This was our third attempt of sowing these, and I planted two pairs of seeds in the bed with the onions and shallots. There are still none in the pot (sowed them twice in there) and I had been thinking of what I could plant in the empty space where the Magda and White Scallops had failed, only to find these! So far, it’s just the one pair of seeds. No sign where the other pair was planted, but if it took this long for the first ones to show up, there is still hope!
Now, they just need to survive.
Still no Magda here, but a second one germinated in the pot on the steps.
There is also a nice little row of tiny kohlrabi seedlings popping up in the potato bed at the chain link fence.
I got a surprise phone call this morning, too. The scrap guy was going to be in our area. Did we want him to come by?
Today???
Yes, today.
*sigh*
I’m taking my mother to her medical appointment today, so that won’t be an option. We talked a bit about the state of the ground for getting to the barn and stuff. He’s going to be in the area again later – he has to wait for the ground to dry out more, first, so he can’t say exactly when, but he can call us first, if we want.
Yes, please!
We need to re-bag the aluminum, anyhow. Between the cats, racoons and skunks, quite a few bags have been torn up. That’s the down side of having so many cat food cans in there!
Since I’m going to be in the area, anyhow, after I bring my mother home from her appointment, I’m going to head over to my homesteading friend that sells eggs. She’s overwhelmed with eggs again – this has been a good year for eggs for a lot of people! – and is all but giving them away. When she posted about it on FB and someone asked the price, she just said “whatever is reasonable!”
We still had eggs, but the girls cooked some up with their supper, and boiled the rest for egg salad, so there is room in the fridge again. I’ve asked for 4 flats. I remembered to ask if she needed egg trays, and she does, so I’ll be bringing a bunch of those over for her, too.
With all the driving around, plus the likelihood that my mother will be seen late (hard to say; I’ve actually been seen early, at this clinic!), and a trip to pick up eggs, I’ll probably not get home until well into the evening.
Today, we’re supposed to reach a high of 28C/82F, and now the forecast has the same high for the next two days. As I write this, we’re at 23C/73F, but the humidex is already at 31C/88F! Humidity is at 81%, but apparently there’s just a 9% chance of rain this afternoon – or thunderstorms, if I look at a different app!
Next weekend, we’re supposed to reach highs of 30C/86F, and stay there for days.
I do wish we had better forecast regarding rain or storms, so we know whether the garden needs to be watered or not! I probably will anyhow, tomorrow morning, just so the garden can better handle the heat.
I was able to make my trip to the nearest Walmart (a 45 minute or so drive) to pick up some kibble to last us until we have our first stock up shopping trip in a few days. As I was driving home, I was seeing people all over, with their riding mowers, trying to get as much lawn cut as they could before the rains hit. Something our own grass/lawns are too tall and too wet to do.
Once I got home and unloaded, I stayed around outside to give the yard cats a feeding and pay them some attention.
I’m glad I stayed out longer, because I saw Syndol coming in much later, limping! His right leg is injured, though he is putting weight on it, and it does not appear to be broken.
I recently had to break up a fight between him and Shop Towel. It was the first time I’d seen Shop Towel go after Syndol! I guess Syndol is now adult enough for Shop Towel to consider him a rival. Unfortunately, I’ve seen seeing Shop Towel actually stalking other males while they’re gathered around and eating. When he does go after them, he is absolutely vicious. I am pretty sure he is the reason a number of our males, plus other visiting toms, have disappeared over the years. If we can’t get him neutered, we’re going to have to figure out something to do about him. He’s injuring and possibly killing too many other cats. Judgement is missing again; hopefully, out exploring for the summer, but Shop Towel has been after him, too, even though Judgement is now neutered and wouldn’t be giving off that testosterone scent anymore. While Shop Towel has allowed us to pet him at times, since we’ve had to break up so many fights of late, that’s no longer happening – and right when we have neuters booked, early next month! Unfortunately, even if we do get him neutered, that doesn’t mean he’ll actually stop picking fights. We have indoor cats – male and female – that have been fixed since they were quite young, and they still go after Ginger and Butterscotch.
As for Syndol, he came about half way to the kibble house and then settled in the grass, looking nervous, so I ended up picking him up and carrying him to one of the food bowls in the kibble house. Shop Towel was eating in the shelf shelter. When he came and, I could see him going into stalking mode, targeting some of the cats in the grass, and I ended up having to persuade him to leave. Then he came back, and I had to do it again!
Meanwhile, I spotted what I thought was the grey ball of fluff in the junk pile, eating under the shrine.
