melons

Kitty status and morning in the garden

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First, I have heard about how the adopted ladies are doing. They are recovering well at the Cat Lady’s home for now. The Phantom is being an absolute, loving joy. The kitten is also being really sweet.

Decimus is hissing and spitting and not a happy camper, but doing well, health wise! They have several catios, though, so they were able to let her go “outside” to get some fresh air.

My daughter and I went outside with the flashlight last night. Still no sign of Marlee or Butterscotch. We did spot a cat in the driveway that turned out to be Nosencrantz. Once my daughter started walking towards her, though, she ran off into the old hay yard.

If we’ve seen her, chances are pretty good the other two are okay, too.

Right?

As for the remaining cats in the isolation ward, the kittens are doing just fine, though getting very active and destructive! TTT spends most of her time in her napping cave in my closet, but she sure knows when the food is coming out!

She has also continued to make a mess on the puppy pads next to the litter box under my desk.

*sigh*

At least it’s on a puppy pad, and not my bed or the carpet.

She is also remarkably regular. She always goes in the same place, and even goes at almost the same time! I was awakened by the rustling of the puppy pad being dug into this morning. I found it was very wet and changed it, then went back to bed. Maybe an hour later, I was again awakened by that familiar rustling sound, and she’d dropped a load this time. Again, thankfully, on the puppy pad and an easy clean up, but I find it interesting that she has such a consistent habit of time and location!

Now, if she would just use that litter box, instead. The kittens are sure liking it. 😕

This morning, as I started getting the kibble ready for the outside cats, I spotted the stranger cat, inside the sun room!

For a stranger cat, it’s acting right at home.

S/He was even sharing a food bowl with Beep Boop and the friendly black and white kitten.

I feel I should know this cat. The face looks familiar. In fact, the face makes me think of Potato Beetle. The markings on the sides, though, are not at all familiar.

Could this be a yard kitten from last year that took off before we became familiar with it, only to come back now? It’s possible, but I don’t remember seeing a kitten with markings like that last year. Mind you, it might also be a slightly older cat, too. I still can’t come close to it, though.

After finishing my rounds, I noticed the bitty kitties around with Octomom (whose name is actually Slick, but I kept forgetting that). They were watching me, so I got out the lure – just some jute twine tied to a stake.

This adorable ball of fluff took the bait and started trying to catch the end of the twine. I was actually able to get hold of it and pick it up. It did not like that, though! I pet it for a bit, but as I was trying to put it back down again, it chomped on my fingers and left me bleeding.

It was worth it.

I didn’t intend to harvest anything this morning, though I did end up picking some Red Swan beans and a couple of yellow patty pans. Mostly, I was making sure everything was doing well.

While checking the Crespo squash, I spotted a female flower! There have been so few of those this year. Wild that one should show up so late.

Also, that’s 2 bees in there, one on top of the other!

I decided to hand pollinated anyway, just in case, so I went looking for one of the many male flowers that was open and found this.

So nice to see!

I picked a different one to hand pollinate the single female flower. One of the bees flew off, but the other stayed, even as I moved around the male flower stamen, then broke it off and left it in the flower, so the bee could do the rest.

This next slide show is the first time I’ve been able to upload a slide show and have every single photo work! After this, I had to do one photo at a time, because every group upload was thoroughly corrupted.

I really, really hope we have a long mild fall, because we suddenly have SO many new melons forming, along with the two big ones. The vines are so mixed up, there’s no way to tell which variety is which right now. There are many more female flowers and tiny melons that forming. If the weather holds, we might have a bumper crop!

Even the winter squash is seeing an increase. For example…

This is one of two Boston Marrow vines. Both had a single squash starting to form, but the one on this plant suddenly started to rot away. You can even see it in the photo. I broke it off but left it to break down where it was.

Now there are three female flowers blooming – and not a single male flower to be seen! At least not another Boston Marrow male flower. I ended up hand pollinating them with a nearby North Georgia Candy Roaster. With that combination, if we actually get something to harvest, I’d want to save the seeds. That sounds like it would make an interesting hybrid!

Speaking of which…

The candy roasters are doing really, really well. Check out this big beast of a squash!

I noticed a few small squash that were being eaten by slugs, but they seem to be leaving the big ones alone. Likely because the skins are harder.

When I saw an open flower with what I thought might be another bee in it, I found several slugs, isntead.

I picked he flower and stepped on it. Slugs have been such a problem this year!

