In the first image above, you can see the potatoes in the background. They are yellowing and dying back, even though they’ve never flowers, and there are no signs that they ever will. I’ve looked around and have been able to rule out insects or fungal disease, which pretty much leaves heat and lack of water. I’ve been trying to keep up with the watering, but it’s very possible I wasn’t able to keep up, with the heat that we’ve been having. Mind you, the wildfire smoke probably hasn’t helped anything, either.
I’ve avoided watering the garlic bed for a while, so it could dry out before harvesting. A quick loosening of the soil with a garden fork, along both sides, and they all came out quite easily.
We got some of the biggest garlic heads we’ve ever grown in there!
In preparing this bed before planting the garlic, I did trench composting with whatever organic matter was handy. Including kitchen compost and grass clippings. These garlic have the biggest, strongest roots we’ve ever had, and a few of them pulled up partially broken down grass clippings, and even some egg shells, with them. The roots seemed very happy with the trench compost!
Once picked, I brought them over to the canopy tent I’d set up for them, and sorted them on the bench. Some of the garlic was picked too late, and were starting to split. There was one garlic where the scape never made it out, and instead got stuck in the stem. The bulbils formed in there and broke through the stem. We could keep those and plant them, if we wanted.
Or eat them.
The remaining garlic was strung up on two lengths of twine and hung across the canopy tent to cure.
The garlic that got too big and starting to split was cleaned up and trimmed, and are now in the kitchen for immediate use.
That done, I was finally able to give the garden a solid watering. I even had a full rain barrel to use on the old kitchen garden. I didn’t do the new food forest trees, though. I wasn’t feeling that good, yet!
Tomorrow, the dump is open and, now that we have the truck back, we’ll be able to do a dump run. I’m also going to have to do a shopping trip large enough to make it worth driving to Walmart. I’m hoping to get that done early enough in the day that I can continue working on the new wattle weave bed later on. Since I have an abundance of willow switches in particular that are too short for the distance the verticals are set at now, I’m going to take advantage of those chimney blocks and go the completely the opposite direction. Each of the concrete blocks has a series of openings around the sides. The posts are inserted in those openings along one side, with four empty ones in between each post. It was an easy way to evenly space the verticals.
I’m going to try adding verticals, using thinner posts, in each of the openings between the posts that are already there. I’ve got six posts now, which means there are five sections where I can add four more verticals. Since these will be sitting on top of the retaining wall, there will be no need to debark them, which will certainly save time, and be easier on my hands!
What this should do is allow me to use the shorter, thinner and more flexible willow switches we have so much of, adding new lengths along the way, held in place more securely. Right now, with what I’ve got so far, the overlapping ends just sort of sit there, loosely. I could probably tie the overlaps together, but that rather defeats the purpose of weaving them in the first place!
One of the things I am planning to get, to plant in the outer yard, is basket willow. Properly coppiced, these can produce an abundance of really long, flexible willow. It seems weird to buy more willow, since we have so much of it around, but they are a different variety, and surprisingly not-straight, unless they’re really, really young. I was originally thinking to get basket willow so that we could… you know… make baskets. However, if the coppiced willow is allowed to grow long enough before harvesting, they would be ideal for wattle weaving, too.
That’s at least a couple of years in the future, though. For now, we make do with what we have!
My younger daughter and I were able to get so much done today, all before our expected first frost.
Depending on which weather app I look at, we’re supposed to drop to either -2C/28F, or 1C/34F tonight.
Either way, we’re looking at frost tonight.
Strangely, there are absolutely no frost warnings. Perhaps the humidity is too low. The temperature alone is enough to cause damage, though.
Last night, my older daughter helped me cover the two beds that actually can be covered, and I’m glad we did. We dropped to 3C/37F last night, and that was enough to kill off the last of the squash and melon leaves. Even the Crespo squash was droopy, and they were the only ones that were still lush, green and growing.
My daughter started off by checking on the biggest Crespo squash. As she rolled it aside, the stem broke right off its vine.
The two that were growing in the bean trellis didn’t get to full maturity, so they’ll need to be eaten sooner, too. Or we could cut make a puree to freeze or something like that.
