When it comes to deciding what seeds to start indoors, and when, your frost dates are more important than your zone. Gardening in Canada talks about what to start now, whatever zone you are in.
We’ve got our onions,shallots, eggplants and hot peppers started (even though the hot peppers are supposed to be a short season variety). Next up, I have herbs to start.
We don’t have luffa seeds to try this year; I will buy more to try again next year. I’m debating whether I want to try any gourds this year. I’m not sure how many beds we will have access to this year. I think I should skip them this year and focus more of the edibles than things I am growing for crafting purposes.
What about you? If you have a garden, what are you trying – or skipping – this year?
This morning, I headed out to drive my mother to her doctor’s appointment. It really sucks to not be able to use her car right now, because it’s a real struggle for her to get into the truck, even with the foot stool. She finds it easier to get out, and refuses the foot stool completely, preferring to use her walker for support.
I’m certainly glad my shoulder is all healed up, because I had to help boost her up into the truck! Something I could not have managed, just a few days ago.
Once in the truck, though, she was happy as a clam! She commented on how nice it looks inside, and how smooth the ride is, compared to her car. I think she finds the seat more comfortable too.
At the doctor, she got the referral she was there for. The doctor was supposed to give her a physical exam, but my mother couldn’t even get up the step to go onto the examination table, so that was skipped. My mother will get either a call or letter about an appointment in the city to see a specialist, and the wait should not be long.
After that, she was up to stopping for lunch before heading home. I didn’t stay long after dropping her off; mass on TV was about to start, and she watches every day. Plus, I wanted to stop at the grocery to pick up an ingredient we were missing for my daughter, who wants to use the last of our winter squash to make a pie, and my husband sent me a message saying we had parcels to pick up at the post office.
Along with the parcels, my seed order from T&T Seeds was in.
It took several tries to get a photo without a cat photo bombing me!! 😄
The potatoes will be shipped in the spring, but they included a pamphlet on how to handle their various types of perishables with the seeds.
Based on what the package says, with our June 2 average last frost date, the tomatoes can be started indoors in the first half of April, and the winter squash can be started indoors at the beginning of May. Both say 80 days, though, and our growing season from last frost in the spring, to first frost in September, is 100 days. Technically, we could direct sow both of them! I don’t think I’d want to take that chance, though.
I must say, it’s very hard not to buy more seeds right now! The McKenzie Seed displays are out, and they are everywhere. Even some gas stations have them! As soon as I walk in somewhere – like the grocery store, today – and see the displays, I just zoom right in and start looking. We have so many different seeds, and for many we also have several varieties, so there’s really not been anything in the displays that I would get, that we don’t already have. About the only thing I really find myself looking for is sugar snap peas. We have lots of seeds for shelling peas. The first year we grew peas, we grew both types, but that was the drought/heat wave year, and the snap peas barely survived.
With everything melting outside right now, and the rest of the winter expected to be mild in our area, who knows. We might be able to get things started earlier than usual! At the very least, we should be able to get to work on the building more trellis tunnel beds and reworking others. early. There are seeds that can be planted as soon as the ground can be worked, even if there are frosts later on, so I’d quite like to have some of those started, nice and early! Things like the peas, which I want to plant in the bed the popcorn was planted in, last year, to get some nitrogen back into that soil, spinach and onions.
I so looking forward to getting outside and back to work again!
We have GOT to get more of the inside cats adopted out.
Last night was a rough one.
With my arm still giving me grief, I tried going to be early again. While I could move my right arm forward and back as normal, if painfully, I still couldn’t get it move more than a few inches straight outward.
When I go to bed, I often has several cats that insist they MUST be either right against me, or me, and they don’t often give me a chance to finish getting into bed before they do it! Cheddar is one of several that has decided where I sleep is his spot. He’s a big boy, so moving him with one wonky arm was a challenge! Others will move as I pull the covers back, but not Shadow in the Dark. He’s one that likes to curly up near my face or against the back of my neck, and he won’t move. So lifting the covers usually results in him being rolled over and over, then he lies there, all sprawled out, looking at me like I’ve offended him somehow!
That’s not unusual, though.
Butterscotch made things unusual.
