Our 2025 Garden analysis: transplants

December 8, 2025December 7, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

In my last post, I talked about the winter sowing we did. A definite head start, with a short growing season like ours. Still, things needed to be started indoors, too.

We “lost” a lot of beds that would have been available for transplanting to winter sowing, which limited how much we could start indoors. We also had some re-arrangements in the house that meant I could no longer use the living room, and the aquarium greenhouses, to start seeds indoors.

I had to use our basement.

Not the old basement, which is actually pretty warm. The “new” basement, which has more space, but is pretty darn chilly!

Here are a series of videos I made of our seed starting sessions, beginning with the things that needed the most time.

For winter squash, we went with four types. Baked Potato, Mashed Potato, Sunshine and Arikara – all new varieties for us. The Arikara squash are a rare variety, so I particularly wanted to grow them for seed.

Next on the list where peppers.

This year, we went with a Sweetie Snack Mix with orange, red and yellow mini bell peppers for my family to snack on. We’re still in the “let’s find a variety we really like” stage, and trying new things.

Pre-germinating seeds has been another game changer for us. We’ve had years were we’ve planted and replanted things several times before getting germination. This way, only seeds that have already germinated get planted, for a much higher success rate.

This year, we also got a portable greenhouse, so we could start taking the transplants outdoors earlier – mostly because of space issues – and to make it easier to harden them off when the time came.

In the following video, it first shows the kitchen garden winter sown bed getting its own little greenhouse cover, and then the assembled portable greenhouse.

By the end of it, you could already see we were having issues, as the cover started to tear, even as we were putting it on!

The next seeds to pre-germinate were tomatoes.

This year, after going over our seeds with my daughters, we went with four varieties. The Black Beauty and Chocolate Cherry, we’ve grown successfully before, and the family enjoys them. New was the Sub Arctic Plenty. These are a super short season variety that we could technically start outdoors, since they are supposed to mature in less than two months, but they got started indoors, too. Last of all were the Spoon tomatoes. Those were mostly for me, as they’re the only tomato I can eat fresh without gagging (I’ve since learned this is a reaction to one of the chemicals in tomatoes, much like with people who find cilantro tastes likes soap). The seeds have gotten very expensive, so I want to grow these specifically for seed saving, too.

Something I somehow did not get pictures of were the melons I started. I started pre-germinating those at the same time I potted up the pre-germinated tomato seeds.

I used up some older seeds and started Kaho and Cream of Saskatchewan melon. I also started older Sarah’s Choice melon and new Green Flesh Honeydew seeds. Last of all, I started some older Zucca melon seeds as well.

The Zucca melon and the Kaho watermelons didn’t make it. None germinated. The others did, though, and I was able to pot them up.

Starting seeds indoors in the cold and dark basement was a real challenge. A challenge made more difficult, as one of my aquarium lights, which are grow lights, since they were for aquarium plants, too, needed replacement bulbs. They need a size that I simply could not find locally, so I had to order them online. I was able to get them from Veseys, which also had them at a very reasonable price.

Still, with heat mats, lights and even a heater, we were able to manage it.

It took a while for some of them, but the pre-germinated winter squash seeds all made it. In fact, most of the seeds did really well. It took quite a long time for the eggplant and peppers to germinate – those were direct sown rather than pre-germinated. The colder temperatures did seem to set them back a fair bit.

I was more than happy to be able to get them out of the basement and into the portable greenhouse as soon as possible!

We were still having cold nights, though. I had a thermometer in there for a while and, in the morning, it was just as cold in the greenhouse as outside. To try and combat this, I dug out an old, black garbage can – one of many we’ve been finding around the property! – and set it up to be a heat sink – covered to make sure no critters fell in! The idea being that water inside the black container would absorb heat during the day, then slowly release it during the night.

I can’t really say it worked that well. Partly because it turned out to have a leak and, after several days, it would need to be refilled.

During the day, it got insanely hot in the greenhouse and, other than tying the door flap open, there’s no way to release the heat.

Yeah, the heat was off the scale on the thermometer in there! It got so hot that, on many days, I had to move the trays and bins of transplants outside and into the shade, so they wouldn’t cook.

Like the chitted potatoes, but that will be covered in another analysis post.

In the picture with the transplants, you can see that I did buy some this year. I decided not to start any herbs indoors – I just didn’t have the space for them, and my results have been hit and miss over the years. In the picture, I got on each of lemon thyme, English thyme, oregano, Greek oregano, lemon balm and basil. Later on, I also picked up two transplants of sage.

Then there was the wind.

Even with the structure being secured at each corner, we had one wind storm that was bad enough to knock it half over!

The old garden hose was draped over the top of the greenhouse to reduce flapping in the wind, which was an issue well before this particular wind storm knocked it over. I later set the bags of manure strategically on shelves to add more weight and keep it from being blown over again.

Thankfully, most of the transplants survived.

Eventually, they were being taken outside of the greenhouse to harden off, not just to keep them from being cooked. They recovered very well.

The one thing that wasn’t doing well was the luffa. Of the four seeds, three pre-germinated but only two survived to be transplanted into pots to live in the greenhouse for the summer.

As you can see in the slide show above, one of those surviving luffa was super tiny.

The stove pellets are something I like to add as a gentle mulch. When wet, the pellets expand into sawdust and are less likely to squish or smother young seedlings. They also hold moisture quite well. I find they’re also good to mulch in hard to reach areas. I can reach under leaves or between plants and drop a handful of pellets where it would be more difficult to use grass clippings, leaves or straw.

In the end, I found myself with what were probably the best transplants yet. It was looking to be a great start for transplants this year! Aside from the sad luffa, they were all strong and healthy plants, by the time they were ready to go into the garden.

Once the ground was warm enough.

Which took a long time, this year.

Winter Squash

This first slideshow is of three types of winter squash that were planted in one bed. I set protective collars around them to help with the still-coldish nights, but also to protect them from rolling cats, slugs and other critters.

I later set up a soaker hose but, in the end, I found it easier to use the protective collars to water them. Protective collars went around all the transplants except the peppers and eggplant.

With the drought conditions we had this year, I found that the collars really helped. I could water into a collar until it was full, then move on to the next one. By the time I finished watering from one end of the bed to the other, the first collars were drained of their water, and I would do it again. Most of the summer, I would water a bed in this way three times, twice a day. By the third pass, the water would finally be draining slightly slower. It was more efficient to water this way, than to water empty, mulch covered soil around the plants.

The Arikara squash had three survivors, and they went into their own little bed in the East yard.

Last year, in this bed, I had finally successfully grown Crespo squash. The vines got so huge, they even spread into the cherry tree suckers nearby and started climbing them! The bed got amended as much as I could, and I had confident expectations that another variety of squash would do well here again.

The three squash were transplanted with a cover of mosquito netting to keep the cats out. The netting was a bit too small, though, and didn’t cover it very well. Still, it was enough to protect the bed until things were big enough. I didn’t want it covered for too long, so the squash could be pollinated by insects. Later on, I would direct sow corn among them.

Melons and Spoon Tomatoes

Last year, we had brought the logs to frame a low raised bed, but didn’t get a chance to finish it. I was able to do that this spring, and that’s the bed that got the melons and Spoon tomatoes.

First, the melons.

I found some metal posts at the dollar store and first used those to create a trellis for the melons. In past years, they turned out to be far to heavy for the plastic netting I’d used, so I figured something stronger was in order!

In planting the Spoon tomatoes, I put a pair of bamboo stakes in each protective collar. Later, I added cross pieces to make a trellis to secure the Spoon tomatoes to, as I knew they could get quite tall and leggy.

I also direct sowed beans beside the tomatoes, and will talk about those in another post.

More Tomatoes

The other three varieties of tomatoes all went into one of the East yard garden beds.

In the first picture, you can see just how much growth there was with the winter sown bed in the background. That greenery is almost all lettuce!

You can also see that the Chinese elm seeds have started to drop.

The attempt at solarizing didn’t work. It did warm up the soil, though, and the weeds were much easier to pull at that size.

In the end, I had 9 Sub Acrtic Plenty, 5 chocolate cherry and 4 Black Beauty tomatoes to transplant.

I added a large, plastic coated metal plant stake into each protective collar, then wove in bamboo stakes to great a strong trellis. I knew the chocolate cherry could get quite tall. When we grew Black Beauty before, they didn’t get as tall, but were so heavy with tomatoes, I had to add more structural support to their trellis, because they were pulling it over! I wanted to make sure these had a good, strong frame to hold their weight.

Sweetie Snack Mix peppers and Turkish Orange eggplant

Next, the peppers and eggplant went into the wattle weave bed in the old kitchen garden.

