planning ahead

Garden plans for 2021: orders in, and probably way too much!

/ Re-Farmer / 19 Comments

I posted previously about seeds we ordered from Rare Seeds. Since then, I’ve placed another small order from them, which I will talk about below. (all links should open in new tabs, so you won’t lose your place. :-) )

The problem is, our first order hasn’t arrived yet. It has been shipped and, as far as my account on the website states, it’s complete. It should have arrived by now.

Could it be stuck at the border? I don’t know. I’ve emailed them and asked. Hopefully, they will be able to find out at their end.

A lot of the stuff on my wish list there is out of stock, so when I had the chance, I did place another order while what I wanted was available. This is what I will be getting (along with a free packet of mystery flowers).

Hopi Black Dye Sunflower. I’m really excited about this. Not only is it supposed to be a good eating sunflower, but it can be used to make a purple dye. After what happened when we planted sunflowers last year, we ordered 2 packages of these.

Mongolian Giant Sunflower. I love how they use small children to demonstrate just how MASSIVE some of their products are. This one is a monster of a sunflower! Heads can reach up to 18 inches across, and the stalks can reach 14 feet. This will make a substantial wind break and privacy screen. Yes, we ordered two packages of these, as well.

Crespo Squash. This is a type of big, warty green pumpkin. Why did I order it? Because it’s big, green and warty. Also, it’s supposed to be very delicious.

In deciding what to get, we are looking at both summer fresh eating, and winter storage. The sunflowers we planted last year did not get a chance to mature, but if we can get these planted earlier, hopefully, that will not be an issue again. We will also be looking at finding ways to keep the deer away from them. From the looks of the stalks we left in the garden, they are still trying to eat them which, for this time of year, is part of why we have them there. Hopefully, the birds are able to eat the developing seeds in the seed heads, even if they’re not fully formed and ripe. Last I checked, some did appear to be eaten, but not much. With bird feeders right by the house, they don’t really have much incentive to eat underdeveloped seeds.

We got our Vesey’s catalog in the mail recently, which was quite exciting. :-D The girls and I have been talking about what we want to do while going through it. Today, I ended up placing a much larger order than before. I had been thinking of waiting until January, but with things already disappearing from my cart because they were suddenly out of stock, I figured I’d better order things while I could. Even so, much of what I would have liked to have ordered was out of stock. Some of them, I ordered different varieties instead. Others, we will wait and will probably order in January or February.

This is what we’ve got ordered, as of right now.

Vesey’s Mosaic Mix Tomato. We are not big tomato eaters. I actually detest tomatoes, though I can eat tomato paste or crushed tomato as an ingredient in dishes. One of my daughters, however, really likes little tomatoes. This package is a mix of cherry and grape tomatoes in a range of colours that will produce over a long period of time. This is for her! :-D

Merlin Beet. Of the beets we tried to grow last year, this is the one the girls liked the most. We’ll just have to protect them from the deer!

There is another variety we plan to get, but it’s out of stock, so we’ll order that later. When we’re ready to plant, we should have 2 varieties of beets.

Spinach collection. Three varieties of spinach that mature at different types. We all love fresh spinach, but store bought spinach goes bad so quickly, we rarely buy it. Something else we have to protect from the deer, though!

Summer Squash Mix
Sunburst Summer Squash These are the same as what we ordered last year. The mix does include sunburst squash in it, but having more of them went over very well last year. This time, we have better information for starting them indoors, and protecting them from late frost, so hopefully, we will have even more. They will be for fresh eating, and for pickling and freezing.

Baby Pam Pumpkin. The pumpkins we planted last year were planted way too late, and we didn’t even know what variety they were. This time, we chose a variety noted for its eating quality, and faster maturity.

Red Kuri (Little Gem) squash. These little winter squashes should mature even faster than the pumpkins! This variety was also chosen for its winter storage qualities.

Teddy Organic Winter Squash. We picked these for their combination of small size (serving size!) and high production, as well as it’s faster maturity.

Pixie Melon
Halona Melon

I was unsure about trying to grow melons again, as the transplants I bought last year did not work out. I had a variety recommended to me, but it was not available. These cantaloupe type melons were picked for their quicker maturity. We enjoy melons, but it’s another of those things we rarely buy, so it’s worth giving it another go.

Cucamelon. Yes, even though I was able to save some tubers, I’m still getting some to start from seed. Just in case!

Conservor Organic Shallot
Norstar Onion
Red Karmen Onion Sets (to be shipped in spring)
Red Baron Onion (bunching onion)

We have 3 varieties of garlic already planted. Now, we’ll also have lots of onions, too! We use onions a lot, so figured it was worth going ahead and planting lots. We chose come of these for their winter storage-ability.

Yukon Gem Potatoes (yellow flesh)
Purple Peruvian Fingerling Potatoes (purple throughout)
Norland Potatoes (red skin, white flesh)
Purple Chief Potatoes (purple skin, white flesh)

Last year, we ordered 2 boxes (3 pounds each) of the Yukon Gold. This year, we decided to double the amount (each comes in a 3 pound box), but quadruple the varieties. The Norland and Purple Chief are noted for their winter storage, so we’ll have some we will grow for eating earlier, and others to keep for later.

Napoli Carrot
Deep Purple Carrot

Deep Purple is one of the varieties we planted last year. The Napoli is not the variety I originally picked, but this one was in stock and highly rated. We have two other carrot varieties coming from Rare Seeds that should have arrived by now. If something has gone wrong with that order (for all I know, seeds aren’t being allowed across the border right now. Or maybe it’s just slow), we’ll still have 2 varieties. If we end up with 4, well, that’s just more for pickling or freezing.

Dalvay Pea I actually had a 3 variety collection in my cart, but waited too long to order, and now it’s out of stock. So I ordered this variety for now. We may order another variety, later. These were noted for their fast maturity and long pods.

Lewis Bean (green)
Golden Rod Bean (yellow)
Royal Burgandy Bean (purple, turns green when cooked)

The 3 variety collection I had on my wish list is out of stock, so I picked similar varieties that were in stock. These types of beans are another thing I rarely buy in the stores, though we like them. They tend to either look oogy, or get oogy very quickly. These will be used for pickling and freezing, too.