My daughter started off harvesting the tomatoes in the old kitchen garden ahead of me. She’d collected all the Forme de Couer and had moved on to the Black Cherry tomatoes by the time I was able to start helping her. The Black Cherries were so tangled up in the lilac branches, we had to cut our way through to be able see, never mind reach, the tomatoes. After a while, I grabbed a pile of cut up tomato plants to take it to the compost pile when I realized, there were plenty of tomatoes in the compost pile to gather.
So I grabbed another bin and worked on those.
I found a surprise!
I knew there were two types of volunteer tomatoes in there. A few Indigo Blues, and a whole lot of Roma VF from last year’s harvests.
I found a third type, completely buried by the others!
They look like a slicing tomato of some kind, but I don’t remember growing a red variety of slicing tomato last year. It was also the only one that had an almost ripe tomato.
You’ll notice a lot of the Romas are very pale – almost white – in colour. These were essentially blanched from being under so many stems and leaves. I’m really surprised by how many we got in there!
It’s a shame they never got to ripen. A few of the Romas had started to show a blush. Who knows how many of these will actually ripen once indoors.
By the time I got the compost tomatoes done, my daughter was almost finished the old kitchen garden, so I moved on to the main garden area, bringing the wagon with the Crespo squash, to start harvesting the squash and melons. Then my daughter joined me and started harvesting the rest of the San Marzano tomatoes.
I found several melons were already “harvested”! One had a hole in it and was essentially hollowed out, so I’m guessing a mouse got that one. The others looked more like racoon damage.
Once the squash and melons were picked, plus a few patty pan squash, I cut down and went through all the corn stalks to find the cobs I’d left to go to seed.
This was all the racoons left me, and it’s not even dried out enough to have viable seeds.
Ah, well. Live and learn!
That done, I got another bin and helped my daughter with the last of the tomatoes. There were so many San Marzanos in the main garden area! Then we did the tomatoes that were at the chain link fence.
The bin with the cat next to it has the Chocolate Cherry tomatoes from the chain link fence in it, plus the tiny tomatoes from the volunteer tomato plant that I found among the potatoes. There were so many perfect little tomatoes! Not a single one had a chance to ripen. We have no idea what kind of tomatoes they were, either.
My daughter had already moved the previously harvested winter squash from the garage to the house, so now these squash are set up in the garage. It looks like some of the blue squash did get to fully mature, but most of them seem shy of full maturity, so they won’t be able to properly cure. They are still quite edible, though. They just won’t last as long in the root cellar than if they had fully matured and cured. Still, some time set up like this in the garage will help them last a bit longer.
Once we were done with the harvesting, my daughter uncovered the box of the truck, and we loaded up with as many bags of cans as we felt we could properly secure.
Which turned out to be maybe a third of the pile!
The whole thing got covered with a tarp and strapped down with ratchet straps. We set two up in an X across the pile, plus two more across the front and back. It was pretty windy, though, and once we got to highway speeds, the tarp was billowing under the straps more than I liked.
We stopped at a gas station to tuck the tarp back in place, then secured it more using Bungee cords. It still billowed, but nothing that was a potential problem.
This is the first time we’ve gone to this salvage place, but they were easy to find. I’d called for instructions yesterday, so we knew where to go to start. After talking to someone in the office, she directed me to where we should pull up, and staff could unload the truck.
My daughter and I started taking the straps and tarp off while they brought over a couple of bins with a forklift to bring them to the scale. All the cans are in transparent bags, so they could see that there were some tin cans in there, too.
That was okay for them, but good for us.
The tin cans go for 10 cents per weight.
The aluminum goes for 50 cents.
When they’re mixed up like this, they basically figure out something in between.
After everything was unloaded, we moved the truck again, and I went back to the office to wait. I had thought I stopped out of the way, but I turned out to be wrong, when a very large truck pulling a very long trailer came in! One of the office staff asked if we could park on the street. When I moved the truck, though, there wasn’t enough room to get by the trailer. I went back inside while my daughter waited until the truck could pull ahead, then she found a place to park.
As I was waiting in the office, I heard some staff going back and forth and saying something about “getting her a magnet”.