The Sweetie Snack Mix peppers all fit into the short side of the L shaped bed. The Turkish Orange eggplant were planted around the tiny fruited strawberry plants that were already starting to bloom!

In cleaning one of the beds, I found some sort of flower. I decided to transplant it in this bed, too. Later, I added a second, different, flower of some type I found. Once they bloom, maybe next year, we’ll know what they are!

The peppers and eggplant all got wire tomato cages for support. Those came in handy, later, for other reasons!

The Herb Bed

Finally, there were the herbs.

This tiny bed had been prepped in the fall, but was pretty over grown already. You can see the walking onions outside the bed are doing really well already, too!

The cats also like to sit on top of the mesh, so before anything else, I added supports to it, then added a bamboo stake that was given to us, weaving it through the top. It was meant to keep the top from sagging under the weight of cats, but has turned out to be a fantastic handle.

This little bed is the perfect size for a few herbs. It even had room for a couple more.

Spur of the moment, I got some discounted sage and tucked them in as well.

So, everything went in and was looking good, though things were getting pretty late by the end of it. We had plenty of hot days in May, but the nights were too cold for the transplants, and the soil didn’t get much chance to warm up. I recall we even got a frost well past our old average last frost date. The last of our garden didn’t get in until the end of June.

It did not bode well for how the summer would go.

How things grew

Drought.

Heat waves.

Smoke.

A triple whammy that affected everything. I’m amazed we got anything at all.

Winter Squash

The winter squash was hit particularly hard, and not just by weather and smoke.

Those strong, healthy winter squash in the main garden area started blooming very quickly, even while still small. Just male flowers, but that’s not unusual.

This, however, was a first.

All the winter squash in that bed were hit with these tiny insects. Thrips, I was told they are. They were really bad. In the end, they were dealt with using a spray bottle with dish detergent in it, after washing most of them off with a hose.

None of the winter squash did well. After the first flowers appeared, they just stagnated. It was ages before they started blooming again. Plants that should have gotten big enough to completely fill and cover their beds barely covered their protective collars.

It took even more time before any female flowers showed up, and I made sure to hand pollinate as many as I could find. Usually, I had to open up a spent male flower to be able to do it, though sometimes, not even that was to be had.

By then, it was so late in the season, we started having to worry about cold nights. Not quite frost, yet, but cold enough to set them back. I really wanted to give what few squash had finally started to develop, the best chance they could. Thankfully, we did have a long and mild fall, but not mild enough for the squash.

I found a way to cover the bed.

We added jugs full of water to act as heat since, too.

It seemed to work.

It wasn’t much, but what we had were surviving.

We got times when the days would be cold enough that I didn’t uncover them at all during the day.

After a pretty severe frost, I finally decided to open it up and see what survived.

None of the Sunshine squash made it, but we did have some Baked Potato and Mashed Potato squash to harvest, including one decently large Baked Potato squash. That one was pretty close to the size they are supposed to be. We had something to harvest to try out, at least.

Then there was the Arikara squash.

They, too, stalled and stagnated. The corn that was planted with them, however, did better than the corn in the larger bed, so we could rule out soil issues. The above photo was taken after I’d salvaged the trellis from the melons to make a fence to keep critters from eating the corn before we could.

As with the other winter squash, the Arikara squash seemed to do well, then stalled, then started to grow again, then stalled.

When it got late enough to harvest the corn and pull the stalks, they had started to grow again, so I left the fencing.

In the above picture, you can see frost damage on the leaves – and flowers! There were even female flowers developing!

It was too late by then, but they continued to surprise me by starting to show new leaves and buds even after the entire plants looked like they had been killed off by frost.

Melons and Spoon tomatoes

Then there were the melons and Spoon tomatoes.

I took these pictures of progress on covering the paths with wood chips, but you can see the melon and Spoon tomato bed in both images.

The melons just… didn’t. Some tried to bloom, but the vines seemed to die back a bit, possibly from transplant shock, and then that was it. They never got better, even if a few did try to bloom.

The melons were a total loss.

The Spoon tomatoes, however, were a surprise.

The first surprise is that they stayed short and bushy. Every time I’ve grown them in the past, they got quite tall for such a small plant, and needed support. That’s why I made the bamboo stake trellis for them that I did. The absolutely stagnated, like everything else.

And yet, they were incredibly productive! I couldn’t believe how many tiny tomatoes we got off of these! Granted, they are so small that it takes about 50 or more to equal one small slicer tomato, but it was enough.

Yes, I did collect some just for seeds.

We also lost a lot of tiny tomatoes into the bed while picking them. When the frosts were coming, my daughters pulled them all, then all three of us sat together, picking off only the reddest tomatoes to keep, and the rest went onto the compost heap. Of the next couple of weeks, even with the frosts, I saw all those tiny green tomatoes turning red!

Not only will we probably have self seeded Spoon tomatoes in that bed, but in the compost pile, too!

More tomatoes

Then there were the other tomatoes.

*sigh*

One of the things I had to do was put netting around the bed.

The cats kept going in and trying to use is as a litter box.

I also interplanted them with beans as nitrogen fixers and a living mulch. Plus, some self seeded carrots showed up.

As with so much else in the garden, they did not do well. Everything stagnated, and nothing grew to their full potential.

The Black Beauty tomatoes were already something that takes a long time to ripen, but when we grew them before, they got large and bushy and were loaded with tomatoes. This time, we had hardly any show up.

The Chocolate Cherry did better, but still nothing close to when we grew them before.

The Sub Arctic Plenty barely grew at all. They did produce a few tomatoes, though.

Very few. These are a bush type, but they should have gotten much bigger and bushier, and produce more.

Having said that, we did eventually get Chocolate Cherry and Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes to harvest. Just a bit, here and there.

In the end, we had to harvest the last of everything before a frost hit, bringing them in to ripen indoors.

In the above first picture, there’s the last of the ripe Spoon tomatoes, along with the unripe tomatoes, that we brought in for our last real harvest. This included dry radish seed pods and Super Sugar Snap peas for seed saving.

Sweetie Snack Mix peppers and Turkish Orange eggplant

Then there were the peppers.

The plants actually did pretty well, though they didn’t get as large and bushy as they should have. One thing I did that I believe helped was prune the ornamental crab apple tree of branches overhanging that bed – discovering a whole bunch of hidden dead branches in the process. It took a very long time, but they did start producing, and we even harvested a couple of mostly ripe peppers off the plants.

When the cold nights and frosts threatened, the wire tomato cages allowed us to cover them with old bed sheets we repurposed for the garden.

The pepper plants handled the cold surprisingly well, though. As with the tomatoes, most of these got harvested while still green, and brought in to ripen indoors before the hard frosts hit.

The Turkish Orange eggplant also stagnated and took a long time to start producing fruit, so it was very late in the season before we started seeing orange among the green.

Some did fully ripen on the plants, though!

It was so late in the season, I was collecting carrot seeds, too!

As with the peppers, the last of them were harvested green and brought in to ripen indoors. The plants themselves were not at all cold hardy. Yet, they surprised me. Even after I cut their stems at soil level to more easily harvest the unripe eggplant, I later found that they were sending up new growth!

Over time, as they ripened, we were able to use the peppers and even had enough to dehydrate a small bag’s worth.

As for the eggplant, we tried them out and they were okay tasting. Not particularly tasty, compared to other varieties, but that could have been because of the difficult growing year. One of my daughters, however, found that after eating them, with the skins on, her lips went numb. She’s never had this reaction to eggplant before. There’s something in this variety that she’s allergic to!

The Herbs

This was absolutely a success!

In the first picture, you can see the herb bed in the background, still green and producing, after several frosts, while the other beds are being winter sown. Everything except the basil, which got killed off with the first light frost. It was fantastic being able to pop into the garden and harvest a few herbs, any time we needed.

We were still harvesting as needed until it finally was time to mulch the bed for the winter. Even then, I mulched around the plants first, and we kept using them, before fully mulching them before the snow hit. The thyme, oregano, lemon balm and sage are all herbs that, in milder climates, are perennials. With proper mulching, these might actually survive the winter.

For a time, it did seem that they were stagnating, too, but there was a different solution for that. They weren’t getting enough light. We’d pruned the ornamental crab apple tree at that corner before, but much of it was grown back. After cutting way a major branch, the herbs, and even the winter sown kitchen greens bed, suddenly were getting so much more light!

I’m glad I bought the transplants, though, rather than trying to start them myself indoors. I don’t think I would have had as much success, otherwise.

Now we have one last transplant to talk about.

The luffa.

*sigh*

As with everything else, they stagnated. One grew a fair bit more – enough to actually climb up the greenhouse structure, and even bloom.

The other one also, eventually, started to grow, but these were both failures. They’ve grown better for us, out in the open garden beds, than in the greenhouse!