The pink bananas are also doing very well. Not only are there a lot of huge squash like this, but lots of smaller ones, plus they are still blooming and producing both male and female flowers!

I noticed that one of the Honeyboat Delicata squash that hadn’t even bloomed all year, suddenly has both male and female flowers budding. Even the Winter Sweet plant that had nothing going on – the other one has a single developing squash – suddenly had a female flower blooming! I had to use another type of winter squash to hand pollinate it, though.

We’re at the end of August, though. Average first frost date is September 10. Long range forecast says we should have a high of 23C/73F that day, with a low of 13C/55F. In fact, if the monthly long range forecast is right, we won’t see frost until near the end of October. If that holds true (thanks to El Nino!), that will another 50 days or so to our growing season! That would make a huge, positive difference for the garden.

As for today, there’s a limited amount of work I can do outside right now. We’ve got high winds today. We’ve had predictions for everything from a thunderstorm this afternoon, to rain this morning (we didn’t get any), so rain overnight, to no rain at all.

This morning, when I saw the predictions for a storm, I checked the radar. I would see the system coming our way but, sure enough, by the time it reached our area it dissipated and split up around our weird “climate bubble”.

Which works out. We’ve decided to do my husband’s birthday dinner today, and he asked for take out pizza from a specific restaurant in town. He didn’t get his prescriptions delivered yesterday, as they were missing something, but it’ll be ready today, so I’ll be picking those up first, plus hitting the grocery store for a few things, before picking up the pizzas – which my daughter is kindly paying for as her birthday gift! My husband’s main disability payment came in today and normally I’d be going into the city for another stock up shopping trip, but I’ll do that tomorrow, I think.

Meanwhile, I’m going to be watching the trees outside our windows closely, in case another one comes down in the wind!

The Re-Farmer

Trying to get things done

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It was supposed to start getting cooler today. I guess a high of 28C/82F is “cooler” than a high of 30C/86F, but it sure doesn’t feel that way. As I write this, it’s 26C/79F and I’ve been driven inside by the heat.

My daughters headed out much earlier in the day. They took care of feeding the outside cats before clearing the area we will be planting the saffron crocuses when they come in, and pruning away some of the dead, overhanging branches. They also fought with that last carport support for me. They couldn’t get it completely together, but it’s close enough that it’ll work. For all the trouble it is to put it together, it’s almost as difficult to take it apart, too.

Thanks to them, I was able to actually sleep in a bit. At least as much as the kittens would let me! 😁 I even had breakfast before going outside for a change! In the slow cooker last night, I put in a whole bunch of our own garden vegetables – both green and yellow patty pan squash, a yellow zucchini, green and yellow bush beans, two massive cloves of garlic – that largest bulb we had that had to be used because it was starting to split apart was made up of only 4 cloves! – along with a family size package of ground beef, browned, and two cans of crushed tomatoes, plus salt and pepper for seasoning. It was set to low for 8 hours. My husband and I both had it for breakfast, and it was quite good. What we don’t eat today will be frozen in individual portions for heat and eat meals.

Here are some things from the garden from this morning.

The mystery squash are starting to show patterning. They almost look like those cross pollinated zucchini we were given last year, but the plant is a vine type, not a bush type.

The mesh covered bed was something I did last night, while doing my evening rounds. I had noticed the grass mulch in between the rows were getting spread out to the point of covering the seedlings and starting to kill them. Last night, I saw the culprits in action. Robins! They’re just digging around in the garden bed and spreading the grass clippings. So I dug one of the rolls of mosquito netting out of the garden shed to lay over the bed.

Then I put it back and got a different roll that was long enough to cover the bed. 😄

This should protect the seedlings from the grasshoppers, too.

I was seeing lots of pollinators today. The one in the photo actually seemed to be stuck in the flower, so I moved off a leaf that was pressing into it, and it eventually crawled out, then stopped for a rest! Though there were lots of pollinators, I still hand pollinated the open female squash blossoms I found, just to be on the safe side. I’m so happy to be seeing so many of them!

I got a picture this morning, of some modifications I did to the melon bed last night. I added more cross pieces closer to the top, then strung twine around it for the vines to grow. The metal pieces I used were longer, so I decided to take advantage of that and strung twine to the ends as well. We’ve been regularly trying to train the vines to keep climbing upwards, so things are more open below, for more air circulation, light, pollinator access. The melons are all blooming like crazy right now, and I’m finding lots of female flowers! Because this bed it so densely plants, I’m leaving it to the insects to pollinate. 😁

Last of all, we have our very first harvest of ripe Spoon tomatoes!