She’s been doing quite well, and even gotten to the point that she has started to leave my room, if only to go as far as the steps to the dining room, or peak around the corner at the basement door, to look down the hallway, before running back into my room.
Lately, however, she has taken to growling and snarling.
Sometimes, I can see that there’s a cat nearby that she’s snarling at, but they’re usually just there, and not even looking at her. A couple of times, one of them would go at her, but it seems more a response to her snarling, and not the other way around. Other times, I’ll hear her snarling, and I can’t even see any other cats around her.
Well, it seems that having so many cats in my room, usually covering my bed, sleeping in groups, is stressing her out to the point that she isn’t going to the litter boxes. She’d have to go past the other cats to do that.
The first time I heard the odd noises, I found her squeezed onto one of the boxes I’ve set in front of the wall shelf, under my craft table. I’ve got other boxes inside the bottom shelves; with the table there, they can’t be accessed for us, but when they were empty and I thought the cats were just using them as places to sleep, we discovered they were defecating in them, so we blocked them off with empty boxes. One of those overhangs the edge of the shelf, and she was squeezed between the box on the floor and the overhanging box.
Then I started hearing a very strange sound indeed.
The sound of hard turds dropping onto the box she was on!
I managed to get her out of there, but then she went into a shelf above where I sleep; the shelf I keep my glasses in, as well as where I put my phone on a stand to charge at night, among other things.
I got her out of that, and she squeezed herself into the space of another shelf, in between my cookbooks and the top of the mattress. I tried lying down again, but more noised had me getting up again to investigate, and this time she was digging into the shelf that I use for some of my clothes. I got her out of there and tucked her into the nearby cat cave, and she stayed there.
Not for long.
I was again awakened by strange noises, and this time I found she was making a mess on my bed, between my pillow, and my leaning sheep – a large stuffed sheep I sometimes use to lean against when sitting up in bed, but is normally stored in the shelve under where I keep my glasses. It’s large enough to almost fill the space completely.
Well, this time, it was a very messy mess.
My daughters are still timing things so that one of them is always available to help me with his, so I messaged my older daughter to help me. We wiped up as much as we could, then stripped the bed. The fitted sheet and the leaning sheep had to be washed, along with one pillow case, but the mess was bad enough that we had to strip the waterproof mattress cover for washing, too!
By then it was past 1am – so much for going to bed early!
While my daughter got the laundry going, I started putting out wet cat food. That lured all but one cat out of my room. I set wet cat food out in the bowls I have there, which allows for Butterscotch and a few of the the shier cats to get some, without being pushed around by the other cats. This time, I was able to close the door and keep the other cats from coming back in during the night.
Of course, that meant frequent interruptions by cats trying to claw the door open.
Eventually, though, I did hear Butterscotch going into a litter box, which should have been a good thing, but… something didn’t sound right. So I used the flashlight on my phone to try and see her.
*sigh*
Yeah, she was using the litter box, finally, but didn’t quite go all the way in.
She ran off again and hid in her cat cave while I got up and cleaned up the mess.
*sigh*
After that, things did finally quiet down, and I managed to get some sleep, but all this having to get up and check things was quite painful.
I have discovered on thing, though. While my girth may make it seem otherwise, I’ve got some pretty decent abs! I had to sit myself up many times using just my abs, and not being able to use my arms at all.
With just Butterscotch in her cave and what turned out to be Susan sleeping somewhere else, I actually was able to get some decent sleep, if only for a few hours.
This morning, I felt good enough that, when my younger daughter went to feed the outside cats, I went along to help out, then do the rest of my rounds and switch out the trail cam memory cards.
I was very happy to demonstrate to her that I can now lift my right arm straight out again! While there is still some pain, I have almost full mobility of my arm again! The level of improvement since yesterday is amazing. I’m so relieved! There were times I seriously considered getting my daughter to drive me to the hospital, but giving it a couple of days of rest seems to be what I really needed. In fact, while writing this, I just tested my arm again, and I could do a full rotation at the shoulder, with no pain! Not even my left shoulder, which was not strained as badly, still has more pain now than my right shoulder does. I’m so relieved!