Final Thoughts

Starting seeds in the basement: we have no choice on this one. In fact, we are currently working on making space and figuring out how to bring the aquarium greenhouses into the basement, so we have have better control over temperature and light. The problem is, the big tank and the shelf it’s on are quite large, and we aren’t sure how we can get it around the bottom of the stairs without breaking anything! Also, one of my heat mats died, so we’ll need to get another.

Pre-germination: no change there. We will continue to pre-germinate as many seeds as possible

The portable greenhouse: I really loved having this, but we have a major issue. By the end of the season, the winds basically tore it apart. Plus, we’ve had a couple of cats jump up onto the roof, adding more holes. The cover is completely toast. The frame it still good, though, so we will probably look into getting better quality greenhouse cover material and basically make a new cover for it. Currently, it’s covered with a large heavy duty tarp and being used as another winter shelter for the cats. With no door flap, because that is gone.

Winter Squash: we will always be growing winter squash of some kind. This year’s failure had to do with things out of our control. I’d like to try this year’s varieties again, but another time. We’ve got other varieties to try in 2026 already. I’m still looking to grow the rare Arikara squash for their seeds, too.

Melons: same as with the squash. Growing conditions just killed them off this year. We have new melon seeds and new varieties, so we will be growing melons again.

Tomatoes: My daughters have suggested not to grow Spoon tomatoes again. Too many tiny tomatoes to pick. 😁 We have new varieties to try, including another tiny variety 😄, so next year we will likely have another three or four varieties again. Just not a lot of each.

Peppers: my daughters suggested that we just grow the Sweet Chocolate peppers we grew a couple of years ago, as they were enjoyed. I did pick up a different variety noted for having thick walls, so we might be doing two varieties of pepper next year.

Eggplant: with a daughter that has a reaction when eating the Turkish Orange eggplant, we won’t be growing those again. I did, however, get a white variety to try next year.

Herbs: total win, here. We plant to have many more herbs in the old kitchen garden, and we do have seeds to start indoors, but buying transplants is always a good option, too. Plus, with this particular little bed, we might even have our first perennial herbs – if the heavy mulch helps them survive the winter!

Luffa: Yes, I will be trying luffa again! I am determined to grow sponges. We’ve come so close in the past!

What we could really use is a polytunnel or a more permanent greenhouse.

All in good time!

As for this year’s transplants, they started out strong once they got out of the basement. It just was such a difficult year. We had modest successes, at least, but nothing that would feed us for any length of time! As my SIL once said, of their own garden: if we relied on our garden to feed us, we’d starve! One of our goals, however, is to grow and store enough produce for 4 adults from harvest to harvest. We can’t afford years like this too many times!

We were not the only ones that has such a bad gardening year, of course. Lots of people on my gardening groups really struggled.

Hopefully, next year will be better.

We will, however, be learning a lot from this year, to help make that happen!

The Re-Farmer

Frost damage, progress, good news, and what a cheeky bugger!

October 7, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It looks like we dropped to about -3C/27F last night. There was still frost on the ground when I headed out to do my morning rounds. I think the covered winter squash survived, but I didn’t want to uncover them to check, as it was still quite chilly at the time. Hopefully, they got a nice greenhouse effect during the day, as our high was only 9C/48F. We’re looking at a low of 2C/35F tonight, and they will need all the warmth trapped under the plastic that they can get!

There was obvious cold damage on other things as I checked in the morning, but it was when I did my evening rounds that the damage could really be seen. In the second picture of the slide show above, the Cosmos got hit quite hard. I don’t expect them to recover enough to continue blooming, and we certainly won’t have any seeds to collect.

The memorial asters, however, seemed to fair better. I suspect they were protected by the much taller Cosmos. Looking at the long range forecast, getting seeds from the asters might still happen.

I didn’t bother getting a picture, but the summer squash got hit the hardest.

I had picked the larger peppers (this mix is all smaller “snack size” peppers) before the frost hit, but once the leaves started to droop, I found one I missed. While the leaves obviously had cold damage, the pepper itself seemed okay.

In the herb bed, everything but the basil seemed to handle the frost just fine! I’m hoping that, if I mulch the bed deeply enough, the rest will survive the winter, as some of them are supposed to be perennials in warmer climates.

I had a few things I wanted to work on today but decided the sun room stuff was more of a priority. I had all sorts of buckets and bins to go thorough and sort.

The problem is, these were in a room full of cats, and no lids. Quite a lot of stuff had to be thrown out due to cat damage.

Other things were fine, but their containers had to be replaced. I found a few things I’d been looking for, including that last sheet repurposed as a cover for a garden bed! That’s now soaking in a bucket of water. I ended up setting a couple more bins with small plant pots and Red Solo cups to use for starting seeds or potting up, to soak overnight. One bin had some of the black garden netting on the bottom. Not only did it need to get a soaking, but I’m going to have to snag a daughter to help untangle it so it can be rolled up and stored properly.

Some of the stuff I was going through predated our moving here. I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to do with them. They’re not garbage, but some of the things, I don’t even know what they’re for, exactly. I also found a whole bunch of keys of all kinds, with no real clue as to what they belong with! The odds and sots are now in clear plastic jars with lids, so we can see exactly what’s in there.

I was able to sort some of the stuff out for storage in the garage, rather than the sun room. Other items are garden related in some way and I’m hoping to still store them in the sun room. The old garden shed doesn’t really have any space. Once the bins are no longer being used to soak things, and get a chance to dry out, I can finish organizing them. It turns out I have a whole lot of ground staples, still in their packaging, that simply got buried in other stuff!

Yesterday, I’d taken a bunch of garden gloves that had needed soaking and washing, and hung them up on the line to dry. Today, I found a whole bunch more that got soaked and washed, and hung on the line. There was at least six pairs, and maybe some strays as well. 😄 I’d been wondering where all my gloves were disappearing!

In the end, I was out there for several hours. It took a bit longer partly because I got cat pictures and started messaging with people from the new rescue.

I now have good news!

One of them volunteered to foster these two.

Originally, she volunteered to take Smokey, but when I sent the above photo of Smokey with her brother, she decided not to separate them, and will take both. !!! I’m really happy with this, as Smokey is getting big enough and old enough that she could potentially go into heat. Not that I would expect that, this late in the year, but it’s possible.

They do know that Smokey isn’t socialized, but isn’t quite feral, either. Well, I have more good news about that.

She let me pet her today!

Several times!

Granted, I wasn’t able to pet her for long, but it’s better than I’ve been able to do before.

The current plan is to meet the foster in the nearer city’s Walmart parking lot to transfer them over on Sunday afternoon. So I am thinking to simply close the catio door while they are in there, earlier in the day. Then my daughters and I can more easily catch them to put them into carriers.

That gives us four days to try and get Smokey more used to human contact.

Once I had done as much as I was able to with the sun room stuff, it was time to do my evening rounds. I had a bit of a surprise when I got to the isolation shelter, which is right next to where I had been working all afternoon.

The stinky kitty sure moved in fast! He had been all curled up in the cat bed until he heard me coming closer and started getting nervous. I stayed well away until I was doing the evening cat feeding. There’s a food bowl next to the cat bed. When I got there, he was sprawled over the bed like you can see in the second picture, with his chin on the edge of the water bowl, like it was a pillow!

Cheeky bugger!

He’s going to be most upset when I move the isolation shelter under the canopy tent for painting – and when it’s set up by the house for the winter! Once that heat lamp is set up, there will be a lot of cats using the isolation shelter. 😄

So that’s progress for today. Tomorrow is supposed to be a fair bit warmer so, once I’ve got the soaking things set to dry, I should finally get that garlic in, then get to preparing more beds for winter sowing.

Thankfully, it looks like the weather will hold for a little while longer. Lots of work to get done in the next few weeks!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: in before the cold

October 5, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It was still raining, off and on, while I was doing my evening rounds. Today, that included getting a meter reading.

I had help.

Gouda in particular was following me the whole time, mostly trying to rub against my feed while I walked and trying to trip me up!

Even from a distance, I could see those mushrooms in the wood chip pile are getting much bigger.

Well… two of them are.

The third one in the group looks like something stepped on it, and the fourth I found off to the side doesn’t seem to be getting any bigger. I wonder what kind they are?

We are expected to drop to 3C/37F tonight. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to hit 0C/32F, then 2C/36F the night after, before things are supposed to warm up a little bit overnight. The winter squash are covered and should be okay, but I decided not to bother trying to cover the rest. Instead, I did a harvest.

There is our single White Scallop squash that I’ve been allowing to get bigger. No chance it would get big enough and mature enough for viable seeds, but it is at an edible stage right now.