I was wrong! It was one of the kittens from the grey litter. I still haven’t seen any of the others, nor have I seen the white and grey litter, but at least we have one coming back for food!
I knew for sure it wasn’t the junk pile kitten as I came closer and saw it run away from its favourite perch next to the chain link fence. I wasn’t able to get a good picture of it, but I dig get a picture of another friend!
I just love those tree frogs. They are so adorable!
When I came closer to the grey kitten under the shrine, it hid around the back of the pedestal. I noticed the kibble I’d left there was almost all gone already, eaten by a group of adult cats, so I got another scoop for it and, hopefully, the little one in the junk pile.
By then, it was starting to rain, more than an hour earlier than was forecast before I left for the city. We are now under a storm watch, and the rain is supposed to continue until 7am tomorrow! From the weather radar, the worse of the storm system will pass to the south of us, but I’m hearing plenty of thunder out there, right now. With the ground still so saturated, I can see from the garage came that our driveway is covered with water again. The driveway is getting to be more grass than gravel!
I really hope we get enough of a break from the rain that we can do something about our lawn!
Oh, and while I was at the Walmart, I picked up another package of the purple bush beans that don’t seem to be coming up, except for on, right now. I’m hoping if I plant more now, and we really do get the break in the rain until Wednesday that is forecast, they new ones will come up. I will probably sow more of the summer squash in their pots, since nothing has come up there at all. Hmm… I should probably set some seeds to soak and maybe even pre-germinate. Then at least I’ll know if it’s the seed that’s the problem, or the weather.
Hmmm. According to the weather radar, we should be under moderate to heavy rain right now. The rain has actually stopped. Looks like our climate bubble is still in action!
I put together a garden tour video last night, then set it to upload to YouTube and went to bed. This morning, I was expecting to be able to include it in a blog post – but it was at only 59% upload! The video is about 26 minutes and “good” rather than “high” quality. This shouldn’t happen. Plus, we’ve got StarLink, which means we should have the same upload speeds as anywhere else.
Which means the problem is local.
I closed my browser to stop the upload, then tried again.
My browser opened the upload at exactly the same place.
I’ve never had that happen before!
I ended up closing it again, and am now trying to upload it with a different browser. It’s already at 12%
I don’t think it’s the browser that made the difference.
Ah, well.
It’s just past 7am, and a lovely 12C/54F out there right now. I’m planning to do my morning rounds, then stay out to get back at working on that garden bed, so I’m having my breakfast now (I don’t usually eat breakfast until after I’ve done my rounds, at the earliest). I can monitor the upload at the same time.
We’re supposed to hit 20C/68F today, but not until about 3pm, so I should have a few hours of decent temperatures for manual labour this morning. It’s supposed to start raining again during the night, no raid during the day tomorrow, then rain during the night again. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be only 17C/63F! That’s going to be awesome to work in!
Best of all, the winds have died down.
We might actually have some productive days over the next while.
After I finished my post earlier today, my daughter and I headed out for a dump run, then errands. We ended up going to the smaller city for her shopping, so that I could pick up some cat food at a better price at Walmart. By the time we got home, it was well past 3 and, I’m happy to say, starting to get a bit cooler!
After having a late lunch, I headed outside to finish at the new low raised bed.
Before I got started, I prepared a 4L size water bottle by removing the top and punching holes in the bottom, then brought over protective rings and support posts. The support posts were long enough to reach from corner to corner on the bed, so I used them to find the centre. That is where I partially buried the water bottle. This way, we can add water into it, and it will drain out the bottom and water the roots of the plants nearby. We’ve done similar in the past, including the first time we tried to grow Crespo squash, and it has worked well.
The pot with the single Crespo squash was the one where the stem had broken when the cats knocked the bin holding the pots off the table. I had it supported with a pair of bamboo skewers. Unfortunately, as soon as the skewers were removed, it immediately bent over at the break, almost snapping off. I had intended to plant it deep enough to cover the break, as the squash will develop adventitious roots, but I had to be so careful not to break it completely! I planted it in a protective ring and ended up filling the ring to the top with soil to support the stem. It still ended up lying on the soil. I just made sure it was running towards the side I wanted to train it towards, as it gets bigger – if it survives!
The other pot had two squash in it. I was planning to separate them, but the roots were too entwined, so they were planted together. They, too, ended up with their protective ring filled almost to the top with soil. They both got well watered, and I added water to the reservoir in the middle – which drained much faster than I expected! I ended up filling it again, a couple of times. before I was done.