Peaches and Cream Corn Collection Three varieties of Peaches and Cream corn. Not the collection I originally intended to order, but the one that was in stock! We have 2 other, more unique, varieties from Rare Seeds that are held up (watch, after my saying this so often, I’ll find them in the mail tomorrow… LOL). I believe we will need to plant those varieties away from these ones. I don’t think they would be good to cross pollinate. Especially the purple variety. :-D

Illinois Everbearing Mulberry (shipped in the spring) This is it! Our first food tree! I really hemmed and hawed about ordering it, because it’s quite expensive, but it will be two years before it produces fruit, so the sooner, the better. It’s actually a zone 4 tree, so we will have to ensure that it is well protected. It can grow up to 25 feet high, which also needs to be kept in mind when we decide where to plant it, too! My mother remembers they had a mulberry tree growing behind their barn, when she was a child in Poland. She remembers bright yellow silk worm cocoons on them, too! We might be able to grow the tree here, but I don’t think we could introduce silk worms here! :-D

Western Mix Wildflowers
Alternative Lawn Mix Wildflowers

These are mixes that will be scatter sown in a couple of areas. One of them will actually be outside the property, between a fence and the road. This is an area that is currently open, and I don’t want it to be taken over by trees, like on the other side of our driveway. Plus, the garden area is on the inside of the fence, so it will attract pollinators. Reading over the planting instructions, it seems they actually do better being planted in the fall, so we might take the summer to prepare the areas (they actually recommend tilling! No, we aren’t going to go that far), then seed them.

There we have it! Our order is in.

This is probably way too much – and there are other things I’d still like to order! We certainly don’t have enough beds or grounds prepared for all of it. Especially the corn. But that’s okay. We’ll work it out!

We will need to build potentially 4 trellises for the peas and beans, plus we want to build squash tunnels and trellises. Where we planted the squash last year, there are 5 prepared beds, plus the 2 beds the potatoes were in, plus 1 long skinny bed where I planted the seed potatoes I found that hadn’t sprouted. No idea if they will grow at all next year. We also have the retaining wall and parts of the old kitchen garden available for some things. The potatoes we ordered will need to be planted in a different area from where we grew them last year, so as not to attract the Colorado Potato Beetle. We are talking about trying to grow potatoes in containers, instead, this time.

So we’ll have to prepare beds for 27 plant varieties, plus larger areas for the corn and sunflowers, just from what I’ve listed here. More, counting my first order from Rare Seeds, and anything else we might order later. Not that we actually have to plant all of everything we get this year. Some things can be inter-planted (squash, beans and corn together, for example), so that will help a bit.

We’re still looking at potentially 20 beds or more that need to be prepared! All manually, too.

Yeah.

We can do that. :-D

Did we maybe overdo it? :-D

The Re-Farmer






Half shop, and bubble!

/ Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

First up, Happy Thanksgiving to all our visitors from the US! I hope you are having a wonderful day! :-)

Today was my day to go into the city for our monthly stock up.

I was really dreading it.

I’m part of a local, private, online group where people around our province share where it is safe to shop for people who can’t wear masks. Since our province went into “enhanced lock down,” some places have gone full gestapo. The Costco I normally go to has always been really great, but something changed. Now, masks or shields are required, or no one is allowed in. I know quite a few people who cannot wear even a face shield, at all (largely due to PTSD), and they reported some pretty awful responses from the management. Worse, people were reporting that police have started patrolling the stores and parking lots at all Costco locations. They have been approaching people in their vehicles, when there is more than one person, demanding to know if they were from the same household. One woman had an officer come back to her vehicle and ticket her, for being part of a freedom protest a couple of weeks ago. How the officer determined who she was or if she were even at that protest, she didn’t know. Inside the store, people were reporting being hassled, medical exemptions being denied, and management being downright abusive. A different Costco location than the one I usually go to, which was already known for not being a safe place, has gotten even worse.

As you can imagine, I was quite concerned. Yes, I would be wearing a shield, but even people with shields were reporting being denied entry to some stores, getting harassed by security, and so on.

Normally, a daughter comes with me, but with the “enhanced lock down”, I wasn’t sure we would both be allowed into any stores at the same time. So I went alone, just in case.

Normally, we do a drive through breakfast, then Walmart, then an international grocery store, then Costco, so that stuff that is frozen, or needs refrigeration, is in the vehicle for the shortest possible time.

Today, I skipped the drive through, and bought most of what was on my list at Walmart. I walked in with my shield, and no one batted an eye. I was the only person I saw with a shield instead of a mask, the entire time. I did get odd looks from a couple of customers, but with their faces hidden, I really couldn’t tell what their full expressions where. One old guy just stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me. ???

The last thing I got at the Walmart was a small tray of sushi for breakfast to eat in the van, then headed to the international grocery store. I was able to get the rest of what was on my list there. This place is awesome, and I probably would have been fine without even the face shield, but I didn’t want to take a chance of them getting fined $5000; something else our provincial government has started to do.

Along with what was on my list, I also found something I was quite excited about, in the Indian food aisle.

Duram wheat flour!

We’re going to be making pasta! :-D

It doesn’t take much for me to get excited. ;-)

Best of all, though, I was able to skip Costco entirely.

Since neither place had flat carts, I wasn’t able to get things in the same amount we normally would. I basically did a half-shop, as far as quantities go, so we will need to make a second trip. Especially for the heavy stuff, like cat food and litter. Most of the smaller, lighter stuff, we can get locally without hurting the budget too badly. The lock down is supposed to end on Dec. 11, so we have at least enough to last until then. I don’t expect the lock down to actually end, though. From what I’m seeing, I expect things to get worse, not better. And I don’t mean the virus. I hope I’m wrong.

Once I got home, and the girls and I were putting everything away, I happened to see something odd through the semi-transparent lid of our flour container. So I opened it to check.

It’s a bubble!!

The “bread egg” I buried in there managed to expand a bubble far enough to break through the top of the flour!

Well, at least I know that yeast is still active and happy! :-D

Tonight, I’ll be fishing it out to soak overnight, to continue my Babcia’s bread experiment.

But I digress…

One thing I made sure to do as I headed out, was bring our pulse oximeter. After the issues I had before, I wanted to monitor myself. I used it before I left and I can’t say I was surprised to see my heart rate was at 112 – I was already pretty stressed! – but my oxygen was at 95%. I typically read at 97 or 98, so this is low for me. The “normal” range is 95-100%, unless a person has something like COPD or some other lung disease. Anything from 88-94% is still considered safe, but below that, it’s recommended to get medical help.

