Today, we were expected to reach a high of 28C/82F, so I wanted to make sure to give the garden a deep watering early in the morning, before things got hot. I’m glad we did, because we seem to have reached 30C/86F, with the humidex closer to 35C/95F!
I’m so glad I remembered to grab ice packs before I headed out today.
Anyhow…
After the garden was watered, I did some harvesting, and this is what I gathered.
There was a single patty pan ready to harvest. I mightily resisted picking the one Magda squash we have right now, but I decided to let it get bigger. There’s one zucchini that looks like it’s going to reach a harvestable size soon, too.
There was a nice handful of the Royal Burgundy bush beans (bottom right corner in the bin, as well as the longer Carminat pole beans. There was a single San Marzano tomato to pick, plus a whole two Chocolate Cherry tomatoes – the first of the season! I went ahead and harvested a few more Uzbek golden carrots as well. I think the next harvest will be the last of them, except for the ones gone to seed.
I always second guess myself when it comes to harvesting corn. I’ve heard it said, you can tell they’re ready when the silks are dried up, but I’ve harvested them at that stage and found immature cobs. It’s also suggested to tear through the husks to actually see the kernels, but if the cob isn’t ready, that leaves it with an opening where moisture and insects can get in.
This morning, I found one corn stalk broken at the cob, as if something tried to pull it down. Raccoons are notorious for cleaning out an entire corn patch at peak ripeness, but I don’t think a raccoon did this. I would expect more damage from a raccoon. Still, since the cob was above the broken stem, I shucked it and it was perfectly ripe.
Yes, I ate it raw, and it was deliscious.
So I went ahead and picked more that I thought might also be ripe. Happily, when I shucked them at the compost pile, I found they were all ripe. I ended up putting them in the oven to roast along with something else, and they were absolutely fantastic!
Yukon Chief is definitely a variety worth growing again!
I have a different short season variety to try next year, so we’ll be able to compare, but with how super short the Yukon Chief’s growing season is, it already has an extra point going for it. Once we decide on a variety we like that grows well here, we will start saving seeds. By then, we should have more space to dedicate to growing corn, too.
It’s nice to finally be having some decent sized harvests this year! I honestly did not thing we would be getting any bush beans at all, so to have both bush and pole beans to harvest is just icing on the cake!
There were some pretty decent sized bulbs in there!
They got trimmed and strung up and are how hanging in the garage with the garlic harvested from the bed with the Forme de Coeur tomatoes.
Speaking of which, I spotted a couple of those, starting to turn red, too! Finally!
Still nothing on the black cherry tomatoes, though.
While doing my evening rounds, I spotted a few things I could probably have harvested, but I decided to leave them for tomorrow morning.
While I didn’t have to water the garden this morning, I definitely will have to do it tomorrow morning. Today, we reached our high of 27C/81F, but the humidex definitely put us above 30C/86F. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to hit 28C/84F, with not even a hint of rain in the forecast – and it’s supposed to continue like that for the next week to ten days.
What I found interesting when I did my evening rounds in the garden was that so many things were noticeably bigger – particularly the squash plants, both summer and winter – just from this morning! The Crespo and G Star squash are getting huge!
Now, if we can just keep this up through at least half of September, that would be good… 😁
Ha! I just checked the long range forecast. For a while there, around September 10 – our average first frost date – it was looking like we’d be getting pretty chilly, with lows of only 4C/39F on that day. Now it’s saying that we should be hitting 30C/86F on the 10th, with a low of 15C/59F! As it stands now, we might not get first frost until October.
Of course, I expect that forecast to change a few times over the next while, but still, there’s hope for the garden!
We’re expecting heat but no rain for the next while, so it looks like I’m going to be back at watering the garden every morning again. I worked on that while the girls took care of eyes baby, cleaning and treating her eyes, then feeding her cat soup with the modified kitten baby bottle. That made a mess, of course, so she was looking really bedrabbled when I finally saw her outside!
While I was watering, I saw a little green friend on the grape leaves.
While watering the G Star pattypan squash, I found a squash I’d somehow managed to miss seeing before. It’s a bit bigger than I would normally let it get, but it’s still in the tender stage. I got a pretty good handful of Carminat beans and a few Dalvay shelling peas.
There was one Yukon Chief corn stalk that didn’t survive being broken by the wind, and it had a tiny little cob on it. I went ahead and shucked it and, small as it was, it was ripe. I ate it raw, and it was quite tasty. So I took a chance and harvested the ripest looking cobs I could find. Only one probably could have used a few more days on the stalk. I decided to harvest some of the Uzbek Golden carrots, and even found a few Seychelles beans in the bed with the Crespo squash. I’m happy with the carrots I picked this morning. There isn’t much left in the bed, including the two that have gone to seed. I really hope we’ll have the space to plant more carrots next year.