After checking out all the garden beds, I started to work on the carport thingy. I moved the whole thing to where it’s going to be set up, then tried to stand it up. My thought was that, if I could get at least the first supports set up on the rebar stakes hammered into the ground, setting up the rest of them will get easier and easier.

Which probably would have been true, if I could set up that first set of supports at all!

I got one end over a piece of rebar (you can see some of them in the grass; they’re a sort of aquamarine colour), but the other end twisted in another direction, and simply would not twice back again. I brought the other ones closer and, of course, one of the side pieces popped off the middle piece. I was able to push the canopy up to access it and put it together, but it’s a looser join and it won’t take much for it to come apart again. Moving more pieces around, I’m pretty sure another side piece popped off.

Clearly, this wasn’t going to be a single person job. When both girls are available at the same time, we’ll work on it together.

With that job having to be set aside, I checked out where the crocus are going to be planted, then decided to take down part of a dead tree. As much as I could, using the battery operated pruner/mini chainsaw. There’s one fairly large tree that has finally died, but the main trunk will need a full chainsaw to cut it down.

I also pruned off a large branch from on of the ornamental crabapple trees in the old kitchen garden. I got as far as cutting the branch into smaller chunks, but that was as far as I could handle. It wasn’t quite full sun where I was working, but enough to make me really feel the heat! So those branches will be cleared away later in the day.

Short range forecast shows temperatures will continue to cool down slightly. I look forward to being able to stay outside longer and actually finish the jobs I start!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: last seed starts!

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First, something pretty!

There are quite a few crocus buds popping up, and we’re also seeing lots of grape hyacinth greens emerging! Too early for the flower stalks to start forming, but the leaves come up in distinct little clusters that are easy to identify, compared to the grass and weeds that are in the same area. I’m looking forward to when the crocuses and hyacinths spread enough to start choking out the weeds and grass where they’ve been planted!

Last night, I started hydrating the seed trays with the Jiffy pellets, then headed into town this morning to pick up some more seed starting mix for the other tray.

There wasn’t any.

I tried a few places and found lots of potting mix, but no seed starting mix. I wasn’t willing to drive to another town, so I ended up getting more of the small trays with Jiffy Pellets in them. I did pick up a few bags of manure, though. Two of composted cow’s manure with peat, and two more of composted sheep’s manure with compost. These will be good for top dressing some of the beds, and for the trees we’ll be transplanting when they come in next week.

When I got home, I first had to start new trays hydrating, then I could work on the ones that were ready.

I had 5 trays, each with 12 pellets in them. I decided to do two different seeds in each tray, for a total of 20 new seed starts. Hopefully, we’ll have a nice, high germination rate, since each pellet got only one seed each.

These are what I chose for the first batch.

For melons, I’ve got the Sarah’s Choice, a new variety, Halona and Pixie, which we’ve successfully grown two years ago, and Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon, also new. Our attempt to grow melons last year was a complete failure, due to flooding. There are the two types of cucumber; Lemon, which we got as a freebie, and Eureka, a dual purpose variety for both fresh eating and canning. Then there are the winter squash: Pink Banana, North Georgia Candy Roaster, Honeyboat Delicata and Little Gem (Red Kuri). We tried the Candy Roaster last year, but they got drowned out. This will be our third year growing the Red Kuri squash, which survived last year because we planted them in a completely different location. I thought I’d ordered a new packet of those, but couldn’t find it. I ended up finishing off the few seeds in this older packet, then used seeds we’d saved ourselves from the first year we grew them.

I rearranged things a bit in the sun room to make room for these on the makeshift table. Later on, I’ll move the mini-greenhouse frame to the sun room to have more space for the trays.

As for the second batch, it will have:

The three varieties of hulless pumpkins, Kakai, Lady Godiva and Styrian, that we also grew last year. We’ve been slowly going through the ones we harvested last year – yes, we still have some! – but I lost track of two varieties that looked alike, so I haven’t been able to keep track of which seeds we like best. There is more winter squash: Red Warty Thing is new, while Boston Marrow and Winter Sweet were among those that got drowned out last year, though the Boston Marrow did start to recover somewhat. I’ve got more gourds, too. We started the Canteen gourd too early last year, and they were starting to bloom before we could transplant them, so they are being started later this year. Hopefully, they will actually get a chance to produce fruit this year. The Yakteen gourd transplants got killed off along with the melons, during our terrible, no-good growing year last year, and I hope to be able to actually try some this year. The Ozark Nest Egg and Apple gourds seemed to do well last year. We still have some Ozark Nest Egg gourds curing. The Apple gourds actually recovered rather well from the terrible conditions the squash were all hit with last year, and were producing quite a lot of gourds, but it was too late in the season by then. We were hit by frost before they could fully mature. I’m hoping we’ll have a better year this year.