While I was shopping, every now and then I would pause and take a reading. When my levels were below 95%, I would do some breathing exercises, watch my levels go back up again, then continue. I remember one reading where my % was okay, but my heart rate had gone up to 126!

I am really glad I brought it along.

I’m really glad we had one I could bring along!

One thing all of these mask mandates and trying to wear a shield has done, is make me more aware of my own breathing. I mean, really, who even thinks about it normally, right? Well, I’ve started to notice that I’m having issues at other times. Like while I was driving home, I found myself short of breath, and opening the window a bit to get more air flow. I’ve even noticed times when I’d be sitting at my computer, then suddenly gasping for air. What the heck?

I have kept the oximeter with me since getting home, and every now and then, I’ll do a quick test.

My heart rate has gone down to about 68-70, which is good.

My oxygen has dropped down as low as 93%.

What the heck is going on?

I don’t feel anything is off or out of the ordinary, except possibly my sinuses. My husband suggested I might be having an allergic reaction to something. Normally, I get that in the summer, when I’m working outside. I have no idea what I’m allergic to, other than it’s something environmental. I’ve had allergy tests to try and find the source of my chronic cough, and I’m not allergic to pollen or cats or any of the other usual stuff. So I think I will try taking antihistamines for a few days and see if that changes anything. This is all so very strange.

Anyhow.

We are now stocked for about half the month. With Christmas coming, we don’t expect to do much for special shopping. Most of us have already purchased gifts online, which I hate doing unless it’s for things we cannot buy locally. I’ll have to increase the number of times we go to the post office for the next while. :-)

One thing I did do, since we will be starting to make pasta, is order a manual pasta machine and a pasta drying rack. They should arrive in the first week of December.

Meanwhile, my daughters let me know we were running low on yeast. At the Walmart, they were mostly out. I got a vacuum packed brick of “instant yeast”, and a small jar of traditional yeast, which is what we prefer. At the international grocery store, however, they had plenty of large jars of the traditional yeast, so I snagged one.

Between our ample stock of flour, yeast and other basic ingredients, we’ll be able to do all sorts of bread baking in the next while, if we want. :-)

Now that this trip is done, we shouldn’t need to go anywhere, other than the post office or the dump, for quite some time! Hopefully, I’ll at least be able to help my mother with a grocery shopping trip. No visitors are allowed in her building right now, but I can pick her up outside, then bring her bags to the outside doors. The social workers at the senior’s centre have offered to get groceries for her, too, so she should be okay. In her building, they slid notes under everyone’s door, telling everyone that they had to wear masks, even in the hallways – but “graciously” allowed them to be mask free inside their own apartments. !!

How did we ever get to this point? Have we learned nothing from history?

The Re-Farmer

This year’s decorations start: dehydrated orange slices

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For many years, I would craft new decorations for our Christmas tree. It was a good opportunity to use small projects to try out new techniques and ideas. Our tree is basically a mad chaos of different styles and materials, and I love it!

Life got in the way, and I stopped doing this for many years. I was able to do a few last year, and I’m hoping to be able to continue this yearly tradition.

With so many cats in the house, though, we’re going to have a much smaller tree, set high off the ground! We’re still trying to figure out how to manage that, but the cats have inspired ideas for this year’s decorations.

Cats are supposed to not like citrus, so I will be using dried orange slices as the foundation of the decorations.

Last night, I sliced two naval oranges and laid them out on a rack in a baking pan. I set our oven to “warm” (170F) and left them overnight. I did have the opportunity to turn them a couple of times, since I was up anyway, investigating the crashing and banging that woke me up (I found Layendecker on the fridge, and a decorative jar with seashells on it was on the floor in the dining room; I’ll have to figure out how to remove the broken seashells to replace them. :-( ).

This morning, one of my daughters took a dried slice and showed it to some cats.

I don’t think they’re going to work as cat repellent! :-D

I plan to include cinnamon sticks in the decorations, too – something else that cats are supposed to not like. I don’t think it’ll help, since in the past, we’ve had cats try and steal our cinnamon apple dough decorations, right off the tree!

Well, even if it doesn’t work, we’ll have new decorations for the tree this year! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Garden plans for 2021

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Yes, it’s only the middle of November, but the girls and I are already planning for next year’s gardening.

We learned a lot in our first year of gardening here, and will be using that information as we expand our food growing.

We have several goals and things we keep in mind when deciding what to order. First is keeping in line with our long term goal to be as self sufficient as possible. The other is to take advantage of being able to grow our own food by growing things we either can’t normally buy in the grocery store (either due to lack of availability, or poor quality in stores), or because they tend to be more expensive, or “treat” items, that we typically can’t justify spending our limited budget on. Both of these goals also allows us to go a bit wild in what we grow! :-)

With that in mind, I’ve already placed and order with Rare Heirlooom Seeds. It’s a small order; some of the things I would have bought were out of stock while, with others, we will go through the wish list to pick and choose. Here is what I’ve got ordered right now.

Giant Rattle Breadseed Poppy. I was really excited to see this new item! These are very much like the poppies I remember my mother growing, when I was a kid. I used to love eating the seeds right out of the dried poppy pods. She grew enough to make the filling for poppy seed rolls, which uses a LOT of seeds! Poppy seeds are something I love, but buy very rarely. If we have our own, I would certainly be using them every chance I get!

Longue Rouge Sang Carrot. I’ll be honest. I selected these just for the colours.

Kyoto Red Carrot. This is one I ended up choosing based on comments other customers left behind. It’s described as a “winter carrot”, which obviously isn’t a thing in our climate. Several people had complained about not being able to grow it well in their warmer zones. Then someone in a zone 3 – the same as us! – said they grew it as a summer carrot and it thrived. Awesome!

Strawberry Spinach. This is something I’ve actually tried to grow before, in containers on our balcony, years ago. We had limited success, largely due to weather conditions. What little we got, I liked, so I want to try them again. Both the leaves and the berries are edible, so that’s bonus, too!

Dorinny Sweet corn. I hemmed and hawed quite a bit about growing corn yet, but I decided to just go for it. This variety is from a Canadian hybrid, so it should be quite hardy to our growing zone.