I was happy to see that we FINALLY have ripening chocolate cherry tomato. Just two, really, and one looked almost ready to pick, but I left it for now.
With having such small harvests for the past while, most have not had enough to make it worth including in a meal, so we’ve been setting some things aside. We had enough that, with this morning’s harvest, I decided to use it all up. I was inspired by A Jeanne in the Kitchen’s Low Country Boil. We had no seafood, and I just used what we had. Except the peppers, since I can’t eat those without gagging for some reason, but we did have a couple of little San Marzano peppers I could use. I can’t eat fresh tomatoes, either, but I can eat them when they are cooked or processed.
I ended up using half a package of bacon, half a package of fresh sausages, frozen onions from our garden last year, carrots, beans, shelled and sugar snap peas, the patty pan squash, the corn chopped into chunks (not a way I would normally cook corn on the cob), some Russet potatoes we bought that need to be used up, and several cloves of fresh garlic that couldn’t be hung for curing with the others. I think that’s everything. Some of this was browned before adding water.
For seasoning, I used some of the truffle salt we still have left, freshly ground pepper, ground thyme, dried parsley, a couple of vegetable bouillon cubes and a touch of turmeric. I was digging through the fridge and spotted some jars of seafood sauce and oyster sauce, so I went ahead and added some of that to the liquid, too.
I’m quite happy with out it turned out, and it made an excellent brunch.
It will now make an excellent… supper, I guess. I got busy working in the garage and am now realizing I haven’t eaten in way too long.
I’ll post about the progress on the isolation shelter next, but first, I need to eat!
Well, the predicted rain did start last night, and it’s still raining now.
Sort of.
It’s a very light, barely there sort of rain. I’m just hoping it keeps up long enough to actually water the garden. It’s actually pretty much stopped right now, but it’s supposed to start up again this afternoon – quite different from the prediction of rain all morning that I was looking at last night.
This time, I actually picked sugar snap peas. The plants are well past their prime, and usually I just find a few to snack on in the morning, but today there was enough to actually bring some in – after I’d already eaten a few. 😉 There was a single green Seychelle bean ready to pick, plus a few Carminat, and one Purple Beauty pepper was ripe.
I was also happy to see the first blooming Magda squash blossom, though at this stage, it’s just male flowers. The Black Cherry tomatoes are starting to get too tall for the lilac they’ve grown into to hold them, so I’m going to have to find a way to support the vines while still keeping them in reach for harvesting. Not a problem I ever expected to have! We’ve never had tomatoes that grew this tall before!
I get the Farmer’s Almanac daily newsletter and caught a bit of their long term forecast for the fall and winter. They’re predicting a warmer than usual fall for some areas – a range that includes where we are. I hope they’re right. Even now, as I look at the local long range forecast into September, the predictions for the overnight lows has changed towards warmer temperatures. We shall see. With how far behind so many things are – and certainly not just for us! – I’ll take very frost free night we can get!
It’s sort of pins and needles time for gardeners – and a lot of farmers, too – at this time of year.
The Re-Farmer
(addendum: I’ve been using WP AI assistant to “generate feedback” pretty regularly, just for a lark. It tends to make the same suggestions, over and over. Clearly, it can’t tell that I’ve got Instagram images embedded in my posts, because it’s constantly recommending I use images or video. 😄😄)
After I did as much as I could on the cat isolation shelter build, I finally got around to harvesting some of our garlic. In particular, I wanted to get the garlic that was sharing a bed with tomatoes. The tomatoes are getting so huge and bushy, the garlic was barely visible!
The challenge was to find them and dig them out without breaking any tomato plants!
Not all of the garlic planted there in the fall emerged, but I think I found all the ones that did. The soil was surprisingly compacted, and the head buried much deeper than I expected. I could actually hear the wood on the handle of my digging tool making cracking noises if I went to deep, trying to loosen the soil.
Unfortunately, when I got them all out, I discovered they were just crawling with black ants!
After trimming the stems, most of them got strung up and are now hanging in the garage. Normally, I would have hung them under the market tent, but that broke over the winter. Right now, the garage is the only place that’s out of the elements, but still has air circulation. Since I’m using it as a workshop right now, I can at least be sure they won’t be forgotten about!