While doing the morning feeding, neither of us tried to do a head count. There were clearly fewer cats than usual, but they were also running around a lot, making it hard to keep track. There were these two, though…
The cats still aren’t going into the sunroom as much as usual. Checking it just a short while ago, there was a small pile of maybe three or four cats on the platform, and that’s it. Usually, we’d see about 6 or ten on the platform, and almost as many under the heat lamp or on the cat bed below, plus more in the shelf, at the food bowls or just wandering around. It’s going to take time for them to start feeling safe in there again.
These two are almost always in the sunroom. Syndol can’t get enough attention, but the little one (can you believe they’re only about a month or so apart in age?) is now getting to the point of enjoying pets and being picked up. We’d brought this one into the house a couple of times to give his nethers a thorough washing. He was so patient about it, the girls have named him Patience.
Even his tortie sister has started to allow me to pet her more often, and will tolerate being picked up more. Which is good, because it means we can bring her indoors for overnight fasting at the end of the week, before taking her to get spayed. Oh, how I wish more of the females could be socialized enough to get them done! My daughter was able to pet Broccoli this morning, but she wouldn’t let me near her. I did manage to pet Junk Pile – the first time in ages. She seemed shocked at being pet, and liking the shoulder skritches, but didn’t allow it for long. Even Caramel was around, but I only managed to touch her while she had her back to me while eating. Brussel won’t let us near her, but she will go into the kibble house and even into the sunroom. Sprout keeps her distance. If we’re around, she won’t eat at all, and she prefers to eat from the bowls under the shrine, across the yard. We’ve seen Slick around, I think (aka: Octomom), and there’s another grey tabby that’s more spotted then striped that I think is also female. That one will eat at the kibble house or on the cat house roof, but is even shier than Sprout, so we haven’t been able to confirm, either way. Another one we have not been able to confirm is one more from that late litter of either kittens; a small grey tabby with dense longer fur. It will go into the sunroom to eat, and I’ve been able to sneak a pet on its back, if it can’t see me, but that’s it. Given how it won’t let us near it, I’m going to just assume it’s female. 😕
Anyhow, that’s the current status.
In other things, my daughter was able to help me move a chair out of the living room so I have access to the aquarium greenhouses again. With my arm mobile again, my goal for today is to get the big aquarium ready for seed trays, then hopefully actually get seeds started. We’ve got the red onions, yellow onions and shallots that should have already been started by now, plus some peppers and eggplant. Possibly some oregano and thyme, too, but those can probably wait a couple more weeks. I’ll have to go through our seeds that need to be started the earliest and make some decisions. With having to build or rebuild so many beds, once things are thawed out enough, I’m going to work on the assumption we won’t have room for everything we want to plant. Especially for things that would need to be planted in ground, like corn.
We shall see how things work out. For now, I’m just glad to 1) be pain free and mobile enough to get back at it and 2) not have any unexpected running around to do, but actually be home to get my own stuff done!
Time to grab a stool and get at those aquarium greenhouses!
I had an order started with T&T Seeds about a month ago. I wasn’t quite decided on things, so I hadn’t completed it when my computer died.
Today, I logged into my account. No surprise that it had been dumped by now! Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite remember everything I had in there. It wasn’t much, and I remembered in a general sense, so I tried my best.
This is what I just finished ordering. All images belong to T&T Seeds.
The first is a tomato. After experimenting with so many last year, my daughter suggested we do just the paste tomatoes I want, plus a cherry tomato. We did get free tomato seeds with our Heritage Harvest order, and I want to try at least a few of those, but I still wanted to order a variety of cherry tomatoes for fresh eating.
I was torn between two varieties, until I saw that one of them was more expensive – and for only 10 seeds! So I got these Black Cherry tomatoes, instead! It comes in a packet of 25 seeds. This is an indeterminate variety that will need staking.
Yes, we ordered yet another squash variety! My older daughter requested this. In the catalog, it’s called Winter Sunshine Hybrid, which I couldn’t find in the website. I was able to search the product code, though, and on the website, it’s just called Sunshine Hybrid. What caught my daughter’s attention is that it’s supposed to make the “best” soup. At only 80 days to maturity, this is something that we could technically direct sow but, with our slug issues, I think we’ll start them indoors!
We’re going to try two new varieties of potatoes this year. The first is a yellow potato.
