve also seen, and had to avoid, more than a few garbage bags on or beside the highway that clearly flew off of someone’s truck, and I don’t want to be “that guy”!
We’ll see how it works out. We’ll probably have to do at least one dump run before we have a cover for the box again.
Ideally, we’ll get it done before our next stock up shopping trip! There’s no way we’d be able to fit a typical Costco run in the cab. With how much I’ve found things moved around when we get home and start unloading, I’ve been very thankful for that box cover!
Anyhow.
Tomorrow, my priority is to pick up the plum and haskap at the post office, and get them in the ground as soon as possible.
Mmm…. the house is starting to smell wonderful. I picked some more rhubarb before coming in, and my daughter is making an upside down rhubarb cake. I’m quite looking forward to it!
It looks like we’ve got at least two blue eyes babies among the three mostly white kittens. I think we’ll call this one Zipper. In the next image, there’s a white and grey/black in a cuddle puddle inside the cat house. That one is Grommet, and I don’t think he’s got blue eyes. Eyelet is in the last image in the series, and he’s got blue eyes. It’s too early to tell with the grublings, of course. Their eyes are just starting to open, still.
After checking on the kittens, I did my evening rounds. The chitted potatoes in the portable greenhouse are clearly dead; if they weren’t already dead, the heat in there cooked them. So I brought out the new bags and laid them out in trays to get some light. Both bags of potatoes were growing, one quite a bit more than the other.
At first, I was just going to leave the trays of potatoes in the old kitchen, where they wouldn’t be affected so much by temperature extremes. It was such a lovely evening, though, I decided to prepare a bed for them.
I decided to use the bed that had been winter sown with summer squash seeds. There’s been no sign of any squash germinating. This bed already had protective netting over it, so I decided to just go for it.
The first thing to do was lift the netting off to one side and remove the support posts, for access. Then I went over it with a garden fork to loosen things before weeding it. Inside the bed was mostly crab grass and maple seedlings. Along the edges was dandelions and crab grass.
This bed has seen a few years of amending, even taking into account the whole thing got shifted over last year. Which means these potatoes are going into the softest, fluffiest soil since we’ve been gardening here. Which should also mean, bigger potatoes.
We shall see.
While weeding, I did find some squash seeds. Not a lot. There was no evidence of germination on any of them. Some felt “empty”. As if only the outer shell remained. It’s entirely possible that we’ll still have some summer squash show up later on, but I think it highly unlikely. If any do sprout, I’ll probably transplant them. Meanwhile, along with some flower seeds, I did pick up a packet of zucchini to go with my white patty pans as back up summer squash seeds.
Once the weeding was done, I used a thatching rake to create a wide, flat trench down the middle, so accommodate a double row of potatoes. I then emptied the rest of a bag of sheep manure into the trench and worked that in with a garden fork.
From there, my daughter helped me bring the trays of potatoes out. She gave the trench a thorough watering while I went through the potatoes and cut a few of the larger ones into two.
We then planted the potatoes in a double row, but found ourselves with 5 or 6 “extra” potatoes. Not enough to start another bed with. So we set them in the largest looking open spaces down the middle. Which makes things rather other crowded for potatoes but, to be honest, I don’t expect them all to make it.
Once the potatoes were set out in the trench, we mounded the soil over them and evened it out.
Then came the “fun” job of putting the supports and netting back. They’d been set pretty deep, as I was originally trying to put the mosquito netting over them, so there had been a lot of slack with the black netting I ended up using, instead. We put them back without pushing them so far down, which took up some of the slack in the netting. The twine ended up sagging more in some places and too tight in others, so it took a while to get it close to where it was supposed to be, before tacking down the edges of the netting.
That didn’t stop Magda from finding a way inside and then having trouble finding her way out again!!!
Once the netting was set and secured, the whole thing got another thorough watering.
