It’s time for my progress report! If you’d like to see the earlier photos to compare, you can visit the posts from July 28, July 30 and August 1. Links will open in new tabs, so you don’t lose your place. 😊
I work my way from one end to the other, and try to follow the same pattern, so once again we start with the Summer of Melons mix in the future trellis bed.
This includes the new melons I found earlier today. I put bricks under the melons touching the ground, except the new ones. I’ve been training the vines of those on the netting, but they came loose, so they ended up on the ground again. I was hoping to avoid using more jute twine in training them, but tomorrow morning, I’ll have to make a point of bringing it with me when I do my morning rounds. I’ve got the wrong kind of netting for this. This finer netting is more for keeping birds out, but it’s what I had. The wider netting I’ve got the peas and beans climbing on would work better, as I could weave the vines around the netting.
As for the melons hanging above ground, some of them look like they’re going to need hammocks to support their weight soon!
There is one that’s looking more and more yellow. I suspect this is a sign that it is going to be a loss, and that it will start to shrivel or rot on the vine. We shall see.
These are the African Drum Gourds I’ve found so far. At this stage, it’s still possible they aren’t properly pollinated and might just dry up and fall off the vine. I hope not! If I’d spotted the female flowers earlier, I would have hand pollinated them, just to be on the safe side. Ah, well. I’m just thrilled to see any at all.
They have the softest fluff on their surface at this stage, too!
Next is the winter squash bed with the peas and beans.
There’s a couple in there that may or may not make it, and one with a flower that will probably open tomorrow – and I’ll me sure to look out for it to hand pollinate it!
There are so many hidden melons I found among the leaves today! There is even what looks like the first female Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon about to bloom. There are no male flowers, though. Unless there is a sudden overnight burst of male flowers, this one won’t have a chance to fully develop. I don’t think it can cross pollinate with the other melons!
This being the beginning of August, I don’t think we’ll get any watermelon this year. Yes, it’s a short season variety, but just about everything is behind about a month or more. Mind you, this year has been full of surprises, so I guess anything can happen between now and first frost!
I love having things in the garden that let you see just how much growth is happening, in such a short time! Even with taking photos every second day, I can see – and sometimes feel – the difference. Then there’s finding new ones, hidden under the leaves like that. It’s like Christmas! 😄
I so look forward to being able to harvest and try these! Well, not the drum gourds, of course. 😄
This may be the strangest gardening year we’ve had so far, but in a way, I’ve found it to be the most fun, too!
The thermometer in the sun room was reading 39C/102F. This thermometer is against the west wall, about 3/4 of the way up to the ceiling. It does not get direct sunlight on it.
The thermometer outside my husband’s bedroom window was as high as the needle could go. If the numbers went that far, it would be about 60C/140F. This thermometer get blasted with the full sun for most of the day, in a mostly sheltered corner of the house. No shade and rarely any breeze.
The last thermometer is stored in the top of a cat shelter shelf. The shelf is in full sun, but the thermometer itself was in shade inside. It was reading 43C/109F. Of all the thermometers, I’d say that one is the most accurate to how it felt while walking around the garden beds.
Wow.
Honestly, I’ll take that over matching temperatures on the other side of freezing. Not that we see -60C/-76F, but we do see -40C/F at times, and that is far more deadly.
A couple of evenings ago, I took photos of our squash, pumpkins and melons, using my hand for perspective. Today, I did it again – but this time, I found more to take photos of! Since Instagram allows “only” up to 10 photos in a slideshow, I split the squash and melon photos up by beds.
Yes, I was able to find melons in the second bed this time! I had spotted one before, but today I moved the leaves around and found others.
I dug around in the leaves and found some “new” ones, too. In one photo, there are two melons, but the leaves and vines prevented me from getting a photo of them both, individually, so one of them is only half in the frame.
They’re getting big enough that they are starting to look like distinctively different varieties, too.
The smaller ones are getting noticeably not-small anymore!
The pumpkin vines are getting intertwined with the drum gourd vines. Those have many male flowers, but I have yet to find a female flower anywhere. It’s possible I can’t see any under all the leaves, but I think that’s unlikely. I’m wondering if they are getting enough water? These have a buried gallon water bottle buried next to their bases, so they get watered slowly and deeply, but a gallon of water might not be enough for something like this. I don’t know. It seems to be sufficient for the pumpkins, though!
The next bed is the winter squash interplanted with shelling peas and pole beans.
The first and largest one is among the few Summer of Melons mix transplants that were left over. The others, I’m not sure. They look like they are the same variety, but one was on the far side of the single surviving Cream of Saskatchewan water melon, which I know for sure are not from that mix. That would make them Sarah’s Choice melons. We grew those last year, but they were grown in a bed next to two other varieties and the vines were so mixed up, we lost track of which were which. The other melons in this bed would be the Pixie melons.
Oh, wow. I just linked those to where I bought them, and my goodness, the prices have sure gone up!!! Especially for the Pixies!
If you want to compare how fast these have been growing, you can check out the comparison posts I made on July 30 and July 28.
We may not have anything to harvest on a daily basis this year, but we sure to have a lot growing!
If the warmth keeps up, though, we might actually be able to have things to harvest. The bush beans first had to survive the slugs. Then they had to survive the deer. Amazingly, there are some that have recovered enough that they are starting to bloom! So Royal Burgundy bush beans are a possibility.
There aren’t a lot of pole beans, either, but they are also starting to bloom, so we might be able to harvest both the green Seychelles and the purple Carminate beans at some point. Which isn’t going to be easy, with all those winter squash vines growing around them! The shelling peas seem to be very prolific, with lots of flowers and developing pods, but it will probably be at least a couple more weeks before any of those can be harvested. The corn is also going to be a bit longer; they are sure releasing a LOT of pollen right now!
We also have green tomatoes developing, but nothing is even close to ripening, yet. Then there are the summer squash. I have no idea if we’ll get any green zucchini, Magda, Goldy zucchini or White Scallops, but I think we’ll definitely be getting some of the G-Star patty pans to harvest at some point. They’re not blooming yet, but there are buds starting to form, at least.
What a strange, strange gardening year. That rain we had in the spring really messed things up and set things back. We had Saskatoons blooming, but there are no berries – it was probably too wet for the pollinators. The cherry tree by the house isn’t going to have many berries, though there are some that are ripening. One chokecherry tree in the spruce grove is showing berries, but the one next to the main garden area has almost nothing on it. Even among the crab apples trees, there are a couple of trees where I’m not seeing any apples! These are the ones that have small apples the birds like to eat. The ones with apples that we like to eat do have apples on them, so the timing of blooms and pollinating seems to have been just right for those trees, but not the others.