Before I headed in for the evening, I finally went out and took progress photos of the winter squash, melons, pumpkins and gourds. It’s been quite a while. The last time I normally would have done it, I did our garden tour video, instead.
If you want to see how they looked earlier, you can visit these links.
It’s now the 14th, so there is quite a lot of difference since I last posted photos. We lost a few things, and some look like they will also be losses, but I also found more melons, including a couple I found just this evening, while taking the photos!
With that in mind, I will start with the melon beds. First, the east bed. There were so many, I had to divide the photos between two Instagram slideshows.
This Summer of Melons mix is really prolific – though with where we are in the growing season, it’s likely we’ll only be able to harvest the earliest varieties, whatever they are. The mid and late varieties are unlikely to have enough time left to fully mature.
Then there is the west bed of melons, which also had to be split up between two slideshows.
In the above slideshow, you can see the only two Cream of Saskatchewan watermelons we’ve got right now, and the older one is dying off. The plant has more female flower buds and is blooming like crazy, but it’s probably way too late. While I was giving my sister a tour of the garden, she was telling me things are late in her garden, too. She’s not growing melons or squash this year, but she says her tomatoes are way behind. She barely even has tomatoes forming right now! That wet, wet spring we had has really affected so many people’s gardens, all over the province.
There are other drum gourds on the vines, but it’s still too early to tell if they were well pollinated. There are lots of male flowers, but I haven’t been seeing the female flowers when they first bloom, so I haven’t been able to do any hand pollinating.
Next is the east winter squash bed. This one has the most squash developing on it.
It looks like we’ve got two surviving squash developing. I’m seeing at least one more female flower bud, but it’s too early to know if it’ll be a survivor. Again, we’ll see if they have enough growing season left. These are supposed to get very large.
I’m kinda regretting not watering this morning, even though the forecast is now more sure about us getting rain overnight. Looking at the weather radar, the trajectory of the weather system has changed, so it no longer looks like it’s going to go right past us. Instead, it’s heading towards us – and looks like it’s going to split in half and maybe miss us on two sides, instead of one! Still, we’re supposed to be getting right starting tonight, and continuing through to mid afternoon tomorrow. We shall see what actually happens!
Anyhow… that’s the status of things right now. I’m quite happy with things so far. In all honestly, considering how many winter squash we planted, I would have expected more – I don’t think there are any hiding under the leaves anywhere that I haven’t spotted. It does seem like some plants have more than one squash developing, while others have none at all. In the future, when we have our permanent trellises built – trellises strong enough to hold winter squash like these! – it’ll be easier to see, one way or the other. The squash in this Wild Bunch Mix really want to climb, too!
I’m quite impressed by how many melons we’ve got developing! They have a trellis to climb in one bed, but seem to prefer to sprawl on the ground, instead.
As late as things are, I’m happy with the Crespo squash, too. Last year, we had four struggling plants that ended up being baked in the sun in there location, and only one small, immature squash to harvest. It still made good pie!
They are definitely doing better in the new bed I made for them this year.
Lots to keep in mind for when we plant any of these again, in the future! Every year is a learning experience, and I don’t expect that to ever stop. That’s part of what makes gardening so fun!
This morning didn’t need as much time out in the garden. I didn’t do any watering, as the forecast was for rain, possible thunderstorms, this afternoon, with rain continuing through to tomorrow.
I should have checked again before I headed out, though. Now we have an only 30% chance of rain in the late afternoon. We might still get rain overnight. Ah, well. The high for today is expected to be 25C/77C. I think things should be okay. Right now, we’re already at 24C/75F, while humidex makes it feel like 28C/82F, and it’s not even noon yet, as I write this.
There was one G Star patty pan squash that was getting quite large – but the other one that I hoped was well pollinated hasn’t been growing any bigger at all, so I left it. It’s not turning yellow or looking like it’s going to drop off, so we’ll see. Meanwhile, there are more female flowers that should be opening soon, so we should have more patty pans to harvest soon.
I also spotted an open female winter squash blossom, while harvesting the peas and beans, that was on a vine that, as far as I can tell, has not had any female flowers yet. This vine is at one end of a bed, so it’s easier to tell it from other vines.
I made sure to hand pollinate it!
I’m spotting female flower buds on other vines, too, including the Crespo squash. Given that it’s August 14, and our first average frost date is Sept. 10, it’s unlikely they’ll have time to mature, but… you never know!
So here was have another little harvest for the day. Nothing compared to past years, but then, we have a very different garden this year!