We’re supposed to get about an hour of rain tonight. I won’t be holding my breath on that, since I kept getting notifications this morning about how long the thunderstorm was going to last, when we didn’t even have a drop of rain. It’s supposed to start raining again tomorrow evening, then keep raining all through Friday. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be a bit on the high side, though nothing like the past couple of days, then the temperatures as supposed to drop significantly on Friday. At least we’re not expected to get temperatures below freezing on Friday and Saturday nights, but it’s still supposed to get quite close to freezing.
For now, I want the potato bed to get as much rain as possible, but when the overnight temperatures are expected to drop closer to freezing, I have plastic that’s large enough to cover the netting on the entire bed, with enough excess to weigh it down along all sides. We should have only two nights where it’s supposed to be cold enough at night, that it might kill things off.
In the photos, you can see how well the garlic is doing. We are quite looking forward to having scapes to harvest!
So, there we are! One more thing planted in our garden.
We got a nice little down pour in the wee hours of the morning. Not enough to refill the rain barrel, but enough to water things nicely.
Knowing it was going to get hot today, I made a point of having breakfast before I did my morning rounds, as I planned to stay out longer to do some planting, before it got too hot.
While checking on the covered garden beds, I tried to open them up a bit so they wouldn’t get too hot inside during the heat wave (we haven’t reached the hottest part of the day yet, and we’re already at 31C/88F) today and tomorrow, while still giving them protection.
I was hearing thunder the whole time I was outside. As I was gathering my supplies together into the wheelbarrow, the rain started coming down again. It didn’t take long for me to get quite wet before I could dash inside! I ended up waiting until about 8:30 before heading out again, though I’d really hoped to have been done by then.
I went through the bag of walnut seeds and found three that were showing roots and needed to get into the ground right away. That worked out perfectly, as there were three spots marked out along the wet side of the lane I want to keep clear to the second gate. It the second picture of the slideshow above, you can just barely see a dot of orange in the distance, marking the northernmost spot.
The first thing to do was rake around the markers, clearing them of dead grass and debris – and any little poplars coming up that I’d missed, before!
Next, at each marker, I removed a circle of sod, which I quartered and set aside to put back, later. Once the sod was removed, I dug around a bit more to loosen the soil and remove any rocks I found in the process.
Once the holes were dug, I added some of the indoor-outdoor potting soil my brother gave me, mostly filling the holes. Then a plastic collar was set into the soil. The loose soil and and sod (placed upside down), along with any rocks I’d dug up, was set around the collar and the hole in such a way as to create a sort of moat, so wany water would drain towards the middle. Then, all of them got a thorough watering. I actually have a couple of photos reversed. The one with the arrow shows where a walnut seed is. Each got pushed into the moist soil, root side down, and the marker was inserted into the soil near it. Each collar got topped up with more of the bagged soil and pressed down gently, before getting a final, thorough watering.
Once the seeds were planted and watered, I raked up more dried grass to set around as mulch.
Here was have the three planted areas, with the grass mulch set around the collars for mulch. The very last photo shows the “combed” area I’d raked the dead grass out of. I just thought it looked rather funny. 😁
Three seeds planted; five more to go! All of those will be planted on the east side of the lane, and closer to the inner yard fence.
While it hadn’t gotten really hot yet, things were pretty muggy, so I was more than happy to get inside!
I had some plans to head into town today, which turned out to work out for everyone. Because of her work schedule, my older daughter basically didn’t see me on Mother’s day until some time past midnight. She wanted to treat me with a Mother’s day dinner today. After the four of us discussed options and ideas, my younger daughter and I left for town in the late morning.
My first stop was at the place our truck is insured at. I talked to someone about the wind damage to the truck, asking if it was something the insurance covered. She didn’t know for sure, but gave me the number I needed to call and find out. Since the cover isn’t actually part of the truck, she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be covered, but it’s worth asking.