We have plenty of pollinators, though. I don’t usually see them, but when I’m going through the garden, I can hear them buzzing. I will still hand pollinate the squash if I spot a female flower, but the melons have so many flowers that are so small, hidden among so many leaves, it’s all on the pollinators for those!
With the spring set backs, we can only pray to have a long and mild fall to make up for it!
As my SIL once told me some time ago; if we depended on our garden for food, we’d be starving! 😄
This is the largest of the melons that I’ve seen (there might be others, hiding in the leaves) from the Summer of Melons mix. This mix of seeds has early, mid and late season melons, and the early ones – whatever varieties they are – are definitely showing up in the trellis bed, where the first transplants went in.
I took one photo yesterday and the other today. What a lot of growth in just one day!
I think I’ll try and make a point of taking photos of the melons and squash more often, with my hand as a size reference. The winter squash and pumpkins has also been getting visibly bigger, from day to day.
Today, we reached our expected high of 29C/84F, but I didn’t notice what the humidex was at at the time. Tomorrow, we’re expected to hit 30C/86F, and the humidex is expected to reach 38C/100F. Our low tonight is supposed to drop to 17C/63F by about 3-5am. I’ll definitely be out early to do the watering again, while it’s still cool.
My husband and I had plans to meet a friend in the city today, but unfortunately, his pain levels were just too high. I am expecting to do our first stock up shop tomorrow, as CPP Disability is supposed to come in on Monday, and when the disability payments are due on a Monday, they’ve instead been deposited on Saturday. However, just in case, I went into town early this evening to pick up a few things to tide us over the weekend. There were some really good sales on, so I got more than planned, and was still in budget, which is always nice.
After what happened this morning, with having to bury 4 newborn kittens, every time I’ve gone outside, I’ve been looking all over, hoping not to find any more. After chasing some raccoons out of the sun room, I gave the cats their evening feeding, then stayed outside to make sure the cats got a chance to eat before the raccoons came back. There was one bugger that was watching me from behind a tree for a while, but I didn’t want to get too close to chase it off, as that would have scared away the more feral cats eating under the shrine. Tricky bugger! It did eventually leave, though.
Since I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes, I kept moving around, eventually going into the West yard.
That’s when I saw one of the cats in the lawn near the old kitchen garden. They’ve worn a path in the grass from the lilacs behind where the tulip bed it, and the corner of the old kitchen garden. There was something in front of the cat that was still there when she ran off. Other cats also went to see it, so I had to check it out.
Yup. It was another dead kitten. It looked to be only a couple of weeks old, and had been dead for a while. It seems a mama was bringing it to the house and it didn’t make it, like the one I found in the old kitchen garden not long ago.
That’s 5 kittens I buried, in just one day.
It’s getting to the point that every time we go outside, we’re nervous about what we’ll find. With this heat, the kittens by the house tend to just splatter themselves all over, in the grass, on the sidewalk blocks, in the sun room, all stretched out and sleeping, and we have been checking to see if they’re breathing!
It’s Button that really gets me. He will sleep absolutely anywhere, usually in high traffic areas. Since he is so very tiny, and has a forever home to go to, I’m the most paranoid about him! I chatted with the Cat Lady today and we have a tentative date to connect on Sunday, if she is able to come out this way. Unfortunately, she just had surgery on one of her hands not long ago, and it’s been hurting a lot, so she might not be up to making the trip.
Hmmm… if I do go to the city tomorrow, I wonder if there is somewhere closer to her place where we could meet, and I can bring Button with me? I’ll have to message her and find out.
I don’t know why Instagram now cuts the sides off my photos, even though I select the wide image function.
I got about half way through the bed, sifting the soil, when I stopped for a break that ended up taking longer than I intended. Which is okay. It gave the soil I needed to move time to dry out a bit. Sifting damp soil is a lot harder and heavier. I’m amazed my home made soil sifter is still surviving the abuse!
By the time I was done fighting with my garden tour video and getting it uploaded, it was quite a bit later before I could get back at it. Thankfully, today has been cooler, with a pleasant breeze. I was greatly appreciating that!
The last bit of soil that needed to be worked on was the worst. This was the section full of creeping Charlie, and I was digging up and tossing large clumps of it. In the end, by the time I finished sifting the last of the soil from the old bed location, there wasn’t enough left to finish the new bed location. I ended up “stealing” soil from the last bed that will be worked on.
By then, it started to rain, but it was just a gentle shower, so I kept at it. Once the bed was done, I brought over the melons. I’d already gone through them and sorted them by type. I kept the Zucca melons aside, since they get huge. I’m thinking of using the kiddie pool as a raised bed, just for them, and setting it somewhere where they can spread.
There were a total of 16 melons to transplant, and I decided to dedicate the entire bed to them. I don’t know that we’ll be able to trellis them, since they will need stronger trellises than what we’re setting up for the beans and peas. If we end up not being able to add trellises, they should have room to spread on the ground and into the paths, if need be.
So this bed now has two rows of eight melons in it. As with the other squash and melons, I planted them slightly below grade and made hills of soil around them, so water would flow towards the plants rather than run down the sides of the bed and take the soil with it. The rain had pretty much stopped by the time that was done, so they got a good watering, too.
The bed still needs a mulch added to it, but it’s getting late, so that will be done tomorrow, when I will also started working on the next bed. That one needs to be shifted a lot, too, but it’s not as weedy and isn’t infested with creeping Charlie like this one was, so it should go somewhat faster. The hard part will be breaking the sod in the new location – and I don’t have anymore carboard that can be put over it, before shifting the soil on top.
This bed is where the last of the San Marzano tomatoes will finally be planted. There aren’t a lot of those left to transplant, so there will be room for other things.
Hmm… I should probably set up the kiddie pool and fill it with soil for the Zucca melons, first. They need to be transplanted more urgently than the tomatoes. That means sifting several loads of soil from the pile in the outer yard.
Once the transplants are in, I hope to be able to do some direct sowing, still. It’s getting really late for that. Our first frost date is September 10, so we’ve basically got July and August for things to grow, since if I plant things within the next 7-10 days, they will take the rest of June just to germinate.
What we don’t have a lot of is stuff that can be harvested throughout the summer. I’ve got three types of beans planted, and the very first Seychelle bean was sprouting this morning. The sugar snap peas are going to be awhile before there’s anything to harvest from them. The spinach is doing so poorly, I’m thinking of taking them out completely, and planting some chard or something, instead. I think it’s getting too late to plant more carrots, but I’ll check the information on my packages to be sure.
