Okay, this is a first. Planting something in April!
We had a bed prepared and covered with plastic over hoops for the soil to warm up more, so that is where I started. All of the carrot seed tape we made fit into the bed, with even a bit of room to spare. After that, another bed was finally prepared and covered with more plastic, and in a couple of days, it will get spinach planted in it.
I tried an experiment this time, setting up an old phone to take a time lapse video of both jobs.
Plus some random cat appearances.
The time lapse made for a short video. I hope you enjoy it!
Earlier today, I made a trip into town to hit the hardware store. I found the screws in the size I needed, though the cost was insane. A box with only 100 screws was $12.99 – about $4 more than the last time I got a 100 count box! Still, we’ll be able to finish the water bowl shelter now.
I also picked up a glass cutter. We have one somewhere, but I have no idea what happened to it. While I was in the city yesterday, the girls worked on clearing the broken glass from the inner pane of one of the sun room windows. There are still pieces that are firmly attached at the sides. Until that’s done, we can’t let the cats into the sun room. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get that cleaned up soon.
I was really happy to find the lever type door handle I was looking for. Just a simple, inexpensive handle for an interior door. It was easy to install, and it now no longer hurts to open my door!
Later on, my older daughter and I headed out to do some work in the garden, including planting these.
The Nootka Rose garlic on the left are a soft neck garlic. On the right, above the cloves, you can see the hard necks from the middle of the bulbs. They do make it easier to break the cloves apart! The cloves are larger, and there are fewer of them. Of the four bulbs, one of them had only three cloves!
The soft neck garlic has nothing like that in the middle. Just smaller and smaller cloves. I’ve never planted soft neck garlic before. While the hard neck garlic should be planted in the fall, in our climate zone, we can plant soft neck garlic in the spring – but we’re planting both now.
We moved the mulch aside and planted them the same way as the first row we planted a few days ago. The row in the middle of the bed got the hard neck Music variety, because there are fewer of them. Less reaching needed when it’s time to harvest!
After laying out the cloves to see how to space them, the kittens absolutely would not leave them alone! They also really, really wanted to dig in those freshly uncovered rows!
After planting, the rows were lightly covered to reduce compaction while watering – and protect from kitties.
Which didn’t work very well. Several of them started digging in to them to poop! One wouldn’t stop even while being directly spayed with the hose!
*sigh*
We did eventually persuade them to go elsewhere.
With the Nootka Rose garlic, there were enough that we planted only the largest cloves.
The remaining smaller cloves are now in the kitchen for us to taste test. 😊
That done, my daughter did some other clean up and gathering of support poles, while I turned my attention to the high raised bed.
The chard remains were pulled. They’re actually looking better after several frosts then they have all summer, now that there are no longer grasshoppers eating them. We were never able to eat any of it!
As expected, the soil level has dropped a fair bit, as the organic material buried in layers below, settle. It looks like some mice may have been trying to tunnel in one corner.
I have no doubt Rolando Moon has taken care of that problem for us already.
The last of the vines from the squash patch were added for more organic material – then smashed as flat as I could get it before adding fresh soil. The remaining soil sifted from what is now the garlic bed came in quite handy!
It had settled enough that it took three large wheelbarrows full of soil to top it up! I probably could have gotten away with two and a half, but it’s going to continue to settle, so a little extra is fine.
It then got a light, thin mulch of grass clippings before I gave the whole thing a thorough watering. I just want to protect the soil surface, not insulate it. In the spring, the mulch will be removed so the soil can warm up and thaw out faster.
We haven’t decided what to plant here next year, yet, but I think we should give it at least one more year for the upper layers to break down before we try to plant any deep root vegetables in it.
I feel like I’m really behind on preparing the beds for the winter. The girls aren’t able to help as much as usual, either. My younger daughter has been having knee issues to the point that she’s now using a cane to get around the house. She did try to go to a doctor about it, about 2 years ago, but it wasn’t taken seriously because she’s so young. It was already a battle to get her to see a doctor in the first place, so that certainly didn’t help. Anyhow, she does the best she can but, right now I’m actually the most able bodied person in our household. Which is kinda scary, considering how much I’m hurting this year! I didn’t expect my hands to be the main problem, though. Usually it’s my wrecked knees and feet. They’ve actually been relatively good, lately. Either that or the pain in my hands is making it seem like they are better.
Ah, well. We do what we can. It won’t be the end of the world if some beds don’t get weeded before winter and need to be done in the spring. There are other things that are higher on the necessity list.
No, that’s not a typo in the title. Today, I FINALLY planted our garlic for next year.