This is the German Butterball potato. It is supposed to be a good winter storage variety, and a good all-purpose potato, so I ordered two 1kg bags.
I was torn between trying another all purple potato, or a purple skin white potato. In the end, I settled on this Purple Caribe. It’s supposed to be a good mashing potato that isn’t fussy about where it grows – which matters, with our soil conditions! I ordered only one 1kg bag of these.
This year, I’m considering growing the potatoes where we had the big squash patch for the past two years. I’m hoping a couple of years of heavy mulching will have made the soil easier to dig into, to plant potatoes. The alternative would likely be to use grow bags again, but I don’t think I’ll do that this year. We shall see. The potatoes won’t get shipped until planting time, so we’ll have the opportunity to prepare a place in advance.
The entire order cost under $40, but with tax and shipping, it came out to over $60! To have it shipped by mail was basically $20. I’m not impressed with that. Alternatively, we could have picked it up at the store, which 1) would still have had a shipping and handling charge of a little over $5 and 2) is nowhere near us, so not an option, anyhow!
Hopefully, the product will be good. We’ve ordered short season sweet potato slips from them before, during what turned out to be a really difficult growing year, so they didn’t have a chance to grow well. I looked into trying them again, but the price increase was way too much. Frustrating.
Anyhow.
This will probably be our last seed order for the year, though I hope to order at least one fruit, berry or nut tree this year. We still need to decide on what we want to start this year. Aside from that, I would like to pick up more strawberries, but we will probably buy transplants in the spring, rather than order online.
My main focus for this spring is going to be increasing the number of beds we can plant in. The tunnel beds are high on the list, but if at all possible, I’d like to do something with the low raised beds we currently have. They were always intended to be temporary set ups, but with the troubles we had last years, from tree roots at the far ends, to whatever infected those red onions and Roma tomatoes, they need to be reworked. Right now, they are bordered with short lengths of logs from the trees we had trimmed away from the house and power lines, and I want to replace those with longer logs (if we can harvest enough dead trees!), make them lightly higher, and consistent in width and length. Right now, some of them are a bit wider and, with low raised beds, that makes it harder for us short people to reach. In the future, I need to remember that a low raised bed, accessible from both sides, should be no more than 3 feet wide. By making these even just one log higher, we can keep them at 4 feet wide. We might not be able to do that until after the growing season is done, though. We shall see!
Can you tell the warm weather has me itching to get working outside? 😂😄😂
We still have not been able to start seeds indoors. I need access to the aquarium greenhouse, but we’ve got too much shoved in front of it that we don’t know where else to put. Like an armchair that needs repair. It will probably have to get moved to the storage house, but there’s too much snow in the way to carry something like that.
We really need to get those onions started soon, though!
One more night, before the cold snap is dupposed to end, in our area.
I headed out to feed the outside cats and do partial evening rounds. We have reached our expected high of -20C, and are not expected to drop much lower overnight. The windchill, however, is -32C right now, and it’s expected to reach -37C overnight! While walking around the inner yard, there is a section that isn’t sheltered from north winds, and wow, what a difference! The winds have certainly increased, and we are supposed to get a light snowfall, too.
The cats are handling it well, and making good use of the shelter and sunroom. I did find they had somehow managed to unplug the heat lamp, though! The power bar is on the wall, on the far side of the platform, so reaching to plug it back in was a bit of a challenge. Even with it unplugged, though, the room was still around -10C. I made sure the lamp was pushing heat properly, before heading in.
Tomorrow our high is supposed to be -15 or -16C. I have some errands to run, and hope to head over to help my mother as well. I haven’t gotten through to her on the phone, yet. My brother spoke to her yesterday, and she had told him she is willing to try doing her errands in our truck! I do have the step stool, the truck has a step under the door, and the passenger side has a handle she can use to pull herself in. I’m willing to try it if she is, but my goodness, it concerns me! However, her car is out of commission, my sister isn’t able to come out, and my brother would have to plan ahead to arrange a day off work to help out with his car. So there isn’t much choice.
I hope it works out, because then I can get her to a doctor’s appointment, so she can get referred to a specialist. Errands, tomorrow, will be the test!