Montana Morado Corn. This one falls into the “go wild” category! I chose it partly because it is a cold hardy variety, but mostly because of the amazing colour. It is also a variety that can be milled into flour; something we have included in our mid term plans. We just have to acquire a hand mill. Once we do, we will be looking into planting grains as well as corn, specifically for milling.

Other things we plan to get from this site are giant sunflowers, plus a variety of sunflowers that can also be used to make a purple-grey dye.

We’ve also got a substantial wishlist going at Veseys, which is where we got almost everything we planted last year. Those will be ordered later in the season, as their new catalogs include promo codes for discounts. With how much we plan to order, we’re going to need a discount!

This past year, one of the things we really loved about having the garden, was being able to pick and eat our own produce, daily.

As great as it was to have fresh produce all summer, there wasn’t much left over for the winter. This time, we will focus more on things we can process (the pickled summer squash was a huge hit for our family), as well as things that can be kept in the root cellar for long periods.

So for sure, we will be re-ordering the summer squash mix, with an extra packet of sunburst squash again, to go with the carrots and cucamelons (I have cucamelon tubers from this past summer, but will likely get more seeds, too).

We plan to get a variety of winter squash, with a focus on those that store well. Winter squash is something I almost never buy in stores. This will include small eating pumpkins (rather than the more popular carving pumpkins).

This time, we know to use 3 or 4 inch pots to start our seeds indoors, and to start them earlier. Maybe even get a warming mat. Some of our seeds took forever to germinate (especially the birdhouse gourds!), while others germinated fine, but outgrew their Jiffy pellets before the weather allowed for transplanting.

With potatoes, we decided to get the same amount of Yukon Gem potatoes as before (6 pounds of seed potatoes), but also get other varieties. If all goes to plan, we’ll be planting 4 varieties, including two that are noted as being good for winter storage. For these, we’re thinking of using grow bags or pots, to try and keep out the grublins that chewed holes in our potatoes.

We might get more varieties of corn, as well. We will be getting a collection of peas in 3 varieties. Peas right out of the pod are the best! A 3 variety collection of bush beans is also on the list. I love fresh beans, but in stores, they are among those things that always look a bit iffy. Eventually, we will get beans for drying, but not quite yet.

If we can figure out how to protect them from the deer, we will be getting the same collection of beets as we did before, too. A spinach collection (three varieties, each maturing one after the other) is also on the list.

We will be getting at least one more variety of carrots. We will very likely pick up a 3 variety pack of raspberry canes, too. These produce in their second years, so they will be for 2022’s garden. We’ve also been looking and onion and shallot varieties, focusing on those best for storage.

We’re looking at starting to get more trees and bushes, too. There are blueberry varieties that are suitable for our climate. Of course, we want more haskap berries. What I thought were gooseberries here turned out to be currants, so gooseberry bushes would be good to get, too. We’re also looking at mulberry, apple, plum and pear trees. All of these take at least a couple of years before they start producing, so the sooner we start planting them, the better. We will likely get fruit and nut tress from Hardy Fruit Tree Nursery. It’s one of the few places I’ve found that has cold hardy food trees suitable for our zone.

There is an extra purpose to all this planning ahead so early. We had plans we weren’t able to follow through on for last summer’s garden, in regards to trellises and other supports. Once we know what we are going to plant, and figure out where, we can use the winter months to accumulate any materials we need to buy (like cattle panels, rebar or rebar grid, tie wire and other fasteners, etc.). Most of what we want to build, we can use materials salvaged from around the property, but there will always be a few things we’ll have to buy.

With that in mind, I now have a tighter goal for cleaning up the spruce grove – something that is already behind “schedule” of our original timeline by a couple of years! We have a lot of tall, springy poplars that I want to clear out, and they will be used to build upright trellises, A frames, arbors, and more. We’re also looking to build squash tunnels. The beds we have where we planted squash last year looks like they will be permanent gardening areas, so I would like to start building up raised beds there. The walls for these can double as supports for any arches we add. Plus, I’m going to see if I can start taking down more of the dead spruces that are further from the house and garage (the ones closer will be taken down by professionals!). The wood might be usable for various projects. However, as we clear out the dead wood and open up the ground to sunlight, this will give us space were we can plant fruit trees that require extra protection from the elements.

We’ll have a lot of work ahead of us!

I’m looking forward to it. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Taking stock

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Of course, I just have to start with my morning smiles!

I am so glad we were able to build the kibble house for the outside cats. It’s working out really well! We have about 5 days of warm weather coming up next week. The perfect time to add a sheet of rigid insulation under the floor boards, then add another board across the front, to keep the containers from being knocked out. Hopefully, the winds will have died down more by then. We don’t have anywhere near the high winds we had yesterday, but it’s still too windy to be trying to work with things that become sails! :-D

Speaking of winds, my morning rounds were a bit more extensive, as I checked to see what damage there might be. I found the back doors of the barn were actually starting to pull open. They are double doors, with one side “latched” at the lintel, while the other split door is held in place by the first one. If it weren’t for the bar holding the one side in place as much as it did, no doubt that both sides would have been flung open. As it is, they were pulled open far enough that the split door was barely held in place.

Even one of the garage doors were my mother’s car is parked were being blown open. We finally had to roll and old tire, still on its rim, in front of it to keep it from blowing open. Those doors are supposed to be held in place with spring latches at the time, but the piece one of them latches into has broken, and both sides of the door are sagging. Another thing on the list of things to fix!

The tarp I put over my late brother’s post pounder is being torn to shreds. I’ve tried tying it down more, but the recent winds have undone all of that, and more. I was at least able to cover the motor with a plastic bag until I can find another tarp large enough to cover the whole thing.

Oddly, I found a piece of aluminum blown onto a stack of wood by the old garden shed. It’s the same material the eaves-troughs on the house are made of, though it’s not a trough; more like an edge piece. I have no idea where it blew in from! Still, when the girls are on the roof to clean out the eaves-troughs on the second level, it’ll be a good time to check the roof for damage in places we can’t see from the ground.

We also lost another tree in the spruce grove. Not a spruce, this time.

One tree broke off about 8 or 9 feet up, and another next to it lost its top. Not too bad for losses, all things considered.