Then a guy came up to me and handed me a red keychain with their company name and number on it. It turns out, I was the “her”, and the keychain has a strong magnet on its end. This is for the next time we bring in a load; when we back stuff up, we can use the magnet to make sure there’s no cans with steel in them mixed in.
It means we’ll have to re-bag all the cans again, but the difference in price makes it worth is. With sooooo many cat food cans, plus the pop and energy drink cans, it is quite a loss to not get full price on the aluminum because there’s half a dozen tin cans scattered among them.
In the end, we brought 208 pounds, which got us just over $17. While they did give us an in between price, we still could have gotten quite a bit more, if we didn’t have those tin cans in there.
Live and learn!
It was very nice of them to give us the magnet, too. We have magnets, of course, but this one will be much more convenient!
That done, my daughter and I made a quick stop at a gas station, then headed home. We made a point of not covering the box again so that, once at home, we could give it a cleaning. The truck has screw holes in the bed from when it was a commercial vehicle hauling trailers. A remarkable amount of dust from the gravel roads gets in there!
I know it’s just going to get full of dust again, but it sure did feel better to finally wash that out with the hose!
Then we filled the truck again, this time with our garbage. We were overdue for a trip to the dump!
I had planned to go to a different landfill in our municipality, but I don’t know the area it’s in, so we went to our usual one.
I was really glad to have my daughter with me! The pit area is a real disaster. My daughter got out before we went into the pit area to make sure there wasn’t anything that might puncture a tire. While she kicked things out of the way, I slowly crawled along behind her with the truck until she could guide me in backing up to the pit. Not as close as we normally would have gone; too much broken glass!
And nails.
She was finding and kicking away nails, the whole distance!
This place has really gone downhill. The previous municipal council had fired the guy that used to take care of the landfill. I don’t know what the new council is doing, but the attendant that’s here now is not someone physically able to maintain the pit. Which is fine, if being an attendant is the only part of her job description, but whoever it is that’s been hired to use the heavy equipment to clean where we’re supposed to drive up to the pit is not doing a good job at all. Even the equipment being used is different, and the tracks on that front end loader is just destroying the gravel driveways.
But, we got the job done, and so far, it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any flat tires, thanks to my daughter!
As we were leaving, my daughter wondered about being able to go to town and pick up something. It had been a long time since either of us had eaten, and she was thinking of perhaps treating us.
After talking about it, we decided that, between the two of us, we could pick up some fish and chips for all of us for supper.
Which was about when we got a message from my husband. The pharmacy called. When he had his prescription refills delivered, they didn’t have enough to fill one completely. They now had the amount they owed him.
Well, that was handy! We would have time to do that, before the pharmacy closed at 6pm.
A trip to town, it was!
As we were going along, we ended up stuck behind some slower moving traffic, so it took a bit longer to get to the pharmacy. I was going to just dash in, anyhow.
As I was walking in the door, behind two other people, a staff member let us know…
…they were closing in one minute – and she locked the entry doors behind us!
It turns out, they close at 5:30.
Thankfully, my husband’s prescription was quick to find, and it was already covered, so it just needed to be handed to me, and I could go!
From there, we went and got the fish and chips to bring home, plus a quick stop at the grocery store for something else my husband needed. We could finally go home!
We weren’t quite done yet, though!
One home, my daughter took care of bringing in the hot food, while I started bringing the bins of tomatoes into the old kitchen.
I have no idea what we’re going to do with them all.
In previous years, we kept a bin of green tomatoes out and my family just snacked on them as they ripened. They were all small grape, cherry or pear type tomatoes.
I know there are lots of things that can be done with green tomatoes; we’ve just never done them. I wouldn’t be able to eat them, so it’s a matter of finding things the family would like.
What we don’t have is the space to lay out so many green tomatoes in what should be a single layer, to ripen indoors. It would have to be in the living room – the cat free zone – but it’s a disaster right now.
Until we figure that out, all five bins are now laid out on the chest freezer in the old kitchen. That room is too dark and gets too cold to be able to leave them there to ripen.
Once we were finally able to have our supper, things still weren’t done!
It was back outside to recover the two beds for the night, so the peppers and eggplant will survive. The hoses had to be prepped so they wouldn’t have any water in them to freeze, and I even remembered to close the doors in the side of the garage the squash and melons were in, so they won’t get as cold.