What I will likely do is direct sow more summer squash, since right now we just have some in pots. They haven’t germinated yet. Since summer squash gets harvested while still quite small, planting them in late June should be okay. As long as I can keep the slugs away! I haven’t actually seen slugs yet, so hopefully, we won’t have a bag year of them, like we did last year.
We shall see how things work out! Hopefully, we’ll even get weather that will allow us to harvest more dead spruces and build the frames around these beds, and maybe even continue the trellis beds, by fall.
Much work to be done.
It’s a good thing I love this kind of work! Even if I do have to pain killer up for it.
Speaking of which… time to do that, before this broken old body starts to seize up! 😄😄
I had to be careful with some of the bigger ones, and their roots has made their in between the layers of paper towel.
All 21 of them got planted into the larger cell trays we’re testing out this year. Even the last one that just started to germinate. While I made sure to plant the seeds so they were not completely buries in the seed starting mix, the vermiculite added to the top does hide most of them. Which should be fine. They’ll still get light, and it’s so light, it won’t hinder their growth at all.
To make room in the aquarium greenhouse, the last tray of Wild Bunch winter squash got moved into the mini greenhouse frame at the window, and the remaining containers of seeds set to pre-germinate were moved over to that side of the aquarium.
Getting the tray with the planted seeds in it is always a pain, though. These trays are a bit longer, and the aquarium has a support running across the middle. The tray needs to be carefully tilted to get it in. It means waiting until after it’s set up before adding water to the bottom tray. The freshly planted seeds did get misted with a spray bottle, after the vermiculite was added, and the seed starting mix was pre-moistened, too, but once it’s on the heat mat, things will dry out quickly. The smaller celled trays we used before – the ones designed for the small Jiffy pellets – had openings in two corners, where water would be poured through. These larger celled trays fit the same base trays, but are quite a bit taller. Normally, that gives space to add water to the base tray from the side, making use of the gaps between cells. That can’t be done with it set up in the aquarium, so I had to move the tray of cells off to the side, add water to the base, then put it back.
I need to find a better way to do that. We have a funnel that is long and flexible that we use to put drain cleaner/maintenance stuff into the washing machine drain pipe. I think that would be long enough to work. The next time I’m at Canadian Tire, I’ll see if I can find another one.
I might be planting more in the next couple of days, though! The watermelon seeds look like 4 out or 5 have germinated, and the Sarah’s Choice melon seeds just sort of exploded. None were germinating when I checked this morning, and now all 5 are sending out little radicles! Even the Zucca melon seeds look like they will soon germinate. Nothing on the Pixie melons yet, though. When it comes time to plant those, they can all go into another of the large celled trays that I have. If the 100% germination rate keeps up, that will be another 10 melons, 5 watermelons, plus the 4 Zucca. That will leave a couple of cells to spare, which will make it easier to keep track of them.
Oh!! While doing a quick search to get the link for the Zucca melon, I found an article about some people in the Canadian prairies, like us, that successfully grew them! That’s encouraging, considering we’ve had I think 2 … or is it 3? … failed years with them. Last year was the most successful, but the developing fruit all suddenly started to rot on the vine, and I don’t know why.
Well, we’ll see how they do this year. Hopefully, we’ll have 30-100 pound/14-45kg melons this year!
We now have various melon seeds set to pre-germinate above the heat mat – indirect, so they don’t get too warm.
As with the Wild Bunch Mix of winter squash, I wanted to do all the seeds in our Summer of Melons Blench, There were four more of the Wild Bunch winter squash ready for potting first, though. There were still some seeds left, but I put those in the compost bucket. Some were looking like mold was starting to grow on them, and others were looking slimy, so I figured they were done for. Which is fine. We have so many from the Wild Bunch mix that successfully germinated, we won’t be starting any other winter squash this year, as much as I’d like to. We just won’t have the prepared space for that many large plants, even with trellises.
All of the smallest and not quite emerged Wild Bunch Mix squash are now together in the one half of the aquarium greenhouse. The larger ones got moved to the mini greenhouse frame at the window. The larger ones that were already in the mini greenhouse frame in the window were tucked into a bin and, together with the bin that had peppers and herbs in it, are now in the sun room. The cats like to sit on these shelves to look out the window, but the bins should protect the transplants.
The tray with the hot peppers and eggplant is now on the shelf between two windows in the sun room, along with one of the tomato trays. There’s also space for a cat to sit by the door, as a few like to do. These trays will get plenty of light through most of the day. I’m taking a chance on putting them there, but last year the cats were good about leaving the transplants alone, for the most part. They were more interested in getting at the window, so as long as they can still do that, the transplants should be okay.
Once the space was made in the mini greenhouse frame and the aquarium greenhouse, I made some decisions as to which melons I wanted to start.
The Summer of Melons Blend was the only for-sure choice. The package had 21 seeds, and I set all of them to pre-germinate.
For the others, I decided to try the Zucca melon again. It’s been rough going for these, even though we’ve had success starting them out, so I’m hoping to actually get some this year. They are supposed to get quite massive in size. The seeds are pretty huge, so they got where the only ones to be scarified to help with germination. I decided to try only 4 seeds, with plenty left to try again next year, if it doesn’t work out this year.
The Pixie melon is one we’ve grown successfully before, during a drought year, which is what we’re supposed to be getting this year, too. They are a small “personal size” melon. I set out only 5 seeds, which left another 4 in the package. If we have the space, I might try direct sowing the last seeds, since they only need up to 75 days to maturity. The plants are very productive, though, so even if we only have a couple make it, that should still provide us with a decent amount of little melons.
The Sarah’s Choice is one we tried last year, but I think only 2 seedlings survived to be transplanted. They were planted together with some other melons and, to be honest, I’m not sure which variety was which, the vines were so interwoven. The plants did well, but they didn’t start producing both male and female flowers at the same time until quite late in the season, so we didn’t get very many that fully ripened before frost hit. So I want to try them again. This year, I’ll make sure we plant them away from other melon types, so we can tell them apart. Again, I started only 5 seeds, which was a little under half was what was in the package.
I had two types of watermelon to choose from, and I decided to go with the Cream of Saskatchewan. Both were short season, cold climate varieties, but I only had one container left. 😂 Again, I picked out 5 seeds, which was half the package.