The next stop was at our usual Chinese food place to place an order, only to discover they were closed. We keep forgetting. They are always closed on Mondays. After talking about it with my daughter, we decided to try the other Chinese restaurant. We keep forgetting about that one, but I’ve been there for sit down meals a few times while waiting for my truck to be worked on, since it’s in a hotel right next to our garage. This restaurant, it turned out, closes on Tuesdays, so we were good! 😄
After going over the menu and deciding on things for my husband and myself, I left my daughter to take care of the rest while I went to the pharmacy. My husband had ordered refills of his injections for delivery, but getting them faster was preferrable. While there, I also picked up some liquid, spray on bandage. The little calico kitten has a strange wound on her back leg, and lost some skin. We can’t bandage it and, while we’ve been applying antibiotic ointment, it really needs more protection.
That done, I got back to the restaurant early enough that my daughter and I popped across the street to the grocery store, where she picked up drinks to go with our Chinese food. We got back just in time for the food to be ready.
That was a very nice treat from my daughter – and no need to heat up the house more with cooking, today! The air conditioner in the living room has been turned on. We need to start bringing the fans up out of storage in the basement.
In the end, it has turned out to be a more productive day than I expected it to be, with this heat.
One more hot day, and then it’s going to get downright cold again! I’m certainly happy to have gotten those walnuts in!
I’m looking forward to taking some pain killers and going to bed early, though! 😄
But first, the cuteness! While feeding the cats this evening, I got to see the grublings while their mama was outside. They are getting way more active!
While getting the container out of the cat house for Caramel and her babies, I saw a surprise through the window.
Three kittens, snuggling together in the cat bed.
The sun room kitten has found her siblings!
She didn’t say, and was soon back in the sun room for feeding time, but I’m glad that she found and was immediately accepted by them.
Also, Kale and Sir Robin are 1) insanely fast and 2) determined to go into the old kitchen. As soon as the door is open, they come bounding for the doorway. It’s actually really quite dangerous for them, because they’re doing this while I’m carrying the kibble bowl with one arm, opening the outer old kitchen door (the one with the screen window, with no screen) with the other, and trying to get through fast enough to close the inner door (the solid one) and keep the cats out. They keep getting under my feet while I’m juggling all this. I’ve already accidentally closed a door on a tail because Sir Robin basically teleported from across the sun room.
Kale and Sir Robin want people, and they want inside!
So that’s what feeding time is like these days. 😁
One of the things I wanted to do today was get our push mower to the small engine shop in town. Last summer, it got harder and harder to start until finally, after stopping to refill the gas tank, I just couldn’t start it anymore. It’s possible this is related to the fact I was unable to change the air filter all summer, because there were none to be had. I finally found one this past winter and made sure to bring it with me. While I was at the counter, this was one of the things I mentioned. The woman filling out the paperwork was very glad that I brought the filter. It seems I was not the only one to have problems finding these, last year!
Along with basic servicing (oil change, blade sharpening, etc.) they will check the self propelling mechanism, which is broken, but not in any visible way, and look for anything that could be causing the starting problem. This time of year, she told me they probably won’t have a chance to look at it until next week, which is pretty much what I’m expecting. The nice surprise was when I gave my name and contact information, and she recognized me. We haven’t met in person until now, but “know” each other on local Facebook groups. When our truck suddenly lost oil pressure and started giving the “shut engine off now” warning, her husband was the person who stopped and helped us out. I made sure to tell her to thank him again for us, briefly mentioning some of the problems we found from this happening.
That done, it was a run to the grocery store to refill our 5 gallon water jugs and pick up a few things before heading home.
By the time I was able to head outside and work in the garden it was, unfortunately, reaching the hottest part of the day. Which, thankfully, was only 17C/63F. Still hot in the sun, though. Tomorrow is supposed to be 22C/72F with high winds again, then 27C/81F on Mother’s Day, then 32C/90F on Monday! Or 32C/90F on Sunday and 34C/93F on Monday, depending on which app I look at! So now was the time to get this done.
The first thing to do was finished getting all the weeds out of the second half of the bed. By now, the soil had baked hard and had to be broke up with a garden fork again, so I could get as much of the tap roots and rhizomes out as possible. I am so thankful for that rolling seat! It’s not comfortable to sit on while reaching down that far, but still much easier on the body than bending at the waste. My doctor may want me doing squats, but my knees are too unstable to bend that far for that long!