With how the light hits this area, I decided to plant a row of beans along the east and west sides of the bed. I chose Seychelles pole bean seeds left over from a couple of years ago, that did so well for us when so many other things did not! These are a very straight green bean, and they were quite prolific.
Once the beans were planted and well watered, I set up supports to create an A frame, then added 4″ square netting. This will be enough to keep the deer from getting at the squash, while still being open enough to reach through to weed or pick beans. The beans themselves are planted about 8 or 10 inches from the side, so they will also be protected by the netting until they get tall enough to start climbing it. Hopefully, we’ll have a decent germination rate. The germination rate was excellent when we grew them before, but after a couple of years, I would expect it to be far less.
Though it was starting to get late, the days are so long right now, I decided to do more transplanting. The San Marzano tomatoes needed to be transplanted, and I decided to see if the retaining wall blocks could be used for that.
Aside from the chives in the corner, I planted mint in alternating blocks. Unfortunately, there’s some sort of plant in this garden that is more invasive that even crab grass or creeping Charlie! The mint is struggling to come back this year, and this plant is choking them out! I pulled as much as I could around the mint, but they’re so mixed together, there really isn’t much I can do.
In the other blocks, there was a lot of this plant to clean out as well. A couple of blocks still had some onions growing in them. There had been more, but they were choked out by this invasive plant.
I was able to clean up 10 blocks for the tomatoes, including two of blocks with a pair of onions in them that still had room for a transplant. I used my pH meter and was surprised the soil was just as alkaline as everything else. These blocks have been amended with peat in the past, and the cement itself can increase the acidity of soil. That meter’s needle was a hard 8. So I worked some sulfur granules into the prepared blocks, too. I wonder, at times, what the reading would be if I had a meter that went higher than 8! Even the solution in my soil test kit maxed out at 7.5. Ah, well.
In the tray that had the biggest, healthiest tomatoes, there should have been 9, but there were only 7 surviving. One of them was even starting to bloom! The last three blocks were planted with the smaller tomatoes that almost didn’t survive being moved to the sun room. This was the tray that had tipped and spilled after I’d topped up the soil in the cells, so they’ve had just a rough time, over all! After transplanting the three strongest looking ones, there’s maybe 5 or 6 left. There’s one, I’m not sure is going to last much longer. I don’t know where I’d transplant these right now, but being as small as they are, they can stay in the tray longer.
Each of the transplants got a bamboo stake that will be used to support them as they grow. They will likely need more as they get bigger, but that can be added later. Last of all, they got a very thorough watering. Hopefully, they will do okay here. The ornamental apple trees cast quite a bit of shade, even with the pruning we’ve done over the years, but we’ve grown tomatoes in these blocks before, and they did okay.
Once everything was put away, I did one last prep. There are three pots on the landing outside the main doors. Last year we grew herbs in them. I have decided to grow summer squash in them this year. This way, even if we don’t end up having the space to direct sow in the main garden beds, we’ll at least have some summer squash in the pots to enjoy!
One of the pots had spearmint in it, but it did not survive the winter. Another had a mix of thyme and oregano. The one oregano that survived to be transplanted had bloomed and gone to seed, and I was going to see if any of the self-sown seeds germinated, but decided having summer squash was a priority. The biggest pot had lemon grass in it and, wow, were those roots every hard to clean out!
One of the new seeds we got for this year were are a white patty pan, so I’ll plant some of those, for sure. We have both green and yellow zucchini, and I haven’t decided which of those I will plant, yet. If we still have some Magda seeds left, I want to plant some of those. We really like them, but they are the ones that have been the hardest to grow! With some of the seeds being a few years old, I’ll plant at least three per pot, and see how many germinate.
The pots are prepped, but the planting will be done tomorrow.
With so many winter squash that need to be transplanted, they are a priority for the low raised beds that are already shifted, with or without frames. Tomorrow, my daughter and I will finally drag the second 18′ log out of the spruce grove – between the rain and the high winds, we haven’t gone into the spruce grove since she got this last one cut to size! We have enough logs to frame one bed, so that will make things a bit easier.
Things may change, but I’m thinking of planting the winter squash in the middle of the bed, in a long row, then planting more pole beans on either side. We won’t be able to do an A frame support structure, like over the Crespo squash, but we should still be able to rig up a quick trellis for them, later on.