This morning I first headed out to get my mother checked out of her hotel room, then took her out for brunch – she hadn’t had a proper meal since our take out Chinese food lunch, yesterday! – before taking her home. She did not have the energy to do anything else. I stayed long enough to make her bed up again with fresh sheets and blankets, and push some of the stuff back against the walls, before my mother sent me home. She would not allow me to run any errands for her, even!
Which works out. As soon as could after I got home, I worked on the garlic. The first thing to do was break up the bulbs I’d set aside from our harvest this year.
Would you look at this giant clove!
I had set aside six of the biggest bulbs of garlic we harvested.
Out of those six bulbs, we got a whole 24 cloves.
Twentyfour big cloves, but still… we’re going to need a lot more garlic!
I used broken pieces of bamboo stakes to mark the ends of a row along one side of the prepared bed, then pushed aside the mulch. The soil is loose enough that I could just use a weeding tool to scrape a trough from one end to the other, then deepened it using the jet setting on the garden hose.
Which the kittens were absolutely fascinated by.
Once the garlic was planted evenly spaced down the row and covered, I pulled back a little bit of the mulch. Once things start to get colder, more mulch will be pulled over to cover it for the winter. For now, it’s just enough to protect the row.
From this guy.
This guy and several other little “helpers” that were so determined to dig in the fresh dirt, they ignored the hose I was watering with, until they got sprayed!
Silly things.
Anyhow. Our first garlic for our 2023 garden is in.
I am now going to start making tomato paste for canning, freeing up freezer space for our next stock-up shopping trip.
Yay! A day without rain! We finally got to get some serious work done outside!
I had a few goals for the day, but before I could even start on any of them, I had to get the weed trimmer out. The grass is getting out of control, but it’s still too wet to mow in most places. In the main garden area, the ground is so rough, it’s just easier to use the weed trimmer.
Easier on the lawn mower, that is. Not on me! Particularly since I was trying to trim as close to the ground as possible, as well as under the logs framing the beds. It’s pretty much all crab grass, with some dandelions thrown in for good measure, so it’s all going to come back, but at least it’ll take a bit longer, this way. :-/
Once that was done, I decided on where I would put the purchased grow bags we are testing out this year. I picked up a couple at Canadian Tire, mostly because they were on clearance. My original plan was to try growing some sweet potatoes in one of them, then have the remaining slips planted in the ground. The bed I was going to use for that now has the white strawberries in it, so I figured they could all go into the grow bags.
I decided to place them near the small potato bed, where they will get full sun, and be sheltered from the winds at least somewhat. I did put some straw in the bottom of the bags. The straw will act as a sort of sponge to hold moisture, but it also held the sides of the bags up, making it easier to add the soil.
The truck load of garden soil by the main garden is mostly used up, but so far it has been enough for what we need. The problem is that, after a year, it’s so full of roots, it’s actually hard to stab the spade into it!
We really need a soil sifter. I don’t have the materials to make one right now, so I rigged one up.
This steel mesh is what we use on the burn barrel as a spark catcher. I used it to sift soil last year. A couple of sticks to support it over the wheelbarrow, and it worked all right. Some roots still got through, but at least the big stuff was kept out.
It took a couple of loads to fill the bags. They’re not that large, but even with the straw on the bottom, they hold quite a bit of soil. I decided not to fill them to the top. I figure, once sweet potatoes start to form, they’re going to need some space. I’ve never grown them before, so we’ll find out!
Also, you can see that one of the handles has already torn off on one side!
These bags are probably too small for sweet potatoes, but this is a bit of an experiment, anyhow, so we’ll see.
For these, I decided to use the stove pellets as mulch. In the above photo, the one on the right had its first watering, and you can see they’re already starting to swell and soften.
After wetting them both down, I left the pellets to absorb the water and moved on to our other experiment.
I got a pair of these at The Dollar Tree to test out. The fabric they’re made of is a thick felt.
Hmmm… Did I mention I got these at The Dollar Tree?
You get what you pay for! The first one I opened, and it had a hole in it!
Some of the stitching looks like it simply came undone, but the opening was about a third of the circumference!
The other one was fine, though, so I gave the first one to my daughter. She’s been doing a lot of sewing, so she’s got all the supplies on hand and was able to stitch it up for me.
While she worked on that, I filled the second one. As with the others, I added straw to the bottom, using it to help hold up the sides. In between loads of soil to fill it, I watered the pellets in the first bags a couple more times, before smoothing out the sawdust, then repeated the process on the smaller fabric bed.
It looks so small compared to the other two!
The sweet potato slips I ordered was a 5 pack, and I decided to plant 2 in one of the green bags, then 3 in the black felt bed. I wanted to see if the black fabric, which would absorb more heat, would be better. We did get a short season, cooler climate variety, but they are still a heat loving plant.