The peppers and Turkish Orange eggplant, on the other hand, are now set up in the living room to ripen. We’ve had a red pepper and an orange one so far. There are also supposed to be yellow ones in there. The one that’s darkening if from a plant we got a red pepper from. I’m curious to see if the lighter green ones will turn yellow, or if they’re just really immature.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a mix of sun and cloud, with a high of 11C/51F. The day after is supposed to reach a high of 8C/46F. After that, we’re supposed to have highs above 15C/59F. The lows are supposed to be all over the place, but still below 10C/50F. It’s also supposed to be sunny until Sunday, when we’re currently expecting to get rain. Of course, the forecast will be changing from day to day, but it does look like we’ll be able to get more progress in the garden, getting the garlic in, and preparing beds for winter sowing. Normally, I’d say we have a good window of pleasant weather to get that done but, considering how many huge roots I’m finding in the main garden beds I’m prepping, it’s likely to take quite a bit longer than it should!

Ah, well.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: winter squash and finally some buds! Also, a general update

September 22, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It was still comfortably cooler when I did my rounds this morning, but we were set to have a hotter day again. And by “hotter” I mean a high of 23C/73F (we actually hit 24C/75F) and sunny. It was strange to be walking around the yard and hearing what sounded like the patter of rain, only to realize it was the sound of leaves falling!

I was very happy to finally see our very first Cosmos flower buds!

In the next picture, you can see the one group of asters is opening up nicely. I’m glad they survived the frosts we got at the start of the month, because – as with pretty much everything else but the winter sown beds – they are about a month or more behind.

In the last picture, you can see the remains of one of the peas I found a couple of days ago. *sigh* Of course the deer would eat the biggest one, too. There’s just the tiniest remains of a stem poking through the mulch, and a tiny branch that got left behind.

With today being so much warmer, I made sure to move the plastic off the winter squash. While condensation under the plastic showed that there was still moisture under there, they did need a very thorough watering. In the process, I found a few new female flowers and hand pollinated them.

I uncovered them in the morning, but these pictures were taking in the early evening.

This first group of photos is of the Baked Potato squash.

There were the two already developing ones, plus a couple to hand pollinate.

Then there was the Mashed Potato squash.

That group had a couple of small, older squash, plus some smaller ones that I’m not sure will make it, and finally one that I could hand pollinate.

There is nothing with the Sunshine squash. Those seem to be mostly dead. The transplanted zucchini seem to be making it, but are still very small.

I don’t know what the chances are of these surviving long enough to develop before the hard frosts come, but as long as they are covered when it gets cooler, they at least have a chance!

Then, finally, there is a pepper I found to pick.

Not quite ripe, but as soon as I lifted it to see, the stem broke off, so inside it went! It will continue to ripen indoors.

In other things, I headed out this afternoon to meet someone for a kibble donation. She’d suggested meeting at an intersection on the highway. I got there a little bit last. First, because I had to pull over while going through my mother’s town to check my phone. I kept getting notifications. One of them was to let me know that home care called and wanted to talk about my mother. Not the scheduler, but a coordinator covering for our usual coordinator. I asked my daughter to send me the number, then continued on my way. I caught up to a car that was driving a bit slower. Then it slowed down more, started signaling a left turn, started breaking…

Then kept on going.

They did this every mile for the next five or so miles. It wasn’t until we were in the last mile before the highway that the vehicle started signaling a right turn. I thought at the stop side ahead, but nope. They pulled over completely!

I’d say someone was very lost!

Meanwhile, I pulled over just short of the stop sign myself, where the woman I was to meet was already waiting with a large bag of kibble for us. It’ll be enough to last us until CPP Disability comes in, and I’ll be able to go to the city for a stock up shop. That will be after dropping the truck off for the insurance claim repairs, so I will be doing the shopping in a courtesy vehicle.

I’ll have to make sure to transfer over some of our hard sided insulated and non insulated grocery bags when I switch vehicles.

After picking up the kibble, I called the home care coordinator. It went straight to voice mail, so I left a message, giving my cell phone number, but adding that I would be driving and it would be a while before I could answer.

My next stop was at the pharmacy. Since I was heading out anyhow, I was able to pick up some prescription refills for my daughter. It was getting close to 4pm when I got there, and the home care office closes at 4, so I tried the number again as soon as I parked.

The woman had a bit of a laugh when she answered and it was me. She had just finished listening to my message!

It turned out to be about my mother’s inhaler. It’s out. There’s still two in the lock box, but they are a different type, so home care isn’t allowed to use them. We had a fairly long talk about that. I explained that I didn’t know why my mother was still on an inhaler, as it was a test to see if they helped with her breathing, and they’ve made no difference, confirming my mother does not have asthma. Plus, my mother went ballistic when I picked up her last refill and she saw how much it cost. She can afford it, but she expected it to be “free”. She still doesn’t understand that she has the provincial insurance or what a deductible is. I don’t know of this type of inhaler is even covered, though.

What I’ll be doing is calling my mother’s doctor’s office tomorrow, and trying to get a telephone appointment with her to talk about it. Then the doctor can send instructions to home care, either saying they can use the other type, or that my mother doesn’t need to use an inhaler anymore. Which is what I am hoping for.

We spoke about other things involving my mother as well. I told her about the person that’s coming to see my mother tomorrow for a mental health assessment. We talked about my mother’s declining mobility and increased pain. I mentioned that my mother should not be living independently anymore. She was really surprised when I mentioned my mother actually wants to go to a nursing him. Not being familiar with my mother’s file, she didn’t know that it’s been over a year since the paneling process has been started.

The main thing is that I wanted to stress how much more difficult my mother has been finding it to just get in and out of a chair, never mind walking around her apartment, or standing to cook for herself. Meals on Wheels is just three days a week.

We’ll see how that goes. At this point, my mother isn’t even on any waiting lists, which frustrates me to no end.

After that, didn’t take long to get the prescriptions and then head for home.

Our overnight low is supposed to be 13C/55F, so I will be leaving the winter squash uncovered for the night. Tomorrow is supposed to be ever so slightly cooler. If the forecast over the next few days is accurate, I should be able to leave them uncovered for three more days, and two more nights. We’re still supposed to be warm during the days, but overnight temps are looking to drop below 10C/50F more most nights after that. Around the middle of October, we’re supposed to get our first days with a mix or rain and snow, while overnight temperatures are supposed to drop below freezing before then. Of course, long range forecasts can change quite dramatically, so who knows.

It’s time to get the mostly done beds cleaned up and ready for winter sowing. We’ve got lots of leaves available to use for mulch right now, and I’d better start collecting them before they are blown away entirely.

I’m really looking forward to a more planned out winter sowing! We’ll need to prepare a bed to plant garlic in, too. None of those will go into the ground for at least a couple of weeks for the garlic, and probably longer for the direct sowing. I don’t want any of the seeds to germinate before the ground freezes.

It’s been slow going, but it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Foggy morning, parasitic weeds, cuteness, garden update and doctor visits.

September 9, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The garden clean up has officially started!

Not until rather late in the day for that sort of thing, but it’s started!

This morning was surprisingly foggy, and actually seemed to get denser as I did my rounds.

While going around the row of crab apple trees, I noticed some pretty little flowers in the grass. Just a little patch.

Thankfully, just a little patch!

I pulled all that I could find. We have these all along the shoulders of our gravel roads. In one of the nasty voice mail messages our vandal left on my brother’s cell phone, he said that there was red bartsia in the second quarter section our renter is taking care of. That quarter is just used for pasture now, though it also has trees, a pond and marshland. Our vandal still thinks the property should be his, so he was having a screaming fit on the message about how I should get my [insert vile and disgusting insult] daughters out there with lawn mowers to get rid of it.

If you follow the link about the weed, you’ll note it specifically says, “Mowing is not reccomended.”

With the arrangement made with the rent, they’ll be the ones dealing with it. This stuff is parasitic with grasses, and can do real damage to pastures. Cows can’t eat it.

We can’t do much about the roadways, but we can keep it out of the areas we are responsible for, at least! It’s bad enough that we’re dealing with creeping bellflower and creeping Charlie.

While uncovering the garden beds this morning, I was happy to finally see some colour among the peppers.

That was this morning. This evening, I went looking and did find another with some colour showing at the very tip. Also red. No sign of yellow or orange in any of this mix of peppers.

I didn’t start any projects outside this morning, as my daughter and I had consecutive appointments with our doctor early this afternoon. We got some Dairy Queen coupons in the mail, so we left early enough to have lunch in town before continuing on to larger town our doctor is in (I just double checked; it’s not large enough to be considered a city, yet). They weren’t very busy, and my daughter got called in for her appointment right on time. Mine was half an hour later, and I got called in on time, too.