With how many winter squash we have, and how far apart they need to be planted, the two shifted beds might not be enough for them all. The drum gourds and the pumpkins will probably need their own hills. I’ll figure that out, later. We’ll be transplanting melons into the first of the trellis beds, all along one side, where the trellis supports will be added, later, but again, we probably won’t be able to fit them all in. Since they will have a trellis to climb, they can be planted closer together, but I don’t expect to fit them all in that bed. Something else we’ll need to figure out!
Still, today was a productive day, and it feels rather good to have fewer trays to return to the sun room for the night!
Okay, I am totally beat! It’s so hot and muggy out there, I had sweat dripping onto the lenses of my glasses while I worked. We’re at 21C/70F, with the humidex putting us at 26C/79F, and we haven’t even reached our high of the day, yet!
But, I got the third raised bed in the east yard planted, and I’m done!
I also took a chance on an experiment that has the potential to be a complete disaster.
Before I could even start, though, I had to deal with the water. There’s so much of it flooding the east yard, the the boards forming the path next to the bed I needed to work on, were floating. The year we put those in was a drought year, and we had no idea it would collect so much water! The path on the other side of the centre bed is gravel, though there isn’t enough of it. We were planning to eventually get more gravel from the pit, but I have no idea when we’ll be able to head out there to get a load with the truck. We do, however, have plenty of wood chips.
There’s too much water to use the weed trimmer around the beds, so I pulled them by hand. Then I filled our wheelbarrow as much as I could without spillages, three times. That path needed a really thick layer to weigh down those boards and get above the water. With the last load, I could add some to one end, and a bit around the other side. Eventually, more will be added, but for today, I just needed to be able to access the bed without trying to walk on slippery, floating boards!
Then I began the first part of our experiment. I needed to secure the box frame so that it wouldn’t blow away. I’ll explain why that can be good, or really bad, later! For that, I drove some posts salvaged from the Walmart market tent we had, until a piece of tree fell on it, into the soil inside each corner. Then I secured them to the box frame with twine. The box frame is tall enough that I can still tend the bed without needing to move it.
I also used the stirrup hoe and weeded the bed a bit, then started on the eggplant and hot peppers. west end of the bed, I planted the smaller Little Finger eggplants; of the 7 in the tray, two were too small and wizened to transplant. At the opposite end, I planted the Classic eggplant; there were only 5 of those. The last two in the tray died off a while ago. The Cheyenne peppers, however, had all 7 in the tray, though there was quite a difference in size from one end of the row to the other! I planted the peppers in between the eggplant, and the shorter ones on the south side of the bed.
Then, because I had material from the boxes I picked up at the grocery store, yesterday, I mulched the bed with paper. Mostly paper. Each of the boxes had a paper liner, and those are almost enough to cover the entire bed, with some overlap. I cut openings in the paper to go around the transplants. At the very end, after I ran out of paper, I broke down one of the boxes. Those had air circulation holes in them, but I was able to use the flaps to cover those. I ended up using one entire box, plus a couple of extra flaps cut from another one.
Then I got my daughter to come out to help me with the rest of it.
I did remember to bring out some of the supports I have for the peppers and put them in before the next steps. Though the soil was quite wet and didn’t need a watering, we did water the paper and cardboard, so it would settle against the soil more and not blow away while we were working on the box frame.
We took the plastic sheets off the arched covers, then secured them around the top of the box frame. We just used staples for that. The two sheets weren’t quite long enough to go all the way around, so there is a bit of a gap at one corner. We then took one of the arched frames and put it on top of the box frame, and the other over the bed with the German Butterball potatoes (which are coming up now!), mostly for storage. They were just sitting in the wet grass, so this protects them from moisture damage. One had been stored on the box frame, but with the plastic over it, the wind blow it off. That won’t happen again, now that it’s just wire mesh. Once the plastic was tacked into place along the top, the bottoms were weighed down with bricks and boards that we have around those beds, just for that sort of thing. This way, I can still access the bed by lifting the plastic from the bottom.
Adding the plastic around the bed is an idea I got from Maritime Gardening.
Last year we had one surviving Classic Eggplant that did surprisingly well, in the shelter of the wattle weave bed. The Little Finger eggplant were among the things that failed to thrive in the chimney block planters at the chain link fence, that we now know is because of the elm roots getting up into them.
This bed is much more exposed, so I figured they would need extra protection from both the wind, and temperature variations, but of the air and the soil. These plastic walls should help with both. The top is open to still allow rain in.
If we get high winds, though, the plastic around the box frame could potentially become a sail. Hopefully, the frame is secured well enough to the stakes, but it’s entirely possible the wind could pull the stakes out of the ground and the whole thing could go flying.