Cleaning up in the spruce grove was my goal for the past 2 summers, and it just didn’t happen. We really need to get in there and clean out all the dead wood. It’s quite the fire hazard, and the area is almost impassable. In checking out the latest breakages, I was pleased to see there’s quite a lot of red bark dogwood, as well as wild roses, in the area – two things that I want to encourage the growth of, as we clean out other things. In time, the plan is to transplant more spruces into the spruce grove. So many have died, it’s almost not a spruce grove any more! A lot of what we’ll be taking out of the grove are small poplars. These are pretty flexible and springy when they’re small, so we are planning to find ways to use them to make things like arbors, trellises, and other things, where I plan to use bent wood. The larger ones that will be cut down will be used as support posts. Among the things we want to make is an arbor with a gate to put on one side of the driveway gate. This is for when people come by, to make deliveries or whatever, while the gate is locked, so they don’t have to climb over the gate to get in, potentially damaging the hinges. I also want to make combination benches and climbing trellises to set up in different areas around the yard. It’ll be good to be able to actually use the small trees we’ll have to clear out to make useful and pretty things, rather than just adding them to the chipper piles.

I also made a run into town today. I was intending to do it yesterday, but just did not want to drive in those winds. Especially since I wanted to swing by the cemetery with some artificial flowers my mother gave me to put at the graves of our family. While there, I took the time to pick up and replace some of the stuff from other graves that got blown around, but some of them, I just couldn’t tell where the things had come from, so I just set them aside.

Among the things I had to get in town was more bird feed and suet, and I’ve also picked up deer feed. From the droppings I’m finding, they are coming around more often. We will start leaving out small amounts for them to get used to finding it here again, but at this time of year, it’s more like dessert. There is plenty of wild food available for them.

I just checked our long range forecast. When I last looked, tomorrow was supposed to be one more cooler day, then it would warm up over the next few. Now it’s saying the next two days will reach highs of 11C, then highs of 9C for the next couple of days after that! So we’ve got 4 days to do as much as possible outdoors before it starts dipping below freezing again. It’s looking to be a pretty mild November, but I still really want to get more mulch on the tulips the girls planted, in particular. The eaves-troughs are the only essential thing left that needs to be done; the rest is stuff that we’d like to get done, but if we don’t, it’s not a big deal. We shall see what we manage. Tomorrow, it’ll be on the girls for the most part, since the van has been re-booked for the garage for then.

I will be very happy to get that oil change done, and those winter tires on, before winter really hits!

The Re-Farmer

First year gardens: what worked, what didn’t

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With snow on the ground and a chill in the air, we’re already thinking ahead to what we can do next year.

Since moving here, our long term goal has been to be as self sufficient as possible/realistic for our needs. Growing up here, my parents were subsistence farmers. My mother had a huge vegetable garden, we had a few fruit trees and raspberries, and pin cherries grew wild in one area. We had chickens, sometimes adding ducks, geese, and turkeys. We had sheep at one point, but I’m not sure I was even born yet when we had those. We had a comparatively small herd of cows for milk and beef. There used to be a small creamery in our little hamlet, and we sold our cream to them – sometimes in exchange for butter! Aside from beef for our own use, once a year we’d sell cattle at auction, and that was the bulk of our annual income. Sometimes, we had pigs, too. We grew crops and hay to feed our own animals, with very little purchased feed to supplement. If the money was tight, my parents would go and get short term jobs. My dad had been working full time after they first moved here from the city, but when he asked his boss for a few days off to do the haying, he was told he could either be a farmer or work for him, not both. So my dad quit the job, right then and there!

We don’t plan to go quite that far in our goals. Our first focus will be on vegetable gardening and planting food trees, including nut trees. The challenge with the trees is finding varieties that will produce in our Zone 3 climate.

There is a great deal of work that needs to be done to get to that point, with limited resources, while also dealing with varying levels of health and able-bodied-ness.

All of which we can work with. It just tends to slow things down.

We really weren’t ready to start gardening this year, as far as clean up and soil preparation, but we went ahead and did it, anyhow. If we waited for everything to be perfect, we’d never start at all! :-D

So for what we had to work with, we were pretty ambitious with our gardening this year. My expectations were actually pretty low for this year. As we plan ahead to what we will do next year, it’s a good time to assess what worked, what didn’t, and why.

Let’s get started!

The one area that was easiest to work in was where the old wood pile used to be. Cleaning that up revealed incredibly soft soil, perfect for root vegetables.

How did this area do?

Carrots: pretty darn good, really. Of the three varieties we got, the purple carrots were a favourite. As far as taste, they were all good, but the purple carrots seemed to have a better, more robust, shape to them, and of course the colour is awesome.

Looking ahead: we definitely want to do carrots again. The purple carrots, for sure, plus there are a couple of other varieties suitable for our climate that I’d like to try.

Beets: Well, they could have been better, but deer were a problem, leaving us with a paltry crop. Even so, we enjoyed the three varieties we got. The girls especially liked the deep red Merlin variety.

Looking ahead: we definitely want to do beets again, but we are going to have to find ways to protect them from deer!

Parsley: those did really well. So well, in fact, that after harvesting and drying them, we have enough parsley to last us quite a long time.

Looking ahead: we don’t plan to grow parsley again next year. In the future, we will be growing herbs in a more permanent location, where we can try growing root parsley (which can take a couple of years for the roots to be mature enough to harvest).

Kohl rabi: this was a disappointment for me. I really hoped they would turn out! For all the seeds we planted, only a few sprouted, only two got big, and between the deer and the tiny cabbage beetles that showed up, they were decimated. The few plants we had ended up on the compost heap.

Looking ahead: I really want to grow these, but I don’t think we’ll try again next year.

Muskmelon: this was a last minute addition, with 2 purchased transplants. They seemed to do very well at first. Then one just up and died. The other grew and even started blooming, but remained very tiny. Then the first frost killed it.

Looking ahead: I remember we’d grown muskmelons when I was a kid, and really enjoyed eating them. My mother didn’t even do anything special to grow them. They were just in with everything else in the big garden. So I know they can grow here. I wouldn’t mind trying them again next year, but we shall see.

For this garden area next year: well, we’ve already got things completely changed in this area, with two slightly raised beds planted with fall garlic. There is still room for another bed the same size, so there is still potential to add to this area. Given the quality of soil, most likely we would plant root vegetables here again.

The next section we planted in was the retaining wall in the old kitchen garden. In this area, my mother had flowers and it’s where she planted her onions and garlic. Unfortunately, she also planted trees and bushes, which has greatly reduced the usability of this area.