The 7 day forecast has changed, and we’re now looking at a cooler day tomorrow, with possible rain, and only slightly warmer days after that. We won’t be back into highs in the double digits (Celsius) until next Monday, if the current forecasts are anything to go by. Which I don’t mind too much. Unless the winds are a problem, the cooler days make it more pleasant do to manual labour in, and we’ve got garden beds to prep, and new ones to build! We need to make room for all those transplants, plus the stuff we want to direct sow!
Okay, I’m going to start with the eggplants, because I keep forgetting about them!
Last year, we grew the Little Finger variety of eggplants. Last year being our Terrible, No Good Growing Year, they never got to the size they would normally have been harvested at, but we did have little baby eggplants to try, and really enjoyed them. So they were worth growing again. I also picked up some Classic eggplant seeds to try.
This was not a good year for our eggplants.
I started the Little Finger seeds in the middle of March. The Classic eggplant seed packet, however, was mistakenly sorted in with the direct sowing seeds, and I didn’t find it and start them until the end of March.
We had trouble with both types, right from the start. With all the Little Finger seeds that were planted, only 3 germinated, so more were planted. It was even worse with the Classic eggplant, which also got replanted.
They were transplanted in between the gourds by the chain link fence, with the tiniest two, which were really too small to be transplanted, but I did, anyhow, going into one planter block.
With the Classic eggplant, we had only one transplant, and it went into the wattle weave bed.
In the above photo, it’s just to the right of the luffa that doesn’t have a plastic ring around it anymore.
I really thought the Little Fingers would do well, where they were. They had plenty of space and lots of sunlight. Instead, they didn’t thrive at all. The one at the very end of the row, next to the people gate, did sort of grow, but mostly they just stagnated. They never even got large enough to start producing flower buds. In fact, nothing did well in those blocks at all.
The Classic eggplant, however, did surprisingly well. The plant grew quite large and robust and started to bloom and produce!
Everything this year seemed to be behind, though, so while these were a variety that should have been able to mature within our growing season, they never quite got there. We did have a long, mild fall, which helped, and when we did get an unexpected frost, that one plant handled it quite well, though we did cover it, along with the peppers, during other nights we thought might get frost.
This is how big they got before we finally harvested them, knowing they wouldn’t get a chance to grow any bigger before a killing frost was expected. Which means we did get a chance to taste test them, and were quite happy with them.
Final thoughts on eggplant
While the Little Finger were a completely failure this year, and we got only one Classic eggplant, we like them enough to grow both again.
Just not in the planter blocks by the chain link fence!
Eggplant is not something we buy often, mostly for budget or space reasons, but we do like them. Growing them ourselves will allow us to do more with them, too. In the future, we will probably try other varieties, but for next year, I think we’ll just stick to the two we still have seeds for.
Next up – the gourds.
We had a real problem starting gourd seeds this year. Many didn’t germinate at all, and I don’t know why. These included varieties we grew last year that had no problems germinating.
Then they started dying off, and I replanted, but the new seeds didn’t germinate. In the end, I had just one survive. The growing medium in the other pots got reused when potting up other things, but I could find no sign of seeds in them.
So that one surviving luffa got planted in the corner of wattle weave bed, where it could get good sunlight, and have the taller portion of wall, then the lilac bush, to climb.
Later on, however, some seedlings sprouted that looked an awful lot like luffa! So I planted them in the same bed.
How they did
This was the best year for growing luffa, yet!
Ideally, we’d be growing them in a polytunnel or greenhouse, because they need twice the growing season we’ve got, to reach full maturity. If we were just growing them as a summer squash for fresh eating, that would be fine, but I’m after the luffa sponges.
The two mystery plants did turn out to be luffa, but they were planted way too late to do well. That first transplant, though, grew so very well and was soon climbing high into the lilac bush where, hidden from view, we actually had several gourds start to develop!
Not all of them made it. In fact, only one did, really. We left it on the vine as long as we possibly could before harvesting it. As I write this, it’s currently curing over a heat vent in the living room. I keep forgetting it exists, so I haven’t tried to peel it and see if we got an actual mature luffa with usable sponge – and possibly seeds – inside.
Final thoughts on luffa
Luffa is one of my “just for fun” experimental plants, so I keep trying! We will eventually get some sort of polytunnel or greenhouse set up, which should make them easier to grow in our short season. I will keep trying to grow them for the challenge of it, but I think I will try seeds from other sources in the future.
Drum gourds, Caveman’s Club gourds, Zucca melon and Crespo Squash
We tried growing Zucca melon last year, but that bed was one of the ones that got flooded, so I wanted to try again. The African Drum gourds and Caveman’s club gourds were new ones to try. I want to grow gourds to use them for crafting. The first time we tried to grow Crespo squash, they did really well, even when recovering from being eaten repeatedly by groundhogs and deer. Both the Zucca melon and Crespo squash are experiments we are growing so we can at least try them and see if we enjoy eating them.
The Crespo squash and Caveman’s club were started in the middle of March.
Though I made sure to scarify the seeds, when they germinated, there were problems with the seed leaves not being able to free themselves from the shells. We also had losses and germination issues, and had to replant the pretty much all of them.
The ones that did take, did well, though, and soon got quite huge!
Here you can see where I used a straw as a splint to protect a breaking stem. It started to break, just from moving the pots around to get good light, when they were still smaller and in the living room. Once we were taking them outside to harden them off, there was a much greater risk of damage. So some of them got transplanted earlier than I normally would have, given our last frost date.
One Zucca melon and one African Drum gourd went into the block planters, along with the two surviving Caveman’s Club. The Crespo squash got their own bed, well away from the other squash, in case we were able to save seeds, as they don’t seem to be available anymore.
The last of the Zucca melon and African Drum gourds went into a reworked bed near the squash patch.
At least, that’s what I thought.
As things started blooming and developing, it because clear that there were only Zucca melon. With restarting seeds and putting up, I must have mislabeled things, because the pots that were labelled African Drum gourd began producing fruit that could only be Zucca melon.
Which means the only African Drum gourd transplant we had, was the one planted along the chain link fence.
How they did
As you can see from the photos above, the drum gourd, Crespo squash and Zucca melon did start blooming.
What was grown in the blocks by the chain link fence did not do well at all.
The Crespo squash also did not like their location. I was expecting the huge, lush plants we got the first year we tried them. Instead, they were spindly vines, with many male flowers but almost no female flowers. What few did appear, I hand pollinated. We did get a few that started to grow, but by fall, there was just one to harvest, and it was much, much smaller than these are supposed to get.