I’m happy to say that I have no errands to run, no unexpected outings, nothing. Just a day to stay home, inside and out of the wind!
We’ve had a very mild winter so far, but as we head towards the end of January and into February, we are expected to get more average temperatures. Not so much that we need to worry about the vehicles freezing, or even plug them in. Which is good, since I discovered the truck’s block heater plug end was ripped off and never repaired. Clearly, it wasn’t an issue for whomever owned it before. This thing can handle the cold much better than the van could.
We do need to try and get the garage door closed, though. One corner wheel came off the track. I’m hoping that, if one person is able to push up the opposite corner, it will move the loose corner close enough to the track to be able to get it back on. This is something to do on a warmer day and will require taking the truck out, setting up a little ladder at one corner, and the folding scaffolding set at the other. It will take three of us to manhandle the thing. One to push up the opposite corner, one to move the loose corner towards the track, and one to try and get the wheel back on the track. It’s an unusually large door for its type.
The outside cats are appreciating being out of the wind. This morning, I counted 33 of them. Last winter, we had a ceramic heat bulb set up for them, but the old fixture we were using stopped working. We currently have a replacement on the way. What we had before was something my brother had put together to set up under the kitchen sink, so the heat from an incandescent light bulb would help prevent pipes from freezing, while the house was empty. The kitchen has no heat vent, so it was the one area of concern in the house.
What we are getting is a clip-on lamp designed for chickens. It has a heat reflector shade and comes with a ceramic bulb. I plan to set it up facing under the platform, which will have the added benefit of the sheet of insulation above, to help keep the heat in their favorite sleeping spot. If it gets too warm, they can go on top of the platform. The only thing I’m not sure of is how I will attach it securely. I’ll figure that out, once it arrives, and I can see exactly how the clamp is designed.
Meanwhile, we are still figuring out our phone problems. I spoke to my brother, through Messenger, and told him we thought the problem was the jack in my husband’s room. My brother suggested we simply detach that jack and see. I never even thought of that! So I went into the basement and traced the wire to the hub, and removed it.
Nothing changed.
My brother said it sounded like moisture got into a jack, which is what we think, too. Likely due to our two fixed males that still spray! There are two other jacks on the ground floor, but there is no way cats or moisture could get to either of those. That leaves the one jack upstairs, which we’ve never used, which could have had damage to it. So, one of my goals for today is to find and trace that wire and remove it.
If that doesn’t do it, then the problem is something else, and we’ll have to call someone in.
The main problem is, either how we have things set up, it’s hard to access all but one of the jacks. We will have to clear things for a tech to reach them, if he needs do.
Speaking of clearing things, once Christmas is over on Jan 6, and we store away our decorations, we need to rearrange parts of the living room again, so I can access the big aquarium greenhouse. We need to get our onion seeds started!
Then we will need to bring other things in from the sun room, including one of the shop lights, to set up our growing zone again. We won’t be able to do the same setup as we did last year, but I think we might not be starting quite so many seeds indoors this year. We shall see.
Today was a day of running around, starting in the afternoon. We had a dump run to do, and I had to wait until they opened. From there, it was a stop at the post office, then off to my mother’s to drop some Christmas stuff off, before I headed to the pharmacy to get more mineral oil. The girls cleaned the cats’ ears while I was out, using the last of our mineral oil to do it, and we have another 4 or 5 days of daily cleaning. Hopefully, that will take care of the ear mites!
I made sure to let my mother know I could pick stuff up for her since I was there anyhow, so she had a short list for me. I took care of that after I went to the pharmacy. Before leaving town, I messaged the family to see if we needed anything and ended up going back to the grocery store. By then, I was pretty famished, and there’s this excellent Chinese restaurant, right next door! So we had Chinese take out as a treat for supper.
The down side of all this running around is that it was already dark by the time I headed home. I hate driving at night. Yes, I have the deer screamers on the truck, but with the lights from oncoming traffic, it’s impossible to see if there are any deer on or near the road.
Once home. I was happy to go through the mail, as our Heritage Harvest seed order was in. It included a lovely surprise
I didn’t expect to get free seeds for such a small order! Of course, I had to look them up. This image is from the Heritage Harvest website.