In other things…
Last night, my older daughter went into the sunroom to check on a commotion, and the kitten with the messed up eyes came over and started squeaking at her. The poor thing’s eyelids were so swollen, it’s basically blind. We gave its eyes a wash, and ended up putting it in a carrier with some food and water for the night.
This would be a good time to have the isolation cage we’re working on right now!
It wasn’t happy being in the carrier, but eventually settled down. I get the impression it can still see something, but not much. I’m hoping to connect with the Cat Lady soon, as she said she had something she could give me to treat the eyes, when she picks up Button.
With the kitten in the carrier in my bedroom, I ended up leaving my computer on all night – I found a black screen video on YouTube with the sound of a cat purring for 10 hours, and I had that playing. It seemed to help. Not just for the kitten, who slept solidly all night, but the other cats in the room, too! While the baby was squeaking (it has the strangest meow!), they were very curious about it, that’s for sure! We also gave it some wet cat food with lysine mixed in, but I don’t think it ate any.
This morning, we have it’s eyes another wash – my daughter thinks they are getting better – and then I took it with me when I fed the outside cats. I think I saw it starting to eat and drink in the sun room. By the time I came back with my little harvest, I found it curled up in one of the cat beds, sleeping soundly.
We’ll see how it does and, if it seems warranted, we’ll keep it in the carrier for the night again.
I also had a less than pleasant surprise when I left the sun room to feed the outside cats. I found another stillbirth. More like a miscarriage, I’d say. The kitten was recognizable as a kitten, but the placenta was at least twice the size of it! I made sure to look, and there was only the one. I can’t even begin to guess with cat was the mama.
I have no doubt this sort of thing has been happening with the yard cats in the past, but this is the first year it’s been happening right next to the house, for us to find. I wonder what has changed. It’s not like the females are any less feral this year.
Ah, well.
Meanwhile, I need to get back to work on the isolation shelter. I’m going to have to nap first, though. I got to thinking about the design and decided to make some changes. I ended up spending time flipping the design around in my head, working out the best ways to assemble things with the materials I have, and what pieces I’ll be needing to cut and paint, and before I knew it, it was past 5am, and I hadn’t slept a wink! The last thing I need is to be using power tools while half asleep.
We’ve got ourselves another hot day today. Our high was supposed to be 26C/79F today, but I’m pretty sure we passed that. I can’t say for sure, since I was mowing the lawn at the time.
I’m so thankful that my brother loaned us his smaller riding mower!! I actually got the driveway done!
Well… the edges of it, anyhow. We’ll need his tractor and mower attachment to get the rest.
Whatever the temperature actually turned out to be, the thermometer in the sun room was reading 32C/90F when I was done, which would have been after things started to cool down!
With the heat coming back for the next while, I made sure to give the garden a good watering this morning, then went over it to gather a bit of a harvest.
I wasn’t sure about the corn, so I harvested the ones that looked like they might be ripe – a whole three of them. 😄 After shucking them, I found two of them were still immature. Ah, well.
There were a few more Carminat beans and Dalvay peas ready to pick, and then I decided to see how the Uzbek Golden Carrots were doing. I ended up harvesting the rest of the row I’d started on earlier, except for a couple that looked really small. The other row has the carrots going to seed in it, and I’m going to let them. Carrot seeds don’t last very long, so fresh seed would be good, even though I still have lots. I ended up using some of the peas, beans and carrots in my breakfast, along with one of the cobs of corn I cooked separately and left for other family members to try. My younger daughter doesn’t like to eat corn on the cob because it gets in her teeth, so having just two left works out.
The G Star pattypan squash has squash large enough to harvest – just a couple – but I’m leaving them to get bigger. Another of the 4 plants was blooming this morning, with both male and female flowers, so I made sure to hand pollinate. I also found a new female flower on the Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon to hand pollinate. As for the winter squash, I went through them and took out the squash that were clearly starting to shrivel up. There do seem to be some new Turks Turban squash forming, though, which is neat. We seem to be getting the most of those ones – potentially. It all depends on if the weather holds, and we’re already reaching the middle of August! There’s basically just 3 weeks or so left in our growing season, based on our average last frost date. Not a lot of time for winter squash to grow!
Ah, well. We do what we can, right?
For now, I’m just happy with the little harvests we are managing to get this year.
We have our first beans of the year! The purple Carminat and the green Seychelle pole beans. The one San Marzano tomato I’ve been keeping an eye on was looking ripe, and when I touched it, it fell off the vine on its own. I was even able to grab a small handful of Dalvay shelling peas.
I honestly didn’t think we’d get beans this year, with how much they’ve struggled.
The Re-Farmer 