All I was there for was to go over my X-rays. With my hand/wrist, it was confirmed that I did NOT break anything in my fall. It just still hurts at times. More my shoulder than where I landed on my palm, even after all this time. Not that anything could have been done about it, if there had been a break. It’s been quite a while since my fall!

It was my hip that I really wanted to see about. According to the lab report, there is actually very little change since the last time I got X-rays done, some five years ago! The arthritis and bone spurs aren’t any worse.

I told her about the issues I’ve been having. I told her, with the anti-inflammatories making everything else so much better, when it comes to things like my hip, the pain is more acute, now that there isn’t so many other aches and pains muffling it. She was nodding her head as was saying this. It’s very typical! I described the issues I was having with my hip, using last night as an example. As soon as I lie down, it starts to hurt. Eventually, I had to get up and take some pain killers, which didn’t really do much. I got up again and used some of the Voltaren lotion, and that finally did the trick. Only then could I sleep. It’s been getting more painful, though at least I can now put weight on that leg when taking the stairs again. When I mentioned that, she suggested it was due to increased activity. I told her that was very likely, since I’m outside working and winterizing while the weather is good. She just laughed and said, “making hay while the sun shines!” Yup. She gets it!

She said that it sounded like tendonitis, so she has referred me to a sports injury physician. This would be in a clinic in the city, but one that is straightforward for us to get to. It would be decided by the specialist, but she felt that getting a steroid injection to the hip might be helpful.

She was writing up the referral as I was leaving. I was done my appointment a whole 6 minutes after it was scheduled! My daughter had already booked her own follow up appointment a couple of months from now and was waiting for me in the truck. No extra trips to the pharmacy or anything, but we did make a quick stop at a grocery store and a gas station before heading home. I was looking to get a flat of 30 eggs, but chokes at the $15 price tag. It was actually cheaper to buy two 18’s, instead. Weird.

After we got home, I was soon outside, starting with the evening feeding of the yard cats. I’ve actually reduced the amount of food I put out, because there are so few adult cats around these days!

Must share the adorableness, of course.

Frank is such a good mama, and her kittens are adorable. When I checked on them this morning, one kitten had one eye stuck shut, which was easy to address. Another had both eyes stuck shut and I ended up bringing that one into the bathroom for an eye washing. This afternoon, that kitten’s eyes were both stuck shut again, so we’ll have to keep close watch on it.

Speaking of good mamas…

Adam is so patient!

After I took the video that’s after the still shot, that tuxedo pushed its way under the smaller kittens, hunting for nip! Only then did Adam move, pushing him away with a back leg so he’s stop messing with a kitten that was still attached.

As I was scrubbing out and refilling water bowls, I spotted some kittens in the portable greenhouse. Now that they’ve discovered it, they really enjoy staying in there – even when the thermometer in there was reading 50C/122F!!!

I’m not sure if the little tabby in the first picture is part of Slick’s litter or not. They usually stick close to junk pile, shrine feeding station and isolation shelter, but there’s one little tabby that comes to the house and even into the sun room. I think it’s actually from another litter, but I really can’t tell.

That black and white with the blue eyes in the next photo is a stunner.

After tending to the yard cats, I started watering the garden. There was just enough water in the rain barrel to do the old kitchen garden beds. The Turkish Orange eggplants were drooping! Everything else was looking better, but those Turkish Orange eggplant seem to be really sensitive to all sorts of things. They can’t handle cooler temperatures well, and they seem to not handle heat very well, either! Or at least the dryness that comes with the heat. They’re watered just as much as the peppers, which haven’t shown any drooping at all. We reached a high of 23C/73F, but our low is supposed to be 9C/48F, so I’ll be covering them for one more night. According to the 10 day forecast, the overnight temperatures are expected to be warm enough to not cover them anymore, and I could even be leaving the winter squash uncovered for the night, too.

Once the watering was done, it was time to start.

It’s clean up time!

For now, I’m working on infrastructure.

The woven bamboo stake trellis I made for the Spoon tomatoes is now dismantled. The tomato cage wall I set up to keep the deer from eating the Super Sugar Snap peas I was leaving to go to seed is down. The soaker hose that was around the Spoon tomatoes and melons was removed, but I’m leaving the one around the winter squash for now. Hoops and stakes and fasteners collected. Most of the stakes with deer distracting pinwheels on them were already set aside. Some of the water bottle noise makers were collected. Not pictured is the post I’ve started using to hold the plastic collars that were around the Spoon tomatoes. I haven’t taken the ones off the melons, yet.

Remarkably, I’m seeing new flowers on the pumpkin vines I thought were killed off. There’s even some melons, still green and trying to bloom. I think the plastic collars actually helped them survive the frosts! My big surprise this morning, though, as finding more bush beans to pick. Only a small handful, but I expect to continue to get little handfuls of beans for at least another couple of weeks, if the weather holds, and I keep watering!

I’ve got a lot more stakes and ties to collect, but I will need to snag possibly both daughters to help me remove the protective netting that is currently pulled up and over the tops of the beds. It needs to be stretched out and straightened before we can fold it up into more manageable sizes, then roll it up for storage, and this particular netting is surprisingly difficult to handle. It snags on EVERYTHING!

As I clean up all the structural stuff, it’s all being brought to the bench by the garden shed for sorting and organizing.

This was the stuff I could do with the time I had this evening. With no outings scheduled, for the next few days I hope to work on more time consuming projects.

I’ve been thinking about that inner wall on the garden bed in the old kitchen garden I’ve been working on. I was going to take out the wattles I’ve got so far, add another stake in between each of the current ones, and find more material to weave a wall. The problem is, even with extra stakes to weave around, I just don’t think I have suitable material for weaving.

So I think I’m going to skip the weaving entirely.

Instead, I’ll do a version of what I think is called a dead hedge, though a very short, narrow version. I’ll be adding vertical stakes to make two rows, a few inches apart, and just lay the horizontals in between them to form the wall. No trying to bend anything. As long as it’s dense enough to hold the soil in, I’ll be happy!

That narrow little bed is taking a ridiculously long time to work on. Lots of experimenting in the process.

That’s just one job I want to work on. Unfortunately, there are so many larger jobs to get done before it starts getting too cold, it gets hard to prioritize which ones need to be started first! Looking at the long range forecast, I’ve got maybe 9 or 10 days before the temperatures start to drop. There’s even a mix of rain and snow in the long range forecast, a little over two weeks from today.

Well, however it works out. As long as I have garden beds ready in October, for planting garlic first, and then doing our winter sowing before the ground freezes.

Lots of work to do!

The Re-Farmer

How things have gone today

June 30, 2025 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Rather all over the place!

Today was our Costco shopping day, and I’ll post about that separately. My day, of course, starting with feeding the yard cats and going my morning rounds.

Which included spotting this little guy.

So far, he’s the only new kitten we are seeing regularly. I saw no sign of any others, so far today.

I think I’ll call him Colby.

While checking on the garden beds, I remembered to take a picture of our new blooms.

Our Sweetie Snack Mix bell peppers are flowering!

I’d seen flower buds starting on the Turkish Orange eggplants, but they got quite a bit of cold damage a few nights ago. They are recovering, but it definitely set them back.

Since we were heading to the city this morning, I didn’t do the watering. I had done it last night. With the expected heat in the next few days, we will have to start watering morning and evening. Even if we do get the rain predicted, in a few days, unless we get a downpour, we’ll still need to water.

Before we had to head out, I got a phone call from the autobody shop. The truck is now booked for repair and replacement of the box cover. I will be dropping it off on the 25th, a Friday, and most likely will get it back the following Tuesday.

They will have a courtesy car for me!

I am just so happy with this place. They have gone above and beyond in dealing with the insurance company, trying to keep costs down for us as much as possible, and now even ensuring we still have transportation – small town shops like theirs typically can’t afford to have courtesy cars available. They were even able to make it so we won’t be charged for part of the paint job, dropping the total cost to us by about $140.

That wasn’t the only call we got to get things worked out. While we were driving into the city, my daughter got a call from the hospital, regarding her upcoming ganglion eviction. She now has an exact time to come in, plus they’ll be calling her a few days before to go over her medical history in more detail.

When we got back from the city, it was getting close to when we’d be feeding the outside cats, so once everything was unloaded, I started on that so my daughter could park the truck. The kittens sure to like to go under the truck when we’re unloading!

And under our feet.

With the heat, part of the routine includes switching out frozen water bottles in their water bowls. Before refilling them, I had to run the hose for quite a while, so it wouldn’t be scalding hot. I refilled the leaking “heat sink” container in the portable greenhouse to get all that hot water out. The handy thing about that is that, while the container was put in the greenhouse to release its heat during cold spring nights, when it gets refilled during the day, it absorbs heat and cools down the greenhouse surprisingly quickly.