With the Zucca melon, they also produced mostly male flowers, but they did start to eventually produce a good amount of female flowers. I hand pollinated those, too! While the plants themselves didn’t thrive, either, they did do better than the Crespo squash, or the ones at the chain link fence. They started to produce fuzzy fruit, which is how we could finally say that what we thought were Drum gourds were actually Zucca. Some of them even started to get pretty big, but in the end, they all ended up with blossom end rot and dying off!
Update:
I knew I was forgetting something!
The Caveman’s Club gourds did slightly better, though far from healthy plants. They bloomed and pollinated, and at the end of the season, we had two – sort of – little gourds. After picking them, one got all wizened and was tossed. The larger one is currently curing in our sun room. The cats keep trying to play with it!
Final thoughts
These were all really disappointing. Those transplants were looking so good when they went in, but none of them thrived!
With the Crespo squash, a bit of research leaves me to conclude that they actually got too much sunlight. Where they were planted gets full sun, all day – no shade at all in the summer. This will be the last year we use that patch for vegetables, though, and next year we will be planting something for the food forest there.
I still have seeds and do what to try them again, but in a different location, where they will be less likely to get sun burnt.
As for what was planted in the blocks, this was the first year those blocks were used as planted, and something is definitely going wrong. It shouldn’t be the soil. One possibility is that the regrown branches above are cutting out too much sunlight. Another is that the blocks themselves are creating a hydration problem. We will grow completely different plants in there, next year.
The Zucca melons near the squash patch, though… that’s where we grew Crespo for the first time, two years ago, and giant pumpkins last year. The soil had been reworked and had manure added to it. They should have done well, and yet they didn’t. I’m not sure why. Next year, we will use that spot to grow something different.
I do still want to try growing all of these again, plus other gourds that we have seeds for. We are working on building trellis beds, but these are all supposed to produce really massive fruit, so I will likely try them in low raised beds, instead. Whether or not we try them again next year, or pause them for a year, will depend on just how many of the various raised beds we need to build, progress.
Summer and Winter Squash
I’m putting these together, but there isn’t much to say about the summer squash!
We had seeds for the same varieties we grew last year; green zucchini, yellow zucchini, yellow patty pans and Magda squash are all seeds we got from a variety pack we accidentally bought 3 of, so we’ll have seeds for these for a long time! We like all of them, too. Then there was the G-star patty pan that we grew last year, and was one of the few things that produced, in spite of the flooding. We got those seeds sent to us by mistake. A happy mistake, as we quite like them, too.
As these are shorter season varieties that we only plan to eat when they are smaller, I was going to experiment with starting a few seeds indoors, and direct sowing others. In the end, we didn’t have the space to start more seeds indoors, so they got direct sown.
Every red dot you see in the above photo marks a slug.
I’ve never seen so many slugs in my life – and we’ve lived in Victoria, BC, where the Banana slugs come out in herds, after a rainfall!
They absolutely devastated our sprouting summer squash. They did damage to the winter squash as well, but they seemed to leave the larger transplants alone more.
Ultimately, we did have a green zucchini, yellow zucchini and a yellow pattypan squash survive and actually produce some fruit. No Magda squash survived. The G-star, however, did surprisingly well; they didn’t seem to get hit by the slugs as badly, recovered very well, and had decent production.
There was the problem of only male flowers being produced, and when a female flower did finally show up, there were often no male flowers to pollinate them. So I ended up hand pollinating them with any male flowers I found on other summer squash plants.
We didn’t have a lot of summer squash to harvest, but there was at least some!
I think the biggest surprise was when they got hit by frost, but when we got more mild temperatures again, they started to recover and continue to produce!
Then there was the winter squash.
As with so many other things we started indoors, we had a really hard time with germination. Some squash and melons simply did not germinate at all, or when they finally did, the seedlings quickly died. In the above photo, you can see what was left to transplant. Just two Lady Godiva hulless seed pumpkins (we started 3 varieties of hulless seed pumpkins), two Winter Sweet (they were among those we tried last year that got flooded out), and two Boston Marrow (another from last year that got flooded). The Little Gem/Red Kuri are something we’ve grown for a couple of years now, and quite like, but this is the first time we’ve tried growing them without a trellis of some time.
More of the Honeyboat Delicata survived. This is a new variety for us, and is a variety of Delicata that is supposed to be good for storage. We’d tried Candy Roaster last year, too, but they, too, got flooded. The Pink Banana was a new one for this year.
The empty mounds got summer squash planted in them, plus another row was prepared for the rest of the summer squash, on the left of the photo.
The thing with winter squash, of course, is that there’s nothing to harvest until the end of the season!
What a difference between the plants, though.
How they did
The Pink Banana and the North Georgia Candy Roasters did excellent! I didn’t think they would, because their two rows were planted in an area that gets a lot more shade. The other winter squash were planted in rows that got much more sun, yet they were the ones that failed to thrive! Going back to what I learned in trying to figure out what happened to the Crespo squash, it looks like they actually got too much sun, while the rows that got shade for much of the day got just enough! Lesson learned!
We still managed to get small harvests out of some of the sun burnt squash. We did get to try both the Banana and Candy Roaster squash and found them delicious.
Final thoughts on summer and winter squash
When it comes to summer squash, these will remain a staple in our garden. We just have to find a way to deal with all the slugs!! We will try other varieties as we’re able – there are a few patty pan varieties I want to try, but what we have now are basic and we will keep growing them. Especially the G-Star. They seem to really thrive here, even under really horrible conditions!
With winter squash, we are still very much in the experimental stage in learning what what grows well here, and what we like. The Red Kuri/Little Gem squash are a winner – though they definitely need better growing conditions than what they got this year! The Pink Banana and Candy Roasters are both ones well worth growing again. I don’t know that we’ll bother with the hulless seed pumpkins again, though. I seem to be the only one that likes pumpkin seeds in the family! As for the other varieties of winter squash, we will try them again in different growing conditions. With the tiny fruit we got this year, we can’t really say if we like them or not, as they would not have developed their full flavour.
Next year, we will not be growing squash again in this location. They need to be rotated out. The trellis tunnel that will be built into the new mid-height raised beds we are working on will be strong enough to hold the weight of these climbing varieties, so hopefully, that’s where we’ll be planting them next year.
The Surprise Squash
We got some unexpected squash, too!
In our compost ring!
They were the biggest, healthiest squash of all! 😄 Unfortunately, we don’t really know what they are. Some looked like hulless seed pumpkins. Some looked like they might have been from some hybrid zucchini we were gifted with. We harvested them, but have yet to actually try any of them. If you look at the photo of squash in our root cellar, the two big green ones at the top are from the compost heap! Whatever they are, they are likely hybrids, or even hybrids of hybrids! 😄
We also got surprise beans in here. I left them to go to seed, and have no idea where they came from. We’ve never grown beans like those before!