It’s a risk, but I think it’s worth a try, at least.
So this has been a productive day in the garden. Two types of tomatoes (out of four) are transplanted. Shallots and red onions were interplanted with one type of tomatoes – I don’t plan to have beds of just onions and shallots, but will interplant them as other things go in. Two types of eggplant and the hot peppers are now also planted.
We have one 18′ bed, the high raised bed, plus some space in the wattle weave bed, that’s ready for planting. We can potentially plant in the two shifted beds before they get their log frames. We just have to plant in the middle. Still, this is not going to be enough for all our transplants, never mind our direct sowing. There are three more low raised beds that need to be shifted over to their permanent positions, then they too can be planted in before they get their log frames. Then more beds need to be built, almost from scratch, for the trellis tunnels.
At this point, I honestly don’t know how much of a garden we’ll be able to get in this year. It all depends on how much progress we can get on those beds, in time!
Well, there’s only so much we can do, and there’s no sense fretting about things if we can’t get them done in time for planting this year. Things will continue to expand, year after year, so it will get better.
My eye appointment tomorrow is in the afternoon, and we don’t need to leave until 1pm. I was thinking I’d have time to get more done early, but it’s supposed to start raining in the morning, and keep raining off and on, all day. We are supposed to get almost 2 weeks with no rain after that, though, and even get some cooler temperatures, so that should be time to get things done in the garden. If we can get everything done by the middle of June, that should be enough time for our growing season.
I was a bit later heading out this morning, so there were plenty of yard cats to greet me. I didn’t bother trying to do a head count, though. I spotted Broccoli, so as soon as the kibble was doled out, I went around the house to the old garden shed with some food to leave for her, and to check on her babies.
I was able to pick them up and cuddle them for a bit, then set them safe in the kibble bin while I straightened out their “nest”. Then it was another cuddle before putting them back and leaving food for their mama.
I did have a pleasant surprise while putting the food out earlier, too.
I saw Judgement! He hasn’t been around for weeks and, my goodness, he was a hungry boy! Wherever it is he wanders, he isn’t finding much food, and was looking quite skinny. Poor thing.
After I came back from tending Broccoli’s babies, I startled a skunk that was in the kibble house. The direction he wanted to run off was filled by a cat, so he ran in circles for a bit before squeezing under the cat house. It gave me a chance to see that one of his ears was just loaded with wood ticks! Poor thing.
Today has been nice and sunny, with just a few clouds. The rain has stopped, so I put the tray of transplants out. In general, the cats leave the transplants alone. The only time there is an issue is when they sometimes try to go through a tray to get to a window or something.
Usually, that just results in a knocked over pot, but the trays with cardboard and peat pots had been watered. When the pots are damp, they damage easily. It looks like a cat tried to step into one, and it broke. The seedling inside – one of the melons that was not part of the Summer of Melons mix – was undamaged, though. I found a small pot in the sun room and was able to transfer it over. The drainage holes in these pots are quite large, so I put the remains of the cardboard pot on the bottom to keep the soil from washing out. What I could no longer do, however, was read the label for which type of melon it was! Probably Sarah’s Choice, but it might have been a watermelon. Well, we’ll have another mystery melon is all. If it survives being moved to its new home. I had one Pixie melon on this tray and, for some reason, it just withered away. We have two more in the house, though. This morning, I transferred the last seedlings out of the aquarium greenhouse and into the mini greenhouse frame at the window. They’ll be moved to the sun room soon.
Things are still really wet out there, of course. It’ll probably be a few days before the lowest areas drain, but it does make weeding easier! Aside from that, though, we’re not going to try and get more progress on the big stuff. Tomorrow, I’m taking my mother to a medical appointment for long term care assessment, which will take up most of the day, so I won’t be doing any big stuff then, either. My daughter might be able to get some progress with the dead trees she’s processing for the raised beds, but the spruce grove has quite a few low spots that would be filled with water, too, so we’ll see.
This is usually when I say, “little by little, it’ll get done”, but right now, we’re not even getting a little done on these jobs! However, we are warming up and staying dry for the next while, so we’ll get there.
So the rain started early this morning, and has been pretty constant, so far. The rainfall warnings include possible flooding in places, including our region. Our region is huge, though, and contains quite a few rural municipalities. Where we are is unlikely to have much, if any, where we are. The newly graded roads, however, are probably going to be a real mess!