I was tempted, but decided against growing the Tennessee Dancing gourd again this year. They are fun and do well, but we just have too many things going – and that’s not even considering what needs to be direct sown!

The new trays are being hydrated now. I’ve got another 5 going, though I have a spare available to hydrate, just in case. Hopefully, I’ll be able to plant into them tonight, and things can be moved into the sun room right away.

Once the last seeds are started, it’s back to working outside! I’ve still got the one last bed to work on in the old kitchen garden, then we need to build at least one trellis tunnel, with the raised beds that will be part of it, and prepare existing beds for planting, as well as grow bags for the potatoes, and containers for things like the lemongrass, some of the peppers and probably the eggplant as well.

Lots to do, and just a few weeks left to do them!

I’m so happy being able to get outside and get work done again!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: melon patches

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It’s been a very long, hot day today, and we got a lot done in the garden!

My first priority was to get the melons transplanted, as they were getting too crowded in their toilet paper tube pots and starting to yellow and weaken. We had 100% germination on all but the watermelon, but one seedling had already simply withered away.

The only place we really had for these was in the deep straw mulched beds that have potatoes planted in them. The potatoes are in the north side of the beds, with one having slightly less room than the other.

I had 4 varieties of melons with just 4 seedling each, so they went into the bed that was slightly smaller.

The Zucca melon, which is actually a gourd and can grow extremely large, is planted on the far right in this photo. For the longest time, we had only one seedling of the Zucca. A second one germinated late, and I was happy with that. Then, less than a week ago, the law two germinated! As they grow, we can train the plants out into the open area beside the bed, where we hope they will shade the grass and weeds. I’ll be going over the area with the weed trimmer, working to cut things as close to the ground as possible, which will help, too.

The other three varieties are from grocery store melons. One, on the far left, is Crenshaw melon. The other two, I lost the names off. Both are cantaloupe type melons. On the label for the jar of seeds, I’d made note that one of the (right of centre) had a nice crisp texture. The other (left of centre) has only 3 seedlings. There’s a prepared space to plant something, if we want.

To plant these, I dug my way through the straw to the carboard, which was still nice and damp. After cutting through the cardboard, I dug out a small hole and loosened the soil, then drilled down into the holes with the hose on the jet setting. Each hole then got a spade full of sifted garden soil (and any worms that hitched a ride) before the melons were finally planted. The seedlings aren’t particularly large, and in the deep mulch, they practically disappear!

This bed is slightly larger. I started 8 Halona melons and 8 Kaho watermelons from seed, so I prepped two rows of four, just like the other bed, with more space in between for a path.

The watermelons were much like the Zucca… some germinated early, some just recently. Of the 8 seeds, there were 5 seedlings, but I went ahead and planted all 8, just in case the remaining seeds still germinated.

Getting these in took quite a while, though I think most of the time was spent sifting the weed roots out of the garden soil. It took two wheelbarrow loads of sifted soil to fill all the holes, with a bit left over.

I was returning the wheelbarrow to the pile of soil for my daughter to use when planting the last of the trees, when I had a bit of of a surprise. There was a car in the driveway, and a woman had just climbed the gate to get in. !!! She turned out to be with the electric company to do a regular maintenance check on our meter. They do it about once every year or two. The startling part was, from a distance, she looked just like my sister! :-D

I’m quite happy to have gotten the melons in. I don’t know that they’ll all survive – at least one might not make it, as it had so few roots, it fell out of its pot as I tired to remove them from the small bin they were in. Before heading in for lunch, I watered all the other transplants, and so far, nothing looks like they are suffering transplant shock.

After that, I took a break from the heat (!!!) before moving on to the next project, which I will write about in my next post. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: thinning and potting up

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A lot of the squash in the big aquarium greenhouse were getting too big for their britches, so it was time to thin them out and pot them up!