It should be interesting to see what volunteers we get in our compost, next year. 😁
Melons
We were so eager to do melons again!
Two years ago, in spite of a drought, we successfully grew two types of melons, Halona and Pixie, and were looking forward to growing even more, last year.
Yeah. They were in beds that got flooded.
Total and complete loss.
This year, we hoped to be able to grow quite a bit more. We started the seeds indoors in early May.
This year, we tried the Halona and Pixie melons again, plus Sarah’s Choice, a new variety. We also tried Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon. The watermelon we tried the previous year – a short season variety, too – was among the losses.
The water melon was a loss this year, too! Zero germination. Bizarre!
The others struggled to start, too. In the end, we had only two Sarah’s Choice, and a couple of Pixia and Halona, each, none of which looked particularly strong.
These were intended to go into the new trellis bed, but that didn’t get built, so we got creative.
We have a kiddie pool we’ve been using for all sorts of things, from washing cat blankets outdoors, to harvesting potatoes out of bags into, to sifting soil into, to use elsewhere.
I made holes in the bottom and turned it into a raised bed, because the few melons we had really needed to get transplanted!
How they did
They did remarkably well! So well, we had to add more supports to the top of the makeshift trellis.
As with the winter squash, these just needed tending until the end of the season. They developed many flowers and we saw lots of little melons forming.
Unfortunately, like so many other things, they started blooming late. We did get a couple of larger melons that were fully mature, but most of them never had a chance to get to that point, even with our exceptionally long and mild fall.
This was our final harvest of all the melons, and you can see we did get some decently large ones!
The smaller ones, however, very quickly started to rot, so we didn’t get very many to eat.
Final thoughts on melons
We will continue to try and grow melons, because we really like them, but they tend to be too expensive to buy regularly. As we build more raised beds, and the trellis tunnels we are planning, we should have better growing environments for them over time.
The Halona and Pixie melons are varieties we know can grow here, so we will probably stick to those two.
We will try the watermelon again. I don’t know why they didn’t germinate; I don’t think the problem was with the seeds. It’s a short season variety developed in Saskatchewan, so it should grow here fine. I might even try direct sowing them instead of starting them indoors, to see if that makes a difference.
We will also try other varieties over time until we eventually settle on something we all really like, and can save seeds from. There are many short season varieties we can choose from!
Poppies
I almost completely forgot about these!
I really want to grow non-ornamental poppies. My mother used to grow them on the old kitchen garden, when I was a kid, and we had enough that my late brother and I would eat the seeds straight out of the dry pods, and my mother could still make filling for makowiec.
We had two varieties of bread seed poppies; one we’ve grown before, and one that is new to us. Previously, we’d grown Giant Rattle poppies, but where we grew them ended up getting highly compacted, was full of weeds, and they did not thrive, though we did get fully mature pods out of them. The other variety we got was Hungarian Blue.
As poppies reseed themselves easily, I wanted to make sure they were planted somewhere where they could be treated as a perennial, plus I also wanted to make sure the two varieties were planted well away from each other, so as not to cross pollinate.
We only got one in.
We had an area by the chain link fence where we’d first grown potatoes in bags. After the potatoes were harvested, the soil was returned to where the bags had been sitting to create a new bed. Last year, we unsuccessfully tried to grow white strawberries there. For this year, it got a thorough weeding, and then Hungarian Blue poppies were planted in it.
How they did.
At first, I thought for sure we wouldn’t get any at all. For all my efforts to remove weed roots, that’s what we got the most of. Eventually, however, poppies started to show up! Yes, some even got to fully mature, with dried pods developing.
We also had some self seeded poppies show up with the shallots. These were transplanted in a new raised bed built over where we’d grown Giant Rattle poppies before, so I thought they’d reseeded themselves and let them be. They turned out to be a variety that predates our living here! Still a bread seed poppy, so I collected seeds from those in the fall.
Final thoughts on poppies
With edible poppies available as seeds again (for a while, they were not available, because they are the source of opium), I want these to be a staple again. I don’t know what happened to the variety my mother used to grow – the ones that have come up on their own are different from the ones I remember. I’ve even found poppy seeds while cleaning up the place, but it seems my mother switched to ornamental poppies at some point. There’s no what to know what kind the seeds I’ve found are without planting them, and with how old they probably are, it’s unlikely they will germinate.
The bed where the Hungarian Blue were planted will need to be completely reworked, with the soil sifted to get out more weed roots. Then, they will be replanted there. Once the poppies themselves are established, they will choke out any weeds, themselves. Until then, we’ll have to battle the weeds for them. The soil also got quite compacted, which affected their growth as well., so we will have to amends it more.
As for the other varieties, we still need to find locations where we can plant them, and then just leave them to self seed. There are a few areas I can think of, but it will take time to take out grass and weeds and amend the soil before we can plant them.
Well, this one turned out much longer than intended! This is the last of what we grew, though.
Next time, I’ll be looking at what we intended to grow, but it just didn’t happen!
Yes, I just place our first order of seeds for next year’s garden. We might not need to order many seeds this year, considering how many we have left, but one thing we were out of completely was onions. Onions seeds only last one year, anyhow. Plus, today is the last day I can use the promo code from Maritime Gardening to get free shipping. 😁
This is what I ordered today.
I’m trying a new variety of yellow onion this year. Frontier. From the Veseys website:
Incredibly strong necks and consistent size! Frontier is a standout variety with our trial staff. Bulbs are golden, large and uniform with small necks that cure quickly. Ideal for fresh and storage markets, Frontier is long day hybrid onion with superb disease resistance. Matures in 100 days from transplant. Approx. 200 seeds/pkg.
I’m also trying a new type of shallot this year. Creme Brulee. From the website:
First Shallot AAS winner! An elongated shallot, Creme Brule has a citrusy flavour when eaten raw but when cooked, sugars are enhanced and do not leave an overpowering aftertaste. Bulbs are 4-5″ with a coppery pink skin. An attractive, easy to peel echalion, perfect for the home gardener or market grower! Matures in 95-100 days from transplant. Approx. 150 seeds/pkg.
I do still plan to try the Red Whethersfield onions again, and will probably get Red of Florence again, but those are from a different source.