In the first photo of the slideshow above, the bed is cleared and leveled, and the centre marked out. I wanted to set trellis support posts down the middle, along the twine you can barely see in the image. The posts I used were old T posts we found while cleaning up around the property. They’re not in good shape and several of them are way too tall for this, but they’ll do. With the first one (set at the end at the bottom of the photo), I hit something in the soil below, and it just would not go any deeper. I tried using my chisel tip digging bar. That wasn’t getting very far, either, and I ended up having to use a spade to loosen whatever it was I was hitting, before I could set the post. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do with any of the others. You can see all 5 posts in the second image of the above slide show.
At that point, I had to stop, get out of the sun and take a break. Before heading back out, I prepared my seeds.
My original though had been to do a row of peas down the centre, then plant potatoes on either side. I changed my mind and decided to do two rows of snap peas; the Sugar snap peas and the Super Sugar snap peas. I prepped markers and set the seeds to soak while I continued.
I decided to use wire mesh for the trellis instead of the plastic trellis netting that I used last year. I found that too saggy. I went to the old squash tunnel that should have been taken down a couple of years ago, and grabbed the 1″ square wire mesh from one section of it. That leaves one more section of 1″ mesh, plus another with hex chicken wire. It’s turned out to be a rather handy way to store the wire on there. 😄
I wasn’t sure if it would be long enough, so I laid it out on the grass to check, and was very happy that it wasn’t too short! Then I realized I’d set all the “teeth” of the T posts facing the other way, and had to drag it around to the other side of the bed. 😄
In the old garden shed I had a bungle of garden twist ties and brought those out to fasten the wire to the posts. The next while was spent first getting it up, then adjusting one way or the other, to get the wire snug between the posts, without pulling them one way or the other. There was enough excess wire to actually wrap around the posts at each end, and fasten it to itself. The other posts got twist ties at the top and bottom to secure it in place.
One thing about using this wire for the trellis. When the wind blows through it, it can get pretty loud!
Hopefully, we won’t need to secure the posts with tie downs. It will depend on how much trouble the wind becomes, once there’s peas actually growing up the trellis and acting like a sail.
I took a picture of the trellis after the wire was up, but you can’t really see the wire at all!
That done, I used a garden stake to draw a trench for seeds on each side of the posts, then used the jet setting to deep water the trench only. This would also break up and clumps, plus the water would naturally level the soil a bit.
Then it was time to set out the pre-soaked seeds evenly down the trenches. There were more of the Super Sugar snap peas, but this bed is long enough that they got pretty normal spacing, while the other wise got more space between each seed. Hopefully, we’ll have a high germination rate, and there won’t be any gaps!
After pushing the seeds into the ground, the trenches got another watering, this time with a flat spray; gentler than the jet setting, but still enough pressure to settle the soil over the seeds.
While I was working on this, of course there were cats going across the freshly loosened soil – and trying to use it as a litter box! So after the seeds were planted, I took the boards that were used to weigh down the solarizing plastic and set them along the sides of the bed. Hopefully, that will be sufficient, and they won’t go under the wire in the middle and start digging there. Later, mulch will be added.
I will plant something under where the boards are, later. I haven’t decided what, yet. The potatoes I’d planned on will get their own bed, I think. If they get planted at all. I may have to buy new seed potatoes. When I prepped the potatoes for chitting, they seemed to be find, but have just… stopped. No sprouts, no leaf buds, no growth. Some of the potatoes have even started to shrivel up and dry out, instead. They were sprouting in their bag when I bought them, and then just… didn’t.
I suspect our basement set up has something to do with it. I hoped they would start growing once in the warmth of the portable greenhouse, but nope. No change at all. I could – and probably will – still plant them, but I think getting more potatoes is in order. It’s not like we can have too many potatoes! It’s just a matter of space.