It’s still hot AF in there. Just not quite as much. 😄 The luffa seem to be doing all right in it, though.

Once I was finally back inside, there were a couple of messages for me – one from the pharmacy, and one from my mother. Both about her bubble packs that were supposed to be delivered today.

I called the pharmacy back, first.

As soon as I said my mother’s name, the pharmacist was all, “oooohhh… yes…”

They did try to deliver her bubble packs today – which is the last day of her medications she had left from the previous month’s packs – but when the delivery person got there and told her how much it would be, my mother told them she didn’t have enough cash.

Also, she told them I’d already paid for it.

I had picked up her inhaler, and it cost almost $200. Her bubble packs were over $200.

What they ended up doing, since today she would be out of her medications, was giving her a week’s worth of her medications – for free! – until we could clear this up.

Once I got all the info from the pharmacist, I told her I would either got to them before they close to pick up the bubble packs, and my mother would pay me back later, or they could deliver them on Wednesday (tomorrow is Canada Day, so they will be closed). I just had to talk to my mother about it, first, and had the exact amount ready for her.

Also, I was startled that my mother said she didn’t have enough cash. She uses only cash, but can’t go to the bank herself anymore so my brother, as PoA, has been making sure she gets her cash for her monthly spending.

Then I called my mother.

*sigh*

When I confirmed with her that I had only paid for her inhaler, not her bubble packs (because there were no bubble packs ready yet), and that I’d told her this at the time, she started to get really, really angry, and even started yelling at me because I used my credit card to pay for it. As if my using my credit card somehow was why there was a charge for the inhaler? Which, according to her, was supposed to be free. Now, she did get to keep the one they used on her while she was in the hospital – back in February! – but that was it. Then there was the cost of her bubble packs. She’s never spent that much on medications in one month before! Except… of course she has. Maybe not all at once, but she has.

I tried to explain to her that she just hasn’t paid her deductible on her insurance, which is through our province’s health care system. (Something not all Canadian provinces has.) She got mad about that, too, telling me she has never had insurance.

Except she has. Even before Canada brought in our medicare system, my father told me, he always made sure they had insurance. Plus, she’s been covered by our province’s prescription insurance for decades. She has to sign a form for it, every year. She’d commented to me about how she sometimes got her prescriptions for “free”, and sometimes not, in the past. Apparently, she had no idea why. I’m not sure why she would get angry at the idea of having insurance, either. She seemed to think having it was a bad thing.

Then she got even angrier when I offered to come into town to pick up her meds. She actually started yelling at me.

Her neighbours must get quite an earful at times.

It took a while to calm her down enough to tell her that the pharmacy knew that, if I didn’t come in today, before they closed, to go ahead and deliver it on Wednesday.

Then I made sure she knew how much she would have to pay for them, and write it down. She tried to say she would remember it, but I insisted she write it down, just in case!

Then I asked if she really was low on cash, and she said she was.

…

I also made sure she understood that the pharmacy gave her a week’s worth of medications for free, because of the mix up. It took a while for her to get what I was telling her, and she was finally happy about something.

Among the other things she got angry at me about was when I talked about her inhaler. What’s “haler”? What is that? I told her, it’s your puffer. Then she got angry that I was calling her puffer an inhaler – followed by my talking about her bubble packs. What bubble? You mean pills?

I use the term “bubble pack” all the time when talking about her pills, but today, she decided she had never heard the term before and was angry at me for saying it.

On the plus side, as quickly as she became angry, she calmed down.

As soon as I got off the phone with her, I messaged my siblings to keep them up to date. My brother ended up phoning me because of what she was saying about being low on cash. There is no way she’s low on cash. There seems to be a combination of things going on. One is that that she probably just lied to the delivery person about not having enough cash because she believed they were already paid for, and thought the pharmacy was trying to cheat her. The other is, she doesn’t use a wallet and keeps her cash in between the pages of a very old booklet I think is a calendar, forgetting that the cash my brother brought for her are still in their envelopes in other parts of her purse. Or, she “hid” some of the money and then forgot about it. Again. The last time she did that, she couldn’t find the envelop and decided one of her neighbours went into her unit while she was in the common room and stole it. She made the accusation many times during social gatherings, without actually saying the person’s name. Then, months later, she found the envelop with all the money still there.

She never did apologize, nor did she ever acknowledge that there was anything wrong with her behaviour.

By the time I got off the phone with her, I was exhausted!

Then I started on this blog post, with some minor interruptions. One of those was to go outside and help my daughter replace the plastic clothes line winch (I kept forgetting the word “winch” when I wrote about setting it up in the first place!) with a metal one we picked up today. We got some more clothes line separators, too, and now both lines have three each. With how long the clothes lines are, they are needed more to keep the bottom of the line from sagging too much under the weight of laundry than to separate the top and bottom. Two was not quite enough. I even remembered to tighten the winch on the older clothes line; that one has had more than a year to stretch out, even though we didn’t use it all that often. We’ll be using them a lot more from now on, weather willing.

Speaking of weather, my daughter and I talked about the upcoming heat. I’m going to be changing my sleep cycles quite a bit. Basically, I’ll be out early to get as much done outside as I can before it gets too hot, get a few hours sleep during the hottest part of the day, before going out again to do as much as I can until it gets too dark, then have another short sleep during the night. None of us tolerate heat well, but there is much that needs to be done!

Which includes working on that permanent trellis again. My arm is doing a lot better since I fell while working on it before. As long as I don’t over do it, I can get back at it. Mostly, it’s just my palm and my shoulder joint that are still hurting, but the entire arm gets tired and sore very quickly, still. At this stage, we’ll be bringing out the little folding scaffold we got last year, and it is definitely going to be a two person job – and not just in case I trip and fall again!

Oh, and I have more adorableness to share with you! After helping my daughter with the clothes line, I spotted Eyelet and managed to get some pictures. He does NOT like to stay still!

Those eyes! Button had the bluest eyes, but Eyelet’s eyes are so much paler. They almost glow blue, when the light hits them right, but I wasn’t able to capture that with my phone’s camera.

Well, it’s time for me to get outside and start watering the garden. It’s about 7:30pm right now, and we’ve barely started to cool down. It’s going to keep getting hotter every day for the next four days, too. Even the overnight temperatures are not much lower. It’s also really muggy, so that’s not much fun, either!

We’re not going to be doing anything for Canada Day tomorrow. I’ve got one day at home to get stuff done, then I’m booked up for the next couple of days.

*sigh*

Looking at the times, I realize I won’t be able to do that shift in my sleep cycle, after all. I’m going to be driving around, instead of sleeping during the hottest parts of the day!

Ah, well. We’ll figure it out.

Time to go water a thirsty garden! Then work on my stock up shopping post.

That was painful, and I don’t mean physically.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

Analyzing our 2024 Garden: corn, peppers and eggplant

December 20, 2024December 19, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

For the next while, I’ll be going through my old posts and videos about our 2024 garden, looking at how things worked out, and use that information to decide what we will do in our 2025 garden.

Some things managed to work out pretty well, even with our rough start in the garden!

The Original Plan

Corn

Corn is something we’ve tried to grow a few times. The first year, we grew several varieties with some being grown more as part of our long term plan to break up soil that had never been gardened before, and prepare the area for a future food forest. I’ve also been trying to grow kulli corn – a deep purple Peruvian variety – for a number of reasons, though we’ve found ourselves growing Montana Morado, instead. Some worked well, some didn’t.

With our garden size actually being reduced after a flood year, instead of expanding, this year we weren’t necessarily going to grow corn at all. We just didn’t have the space prepared for such a nitrogen hungry plant.

However, I had a couple of short season sweet corn varieties I wanted to try somewhere, so when I found myself with larger spaces between winter squash transplants in the second bed, I chose Yukon Chief, which had the shorter growing season: a mere 55 days!

Peppers

We have been trying different varieties of peppers to find the ones the family likes most. Personally, I can’t eat peppers, so I have to rely on their feedback for this. Last year, we had a mix of success and fail with peppers. This year, my older daughter requested one type of hot pepper, and we figured we should probably cut back on the number of varieties to try out this year. So far, no one has really found enough difference between the varieties of sweet peppers to really choose any one type over the other.

Eggplant

We’ve tried two varieties of eggplant before. The first we tried was Little Finger, which was grown in grow bags. They didn’t thrive, but we did have a few little ones we could harvest that we did enjoy. We later learned that nearby elm trees had roots invading the grow bags – a whole row of them all along the north end of the garden, near the self seeded elm and maple trees my mother allowed to grow after she transplanted the raspberries they’d started growing through.

We tried them again another year, but they fared even worse, growing in one of the concrete chimney block planters by the chain link fence. It wasn’t until this spring that I found the blocks were completely choked out by elm tree roots.