And now I am FINALLY done for today.
I’m hoping to actually get to bed before midnight and get some real sleep for a change. My attempt to do so last night was a total failure! 😄
There is, of course, lots to do outside. This is one of the busiest times of the year, as we get ready for winter, while the weather holds!
While doing my morning rounds, I found some new critter damage around. Both corn beds were hit, though not too badly. A few other things were nibbled on, including the way too under ripe Boston Marrow that I had left on the vine. It had gotten about 6-7 inches long and was even looking like it was trying to ripen since the plant was hit by frost. Now, there’s just a bit at the end of the stem left.
Thankfully, the critters seem completely uninterested in the peppers, melons, carrots and onions!
So this morning, I harvested the corn, starting with the popcorn.
In the first couple of photos above, you can see the damage. The slugs were quick to take advantage of the situation!
I did gather all the fallen kernels I could find. I don’t want them reseeding themselves in this bed.
There were still a decent number of cobs to harvest. The stalks will be used in the layers filling any new beds we manage to get done this year.
I took advantage of the chicken wire on the box frame and set out the cobs to dry out in the sun and wind. I moved the pinwheels over, to keep the birds out. We’ll bring them inside at the end of the day, as we have no place to set something like corn to cure, outdoors. Things like onions and tomatoes get ignored, but the skunks, racoons and birds would have quite a good time with the corn!
Obviously, this is still not a lot of popcorn. This is a test crop. Once things are will dried out, we’ll make some popcorn from in and see if we like it. If so, we’d be wanting to plant a whole lot more than this, to provide enough popcorn for the family! If we don’t find it’s worth it, we’ll test other varieties until we find something we like enough to keep growing.
Even with having a few critter damaged cobs that were worth salvaging, the losses were a lot higher in this corn. Some of the stalks didn’t even develop cobs in the first place. The few cobs we had were also set out on the wire to dry. In the second photo, you can see spots of white in places. Those are kernels that were chewed on, revealing a snow white interior!
Again, there isn’t much there, but we’ll have enough to make some corn flower to try out. I still want to try growing the South American kulli corn and acclimate it to our area, but if this corn’s flour turns out nice, I’m certainly not going to turn my nose up to a glass gem variety that’s bred for norther climates.
When it comes to growing something like corn with the goal of self sufficiency in mind, once we have found varieties we like, we would need to grow a LOT more to have enough to preserve/store. This year, we didn’t even have the space to try any of the sweet corn seeds I got! If we are going to be growing sweet corn, flour corn and popcorn, not only would we need more space to get the quantities we would need, but they’d have to be kept well apart from each other, so avoid cross pollination. Which may not be too much of a problem, since the different types of corn would start pollinating at different times of the year, but it would still be a good idea.
The bed with the purple corn still has beans in it that survived the frost. They are just there to fix nitrogen in the soil, as corn is such a heavy nitrogen feeder. I don’t plan to harvest any more of them, and the plants and roots can be left in the soil to break down, when the bed is prepared for the winter.
On a completely different topic…
As I was about to bring the purple corn to the chicken wire, with the popcorn, when I saw Broccoli going by – with three kittens following along! This would be a second litter for her, as she was among those that had kittens really early in the season. One looked like a tortie, one looked like a tuxedo, and one seems to be a long haired black and white – more black than white. I saw that one later on, in the shelf shelter, where I’d put some kibble earlier in the morning. I was only able to get a brief video, but my hands shake quite a bit, which is greatly exaggerated when zooming in.
So… three more babies. 😑 I’ve lost complete track of how many there are this year!
My next surprise was not as adorable.
I came into my room to find a couple of small bins filled with crafting material, and the stuff that was on top of them, crashed onto the floor among other things that got dragged down as they fell. A couple of the kittens have discovered the top of the wall shelf and are very determined to get up there, no matter how much I try to block it off!
After cleaning that up, I went to my computer. I don’t know what they stepped on, on my keyboard, but all the shortcut icons in my task bar were gone. Even the start button was greyed out, like when you put the cursor over it. Except, the cursor wasn’t even near it. I tried clicking on the start button, and nothing. I did get that spinning icon that shows when the computer is busy with something, but it wouldn’t stop or go away. I ended up having to do a hard shut down and just hoped it would revert to normal when restarted. Thankfully, it did, and I was able to upload files from my phone and start this blog post!