For now, I’m thinking and early bed time and an early start tomorrow, before the heat hits, which is supposed to be in the early evening. I’d like to get some more walnut seeds in, but I also need to start digging a trench for the asparagus crowns and bare root strawberries I picked up awhile ago. Then there’s the trellis bed that needs to have the rest of its vertical supports attached, the log frame of another bed assembled, then the bed cleared of weeds… and then… and then… and then… Lots of work to do before we can do more direct sowing and transplanting!
For all the heat we’re supposed to get within the next few days, in the long range forecasts, the temperatures are supposed to drop quite a bit, again, with overnight temperatures barely above freezing.
What we really need is rain. It’s wildfire season, and there are quite a few going right now. The closest ones to the north of us are mostly now listed as under control, but the further north you go, the bigger they are, and they are all listed as out of control. Rain and no wind. That’s what we need!
From the 10 day forecasts, we might get some next week, but just for a couple of days.
We shall see.
For now, I’m happy to have gotten that bed done, and some direct sowing accomplished! Peas really could have gone into the ground quite a while ago, but this should be okay – as long as the heat doesn’t kill them! It sure feels good to be digging in the dirt again.
Even if my body is now saying very nasty things to me right now. 😄
The first image is under the cover of the low raised bed in the East yard. This one has a root vegetable mix of seeds, plus 1 type of lettuce and onion seeds. There are a lot of sprouts in there! I’m guessing mostly radish and beets. I’m not seeing signs of carrots or onions sprouting, but it’s really hard to tell at this point.
This bed was getting the most difficult to tend to with the high winds, so when I took the cover off to water it, I spent a lot of time securing the plastic after the cover was put back on. The plastic on all the beds is meant to be there only until the plants establish themselves and don’t need as much warmth or protection. It will likely be replaced with netting later in the season. So securing the plastic involves a lot of rolling and carefully tucking under the frame. With this one, that also meant completely redoing how it was weighted down on top. Hopefully, it will hold. We’re expecting high winds again, in a few days.
There wasn’t much to see in the high raised bed or the ground level bed with mixed flowers in it. There are sprouts, but not very many. The main thing is, they are no longer being dried out by the wind, nor dug into by the cats!
The next picture is of the old kitchen bed. There is quite a bit of spinach coming up in there, and I can even see tiny onion sprouts. The cluster of larger leaves visible came up very early and I thought it had to be a missed onion from last year, but now I can see that these are most definitely garlic. We had garlic planted in here, two years ago! I did try to pull things that were most obviously weeds – crab grass and dandelions – but only if I could do so without disturbing any seedlings, so there wasn’t a lot I could pull.
The other winter sown beds got watered as well. I think the summer squash bed, and the end of the garlic bed, are lost causes. The only things coming up in the summer squash bed is clearly not summer squash, and the few feet of the garlic bed shows nothing at all. I don’t think they made it!
There are more sprouts coming up in the mesh covered bed at the chain link fence, though still just the one pea shoot. This is the bed that has Dalvay shelling peas, a few King Tut purple, Royal Burgundy bush beans, Hopi Black Dye and Mongolian Giant sunflowers, a few black Montano Morado corn seeds, plus onion seeds. So there should be more pea seeds showing, as peas prefer to germinate in cooler soil. That suggests to me, most of the peas did not survive the winter. As for the sprouts I am seeing, about all I can say right now is that none of them are corn.
Unfortunately, while covering the bed with netting will protect it from the Chinese Elm seeds that are forming right now, the net only partially protects from the cats. There are a few smaller cats that are absolutely determined to get under the netting. Then, when I go to get them out, instead of leaving through the open space next to them that they got in on (the netting slides on the wire hoops), they run down the length of the bed, bashing themselves against the netting every now and then, in a panic. Or, like this morning, they simply climb on top of the netting and play on it! This set up wasn’t designed to actually hold that kind of weight, so quite a few of the wire hoops are now bent out of shape. It is really frustrating.