Cucamelon: these were not planted were we originally planned, and with less sun than recommended for them, I did not expect much at all. So we were very pleasantly surprised by how well they did! This is something we’ve never even seen before, other than photos, never mind tried to grow. We really liked the tiny little fruits, and even had enough to try a quick pickle.

Looking ahead: We definitely will be growing these again. When cleaning up at the end of the year, I found they had amazing tubers, which are now planted in buckets, in a cool indoor location. From what I’ve read, we should be able to transplant these tubers to get an earlier crop next year. We still plan to drag the rest of the chimney blocks out of the old basement and set them up by the chain link fence in the south yard, which should make for a more ideal growing location for them, too.

Fennel: they… got really nice fronds! No bulbs formed, though. To be honest, once we transplanted the few leggy seedlings we managed to sprout, I tended to forget they existed.

Looking ahead: I’d like to try growing these again, but probably not for another year or two.

Chives: when setting up the retaining wall, I transplanted some of the chives growing in one corner into a couple of blocks that would otherwise have been right on top of them. They grew just fine, and we were able to snip some greens any time we needed. The original clump of chives I dug them up from is still there, too.

Looking ahead: nothing needs to change here.

For this garden area next year: my daughter planted a border of Gardenia Daffodils and Eye of the Tiger irises along the south edge of this area. There is rhubarb growing under each of the ornamental apple trees. They aren’t really doing well, and I might transplant them somewhere else, eventually. Some asparagus still shows up on the north edge of the garden, but not enough to harvest. If we plant fresh asparagus, it will be somewhere else.

Though we have done a lot to amend this garden area, which had been overtaken by spreading vines and invasive flowers, there is still much work that needs to be done before the whole garden can be used, including building the soil up more at the retaining wall, to level it off. The mulching we’ve added has already improved the soil considerably, but there is so much in this tiny space, it’ll be hard to get it to a functional garden. My thought is for this area to be a kitchen garden; the place for those vegetables and herbs we use the most. There are perennial flowers in there that I want to transplant elsewhere, and while I want to keep the main rose bushes, there are lots of little rose bushes spreading that are going to be difficult to clear out. Not as difficult as those invasive vines, though!

So while we’ll be able to use parts of this garden, other parts still need lots of work. With the poles by the retaining wall being to ideal to hold a trellis, the chimney blocks are ideal for planting anything that climbs.

The next area we planted in was where my mother’s big garden used to be. It is in such rough shape; poorly plowed, largely neglected, full of rocks – and rock hard soil! We’d gone so far as to use Round Up on one area, then mulched it with straw, the previous year.

The mulched area became our squash beds.

Summer Squash: these probably had the roughest start, yet were our greatest success! We planted sunburst squash and a summer squash mix. A late frost damaged the first transplants, most of which never recovered, but the second group of transplants did very well.

The sunburst squash were very prolific, and we all really enjoyed eating them, too. The zucchini varieties had a harder time of it, but still did fairly well. It was great to be able to include picking squash for the day as part of my morning rounds.

Looking ahead: we are most definitely planting these again! We did end up transplanting them later than they should have been, but late frosts are an issue here, so we need to be better prepared for that.

Birdhouse gourds: these were a sad disappointment for me. They took forever to germinate, and when the first batch was transplanted, they got hit with frost. Amazingly, more germinated later, but in the end, this tiny little gourd was all we got – and it got killed by the first frost.

Looking ahead: There are a variety of gourds I want to try growing, as I want to use them for various projects. I want to try these again, but now know I need to start them indoors much earlier, and will probably need to invest in a warming mat.

Pumpkins: these were planted very, very late, using seeds my mother got for free. No idea what the variety was. I quickly made some mounds to plant the seeds in, but honestly didn’t expect to get anything. Ultimately, they just didn’t have enough of a growing season.

Looking ahead: we do want to grow different pumpkin varieties. We’ll just have to make sure to start them earlier! I’m not entirely sure why I want to grow pumpkins. We’ve only ever eaten it as pie. But there are lots of recipes out there, and I’m sure we’ll find something we like! :-D

Yukon Gem potatoes: These were an experiment for us. We planted two beds, using the Ruth Stout method, because our soil is just too hard and full of rocks.

It did work, though it wasn’t a particularly large harvest. The odd thing was finding seed potatoes, still intact!

Looking ahead: we do want to grow more potatoes, and try other varieties. We’ll still probably use the Ruth Stout method of growing under mulch for a few years, until we can start building raised beds. For now, I’ve taken the seed potatoes I’ve found and replanted them along the north side of the garden, covered in mulch. It should be interested to see if they grow at all, next spring! We planted only 6 pounds of potatoes this year. Next year, we definitely want to plant more, now that we know we can successfully grow them without digging and hilling.

Giant Sunflowers: We had several goals with our sunflowers. Some were met, some were not!

Growing them for bird seed seems to be a miss. We likely planted them too late, as it doesn’t look like they reached maturity at all.

While I did harvest a couple of heads that are hanging in the basement, we’ve decided to leave the rest out over the winter. If there’s anything the birds can get out of them, great. It looks like the deer are still trying to eat them, too, as I find more and more of them, broken.

The other purposes we grew them for is as a privacy screen, and wind break. With a 50% loss of our first planting, likely to deer, we planted another variety, just to fill in the gaps. We did not expect to get seeds from them. It sort of worked. There just wasn’t enough of them.

Looking ahead: yes, we want to plant these giant varieties again, but if we do, we need to get at least double, if not triple, the amount of seeds to create the windbreak and privacy screen we want. Hopefully, we can plant them earlier, too. We also want to try other varieties, including one that is the source of a purple dye. We definitely have to figure out how to protect them from deer, though!

For this garden area next year: In the mulched area the squash were in, the soil is so much softer! Except for all the rocks that are still a problem. In cleaning up for winter, I turned the pumpkin mounds into larger beds, so that area now has 6 beds, including one long thin one at the back, prepped for next year. Plus, there are the two potato beds nearby. Any potatoes we plant next year will be in a different location, to avoid attracting the Colorado Potato Beetle. We will likely continue to reclaim more of the old garden area, but not all of it, as we intend to plant a nut orchard in here in the relatively near future. The sooner we can get that done, the better, since it takes so many years before nut trees start producing. So we will focus mostly on where we have already planted, but when it’s time to do more, it will be elsewhere.