Of course, I didn’t get just onions! I also got:
Yes, we will be trying to grow melons again (I’ll have a garden analysis post about this year’s melons coming up soon). We still have seeds, but I decided to get the Summer of Melons Blend. From the website:
Veseys exclusive! Best for the home gardener. This blend is the ideal solution to stretch out these beautiful summer flavours. It begins with sweet, early maturing hybrid varieties then keeps going through summer and into early fall. Maturity ranges from 75-85 days from transplant. Approx. 20 seeds/pkg.
I like having a variety, and having melons that mature at different rates – while still within our short growing season! – is bonus. It’ll also be a surprise, since the varieties included aren’t mentioned!
Veseys exclusive! Great range of colours and sizes. This exclusive Veseys blend contains a riot of shapes, sizes and colours that will bring your fall display to the next level. Some of the weirdest and wildest looking squash that we have seen in our trials. Ideal for both home and market gardeners looking for a great display without having to buy separate varieties. All are edible, and are strong vining types so they grow well together. Approx. 20-25 seeds/pkg.
I’ll have a garden analysis about our winter and summer squash, too, which was a real hit and miss situation. We do still have lots seeds from what we grew (or tried to grow) this past year. I have zero interest in having a “fall display” (who would we be displaying it for, anyhow? 😄). I like to try new varieties, but am hesitant to buy an entire package of seeds for something I’m not sure of. This way, we get just a few seeds of different varieties to try and – if they make it! – see if we like them enough to order more in the future. At some point, we’ll settle on one or two favourites and save our own seeds. Until we get to that point, we would be dealing with cross pollination, so any seeds we save as we’re experimenting would give us different results that may not be as good.
Just a small order for now. Soon, I’ll place another order for the red onions, so that we’ll have all the seeds ready to start them in January. Because, where we live, gardening starts in winter!
So this day turned out completely different than planned!
The morning was pretty routine. While doing my usual morning rounds, I did a harvest. We are dropping close to freezing tonight – every time I check the forecast, it keeps changing, but not enough to make a difference. Even if we don’t get frost tonight, the few things that are not cold hardy out there are unlikely to continue to ripen, with a few possible exceptions.
One thing I was hoping to do was get one of our few friendly female cats, probably Beep Boop, into the carrier. If I’d managed that, I would have taken her straight to our egg lady for adoption. Of course, this would be the morning when she didn’t show up! In fact, “only” 17 cats showed up this morning, which is a little unusual these days. Caramel showed up and was being friendly, but when I tried to pick her up to put her into the carrier, she would have none of that!
So I let her be and did the rest of my rounds and the harvesting.
I harvested all the remaining melons. Most of them are probably not ripe, but we won’t know for sure until we cut them open. There’s also the last couple of patty pans that were large enough to be worth harvesting.
We had only three of the purple Dragonfly peppers, and I grabbed them all. All the other peppers in the grow bags, I left. The Sweet Chocolates in the old kitchen garden had a fair number of ripe peppers, but I also harvested most of the green ones, too. There are still a few on the plants that I didn’t bother with.
I didn’t harvest the eggplant, and I hoped to be able to put up the one hot pepper in the wattle weave bed, as it seems to have the most mature peppers on it.
I also picked through the last of the ripening tomatoes and brought them in, along with the yellow onions that were curing beside them.
Once inside, I had breakfast, then started on some dishes. With the hot water tank dead, we’ve been heating up kettles of water to use for everything. I was starting to heat more water for another batch of dishes when my mother called.
I’d mentioned to her that I was taking her car in to the garage, so her first question was, how was the car? Turns out, she thought it was still at the garage. Why, I’m not sure, since we only have her car now, so I’d have no way to get home if I left it at the garage!
Once she knew it was running find, she asked what my plans for the day were…
*sigh*
Yup. Even though I ask her repeatedly if she’d need a shopping trip, every time we talk, she always tells me no, she’s fine, she doesn’t need anything – even when I try to preplan a shopping date. She refuses to, because she still has food, so she doesn’t need to. And she doesn’t want to shop before she runs out of things, because then it’ll all go bad unless she eats it all right away…
*sigh*
Honestly, I think she just likes the idea that she’s messing with my day when she does this. It’s a control thing. Of course, part of the reason we’re living here is so that I’m available to help her with this stuff, and she’s not making my brother book time off work to come over (with my sister, she goes out of her way to only call on the days she knows my sister isn’t working).
So I was soon on the road to her place, earlier than usual, as she also needed help with some household chores that are getting too hard for her to manage on her own.
I don’t know that my mother was all that happy with me today, to be honest. I helped her with her household stuff, then we sat for a bit to chat. She started going into her usual manipulative rants, and I was having none of it. At one point, she started off on how everything is so expensive, and it’s because all the stores are cheating people. I tried to explain inflation to her, but nope. It’s because all the stores are cheating people. She knows this because, years ago, someone at the grocery store helped her with her shopping, and when she checked her receipt at home, she found she had been charged for a watermelon she didn’t buy. This happened probably 10 years ago and frankly, I don’t think it happened the way she claims. The grocery store by her place prints receipts that include featured specials. One time that she went through her receipt while I was there, she thought she was charged for a pie she didn’t get, but when I looked at the receipt, I found she was looking at the featured sale on pie and thought it was part of her purchases. Or, the maybe guy made a mistake about the watermelon, and punched in the wrong code. She got mad at me for not agreeing with her, then tried to blame me for her being cheated “last week”. I’d helped her with shopping and she wanted to get a case of mushroom soup. They’d been on sale the week before, but they’d run out. There were no cases, but I found a staff member and asked. She found one for my mother in their stock room. The cheat? My mother looked at the receipt and the price was not the sale price she wanted it to be – a sale that was over already. I’d even told her it was over, but in her memory, she now thinks I told her the price was the sale price from the previous week. I never told her a price, because I never saw a price for cases, only singles. This also happened more like 2 or 3 weeks ago, not last week, as she claimed, because my brother had visited and helped her with shopping last week, not me.
Then, after going on about how this guy had cheated her over a watermelon she never bought, she turned around and tried to make excuses for our vandal, of all people. She still tells me how we all need to get along and forgive each other, yet still allows him to talk to her in spite of all he’s done, and his open expression of hatred for me in particular, not to mention blatant lies to her about me. Somehow, my siblings and I are at fault that we all don’t get along like we used to.
Things even went sideways when I made the mistake of telling her about the truck we have been trying to get financing for. This was her cue to say that my FIL, who lives on a pension in an assisted living building, should be “helping us”. She’s got it in her head that he’s got a “good pension” (whatever she things that is; I don’t care to find out), and if she can help us out, he can, too. He does help us in other ways, but when I said that, she demanded to know in what ways. I told her it was none of her business, just like his finances are none of her business. Oh, and she even tried to use the fact that she paid for the new roof as ammunition against me! We’ll be getting that one rubbed into us for the rest of her life, I’m sure. She never does anything good, without finding some way to use it as a weapon. She and our vandal are very much alike in that regard.