We really need to start letting the bigger kittens out of the “isolation ward”. I’d hoped to have at least a couple adopted out by now, but still no takers. The problem with letting them out is, they’d eventually make their way into the new part basement, where we keep a number of litter boxes. The girls will need to kitten proof it as best they can, first. There are places the kittens could get into that the adult cats can’t fit in anymore, where they could potentially come into harm or just plain get stuck.
Speaking of the girls, my house sitting daughter will be home in a few days! It will be good to have her back. I’m not sure she’ll feel the same, though. She’s been in a cat free house, with no one to clean up after but herself, for several weeks now! 😂😂
They’ve already got plans for a Hannibal marathon when she gets back, so she’s at least looking forward to that! 😁
Well, time to grab a late lunch, then get back outside. It’s a beautiful day out there, and I want to get as much done out there as I can!
The Tom Thumb popcorn could probably be harvested now, but I’m going to leave the stalks for as long as I can before we do that. Just to make sure the kernels get all the time possible to fully mature and dry out on the stalks. So far, the critters seem completely uninterested in both corn beds!
Today was not as hot as yesterday, but still quite warm, hitting 21C/68F while I was working outside. Which is good for the remaining beds that will not be harvested for some time, like the Red of Florence onions next to the popcorn, which still have a lot of growing to do.
A real surprise this morning was seeing a bright yellow flower in the squash patch! The yellow patty pan squash plant is still alive, in spite of all the frost damage, and one of the female flowers actually bloomed this morning. There are several more female flower buds, too, but there are no male flowers to pollinate, so nothing will come of it. The green patty pans have squash that were big enough to survive the frost, and they are getting bigger, too. Even on the green zucchini, we found one little zucchini that had gotten bigger and could be harvested!
Later in the day, I finally cleared the tiny raised bed in the old kitchen garden, which required snipping off the dried poppy pods that had grown through the wire cover. These self seeded poppies have openings in their tops, so when I put them upside down in the container, the seeds just poured out. It really shows how these self seed so readily. The Hungarian Blue poppy pods do not have these openings, so are less likely to self seed.
Another surprise is seeing flowers on one of the volunteer tomatoes that got transplanted! They’re still so tiny, but they seem to really like where they were transplanted to.
I was going to plant garlic in the bed by the chain link fence, after it was reworked, but the garlic came in yesterday. The Jebousek lettuce is blooming now and I want to save the seeds, so the garlic had to go somewhere else.
Which is what my next post will be about!
I’m just loving that we’re past the middle of September, and there’s still gardening happening!
I noticed the leaves on the Roma VF were looking like they got a fungus. I don’t know if it’s tomato blight or something else, but they needed to be pulled.
I started by picking the ripe and almost ripe tomatoes first, then my daughter and I picked the green and mostly green tomatoes and pulled up the bamboo stakes. Then she pulled the diseased plants, while I picked ripe Black Beauty and Indigo Blue tomatoes.
The green and almost green Roma are currently on the screens under the old market tent, while the ripe and almost ripe went into a box for indoors. These corrugated plastic boxes are very handy, but they have air circulation holes on the bottom and sides that are a bit big for some of the tomatoes, so I lined the bottom with carboard egg trays to keep them from falling out.
The Roma tomato plants will be allowed to dry out and will get burned with our paper garbage. That might be a while, since we are actually getting rain today! I’m even hearing a bit of thunder.
We now have a whole lot of very ripe tomatoes ready for processing. I’ll be doing more tomato sauce, first. I’m thinking of dehydrating some in the oven, late, and preserving some of the dried tomato in olive oil.
I’m still looking at recipes for making tomato sauce using roasted tomatoes and figuring out how I want to do them. I want to use as few cooking vessels as I can get away with, so there’s less to wash up! 😄
One of the problems we’ve had is cats getting into the garden beds. They seemed to especially enjoy laying down on the onions!
As a result, we have a lot of onions with broken stems. Under normal circumstances, that would be a sign that the onions are maturing and ready to be harvested. If the stems are prematurely broken, the plants act as if they’ve reached maturity and won’t get any bigger.