Well, would you look at that!
We have extras!
After breaking up the bundle of slips (there was still ice in the packing medium!), the green bags got two each, while the shorter but wider black fabric bed got three.
Sweet potato slips, I’ve learned, are the only other plant that share a trait with tomatoes, in that you can bury them up to their leaves, and new roots will grow out of the buried stems.
I’m sure these bags will be too small, but with how sweet potato vines grow, I think I will let them spread onto the ground. Where the vines touch the ground, they can root themselves, and grow more sweet potatoes. So we might get some growing in multiple places. :-)
Once those were in, I got to work on one of the low raised beds that needed to be weeded (again) and prepped for planting.
It was actually a bit worse than the remaining bed that needs to be weeded. I got as many of the rhizomes and dandelion tap rooms out that I could. I know I didn’t get all of them, but at least I got most.
We’re running low on the canopy tent pieces I’m using for supports. This bed got only 6 of them. The other beds got 8. There are 4 left of these longer ones. After that, there are only some really short pieces. Short enough that I’m not sure where we can use them in the garden at all!
By the time I got this bed done, I really needed a break, so I popped inside for lunch … er… lupper? and a rest.
When I sat at my computer, one of the first things I saw was a flashing red alert on my task bar’s weather app icon.
It was a frost advisory.
*sigh*
Pretty much everything else we’ve got going right now is frost tolerant. These sweet potato slips, however… yes, they’re supposed to be a cool climate variety, but they just got planted!
I decided to play it safe.
We hang on to more of our water bottles, rather than putting them in recycling, and this is one reason why! They can be used as cloche over smaller plants.
Such a hot day, and we’re supposed to get frost. Ugh.
Okay… “hot” is relevant. It was only 16C/61F out there! It certainly felt hotter while working outside. I got a wicked sunburn on the back of my neck. My daughters chastised me for not wearing sunscreen, while one of them applied some aloe vera gel on the burn for me. :-D We do have sunscreen. Somewhere. I just forgot sunscreen existed, and didn’t even think that I might get sunburned!
Tonight, we’re supposed to dip to 2C/35F. Tomorrow’s high is expected to be much the same as today, while the overnight low is supposed to be 4C/39F. After that, our overnight lows are supposed to continue to slowly increase over the next couple of weeks.
Which means that we have one more night before we can start transplanting our warm weather crops. Even then, though, we will start with the ones that are most likely to handle colder overnight temperatures. There is still lots of work that needs to be done, including a repair on the squash tunnel – one of the screws holding a bottom cross piece snapped. Likely because of the winds we’ve been having.
There is still so much to do! The extended cold and the rains have really set things back.
Once everything is in, though, I expect we’ll have quite a good growing season. I look forward to not having to water all the garden beds, twice a day, almost every day, like we had to last year.
Between the weather and the critters, though, nothing is ever a sure thing!
One of things we started indoors were the four seeds we managed to save from the King Tut purple peas we tried to grow last year. All for successfully germinated, and were really needing to be either transplanted, or potted up.
Potting up didn’t make sense for these, so today, they got transplanted! Being peas, they are frost hardy, so we didn’t have to wait until after our last frost date.
I did change were they were meant to be planted. I was originally thinking of using the same pea trellis we used for them last year, but there’s just 4 of them, so we’ll save the trellises for the green peas we’ve got.
As the purple peas were already looking to climb, I decided to put them here.
This is where we grew tomatoes very successfully last year, and tomatoes will be grown here again this year. It got completely reworked in the fall.
This bed was going to get a mulch of wood shavings, too, but I also did the concrete blocks on the other side of the small gate, too.
We’ll be looking at planting some climbers in here, that can use the fence as a trellis.
The bag of wood shavings left over from last year got finished off in the long bed, and most of the new bag got used up, too! There was enough to mulch the haskaps (the male haskap is blooming!) and there’s still a bit left over.
All the mulch got watered as I laid it out, as the wind was picking up and threatening to blow it away. Once it was laid down, all the mulch got watered again, multiple times, as I worked.
Of course, the bed didn’t stay looking pretty like this for long!
This bed is going to be intensely and strategically planted! Along with the purple peas, there will be tomatoes planted all along the fence. Just inside where the tomatoes will go, there will be carrots, as they are good companion plants. On the outer edge, near the bricks, will be onions, as a critter deterrent.
In the bowl are the last of the pelleted Kyoto Red seeds from last year.