The Giant Pumpkins were easy enough to do; there’s just one plant per biodegradable pot, so they just got put into bigger biodegradable pots with little issue.

With the others, we thinned by division. We had only a few of the larger biodegradable pots left, so the biggest ones were transplanted into those. After that, they went into the red Solo cups. Then they all went into the sun room.

Once those were done, we went through the mini-greenhouse and moved the remaining eggplants and peppers to the sun room as well. A couple of them got thinned by division, too.

These two bins are all winter squash, the giant pumpkins and hulless pumpkins, under the bright shop light.

The gourds that were already in the sun room joined more squash and Apple gourds in a bin.

The peppers that survived the Great Cat Crush, as well as replacement starts of peppers and eggplants, got moved into the window shelf.

Back in the big aquarium greenhouse, there is now more room to space things out. The melons were looking leggy, so I put something under the bin they’re in to raise them closer to the light. There’s still just one Zucca melon sprouted (the big one in the foreground).

There are still some smaller squash and gourds on the heat mat. The Yakteen gourds have not germinated yet. I tried to get a photo, but the camera decided to focus on the aquarium frame instead of the plants. LOL

In the mini-greenhouse, there are still the Chocolate Cherry and Yellow Pear tomatoes, and the ground cherries. With more space available, they’re now all spread out to get maximum light and air flow.

It’s always a risk to pot up things like squash. Once the new bins were in the sun room, water was added to the bottoms to let them absorb more moisture from below; particularly the biodegradable pots, so the pots themselves wouldn’t wick moisture out of the soil and away from the roots. I left the shop light on all night, to hopefully give them the energy they needed to handle the changes.

As of this morning, everything looked pretty much as I left them. Nothing was drooping or otherwise showing signs of stress from being divided and potted up. So far so good!

In about a week or two, we will start hardening off the transplants. By then, everything that’s in the aquarium greenhouse and the mini-greenhouse should be moved to the sun room, with the tomatoes divided and potted up.

If all goes well, we should have most, if not all, or cold tolerant seeds direct sown outside by the end of the month, too.

It feels so good to finally be able to move ahead with the gardening!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: last seed starts? Winter squash and cucumber

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Today is 4 weeks from our average last frost date. We started some more seeds indoors, but I’m not sure if these will be our last ones or not.

But first, some re-arranging had to be done.

I moved more pots out of the mini-greenhouse and into the sun room. The mini-greenhouse is now about half empty.

The last of the tomatoes were moved out; these are almost all the Sophie’s Choice tomatoes and, I think, one last Cup of Moldova paste tomato. There was room in the bin, so I added the peppers I’d brought over yesterday. The larger bin with the larger tomatoes and the Canteen gourds got moved so this one could be closer to the window and not get overshadowed by the larger bin.

The re-started luffa, and ozark nest egg gourds, were brought over, too. The plants in the cups are the ones I thinned out from the larger, stronger pepper plants, yesterday. It doesn’t look like they’ll make it, but you never know.

The Red Baron bunching onions got moved out of the big aquarium greenhouse – and got a hair cut.

Then it was time to start planting.

We had only three seeds to start; two types of shorter season winter squash that we grew last year, and cucumber. For these, I used planting trays the same size that come with the Jiffy Pellets, but with 4 sets of 8 square Jiffy pots in them.

With the Little Gem (Red Kuri) seeds, we picked 8 seeds that looked the best, for 1 seed per square. We still have seeds left over, plus I also still have the seeds we saved from last year. The Teddy squash had only 10 seeds left, so we planted all of them, with a couple of squares having 2 seeds. The seeds got scarified and briefly soaked while the squares were filled with potting mix. With the cumber, we just planted 1 seed per pot, in half the tray, so we have plenty of those left over.

For all the re-arranging, we still couldn’t put the tray in the big aquarium greenhouse on the warming mat, because we still needed to use it for other things. With how warm the sun room is, though, the new tray went straight there!

Red Kuri and Teddy winter squash
Eureka cucumber

I didn’t want them drying out too quickly, plus the overnight temperatures are still a bit of a concern. The tray didn’t come with a dome, so I improvised.

Two small bin lids cover the ends, while a small big is deep enough to fit over the labels. :-D

That done, the girls and I headed outside to check things out, and we were absolutely thrilled to find so many crocuses blooming!

Many of them are blooming in clusters like this. Each one of those clusters was a single flower, last year. I just love how they are already spreading!