This bed is still made with temporary materials. Along the path side and ends is loose bricks. The chain link fence there are old boards to keep the soil from spilling through. When we finally have the materials to make it more permanent, we will need to keep protection in mind. It’s not enough to just cover it with netting to keep the elm seeds from smothering the bed, stop the cats from using it as a litter box, or keep the deer from eating whatever is grown there. We need the cover set up to be able to hold the weight of cats – we just can’t keep them from going right on top of any of the covers!
The cover that we have over the old kitchen garden bed is the one that was made using fence wire. When it was done, I swore I never wanted to work with that again! It’s so thick, I had to double up the frame on the sides to secure it in between, then double up the ends, just to keep it from falling apart. However, while it was on the high raised bed, I found it worked out really well, in that I could reach through the wire to tend to the bed, without having to remove it. The openings are not all the same size, though. It’s meant to be installed with the narrower openings at ground level to keep small critters out, while the larger openings at the top are all that’s needed to keep mid sized critters out. Which means there are spaces where I cannot fit my hands through, but I can still reach around from other openings.
The wire is also strong enough that no support hoops were needed. Not only can it hold itself up, but when the plastic was placed over it and the cats started jumping on it, it held their weight, too!
The cover that’s on the winter sown bed in the East yard is almost there. The hoops are strong enough to hold weight; especially now that I’ve secured them permanently, and they no longer slide through the pieces of metal strapping I used to hold them in place. I originally thought it would be useful to be able to remove the hoops at some point, but that potential convenience caused more problems than solved any. They do, however, still bend inwards, slightly. Particularly the ones at the ends.
The hoops are supporting a plastic mesh that is stiffer than netting, but more flexible and easier to work with than hardware cloth. As you can see in that first photo, it’s wide enough that it creates more shade, so this is a cover that would be idea to use for things like lettuces, which like more shade. The plastic mesh does sag when the cats jump on it. My plan is to add horizontal supports in between the hoops. These would keep the hoops at the ends from being pulled inwards, plus keep the plastic mesh from sagging downwards. I am hoping it will only need horizontal supports across the very top, but it might need more halfway up each side, too.
Once the plastic sheet is no longer needed, I will have to put something across the open ends, to keep the cats out. I have some black plastic mesh that should work out well, once I figure out how to secure it!
I don’t want to be spending too much time or effort on these covers, though. These were my first experimental raised bed covers. Now that I know how these have been working out, I plan to build new ones using better and stronger materials, taking into account what we have found works, or doesn’t work, with these ones. These ones still have a few years in them, though, and we will keep building more raised beds, so we will need more covers as time goes by.
Meanwhile, as I was watering the bed at the chain link fence, I took a good look at the haskap bushes.
*sigh*
I have one “Mr. Haskap” and two “Mrs. Haskap” bushes – cross pollinating varieties. With haskap, you need two varieties for cross pollination. The “Mrs. Haskap” is the Borealis variety. I can’t remember what the “Mr. Haskap” is, but that one still has its label, so I can check later.
The first image is the “male” haskap. It’s leafing out beautifully and, in the second picture, you can see it even has flower buds forming!
The next two photos are the “female” haskaps.
The larger one was bought at the same time as the Mr. Haskap and, at one point, I was sure that one had died. It has barely any leaves opening on it. The smaller one is still really small, even though it’s only one year behind the other two. At least it has more leaves, but still, they are way behind their pollinator variety! This is why, after all these years, we’ve never had more than a small handful of berries. They simply aren’t blooming at the same time long enough for proper pollination.
The varieties I have coming later in the month are Aurora (the pollinator) and Boreal Blizzard. These will be planted out in the food forest area, near where the apple and gooseberry just got planted. The Opal plum should be shipped at the same time as the haskap, and it will be planted in that area, too.
Hopefully, this will work out better than what we’ve got now, and we’ll finally have berries to eat! Two bushes should be enough to meet our needs; they are supposed to be quite productive. We’ve got three, and have barely had enough to taste.
At least we know we like them!
So that is how things were in the garden this morning. With today being a calm day, I hope to get back out there soon, and get some work done!
The Re-Farmer 