Things went down hill from there, and instead of rising to her bait on so many things, I pointed out that she was being psychologically abusive, and I wasn’t going to accept that. She then tried to gaslight me, and I called her on that, too. Finally, she just stopped talking and sat with her eyes closed for a few minutes, apparently praying. Then she started doing a few other things in preparation for running errands, and wouldn’t answer me when I offered to help or asked her questions.
Then we just went and did the errands, and everything settled down. We even went out for lunch part way through. I made sure to pay, because she never tips.
By the time we were done, my mother was quite tired. I did stay for a little bit of a visit after everything was put away. Since I’d gone to her place to much earlier than usual, though, I decided to do our last stock up shopping trip. I needed to go to Canadian Tire and Walmart, and her place was already half way there.
Before heading out, though, I messaged my family about the change in plans. That’s when my husband updated me on the plumber situation.
He’d called our usual guy again, and it went straight to voice mail. So, he called another company we’ve dealt with and left a message there. That company called back.
I think we know why we haven’t been hearing from the first place.
This is the time of year when everyone is getting their cottages ready for winter. Which includes draining the plumbing, so nothing freezes and bursts pipes over the winter. This second plumber is fully booked draining cottages for the next two weeks. Given how many cottages there are around the lake, every available plumber would be booked solid right now.
We are going to be without hot water for a while! Over Thanksgiving, at the very least.
I have not told my brother we don’t have hot water at the moment. I didn’t want him to worry as they go to visit their son and grandsons for Thanksgiving. If we don’t hear anything after Thanksgiving, though, I’m going to have to ask him if he can come out and install the new tank. The frustrating thing is, it’s really not a difficult thing to do. We just don’t have what we need to do it. Particularly with the electrical part of it.
Ah, well.
On that note, I headed out and did the final shopping I needed to do, and even picked up a couple of treats for Thanksgiving dinner. The only other stop was to get gas on the way home. It doesn’t look like getting the air filter and new sparkplugs done are helping with the poor mileage my mother’s car has been getting, though it does seem to be running noticeably better! Also, that tire with the slow leak they couldn’t find is still holding air, so that’s good. Mind you, it took about 3 weeks before it leaked enough to be noticeable, last time, so it’s really too soon to say, and I need to keep an eye on it.
When I got home and drove up to the house to unload, the yard was just filled with cats! All the ones that didn’t show up for breakfast were very hungry.
Beep Boop was among them.
So after everything was unloaded and the girls were putting them away, I fed the outside cats, which lured at least three of them out from under the car! The carrier was in the sun room, and Beep Boop was among the cats eating kibble in there, so I put some in the carrier, then picked her up and dropped her in through the top (I love that this carrier opens up at the top!). She immediately started eating again, so I closed it up, then messaged the egg lady to see if she was home.
She was, and eager to welcome a new cat!
So, off I went again! Beep Boop was not happy once she realized she couldn’t get out of the carrier, but she did eventually settle in for the ride.
She now has one of the chicken coops, all to herself! It’s roasty toasty in there. Food and water were already waiting for her – and she’ll have all the mice she can catch! Just getting into the coop, which has a small vestibule with some feed storage in it, we saw several mice running around. Beep Boop (who will surely be renamed!) will get to stay here for a while, and arrangements will be made to get her spayed right away. My friend’s mouse problem is so bad, she thinks she might need three more cats! So we will work on trying to get some of the other females, as she doesn’t think her one male would be happy with more males around.
By the time I got back from delivering the cat, it was getting dark. I was just able to get the eggplant and the nearest peppers covered for the night. I had a couple more covers, so I went ahead and covered the peppers in the grow bags, too. As I write this, the forecast says we will stay above freezing, but the “RealFeel” will be below freezing.
We shall see what we get for real!
Oh, and while all this was happening, I started getting messages from the cat lady. One of the last kittens will be going to her new home tomorrow. There were 17 people interested in that one tiny kitten – but none interested in the other that’s not so tiny. That one doesn’t want to leave them, anyhow, it seems. There’s also someone interested in Ghosty, but that person wants a male, and Ghosty is female. I’ll find out tomorrow, if it’s still a go. I passed on a picture of Tiny, Pom Pom and Soot Sprite to pass on – make sure to mention Soot Sprite is not up for adoption, and she’ll put the word out for them, since the tiny ones seem to have more interest.
So not only are we looking at having as many as 3 more female yard cats adopted out soon, we might have some kittens adopted out, too!
She’s also going to let me know when one of the clinics has their neuter discount day, to start getting some of the outside males done.
And now it’s almost 10pm, and I need to see about some supper! I just realized, I haven’t eaten since having lunch with my mother at noon. Nothing involving the oven, though. My daughters prepped the ripe Sweet Chocolate peppers while I was gone and now have them dehydrating in the oven.
Hopefully, tomorrow I’ll get to do the work outside I’d intended to do today!
With the popcorn harvested, I needed to find someplace to put the box cover. While removing the chicken wire, I figured out a great spot for it.
The onions had a cover simply because I had one. It made weeding impossible, but with onion tops growing through it, it couldn’t be conveniently moved aside.
Since these covers are all 9’x3′, it fits perfectly on top of the box cover. This would be an ideal set up to protect taller plants! I just used the twist ties that were holding the chicken wire to fasten the two covers together. The onion bed is basically a storage spot for them, but now I can access the onions for weeding!
And yes. Those are new squash blossoms in the compost ring in the background!
While checking the other garden beds, I had a little surprise.
The largest melon had picked itself! 😆
I even found a pattypan large enough to harvest.
That’s the size we enjoy the patty pans best.
My daughter gets back from house sitting soon. We will save tasting the melon for when she gets back. 💚
In other things…
When feeding the outside cats, I tried to do a head count. It takes a while for them to all show up. I eventually counted thirty – then three more kittens ran into the yard!
After my rounds were done, I did a dump run. The car was already loaded, because when I tried to do it 2 days ago, it was closed.
I was glad to be able to air out the car, later!
As I was returning to the house, I spotted Nosencrantz slinking away from the kibble under the shrine, and disappear behind the pump shack. She is looking big and fluffy, and is acting incredibly shy. I wish I knew why! At least we know she’s still around.
Now, if only Butterscotch and Marlee would show up!
The Re-Farmer 