This wonderful heirloom originates from Quebec. Forme de Coeur really impressed me this summer and it is now one of my new favorites! The red heart shape fruit are medium size and produced in abundance. The fruit have great taste and are quite meaty. A great all purpose tomato that is early as well. Determinate, regular leaf foliage. (65 days from transplant)
25 seeds per packet.
We were planning to plant only 2 varieties of tomatoes next year, but we might just have to try these! Especially since they have such a short growing season.
The main thing, though, is that the Red Wethersfield onion seeds are in. We now have all our onion and shallot seeds, which will be started indoors next month. 😊
Not having my desktop is getting frustrating in unusual ways.
But first, the cuteness!
In the parcel we received yesterday (thank you!!), a blanket was used as packing material, with instructions that it be used for the outside cats.
They love it!
Especially Sad Face, who now seems to prefer it over the self warming mat.
My usual task of switching out the trail cam memory cards, after feeding the outside cats, is pointless right now. I don’t have a computer to upload the files to.
The solar camera, however, is supposed to be wifi accessible. My husband looked up which app it needed, which I downloaded and started to set up. Then, I continued the set up at the camera.
Once the camera wifi was turned on and readied in the settings, I tried to link it to my phone.
As far as the app is concerned, the camera doesn’t exist.
Same with my wifi settings.
It’s much warmer today, with almost no wind, but it was still below freezing, so I wasn’t going to hang around. I might have to bring the camera indoors to figure it out.
The other frustration is a blogging one. Normally, in the days leading up to Christmas, I do things like embed daily Christmas carol videos. Then, in the days before New Years, I do some “10 most popular posts of the year, type stuff.
Things I am not going to do on my phone.
When writing these posts, I work in several tabs at the same time, with related posts I intend to link to, open in still more tabs. I also spend quite a bit of time, finding and selecting videos to embed.
Can’t do that on a phone. At least, not the way I prefer to do it.
I also have issues with tapping a screen. I end up with many more typos, autocorrect messes the strangest things up, and it’s just a lot more painful on the hands – though not as painful as using the little Bluetooth keyboard. Overall, it’s just not conductive to writing like I usually do.
Tomorrow, I go into the city. My husband suggested I stop somewhere to pick up a rescue USB. So I will try that before I start calling computer repair places.
Speaking of tomorrow.
My mother called. She’s not doing well. The exterminator is coming tomorrow, you see, and the letter she got has so much she needs to do…
She would have gotten that letter maybe a week ago. She never told me about it. I knew she got it because she told my brother, and he updated me, but we didn’t get a date from her.
I reminded her of how little she had to do, the last times the guy came to spray for bed bugs. He’s used to having to go into homes with people who have mobility issues.
Then I asked if my sister had her day off tomorrow, and could help her, because I’m going to be in the city, with a stop at the clinic along the way to do some regular bloodwork. She said yes about the day off, so I suggested she call my sister.
The thing is, the exterminator can come in anytime between 9am and 4pm. Because he’s doing other provincially run buildings in the area, too, there is no way to know when he will make it to her town. He has shown up right at 9am, and at just before 4pm. My mother should be staying out of her apartment for 12 hours, instead of the 6 hours recommended for people who don’t have respiratory issues. Which means one of us needs to get to my mom’s for 9am, then stay there until the guy arrives, then find somewhere for her to hang out for hours. She’d rented a motel room before, but she doesn’t want to do that anymore. I can’t blame her for that! Still, I’m not able to do it this time, so hopefully, my sister will be able to step up. Otherwise, my mother will basically be hanging out in the common room.
She wondered where the bed bugs came from. I told her, since she doesn’t get out much, it’s likely from within the building. She told me her apartment is going to be the only one sprayed. I told her, my thought is that others have them, but they just aren’t reporting it.
Which means the common room is most likely where they are being spread.
Another frustration! If that’s true, then her apartment being sprayed won’t do much, since she will just get infested again. Ideally, the entire building would be done, including the common areas. It’s not a big place, so it is pretty feasible.
Standard practice is, he will leave traps to check, and spray again in a month. I think my mother would rather live with the bed bugs. It was already a fight for my brother to keep her from canceling tomorrow’s appointment.
The Re-Farmer 