Final thoughts: so it’s been a year of successes and failures, but we did learn a lot from our first year of gardening here.

We have a better idea of what works for us, what we like and what we want to plant next year. For the longer term, we definitely will need to look at getting poly-tunnels – possibly a greenhouse – to be able to extend our growing season and protect from frost. We are looking to claim more of the outer yard, towards the barn, where there is more sun, for things like that. We also know that winds from the South are more of a problem than winds from the North, and need to plan accordingly. This year also really hit home for me that we need to built tall, accessible, raised beds. Any raised beds will help when it comes to our rocky soil, but this old body is just too broken, and height will help.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

A new Q!

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

Have I mentioned that my brother is the best?

I just can’t say it enough.

My brother is the best!

I got a call from him, early this evening. He just finished loading up their big BBQ into his truck and was ready to bring it over!

This was something he had offered to us when I told him about what we’d done with the fire pit, for outdoor cooking. They got themselves a smaller BBQ, as their older one was too big for just the 2 of them, and it was just sitting there, unused. Today, he up and decided to deliver it!

There aren’t a lot of places we can put a BBQ right now. Basically, there’s the concrete and patio blocks in front of the sun room where it can stay for the winter.

So I quickly went out and moved the shelf I was planning to moved now that the sun room door is finished. It would be much harder to move it, with a BBQ in the way!

With the shelf moved away, you can really see how much the concrete under the rain barrel has sunk! This is likely from years of the rain barrel being allowed to overflow.

Which might have something to do with why the sun room has been shifting, and why I had such troubles with the door!

Ya think?

Since it’s that time of year, anyhow, I took advantage of the situation and emptied the rain barrel into the old kitchen garden.

After breaking through ice about an inch thick!

It will be much easier to go through here to the old kitchen garden, now that the shelf is moved. We had originally intended to put the shelf in storage, with most of the other stuff that belonged to my parents, and had put it aside until we could bring the van over to take it. It was so handy, we left it. :-)

Inside the shelf are the pieces of rigid insulation that had been used for the “cat condo” we made for the cats in the sun room last winter. We will likely use some of them for the kibble house, under the food containers. We also plan to leave the two bottom shelves empty, except for some pieces of insulation on the “floor”, for the cats to be able to tuck into it for shelter. We did that last winter, and they made full use of it.

There it is! Our new Q!

We’ve never had anything bigger than 3 burners before; this one has five. It’s so big, he had to take the lid off to fit it under his truck cap! My brother even fired it up to test it out, including the extra burner for pots and pans on the side. It even starts better than any BBQ we’ve had before. :-)

Chances are, we won’t be able to use it until spring, but at least now we have the option! We don’t have any BBQ tools, but with all the summer stuff on clearance right now, this is probably the best time of year to get more. :-) I really look forward to using it!

Sadly, they were not able to stay for long. I’m glad my SIL made it out; she hadn’t been able to for a while, as she recovered from surgery. We did get a chance to walk around the yard, and show them what we’ve been doing. Technically, my brother is my “landlord”, so it’s probably a good idea for him to know what’s going on. ;-) Unlike my mother, they are actually quite happy with how things are shaping up, and are not offended by us doing things like using mulch. :-D

Somehow, they found my glee, as I demonstrated opening and closing the sun room door repeatedly, very amusing. :-D

It’s probably a good thing they didn’t stay any longer. They’ve got a long drive back, and wanted to make a quick stop to visit our mother along the way. From what I’m seeing on the live feed for the security camera, there are strong winds and snow right now!

I’ve gotta get that kibble house done!

The Re-Farmer

Fall planting: the last of the flowers, plus other progress

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Along with the three types of garlic that came in, my daughters’ flower bulbs arrived.

The tulip collection included 10 bulbs each of Orca, Pinksize and Brownie, and 8 bulbs each of Black Hero, Pamplona and Vanilla Coup. There was also 6 bulbs of Gardenia Daffodil.

So while I was having fun working in the soft soil, planting garlic, the girls did the hard work of digging holes for bulbs in hard soil, and between roots!

They did not take pictures of the process, unfortunately.

The tulips were planted not far from where they’d planted the Bulls Eye tulips that came in earlier. This area was selected for its combination of sunlight and drainage, and because they’re not supposed to be watered, and this is not an area where they might accidentally get watered along with something else.

The tulips need to be planted up to 12 inches deep, if we want them coming back year after year, but that depth includes the depth of any mulch. So they planted the 50+ bulbs at 6 inches, adding a 6 inch leaf mulch. Leaves, however, crumble and settle quite a bit, plus the wind was threatening to blow it way, so they also wet down some peat, which we still have lots of, and added that to the top.

The Gardenia Daffodil had different requirements, so it was planted with the Eye of the Tiger irises planted along one side of the old kitchen garden.

When we are next able to, we’re thinking of picking up a couple of bags of soil to scatter on top of the mulch. The soil under the mulch in the old kitchen garden is much improved from before, but the straw itself, and even the grass clippings, aren’t breaking down very quickly, making it not at all conducive to planting in it. It’s all just too stringy! :-D And now there’s the excess flax straw from inside the cat shelter. Adding some soil and peat, as well as moisture, for the microbes and worms to do their stuff should help it break down faster.

We also got a couple other things off the to-do list today.

Now that the soil around the support post has had a few days to settle (and get stomped down some more, every now and then), our new bird feeder is now hung up. Hopefully, this less decorative design will not get flung around in the wind as much as the church and barn shaped ones were, and with the support now buried in the ground like a fence post, we don’t have to worry about it being knocked over any more!

I also had a chance to work on the grapes, while the girls were still digging holes for tulips.

The first thing that needed to be done was prune them. I hope I did it right. From what I’ve read, they should be pruned above the second bud from the ground, as grapes will be produced on first year vines. The problem was, I couldn’t see any buds at all! So I tried to err on the side of caution.

I had to move the trellis supports so I could get behind to harvest the grapes. Today, I finally set them into the ground in their new locations, so we can squeeze behind them again, if necessary. On the right is a long piece of rebar, but the white support on the left is actually two plastic tubes on a shorter piece of rebar. The bar wasn’t long enough to hold the trellis wire, but it is long enough to support the plastic tube. I had to lift off the piece that was woven into the wire mesh, then reset the position of the other two pieces.