There are more grape hyacinth coming up, though they are very hard to see. We also spotted wild strawberry leaves in the patch under a dead tree that we’ve framed with branches to make sure they don’t get accidentally mowed.

My younger daughter wanted to check her raspberries that had such a rough start last year. One of them has tiny new leaves coming up at the base! Hopefully, both will have survived the winter.

Once back inside, I fussed a bit more with the big aquarium greenhouse.

I’d already rotated the bin with the melons in it; the Zucca melon is now in the foreground and the watermelon in the back. The Chocolate Cherry and Yellow Pear tomatoes were moved to the mini-greenhouse, while the larger pumpkins got moved to take their place. Some of them were getting too close to the light fixture, and this tray gives them more head room.

A few remained on the warming tray, but moving so many post out freed up just enough room…

… to move the other winter squash out of the small aquarium greenhouse and put them on the warming mat. Hopefully, that will help them germinate sooner.

I have refills of those square pots that fit in the trays like the one on the warming mat. I find myself waffling back and forth over starting the summer squash in them. We have 5 types. These have a short enough season that I could get away with direct sowing. I could leave them be, but I’ve never NOT started summer squash indoors, so I find myself really wanted to start some of them!

If I do start them, it would have to be very soon, and they’ll be going straight into the sun room, too.

What do you think? Should I try go for it, or leave them?

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: an explosion of seedlings!

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We are just so incredibly excited right now! We’ve got an absolute explosion of seeds germinating!

There still aren’t any watermelons yet, but if you look at the back of the second picture, you can see our first Zucca melon has germinated!

Since taking these pictures this morning, the seedlings have gotten notably bigger, and are starting to lean inwards. We’re going to have to rotate the bin.

I’m just thrilled with how fast the hulless pumpkins are coming up. Since taking this photo, the ones in front are fully emerged.

It’s out of focus in the back, but you can see that there are roots coming through the pot with the Giant Pumpkin. I have larger biodegradable pots, still, so that will get potted up soon, with no root disruption.

I’m not sure what’s going on with these two dancing gourds. The leaves look almost as if they’ve been chewed on. They haven’t. That’s just how they emerged.

That’s okay. We have more. The seedling you can see just starting to break ground next to the dancing gourd already up is now fully emerged from the soil – as is the Giant Pumpkin next to it!

In the pots with the Baby Pam pumpkins, you can see the soil starting to lift and split. Since taking the photo this morning, seedlings have fully emerged, not only there, but in the Kakai pumpkin pot next to them! Even in the back corner, it looks like the Apple gourds are starting to germinate. Only the Yakteen gourds haven’t shown signs of germinating, but the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if I checked them this evening, and found something there. :-D

The tomatoes and bunching onions haven’t changed a lot, though. Which is not a problem. They just suddenly seem like they’re growing slowly, compared to everything else exploding around them! :-D

I don’t know why I’m so much more excited about these, than anything else we’ve started so far. I’m not even sure where we’ll be planting these, exactly. More of a vague notion of where we want them, since we’ll be taking advantage of the large leaves of many of our squash to shade out weeds and reclaim parts of the old garden area.

Speaking of the old garden area, here’s how it looked this morning.

This is the view from the fence line. I’m still not even trying to get to the sign cam through the garden. Quite a lot of the snow has melted away, and the area by the squash tunnel (which will be used for pole beans this year) is pretty clear.

I can’t say the same for the areas closer to the house. There’s still deep snow stretching from end to end. The low raised beds are starting to emerge from the snow, but we just can’t get at them yet, any more than I get get to the sign cam.

I checked on a few other things this morning, like the haskap bushes.

The male haskap, which is the largest of them, has been deer damaged, but you can see that leaf buds are emerging.

The female haskap that was planted at the same time as the male has been struggling. It never leafed out or bloomed at the same time as the male. I do see tiny leaf buds, though, so hopefully, it will do better this year – in spite of the deer damage it also has!

The new female haskap we planted is a lot smaller, and seems to have escaped the notice of the deer!

After I got back from town today, and my daughter helped me unload the van – I was finally able to drive right up to the house! – we went around to check on her flowers. There are more irises and daffodils emerging along the old kitchen garden, and more tulips coming up among the nearby trees. We were able to spot more grape hyacinth coming up, too. I had mentioned the snow crocus flower buds I saw yesterday, so we checked those out, too.

Some of them have actually opened, since this morning! There were a few more I couldn’t get good pictures of, completely in water, but still managing.