With the rain, I did short rounds this morning and skipped switching out the trail cams, since I won’t want water getting into the cameras. Short rounds was good, though, because…
… a lovely surprise!!!!
My husband actually came out with me!!!! He caned it rather than drag his walker into the rain, but he did it! I could see he was really struggling near the end, but he did it. I honestly can’t remember the last time he went outside and walked around. It’s probably been at least a year.
As we went around, I checked the beds and we had a lovely surprise in the bed of Purple Caribe potatoes.
The first plants have emerged! Just two, so far that we can see, but this rain is going to be so good for them.
When I was mowing yesterday, I’d put one of the raised bed covers over the German Butterball potatoes, then forgot to take it off, so my husband helped me lift it off to the side, so they could get some rain, too. I had also forgotten to put the extensions on the eavestrough downspouts back after mowing. I’ll have to check the new basement later, and see if that caused any problems. The one corner was already damp and has a fan on it. That was the corner a rain barrel had been left to overflow during a wet summer, and is why we now have weeping tile problems. This basement used to always stay dry, even when the old basement was wet, but not anymore. My brother had found that corner so wet, for so long, there was mold. He cleaned it up with bleach, and when we clear the basement, we also bleached that entire corner, but it still gets wet at times.
So forgetting the extension on the downspout above that corner is not a good thing!
When feeding the outside cats, I didn’t see Broccoli, but we still went around to the garden shed. If I think she might be in there with her babies, I knock on the door, first. Opening the door still startles her, but she doesn’t always run out completely. She gets in and out through the hole in the back wall, and there’s an old chair in that corner. Sometimes, I can just see her butt under the chair, as she waits while I put food out for her. Today, she did actually leave the shed, so I took advantage of that to pick up her kittens and straighten out the self warming mat for them. My husband got to see them, too. If it hadn’t been raining, I would have passed them to him to hold while I straightened out the bedding. More human interaction would be a good thing, but not if they get too chilled in the process!
Speaking of chilled, as I write this, we are at 5C/41F – with a wind chill of -4C/25F! Our expected high for today is supposed to be 8C/46F According to the weather radar, we are under the light rainfall area, with the moderate rainfall passing by to the west of us, with a few places in the south and west of us, getting occasional heavy rainfall. In total, we’re expected to get 50-60mm of rain, which is roughly 2 – 2.5 inches. The rain, with another high of 8C/46F, is expected to continue until about noon tomorrow. Starting Sunday, things are supposed to warm up and we’ll have dry weather for at least a couple of weeks. Hopefully, that will be enough time for us to get those beds reworked and ready for planting! We should probably lay plastic down to help warm the soil up faster, too. Looking at the long range forecast, there are still going to be cooler nights in the second week of June. Not cool enough for frost, but cool enough that I’d want to find ways to protect our more heat loving transplants.
Which won’t even be in the ground for more than a week.
Pretty much everything we do, revolves around the weather.
If the really long range forecasts can be trusted (they can’t), we’ll have only one day of rain in June, and none in July. June is supposed to have a few highs reaching or surpassing 30C/86F, but right now, July is supposed to have highs of 25C/77F, every day. Literally, every day except the first four, which are supposed to have highs of 24C/75F. So you know that’s going to change a lot by the time we get there!
Well, that should be good for all the squash and melons we’re planting this year! Plus the eggplant and peppers. As long as we can keep up with the watering. One of our best gardening years was a drought year with heat waves. I’m still amazed by how many melons we got that year. It was so hard to get them properly watered on the squash tunnel, and the plants were so spindly, and they they produced so well! This year, they will be closer to the house for easier watering, and have better soil conditions. I am hopeful that we will have a much better gardening year, this year, and actually harvest enough to do some canning and preserving of things other than tomatoes and onions!
Yesterday was a pretty wasted day. I wasn’t feeling well, so I decided to use the day to rest and recover.
I’m still feeling like crap, but not as bad. So I just pain killered up and headed out.
Unfortunately, we just can’t set aside mowing the lawn anymore. The grass is getting too tall, and I don’t want a repeat of the spring my brother and his wife had to come out with their mowing equipment to get it done. This time, the problem is how wet the yard has been.
Still, it needs to be done.
When I last mowed in the outer yard, I broke an attachment on the lawnmower. This was the diverter shield on the side that sends the grass clippings away. The grass was so tall and thick that it kept getting knocked out of position. Well, one time I wasn’t paying close enough attention, it got knocked off, and under the mower.
It is now in several pieces.