So this year, I wanted to try them again, in a completely different area!

The Classic eggplant was new to use last year. Only one seedling started indoors survived. It went into the wattle weave bed and the plant grew strong and healthy, though it was late in producing. In the end, we had one roughly palm sized eggplant to try, plus a couple smaller ones.

I wanted to try both again, this year. I was rather liking the idea of being able to grow enough eggplant to make baba ganoush, or cook nice big slices of them over an open fire.

How it went

Corn

I was really, really happy with this variety! Having something that matured so quickly was amazing!

Sure, I probably planted them too close together, but that didn’t seem to bother them too much.

They do not grow very large cobs, but the corn was so tasty, I could eat them raw!

There were two problems, though.

One was, high winds. After they got mostly flattened after a day of high winds, I did what I could to straighten them and support them, only for them to get flattened again from another direction.

The other was, racoons. I’d actually harvested all the corn – or thought I did – when I found I’d missed a few cobs. I decided to leave them to dry on the cob, so harvest seed at the end of the year. That never happened, because the racoons tore them apart and ate them.

*sigh*

Peppers

Wow, did we get peppers!

The hot peppers – Cheyenne – were started much earlier indoors. For the sweet peppers, I still had seeds for a collection of early varieties, plus a variety that did very well last year, and even a few seeds left from one I’d tried to grow a previous year.

I ended up planting a few of each, thinking the older seeds would have a lower germination rate.

Which was sort of true.

We ended up with quite a lot of the hot peppers. They went into a raised bed in the East yard, in between the two varieties of eggplant.

The sweet peppers all went into the high raised bed, later to be interplanted with shallots.

They all did really well! Especially the ones in the high raised bed. They got so full of peppers that got so big and heavy, I found myself having to add supports to some of them – and others actually broke their stems from the weight!

What they didn’t do was ripen much.

As with everything else this year, they were well behind. I did have some I could harvest, with the purple Dragonfly and Purple Beauty peppers ripening fastest, then some Sweet Chocolate but I ended up harvesting a whole lot of unripe peppers before they could be killed off by frost.

The good thing about peppers is, they keep ripening after they’ve been harvested.

I did end up with enough peppers ripening indoors that some could be cut up and frozen, while others got dehydrated. The family actually got tired of eating peppers, like they did with tomatoes!

The exception being the hot peppers.

My oldest daughter is the only one that can eat them, and even then, just small amounts. These aren’t even an exceptionally hot variety of pepper, either!

We did try dehydrating a bunch. We don’t have a dehydrator, and use the oven for that. Unfortunately, the peppers made it so that we could barely stay in the kitchen while they were dehydrating, because breathing the fumes caused our lungs to start burning!

Once they were dry, though, they went into a jar. They should be processed into a powder, but no one wants to do it and accidentally end up breaking powdered hot pepper.

There was a LOT of green hot peppers, though, and they ripened very well indoors.

What I ended up doing was stringing them, and they are now hanging in the cat free zone (the living room) above where the heat vent is, to dry. It’s a lot slower, but it doesn’t create fumes.

Eggplant

We ended up with quite a few surviving transplants this year, which was really nice. They went into a low raised bed with the hot peppers. For this bed, I covered it with cardboard and thick paper as a mulch, then cut openings to transplant through. I moved the box frame cover onto it, and set up sheets of plastic around it to create a sort of open greenhouse situation, since the eggplants and peppers are all heat loving plants.

The plastic ended up being torn off by high winds.

Later in the season, I was able to try again, using stronger plastic and running paracord both inside and outside the plastic to keep it in place, which you can see in the last photo in the slideshow below.

The plants themselves stagnated in growth for a while, until things dried up enough that I could mow some lawn. Once they got a nice grass clipping mulch on top of the cardboard and paper, they really started to grow and bloom.

Eggplants have such lovely flowers.

We were able to harvest some small eggplant towards the end of the season, before they all got harvested ahead of a killing frost.

The setbacks means they never got particularly big, but they were big enough to get a taste of them!

My conclusion, and thoughts for next year.

For the corn, I most definitely want to grow them again. While I am happy with the Yukon Chief, I want to try the other variety, next year. I can’t remember the name of it right now, but it matures in 65 days, I believe. Wherever we end up planting them, I want to make sure to have something set up to support the plants so they don’t get knocked over by high winds as they get bigger. I have a few ideas that would involve fence wire or something like that, set up horizontally, for the stalks to grow through.

I also want to find more kulli corn seeds to try again, but maybe not next year. We shall see. I might buy some seeds (if they’re not sold out again), just in case we end up with enough garden real estate available. If it doesn’t happen, though, I’m hoping the few Montana Morado seeds that got included in the mix along the chain link fence will survive the winter and grow. For the number of seeds in there, if they do survive, I expect to have to hand pollinate them. Then I will leave them on their stalks to dry, and save more seed for next year.

We’re still trying out different varieties of sweet corn. Once we figure out what we like that grows well here, we will want to dedicate a larger area of garden space to be able to grow enough that we can can or freeze some. For now, my single packet of I think only 50 seeds will be enough.

As long as we can keep the racoons out of them!

For the peppers, we won’t need to grow hot peppers again for a very long time! I don’t think we want to grow so many sweet peppers again, either. I’m debating, for next year, picking up a variety that grows smaller “snack size” peppers, instead, but I haven’t decided yet.

As for the eggplant, I’m happy with how they did, under the circumstances. I do want to grow them again. I probably won’t grow them next year, though. I want to save the garden real estate for staples, instead.

Given what a rough start we had this spring, all of these did way better than expected, so I am very happy.

The Re-Farmer

Little by little, it’s getting done

October 20, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It is turning out to be a lovely day today! We’re at 19C/66F right now, which is our predicted high of the day, with almost no wind at all. Which means I’ve been able to get some stuff done in the garden! Finally!

The first thing to get done was take down the last of the nets and support stakes on the future trellis bed and around the strawberries. I was surprised to find more strawberry plants have been eaten, though! As near as I can figure, a deer managed to get its heat under the netting on one side.

*sigh*

I had some chicken wire around the side where a hole had been made in the netting. Once everything was cleared, I put the chicken wire over the bed for now. The strawberries – what’s left of them – will be heavily mulched for the winter, but at this point I’m thinking we may need to transplant them closer to the house, where we can more easily keep the deer away. I’ll decide that later.

With all the hardware collected and set aside, I started cleaning up the high raised bed – mostly because it’s easier on the body!

I was expecting to find shallots that I missed harvesting, once I started cleaning up the dead pepper plants, and I was right. I found quite a few, actually, considering how small the bed is.

I’ve decided I will find a place to transplant these and mulch them over the winter, so that next year, we will have shallot seeds.

I removed the grass clipping mulch on the high raised bed and got about half way through digging out weeds and their roots, when I got a message from my brother. He’s on his way over with another load. He plans to cut away some tree branches while he is here, as they have a storage trailer they will be bringing out tomorrow, and they are in the way.

I’m more than happy to get those branches cleared away!

So I paused in the garden to come in and have lunch before he gets here, as I plan to help my brother as much as possible once he gets here.

While I was waiting for my food to heat up, I tended to the dehydrated peppers.

This is three trays of peppers, combined into one. They’re back in the oven for now, while it cools down (we used the “warm” setting at 150F to dehydrate the peppers). Later on, we might pop them into a jar for storage, or perhaps powder them. I’m not the pepper eater, so I will let the family decide which they would prefer.

Time to head back into the main garden area until my brother gets here. Now that all the stakes and netting are down, it should go faster. My goal right now is to prepare as many beds as I can to direct sow into, then cover with leaves for the winter. Hopefully, we will get a head start on the garden next year by doing this, but if it doesn’t work, the beds will still be ready for planting in, in the spring.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Processing

October 19, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Well, we may not have had many yellow peppers in the garden, but now that they are ripening in the living room, we have a LOT of yellow peppers!

I neglected to take any photos, though, so here is a WordPress AI generated version…

I specifically told the AI generator “long slices”, but it gave me rounds, instead. 😄

There are two types of yellow peppers in the short season collection we got. Yellow and orangey-yellow. Once I had them under the kitchen like while washing them, I could finally tell the difference!

I prepped and sliced enough yellow peppers, plus I think one or two orangey-yellow ones, to fill a gallon size freezer bag.

The remaining orangey-yellow ones were starting to dehydrate all on their own, so I sliced those ones super thin and set them to dehydrate in the oven. That got me three 9×13 baking pans, which required a bit of creativity to fit on the two oven racks. I’ve got a tray meant to cook vegetables on the BBQ, so the bottom is perforated, to use as a spacer between two pans on top of each other.