After things being such a disaster with the tulips, irises and daffodils last year – the first growing season for all the corms and bulbs – we all thought for sure they were a loss. It just didn’t seem they would have managed to store enough energy in their bulbs to survive the winter, never mind spread. Yet that’s exactly what it looks like they’re doing.

My younger daughter is just beyond thrilled. These were her babies! :-D

Spring has been slow in coming this year, but there are finally things growing – and blooming!

Soon, there should be more. The beds in the old kitchen garden are thawed out enough that we can start planting some cool weather crops right now! We’ll have to go through the seeds for direct sowing, and see what we should start first. Some say to plant “as soon as the ground can be worked” while others say things like “plant a week before last frost date”.

But first, we need to prep the sun room some more, so we have space to lay out the plants that are too tall to fit in the growing shelves.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden; new sprouts, indoors and out

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While doing my morning rounds today, I made a point of visiting the old kitchen garden. The girls had gone out to see the sprouting crocuses and tulips yesterday, and checked out the side of the old kitchen garden, where they had planted irises and daffodils. We have some of both coming up!

They took some scrap boards and lay them on the ground outside where the seedlings are, to make sure no one accidentally walks too close to the new sprigs. These had done so poorly last year, only partly due to the drought, so we’re really amazing to find they survived.

Also in the old kitchen garden, I checked the rhubarb. One patch is next to where the irises and daffodils are planted.

It looks like something has been eating them! Rhubarb leaves are toxic, but is that true of emerging leaf buds? I don’t know, but these have been chewed on.

The other patch is on the opposite side of the garden.

I moved some snow to uncover the emerging rhubarb on the right. Some of the ones on the left were chewed on, too.

Very strange.

More snow had melted away in the area we planted grape hyacinth, so I checked there, too.

Yes! There are some grape hyacinths sprouting! I’m so excited about these. I just love grape hyacinths. :-)

More of the area the crocuses were planted is snow free, too, so I checked that out.

Some snow crocuses are actually showing flower buds! They’re barely out of the ground, yet, and already trying to bloom! Awesome!

Things are sprouting like crazy in the big aquarium greenhouse, too.

Just look at all those melons sprouting! Only the Halona melons are from purchased seed. The rest are seeds saved from grocery store melons.

The toilet paper tube pots were supposed to get one seed each, but I see an extra Halona melon seed snuck in. :-D

Only the watermelon and the Zucca melon, which is a type of birdhouse gourd, have not had any seeds germinating yet.

Meanwhile…

We now have a second Tennessee Dancing Gourd sprouting, and two types of hulless pumpkins. Last night, there was one Kakai in the back) and one Lady Godiva (in the foreground), but this morning, another Lady Godiva sprout exploded out of the soil.

I am so looking forward to seeing how these turn out!

We have just a few more things to start indoors, and that should be done soon.

If all goes well, we’ll be direct sowing into the garden in a few weeks, with cold hardy seeds that can be sown before last frost.

I can hardly wait. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: melons, melons and more… gourd?

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We’ve been keeping a close eye on the weather, as the Colorado Low continues to push northwards. We’ve had a few short downpours and high winds from the north, with milder rain continuing throughout the day. The forecasts are still saying it will turn to snow in our area overnight, but that there will be almost no accumulation, as it’s expected to melt on contact.

Which means there’s water leaking from the sunroom ceiling, and there is water starting to seep through the concrete in the old basement. Oddly, it’s puddling on the north side, not the south, where it usually gets damp first. I’ve got the blower going to try and dry things a bit. So far, the water in the sump pump reservoir doesn’t seem to be increasing yet.

A perfect day to start more seeds!

Here we have the purchased seeds. The Zucca melon is actually a gourd. It can grow to prodigious size, with 130 days to maturity, but when they’re young they can be picked and eaten like zucchini. The Halona melon seeds are left over from last year. We do have some saved seeds, but I decided to use up seeds from last year, instead. The Kaho watermelon is a rare, yellow fleshed variety we wanted to try, and hopefully save seeds from.

Then there are the other seeds we saved from grocery store melons. One has the sticker from the melon itself, so I know the name of it; Crenshaw. With the other two, the stickers were lost, and I couldn’t remember what they were. I do remember the one on the right had a wonderful, crisp texture to it.

After deciding how many of each I would plant, I scarified the larger seeds, then set them all to soak while the pots were prepared.