I have been leaving them for the last while, which gives them time to develop that thicker, dry outer skin, but I didn’t want to leave them too long. So today, I harvested the first batch.
This is almost all of our yellow onions, though I did leave the ones that did not have broken stems. Normally, I would not have laid them out with the greens facing in and overlapping like that, but if the greens were hanging off the edges, they’d be way too tempting for cats to play with and drag around! Onions are toxic to cats, so we don’t want any sort of temptation like that.
After a couple of days, we’ll braid them and hang them in the cat free zone inside, aka our living room.
The potatoes that had been curing on these screens were put in cardboard boxes to store and are now also in the cat free zone. We’ll have to eat them fairly quickly. I didn’t bother picking over them to separate any for the root cellar. There just isn’t enough to make that worthwhile.
I did use some of the red potatoes with breakfast. I now know that the Red Thumb potatoes are not really suitable for making hash browns. 😄 They really wanted to mash, instead! Still tasted good, though!
It’s a beautiful cool day! The weather apps can’t seem to make up their mind if we’re supposed to get rain or not in our area, which means we probably will not, so I worked on harvesting potatoes in the old kitchen garden again.
But first, I sorted through last night’s potatoes.
In the first photo above, I sorted the largest potatoes out for curing. The smaller potatoes are the smaller ones, which I brought in for immediate eating.
Not very many left, that’s for sure!
The Red Thumb fingerlings are split between two beds, and I started on the long, narrow one at the retaining wall. The first thing was to remove the mulch, and as you can see by the second picture, there were quite a few potatoes right on the surface, hidden by the straw.
I was also uncovering lots of frogs! With the cooler temperatures, they were pretty sluggish and snoozing under cover.
In the third photo, you can see all the Red Thumb potatoes I harvested from that bed (almost). They are fingerling potatoes, so I would expect them to be small, but they somehow seem smaller than they should be, for this variety. The yield is very nice, though. My guess is that, with better soil conditions, they would have been larger. Later on, we’ll go back to them and separate out the largest ones, and taken the smaller ones inside to eat right away.
What I didn’t get a picture of, but intend to later, are the ones that didn’t make it to the curing screen. I kept finding the tiniest of potatoes! Maybe the other potatoes had tiny ones that that, too, but I just didn’t see them. These potatoes are so red, I couldn’t miss them! I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them. They’re too tiny for eating. Just washing them would be very difficult. I don’t want to just toss them on the compost. I’m considering finding some out of the way spot and just burying them in the fall. Who knows. They might start growing in the spring, like some of our volunteers, this year! 😁
Once the retaining wall bed was done, I removed the mulch from the others in the wattle weave bed. As with the first bed, there were potatoes right on the surface, too.
Holey potatoes.
Some still had slugs on them.
After throwing away the first few I uncovered, I realized this bed was hit by the slugs quite badly. So I took the ones I’d already harvested and laid them out, then took a break. I’ll be getting back at it after I’m done this post. I hope it’s just the surface potatoes that are so badly damaged, but I don’t have high hopes for that bed’s harvest at this point.
We picked as many as we could reach using the little household stepladder. The ground is too uneven to safely use the bigger A frame ladder, even with a spotter. Which is okay. We can leave the rest for the birds! We almost filled the colander we were using to gather them. Then my daughter used one of the window screens we found in a shed that have been so handy to lay them out. She gave them a good washing and picked over them to get rid of any damaged or bird eaten ones that got missed. I think we still had about 5 pounds of cherries when she was done. I’m thinking we might make a syrup out of them, but will look up different ideas to try, first.
There are SO many grape clusters! I’m still amazed. The most we’ve ever since since moving here. It will be some time before they’re ripe, though. The chokecherry tree by the compost ring and low raised beds will be ready to harvest soon. Actually, there are two of them, very close together. There’s a larger, healthier looking chokecherry tree by the main garden area, but with the tall trees beside it, it doesn’t get anywhere near as much sun as the one by the low raised beds. The berries on there are still mostly green, and there are far fewer of them. These trees are still pretty spindly, as they were quite choked out until we cleaned up around them, but they are just covered with berry clusters, weighing down the branches.