When I set this up as a makeshift trellis, I was able to bang the rebar into the ground with a piece of broken brick I’d found while cleaning up around the storage house. I tried that again, but it broke. So I dug around in the sun room, among the things we’d found in there while cleaning it up. There was an old hammer with a ball peen on one side, and a heavy flat head on the other. Much heavier than a regular hammer. For the long piece of rebar, I had to stand on the stairs to reach the top and start hammering it in.

The head fell off the hammer.

It turned out the handle was rotted out at the head!

Thankfully, I still had the new handle I’d found while cleaning up the old basement. I’d intended it for something else, but it didn’t fit right, so I’d left it for later.

Now, I’m glad it didn’t fit the other thing I’d meant it for!

Mind you, it didn’t fit the head of this hammer, either, but I was able to shave the corners of the top, and got it on. I was able to finish the job!

After hammering the rebar supports into the ground and getting the plastic tube in the wire mesh back in place, I was able to use foam covered garden wires a darling friend found for me, to tie the pruned vines to the mesh. Then I used one of the bamboo poles that we’d used in the squash beds as a support for the top. With the grapes growing so well this past summer, I was able to see the weight of the vines were pulling the wire mesh downwards, so this should add some extra support.

Now, all they need is for some mulch to be added to protect them from the winter’s cold. From what I’ve found out about growing grapes in our zone is that they should be just fine with snow as insulation; the vine would be laid down on the ground to be covered. Planted against the storage house like this, that doesn’t really work out, so mulch it is!

We now have all the flower bulbs we ordered planted – 200 grape hyacinth, 100 snow crocuses, irises, gladiolas, and almost 70 tulips – plus the garlic.

That’s it for fall planting this year.

Now, we need to assess how our vegetable gardening went, and decide what we want to plant next year! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Preparing for Thanksgiving

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Before I start, I want to say Powitaninia! Dziękują za odwiedzanie! to my sudden spike of new visitors from Poland. To jest cudowne mieć wy tutaj.

Today is going to be a busy day for us – and it was a busy day of cats this morning!

On the list of things to do is clean out the eaves troughs (aka gutters), so I left the ladder out after bringing it to the well for the plumbers. The cats don’t seem to mind it there at all. :-D

The painted bird feeder stand is now ready to be put up again, so that’s another thing on the to-do list.

Can you see the little snoot of a hidden kitten?

There he is!

The little kittens now come out to the food bowls here, consistently. Though I have seen one or two explore inside the cat house, they prefer to hide under it, rather than in it!

Also, their mother is getting nasty! Butterscotch has been growling and hissing other cats away from the food bowls, which is not all that atypical. It’s when she goes after her own kittens that it concerns me!

Also on the to-do list is building a simple shelter to keep the snow off the food bowls. One that’s long enough that I can spread them out, instead of crowding them under the makeshift shelter I’ve made on the sawhorses to keep any rain off.

It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. While the holiday falls on Monday, we will be having our dinner tomorrow, and some preparations are starting today. I’ve got a turkey that should be thawed out by now, and I just finished preparing a brine. I decided to try something different this year, since I happen to have the ingredients. Along with the usual salt, brown sugar and herbs, I’ve added a generous amount of apple cider vinegar (the one that I used as a “starter” for our own vinegar that is still fermenting). Once the brine is cooled down, it will go into our giant stock pot with the turkey, adding enough cold water to completely immerse the bird. Then it will go into the old kitchen to chill for the night.

Having an un-insulated room has come in surprisingly handy for things that need refrigerating, but don’t fit in our refrigerator! It’s not quite cool enough in the summer, but this time of year, it’s perfect for the job.

Probably not too good for our fermenting vinegar, though! :-D

We never stuff our turkey, but I do like to add aromatics into the cavity. When it comes time to roast the turkey tomorrow, I will continue the apple theme. I like to rub the turkey all over with lemon, then put the pieces inside the cavity for extra flavour and moisture. This time, I plan to add apple pieces as well. The bottom of the roasting pan will have some celery sticks, onion slices and carrot pieces laid out to act as a roasting rack, while also adding flavour to the juices that will be used to make a gravy. The turkey itself will be topped with a woven mat of bacon – a trick I learned from my late mother-in-law.

I picked up some things yesterday, to help me with finishing the sun room door, so I will be heading out to work on that right away. I neglected to check the mail yesterday, though. It turns out our bulbs and garlic arrived, but with Monday being a holiday, I won’t be able to pick them up until Tuesday. So the girls and I will use the time to prep where the bulbs will be planted. Given how late in the season it is, and that we are dipping below freezing almost every night now, we will have to make good use of mulch to help the bulbs get the start they need once they’re in the ground.

Lots of work to do before the cold! But we will still take the time to celebrate the many things we have to be thankful for. For all the problems we are finding in this place, it’s still better than where we were before moving out here! :-D

The Re-Farmer

It wasn’t supposed to rain today

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All the forecasts showed the rains would be passed by this morning. Instead, we’ve got three large systems heading over us.

Which meant the cat food containers I put by the cat house were full of water.

At least all the food that was in them was gone, first.

I dragged over the saw horses and made them a quick shelter.

I reached into the cat house to grab the container in there to fill, but it was gone. Not just pushed back, almost out of reach, as I’ve found it before. Nope. Completely gone!

There was another container that I’d had that disappeared. I figured it got pushed under the cat house, but with this one completely gone, now I wonder!

The girls heard skunks fighting last night. I wonder if they could have dragged them off? Is that a thing skunks do?

Hopefully, the rain will be done by this afternoon, when we’re supposed to have quite pleasant temperatures. We were going to put the sheets of insulation around the bottom of the house today, as well as cover the septic tank for the winter, but we’ll see how wet it still is.

Well, now… The phone rang while I was writing this. My mother called to let me know she found a note slipped under her door, saying “your daughter has to wear a mask.” When I brought up medical exemptions, and that she shouldn’t be wearing one, either, she told me that they don’t understand that. She doesn’t want trouble, so she wears one and just pulls it away from her face, or under her neck, when she can’t breathe.

*sigh*

That is a problem to deal with another time! For now, I need to head to town to pick up a prescription refill for my husband, at the pharmacy where they are more sane about things like this!

The Re-Farmer