The side of the mower where it attaches has a permanent cover over the opening that it attached under. Without it, the opening is well sealed, so that the clippings can either go out the back and into the lawn bag, or if the back is closed up with its plug and cover, the clippings supposedly get mulched into the ground.
That mulch setting doesn’t work very well, and the mower really struggles if it is used.
So that means I need to use the mower bag, whether I want to or not. To set that up, I lifted the back cover and removed the plug.
Where I found evidence of squirrels! Grass clippings still manage to get into it, and squirrels took advantage of the “nest” to store acorns!
With so many cats around, I hardly ever see squirrels anymore, so this is a surprise, indeed!
Once that was cleared out, I started on the east lawn.
I didn’t finish it.
First, the grass it so tall, I’m constantly stopping to empty the bag. Second, the grass is still pretty damp, so the opening into the bag gets clogged up very quickly. Third, because the grass is so wet, the bag is heavier to lug around than usual!
It’s a good thing I enjoy mowing the lawn!
I’ve got a nice pile of grass clippings going, but we won’t even be able to use it as mulch. Sections of this part of the yard are infested with Creeping Charlie. If I use the grass clippings as mulch, I’ll just be spreading the stuff. 😢
In the end, I had to stop mowing, even though I didn’t have very much left to do. I was getting into the lowers – and, therefore, wettest – parts of the yard, plus I was just getting too tired and too hot.
And by “hot”, I mean it’s 11C/52F out there, with a humidex of 13C/55F Yes, I find that hot. I’m not acclimated to spring temperatures yet! It certainly didn’t help that the sweat on my face seemed to attract some sort of flying insect that would get caught in my glasses, or under the visor of my hat!
Anyhow. I’m taking a break for now. Once the post office reopens for the afternoon, I’ll head out to get the mail, and pick up some sour cream, so my daughter can make her rhubarb cake with our first harvest of the year! Hopefully, by then, the grass will have dried a bit more.
We are currently getting weather warnings for potentially heavy rainfalls, but at the same time, our area isn’t expected to get rain until about 5am.
We’re also getting low enough overnight temperatures that, in some places, they are getting frost warnings. We might be getting frost on the weekend, from the looks of it.
We shall see!
For now, I just need to hydrate, run some errands, then get back to mowing before the rain hits! I hope to be able to finish the inner yard, but I don’t expect to be able to mow around the main garden area, or finish the outer yard. That will have to wait for another day. The old garden area is yellow with dandelions right now. I hope to get that done before they all go to seed, but… we’ll see!
It was really windy out there this morning – too windy to take the transplants outside for hardening off. All the pots would get blown over!
That wind also means the Chinese Elm seeds are being blown off, even though they are still green. They tend to drop en masse after they’ve dried out and turned brown.
When I saw how many seeds were on the bed along the chain link fence, though, I had to do something about it. Thankfully, I dug out several rolls of netting from the garden shed, before we returned Broccoli’s kittens to her nest, so I didn’t have to disturb her and her babies to get anything!
Last year, we used decorative wire garden fencing we found over the years, in sections and in different places! Some of it was so damaged, it had to be tossed, but there’s enough left to set up along the length of this bed, just inside the bricks. That would hold the netting up from the soil.
I was happy to find the first of three rolls of mosquito netting I grabbed was long enough to cover the entire bed, with some to spare. It would have been such a pain to have to cobble together two shorter lengths!
Once it was unrolled to the length of the bed, I used garden staples to fix one edge to the ground, outside the brick border.
Syndol “helped”.
At the end by the car gate, right at the start, I fixed the top corner of the netting to the chain link fence with a ground staple. Then, after the bottom edge was fixed all the way across, I went back along the outside of the fence and used more ground staples to fasten the netting to the top of the chain links.
Syndol “helped”.
At the people gate end, I wrapped the excess around the post as well. Now that I think about it, that means we can’t close the gate right now, but that should be okay. The netting needs to stay just long enough to protect the beds until after the seeds have dropped. We only ever close the gates when the renter’s cows get into the outer yard, when the electric fence fails for some reason, and the cows aren’t rotated onto this quarter, yet.
We’ll have to add netting over the chimney block planters, too. The raised beds in the west yard need to be protected, too. One already has netting around it, but it’s a wider mesh. Hopefully, it’ll still stop the seeds from covering the bed. The other two beds could get the other covers on them, since they don’t have any trellis posts and netting inside them. Two of the covers have plastic on them. They got removed, so the rain would water the potatoes in one bed, and saturate the soil in the empty bed. I’m considering removing the plastic and covering them with netting, which would let the rain in. The forecasts have changed. We were supposed to get more rain tomorrow, then off and on throughout the week, but now it’s saying we won’t get rain again until Friday (today is Sunday).