While checking the grape vines, I was on the lookout for more of those caterpillars, but accidentally knocked a big brown one onto the ground!
I tried to pick it up to put it back, but it kept flipping, uncurling and curling. It was remarkably strong! In my attempts to use leaves and twigs to move it, it flipped itself onto the step, which made it very convenient to take photos! I did finally get it on a grape leaf and back onto the vine.
Then I went to get one of the vines out of the spirea, where I found the green spotted caterpillar. So pretty! I was able to untangle the vine without disturbing it.
While I had the timer going for the sprinklers in the garden, I finally finished attaching the fence wire to the raised bed cover frame.
While setting up to work on it, I noticed that a screw in one corner – top right in the first photo – had snapped, allowing the pieces to rotate slightly. Not good!
Propping the frame up with boards helped steady it, but it was a real pain to attach that fence wire. Plus, Gooby decided that rolling around on the ground and sticking his head or feet right were I was hammering was a good idea.
It was not a good idea.
He was very determined, though!
I did finally get the fence wire attached. Between the snapped screw in one corner, and the likelihood of the U nails simply popping out while the frame is being moved, I decided adding extra boards to sandwich the fence wire was a necessity. I cut spare pieces to length, but by then I had worked my way through the sprinkler and soaker hoses, and needed to do the rest of the watering directly. My daughter was a sweetheart and attached the new lengths to the frame for me. That definitely made the whole thing stronger.
The lengths of fence wire for this was 5′, which made for a rather tall arc. This would be perfect for things like the bush beans on the high raised bed. For the next one, though, I’ll use 4′ lengths.
What I will not use, though, is that fence wire again! The twisted wire at every join is just too thick, making attaching it to the wood less secure. I still want to have something structurally sturdy, though, as it has to support any mesh, plastic or netting that is laid over it. Either that or I will need to add hoops to support the material. Hardware cloth or chicken wire would not be enough on their own.
With this one, I plan to cover it with the black netting we have, closing up the ends in the process. That will make sure no cats will get into the beds and lay down on our vegetables!
The buggers.
Meanwhile, the garden got a good watering. We hit 28C/82F today, as we did yesterday, but did not get any of the scattered rain showers that were predicted. Tomorrow, at least, will be a slightly more pleasant 23C/73F but it’s supposed to reach that temperature by noon and stay there until 7pm. To top it all off, we’ve got air quality advisories from all the wildfires. It was definitely on the hazy side, today! Just moderate air quality advisories for our area. Others are listed as extreme, so we don’t have much to complain about, that’s for sure.
I gave up trying to go to bed early today – at least not as early as the last couple of nights. Still debating whether I should try sleeping on the couch to reduce the interruptions by kittens.
Speaking of kittens, Question has absolutely glommed onto me today! She’s constantly climbing up me, whether I’m standing or sitting. While bending over to pick up the adult cat food bowls, I suddenly had a kitten hanging off my butt. Question had been on the bed behind me and went for it. When I stood up, she climbed her way up to my shoulders and stayed there! After feeding them, I sat down to work on the computer with my own supper. Even though she ate her own food enthusiastically, she was determined to eat mine, too! She was not happy that I would not let her! When we were done giving Leyendecker his medications, I settled at the computer again, only to have her climb up me again, to nap on my chest. As I write this, I’m leaning way back in my chair as she sits on my belly. I think she’s nodding off! None of the other kittens behave like this. Mind you, while her sister has been improving in health, Question is still really gooby, and doesn’t have as much energy as the other kittens.
What a handful the litter bugger is, though. Literally. She’s just a tiny little handful. They all are! Not for long, though. They sure are growing fast!
Well, I need to make up my mind on where I plan to sleep tonight.
While doing my morning rounds for the past while, I’ve been able to snack on the occasional early pea pod. This morning, there were enough of them that I went and got a container to harvest them!
Not a large harvest, by any means. Basically, enough for one person – but it’s the real harvest, so I’m happy!
I’m glad I broke out the riding mower and mowed as much as I did yesterday. I got most of the area round the main garden beds. The rest out there is so rough, I’ll be using the push mower or weed trimmer. I also got the East yards done. The West yards have some things than need to be moved or trimmed first, that I left for today. Which might not happen, as the grass it now too wet. Last night, it rained off and on. Not enough to fill the rain barrel, but enough to give the garden a good watering.