I was originally going to put these in the little biodegradable Jiffy pots, with several seeds per pot, but decided against that. I decided to use more toilet paper tube pots, with one seed each, in one of the small bins.

The tubes I had left were a smaller size than the ones we used for the kulli corn, so they wobbled around more in the bin. After deciding how many of each type I would plant, I cut up a couple of disposable plates we happen to have. Several pieces were used as dividers between the different types, then leftover edge pieces were tucked along one side to hold all the tubes in place.

After shifting the Solo cup pots to make room, the bin fit quite nicely beside them. I decided to plant 8 each of the Kaho watermelon and the Halona melon, then 4 each of the others. Hopefully, we’ll have a good germination rate and have lots of melons this year, but honestly, I’ll be happy if we get only one of each. What was that poem again?

Four seeds
In a row
One for the rook
One for the crow
One to die and
One to grow

Thankfully, we don’t need to worry about rooks and crows when starting indoors. Just cats.

The Re-Farmer

First ice, last winter squash and melons

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Thanks to my husband being up at ungodly hours and feeding the outside cats for me, I didn’t have to head out for my morning rounds until things had started to warm up a bit. Even so, I found ice!

We keep a storage bin with tools and various handy things at the far-flung garden beds. It’s in the shade of the rain barrel (which we no longer fill; it has only enough water to keep it from blowing away), and the rain water that had collected on its lid had a layer of ice on it!

The reason I needed to go into the bin was to get a knife. It was time to collect the few remaining winter squash and melons.

The mutant Red Kuri has probably been ripe for a while, and just the outer skin was getting more time to thicken. The smaller one hasn’t reached its mature colour yet. The larger melons are the Pixies. Their vines died off ages ago, but I still had to cut them free!

The two surviving Teddy squash are smaller than they would have been under more optimal conditions, but from what I’ve read about their mature size, not by much. I do think they actually did get a chance to ripen.

The last two Halona melons! They got to this size, and just stopped growing. They are probably not edible, but who knows?

I figure we’ll be cutting into these as soon as we can. I think the winter squash, at least, will be something we can eat, and we’ll want to do that right away. The Pixie melons should probably be fine. Those little Halonas, though… I suspect they will find their way into the compost!

We’re supposed to get a really warm day tomorrow – 18C/64F!! – then back to chilly, but still mild, temperatures. It should be at least a week before we potentially get rain again, then mild for the rest of October. That will give us plenty of time to do more wood chipping, pull of the spent plants, and work on the high raised bed some more. I plan to include garden material among the layers when filling the high raised bed. Every little bit will help!

Yesterday, I consulted with my brother about a job that needs to be done. The old chicken coop – a log building that was a summer kitchen when my parents first acquired the farm – has a corrugated metal roof that was laid over the original wood shingles. A tree had been allowed to grow next to it and, in high winds, the branches had torn away a section of the metal sheets. I cut away the tree last year, so at least there is no new damage from the branches.

This building is still salvageable, but the exposed wood roof needs to be covered, or it’ll end up collapsing like the others. The metal pieces that got torn off are pretty damaged, and I couldn’t even find all of them. There was another building next to the barn with the same type of corrugated metal roof. It collapsed long ago, so the remains of the roof are almost on the ground. It still has several pieces that are bent to fit over the peak of the roof, so I should be able to salvage those, as well as some other pieces, to cover the old chicken coop roof.

The problem is getting up there. I don’t think that roof can hold a person’s weight anymore. Plus, it would be pretty dangerous to try and use a ladder around there. The ideal thing would be to have scaffolding. My brother told me that there used to be scaffolding alongside the building my parents’ stuff is now stored in. I was pretty sure what I would find, but this morning I went to take another look, just to confirm.

No scaffolding.

Something else that disappeared before we moved out here.

*sigh*

My parents ran a fully equipped and functioning farm until their retirement. Sure, it was just two sticks ahead of the stone ages, but as my late brother prepared to take it over, he brought all sorts of supplies and equipment. I’d say it was more like three or four sticks ahead of the stone ages before he died. Now, it’s like I’m down to just one stick ahead of the stone ages. I have fewer tools and resources available now, than when I was a kid and we still didn’t have running water or an indoor bathroom.

It makes taking care of and improving this place, very frustrating!

Ah, well. We make do with what we have. Perhaps, with our vandal taking me to court over the remaining junk, a judge will see fit to order him to return what he took, or pay my mother and brother back for what can no longer be returned. One can dream!

The Re-Farmer