That means we might actually be able to mow the lawn! Right now, we have standing water in the low spot behind the garage, as well as in the vehicle gate. Hopefully, it’ll be absorbed over the next couple of days. We need to do a dump run, which means backing the truck up to the house. The lawn is so wet, driving on it right now would actually damage it.
My goal for today day is to get a second bed in the main garden area weeded and shifted over to its new, permanent location – or at least get started on it! It’s really windy out there, and it’s supposed to get quite hot, while the next few days are supposed to be cooler. We’ll see how far we can get before the heat becomes a problem. I don’t mind waiting for cooler days to work on it. I can get more done, faster, on a cooler day.
Looking at the long range forecasts, the overnight temperatures we are now expecting are well away from the “danger of frost” zone. At least for the last week of May. We might even be able to get some things transplanted early, in the beds that are currently ready. We can protect the transplants with the plastic rings we make from my husband’s distilled water bottles. We did that last year, and it worked out really well. Especially for the chocolate peppers and that one surviving Classic eggplant. We need to focus on getting the transplants in, then do the direct sowing in whatever space we have left.
Oh! That reminds me…
Last night, as I was getting ready to start pre-germinating those pumpkin seeds I picked up, I took out the two containers of Zucca and Pixie melon seeds that were still in the aquarium greenhouse. I was expecting to toss them into the compost. Much to my surprise, two of the three Pixie melon seeds left in there had roots. Even more of a surprise, so did one of the two remaining Zucca melon seeds! So I potted those up and they are now on the warming mat. The pumpkin seeds are now set up with them, in a container between damp paper towels to pre-germinate. I also moved out pots with one Pixie and one Zucca melon that had broken the soil surface. For now, they’re in the mini greenhouse frame at the window, but they will join the other transplants in the sunroom later today. I just need to have someone open and close the door we made for the living room, so no cats sneak in. Fenrir is the worst for that. I swear, that cat can teleport. She’ll be in a completely different part of the house, but as soon as she hears that door open, suddenly she’s through the door and dashing under the couch! She does the same thing when we open the door to the old kitchen. So if any of us needs to get into either room while carrying something, we need a second person to open and close the doors for us, and chase the cats away.
While we do have quite a few transplants going, we started way less than we did last year. I went kinda crazy with starting seeds last year. Many never germinated, which was probably a good thing; we had way more transplants than we had space for, since we ended up with about half the growing space than we had, the previous year. This year, I’m hoping to avoid both problems; pre-germinated seeds for the first one, and starting less for the second. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get back to expanding the garden every year again. Once we get everything in the current beds planted, we should be able to start building more beds for next year.
We haven’t even tried uncovering what’s left of the pile of purchased garden soil yet. I think we’ll have enough for this year, but we’ll need to consider getting another dump truck load for next year.
The ultimate goal is to be able to grow enough food to feed ourselves with fresh produce, and preserve enough of certain things to last from harvest to harvest. As we also intend to get small livestock, growing their food is part of the plan, too. Chickens will be relatively easy to provide for, but if we’re going to get the sheep my daughter wants for their fleece, and the milk goats I want, we’ll need to plan accordingly. Some things, of course, we will have to buy. Especially for winter feed. As we progress with the garden beds, we intend to expand into the outer yard as well. Over time, we’ll have the beds closest to the house to be for things like kitchen herbs and greens, the beds further away for things that would need to be harvested every couple of days, like summer squash, peas and green beans, then the beds furthers from the house for things that get harvested at the end of the season, like winter squash, root vegetables and tubers or dry beans. Even further out, we’ll start to plant crops specifically to supplement animal feed.
It’ll take a few years, but the plan is there, even if it does have to get changed up or delayed by circumstances fairly regularly.
Broccoli was eating at the kibble house, so I took a quick check.
She has not moved her babies!
The old garden shed is a good place for them, other than the fact that we actually still use it.
In other things, the rain started yesterday, off and on, and will continue throught today. No downpours or anything like that. Just intermittent light rain. Enough to make the ground too wet to work in the garden beds or process the felled spruced.
If my husband is up to it, there will be a trip into town for some blood work.
I don’t think he’s up to it.
One of my older daughters, however, has offered to treat us to some Chinese food today, so a trip to town is still a possibility!
That would be a nice treat on a wet and chilly day. 🩷
The Re-Farmer 