But was it enough to do this?
One of the Black Beauty tomatoes got knocked to the ground. The stem is quite dry at the end, so it could have even happened yesterday. I suspect it wasn’t the rain that knocked it down, but a cat.
I picked it and now it’s sitting in the living room, in hopes it will continue to ripen.
The first African Drum gourd, in the main garden area, has started to bloom!
I don’t know that we’ll have enough growing season left for these. I tried starting them early enough indoors compensate for that, but these are among the ones that were sown a second time. The first ones that survived are at the chain link fence and, while they have been blooming for a while, there are still no female flower. Even the Crespo squash, which have also been blooming for a while, are almost all male flower. There were two female flower buds that started to form, but the first one wizened and fell off rather quickly, and now the second one looks like it’s doing the same.
Some of the winter squash are starting to show flower buds, though, which is encouraging. What’s discouraging is that the very few summer squash that are just germinating now seem to still get eaten by the slugs. They definitely prefer those freshly emerged leaves! Yes, I scattered out more cornmeal, but the rain washed that away.
I also quickly transplanted the one lemon cucumber that germinated. I ended up planting it in the mulched bed behind the compost heap, where we had ground cherries last year. I’d planted the three Ozark Nest Egg gourds along one side of that bed, but it looks like there’s only one left. For some reason, the cats really like to use the grass clipping mulch as a litter – but only where there is an open area around a seedling or transplant!
Anyhow.
The lemon cucumber is now right in the middle of the bed, with plenty of room to grow. If it survives, I’ll add something for it to climb.
After the hours spent outside yesterday, trimming, cutting and dragging around trees, I fully expect to be in a world of hurt today. I wasn’t! Just tired. Sleepy tired, not fatigue tired.
Today was a wonderfully cool day and it would have been prefect to get back out there, but I decided not to push my luck. Instead, I went out and made recordings for a July garden tour video. My husband had some parcels come in, so in the afternoon I went to the post office to pick them up. My younger daughter got her new debit card in the mail, which needed to be activated by doing a physical purchase, so we went into town and she bought me lunch. After we ate, we went to walk on the beach. By then, I was really noticing my hips were starting to give out. No pain. Just… unstable. So I’m glad I didn’t push myself to do more work with the trees, just because I thought I was better than I really was.
I couldn’t let such a wonderful day go to waste, though, and took advantage of the riding mower my brother loaned us. I was able to do the driveway and most of the outer yard before running out of gas again. By then, the light was starting to go, and it had been trying to rain for almost an hour, so I left the rest for later.
One of the things I need to mow around in the outer yard is the pile of insulation buried in branches. It’s been there so long, there are trees growing out of it, and wild raspberry bushes.
Lots of wild raspberry bushes.
With ripe berries! The ones in the garden are almost ripe, but these had berries ready to pick now!
So after the mowing was done and the kibble topped up outside, I got the girls to grab some bowls and pick berries with me. I’m not sure what happened with my younger daughter, though. She came out using a cane! After we came back from town, she went for a bike ride and seemed fine, but something gave out on her. Her PCOS really affects her joints, and she worked hard in the basement today. None of us do stairs well at all! I didn’t get a chance to ask what happened, though.
After we picked some berries, I was going to do my evening rounds when I remembered, we have other berries, too! There are Saskatoons ready to pick. My older daughter helped pick for a while, then commented on the cherry tree by the house. It has so many cherries on it, and some of them are just starting to turn red. I told her to go take a look at the other cherry trees along the edge of the spruce grove. I have been able to just see red cherries there. She took a look and forced her way closer, to pick some.
She was able to get at a whole 4 ripe cherries!
My older daughter and I ate those. They’re really sour cherries, and she and I are the only ones willing to eat them fresh like that! 😄
Not too shabby for a first berry harvest of the year! The girls washed them and made whipped cream to go with them. They were awesome.
The weather is supposed to be quite pleasant for the next while – slightly below average for July. I’m pretty excited about that. Hopefully, that means I can finally get lots done outside!
The Re-Farmer 