There were other purple and Sweet Chocolate peppers that could have been processed, but I left those for later and got almost all the tomatoes that are in the living room. A few ended up in the compost, as they were over ripe. The rest got washed, then topped and tailed. I was able to fill one gallon size freezer bag with San Marzano, plus some Roma VF (I assume) compost pile tomatoes. Another gallon bag got a mix of the Forme de Coure and what are probably all Black Cherry tomatoes. There might be some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes mixed in there. Once off the vines, I can’t tell them apart.

The bags all went into the small freezer for now. The chest freezer has bins and boxes of ripening tomatoes covering it right now. I go through them regularly and pull out the ones that are ripening the fastest, and move them into my harvesting colander. Once that’s full, they get transferred to the living room to continue ripening.

Eventually, we will be able to combine the contents of bins so that there’s fewer of them, and have easier access to the chest freezer. Moving a bin or two is not an issue. Moving five bins, a box and a colander to get into the freezer it something else entirely!

All in all, that’s a pretty good haul to quickly process, considering these are all things that were harvested early, before they got hit with frost. There are many more tomatoes ripening, including the ones from the compost pile that look like Indigo Blue Chocolate, though I suppose some might be Black Beauties, from last year’s garden. The basin of unripe hot peppers in the living room is looking more and more red. There are still a lot of green sweet peppers, some of which I can tell are the purple Dragonfly peppers, with a very few Purple Beauty left, and others are the brown Sweet Chocolate peppers. The remaining ones, I expect to turn yellow or orangey-yellow.

So we will have plenty more vegetables to process for the winter over the next while.

Tomorrow we are supposed to reach a high of 19C/66F and, more importantly, we are NOT expected to have high winds again. Since there is nothing more we can do in the bathroom until the sealant has finished curing, that means I should be able to finally get outside and clean up in the garden, and prepare beds for fall planting. It’s time to get garlic planted – we will be using our own garlic from this year’s harvest – and I want to try fall sowing seeds that will hopefully survive our winter and give us an early start in next year’s garden. At this point, looking at the monthly forecast, it seems we will be in for a relatively mild winter. I certainly hope so. We’re supposed to have a La Nińa winter this year which, for our region, usually results in bitterly cold temperatures.

I could really do without that.

While I can no longer tolerate heat like I used to, I find I am absolutely dreading the cold of winter more and more, every year. Especially this year, as we have not been able to slowly stock up quite as much as we have in the past, on the assumption that we will get snowed in or whatever, for weeks or even months again. Everything is so much more expensive now, it’s getting harder and harder to get any extras at all.

So the more we can process from our garden and put up for the winter, the better!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a surprise harvest! Plus updates

October 9, 2024 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Okay, so the garden is pretty much done.

The red onions have been left, since they can handle the cold nights, and still aren’t quite ready for picking. With various distractions related to our plumbing issues, the potatoes still need to be harvested. The sunchokes are still green and growing, so they won’t be harvested for a while. Mostly, the beds are ready for winter clean up – once we can get to them!

What I wasn’t expecting was this.

That’s right. I harvested tomatoes this morning!

When my daughter harvested this bed, she left behind the really tiny tomatoes, or the damaged ones. However, as more of the foliage died back, I could see some green tomatoes that looked fine, and seemed to have gotten missed. The foliage in this bed was so dense, that’s no surprise. I basically ignored them, though, figuring they were frost damaged by then.

This morning I could see they had continued to ripen! Hidden in the middle like that, it seems they got protected from our first frost and following cold nights, too.

So I picked them and added them to the bins and boxes of green tomatoes in the old kitchen to ripen.

We have quite a few things slowly ripening. Yesterday, my older daughter grabbed all the ripe hot peppers, cleaned and prepped them, then set them in the oven to dehydrate. Eventually, they will be made into a powder.

Now… my older daughter is pretty much the only one that can eat these. My husband used to love spicy food, but the medications he’s on have really messed with his ability to taste or tolerate foods. My younger daughter can handle a bit of heat, but not as much. My, I can’t tolerate spicy food at all.

So she has taken over preparing the hot peppers as they ripen and, once dehydrated and powdered, she will have enough to last a very long time! We won’t need to grow hot peppers for some years. 😁

Now, these are hot peppers, but not exceptionally hot peppers. They’re not the kind where you need to wear gloves or anything.

Normally.

It turns out that, after processing about a dozen remarkably large hot peppers, that becomes a problem.

Not right away, though. My daughter had no issues at all while working on them. She was careful about washing her hands before touching things, too.

Then she made herself a sandwich.

The pepper oils from her hands – even after being washed – got onto her sandwich, and it was so spicy, it started to burn her mouth. She ended up having to drink straight cream to reduce the pain!

Then her fingers started to burn.

It happened slowly, over several hours, but eventually she could barely even use one hand.

She sprung for take out for supper, so I went into town to pick up the food. By the time I got back and she regaled me on what had happened, I could see the tips of all her fingers were bright red!

Lesson learned. Even mildly hot peppers can become a problem, if you’re processing enough of them at once!

Gloves needed!

Meanwhile, even her lungs were starting to burn!

These were being dehydrated in the oven. We had the kitchen window open and the fan running. The house smelled amazing, but we still had to stay out of the kitchen as much as possible, so as not to breathe too many of the hot pepper fumes. Even the cats were staying out of the kitchen!

Speaking of cats, they added another distraction. My younger daughter tried to go to bed early, only to discover a cat with a messy butt made a mess on her bed. She had to wash all her bedding.

We had been working to clear my husband’s bedroom, and started doing his laundry, too, so that was already set up (yes, we are still running the hose out the window for the washing machine to drain into the yard). The girls were going to start the laundry and my younger daughter was going to use her sister’s bed for the night.

Which is when they discovered more mess in the middled of her sheets, from a cat or cats that squirmed its way under her covers.

So they were both up all night, doing load after load of laundry. Some things needed to be washed twice, just because of their size. They didn’t get to bed until past 6am.

We’ll be more laundry today, too. My husband has set up his CPAP in my bedroom so he could sleep with me.

Sleeping in the same bed as my husband! Imagine that. 😄

That will give us a chance to strip his hospital bed and wash things like his pillows and body pillows, along with the extra blankets he puts under his sheets. The mattress for the hospital bed has a sort of thick vinyl instead of fabric, so it’s easier to clean. Unfortunately, it doesn’t breath, and causes my husband to sweat. The extra layers under the sheets help prevent that.

I did finally find an XL twin fitted sheet on Amazon for his mattress, which is several inches longer than a standard twin mattress. We’ve confirmed the new sheet fits properly, so we’ll need to get a few more. For now, though, he has only one fitted sheet that actually fits the mattress on his hospital bed.

We’ve been working most of yesterday on clearing his room so we can access the corner behind the plumbing for the tub. This is where we will be cutting an access panel, but it’s still covered by the wardrobe. My husband doesn’t really use the wardrobe, and the girls have said they’ll take it upstairs – but they will need to move out their little bar fridge for the space. They don’t use that much anymore, so we were already talking about moving it to my room. I’ll have to find space for that, though.

Once we get that figured out, we can start moving things around but, for now, we still have one more corner of husband’s room to clear and clean, where has his own tiny fridge to store his injections. This will give us the opportunity to defrost and clean it, too, then move it to where it will be more easily accessible.

The bonus of moving the girls’ fridge out from upstairs, to make room for the wardrobe, is that it frees up a grounded outlet.

That means they can get an air conditioner and actually be able to plug it in! The upstairs gets so insanely hot in the summer, they really need one up there.

That will not happen for a while, though, since my daughter will be paying for what we end up needing to get the bathroom walls repaired.

So all of this rearranging and cleaning and figuring things out is happening at the same time – all because the hot water tap in the tub broke.

There is nothing we can do in the bathroom itself right now. The fan it still running to dry the rotted aspenite. My brother will be looking at it when he comes out on Friday evening (today is Wednesday).

We will have to pull out the tub to be able to find and cut away all the rot, and I’m not even sure how that will be done. It does seem like the tub is in two parts; the tub itself, resting on top of a flat panel that hides the underside of the tub.

Well, we’ll find out when the time comes.

Until then, we’ll just take advantage of the disaster and do the clearing, cleaning and rearranging we need to do, anyways.

On the one hand, I’m glad this has happened now, and not in the middle of winter.

On the other, this keeps me from getting outside stuff done, and from finishing the cat isolation shelter!

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some of that done today, since there’s only so much I can do in my husband’s bedroom before I need my daughters to help out. It’s so close to being finished, too!

Ah, well. It is was it is.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

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The Original Plan

Corn

Peppers

Eggplant

How it went

Corn

Peppers

Eggplant

My conclusion, and thoughts for next year.

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