Clearing out a row to plant the carrots was a bit of a challenge, as there were sticks in with the leaf mulch that had to be removed. With pelleted seed, the carrots could be spaced as they were planted. I still got only half way down the row before running out of seeds. The other half is now planted with Napoli carrots; another pelleted variety from last year. With the Napoli, there are still a LOT of seeds left, so we have the option of tucking them around other things, too. We have 2 other new varieties that are not pelleted seed, so I will likely use cornstarch gel to help plant those.
There were not a lot of the Oneida yellow onions we started from seed to transplant, but it was still close to the half way mark. Of the onions we stared from seed, we have one tray or red onions left, but there’s quite a few of those, and I didn’t want to split them up. We also had a few shallots started from seed – a whole 7 of them survived – so I used those, and there’s still half the row left. We have shallot sets, too, so I’m thinking of using some of those to finish off the row. That will be another job for tomorrow!
As for the peas, I cut some of the plastic bottles from distilled water we have so many of, to put around the peas, to protect them from the wind. One of them blew away while I was transplanting onions. I’d tried to push it into the soil, but there turned out to be too many little sticks in the leaf litter. :-D Once I got that fixed, I added the sticks to help keep them from blowing away. They are the sticks sold for toasting marshmallows, broken in half. We got a package for cookouts last year, but I’ve been using them as supports for some of the taller squash and gourd plants that were starting to flop around a bit. They work really well for that!
This bed now has only tomatoes to be transplanted into it, and that won’t be until after our June 2 last frost date, just to be on the safe side. We will be adding netting after the tomatoes are planted. The decorative wire garden fencing that you see in one of the photos above will be placed right up against the bricks, to hold the net away from the net, which will be attached to the top of the fence. The tomatoes and onions should be fine, but the carrots will need to be protected from critters. The net won’t stop a determined groundhog, but between that, the onions and the carrots, we hope the greedy buggers will decide they’re not worth the effort!
While I was working on this, my younger daughter was working on one of the low raised beds in the main garden area.
The girls cleaned up these beds last year, and this one was the worst for crab grass.
It still was. It took my poor daughter hours to get it done, diligently and carefully pulling up all the roots she could. Unlike me, she’s agile enough that she can kneel down on the ground to work, but she still knackered her back in the process. Once inside, she ended up having to put on her corset she made for herself, to use as a back brace just so she could sit upright at the table! She plans to continue with other beds tomorrow, and will likely just wear the darn thing from the start.
Her sister ended up helping me bring the transplants back inside after everything we done. She was up sick much of the night, but was finally feeling better. It was a bit of a juggle, since the chitting potatoes were sitting on the platform the seed trays and most of the bins sits on. Those had to go outside and onto the roof of the cats’ house until all the transplants were brought into the sun room, then we had to figure out how to fit the potatoes back in! Some ended up on the swing bench under the platform. Potato Beetle has lost his favourite bed for now. :-D
I fully expect we will expand our garden again, next year, which means starting more seeds indoors. Having at least a small, portable greenhouse is going to be increasingly a necessity! We almost got one this year, but the funds ended up being reallocated. Mind you, we still haven’t gone into the old hay loft, where my brother tells me there is the frame for a carport. If all the parts and pieces are there, we’d just need to get the plastic, and we’ll have a polytunnel. I can’t get up into the hayloft anymore – my body is too broken to clamber up there – so I’ll have to ask the girls to do it.
Well… that last paragraph got quite the interruption. I hadn’t realized my mother had phoned and left a message while we were working outside. She called again. It seems the painkillers the doctor prescribed for her back pain are not helping at all, and she’s in a lot of pain. Can’t sit, can’t stand, can’t lie down… She’s convinced the doctor gave her the wrong medication. She called the pharmacist, and he assured her she got the right meds. I guess she now thinks the prescription was a mistake? So tomorrow morning, when the clinic is open, I’ll give them a call. Hopefully, either her doctor, or the doctor that saw her in the ER, will be available to call her today and talk to her about it.
My husband is feeling very sympathetic for her. She’s entering his world, and is completely unprepared for it.
My plans for tomorrow may be changing, if I find myself having to drive my mother somewhere!
Today was nowhere near as productive as I intended it to be. Ah, well.
I headed out early in the day to the nearer small city, to pick up a few things we couldn’t get during our big city trips. The first stop was Canadian Tire, where I was able to get more of the stove pellets we’re using for cat litter now; we now have enough to last the month or more. A day or so after the frost we got, we could see that it did damage the new Heritage raspberries I’d bought as a gift for my daughter. They will recover, but they won’t do will this year. So I went looking to see if I could got more, but they were completely out of stock for raspberries. I resisted the temptation to buy blueberries, instead. Blueberries need acidic soil, and ours is very alkaline. We do plan to have blueberries, and once we decide on where we will plant them, we will have our work cut out for us to amend the soil to something they can do well in.
I hoped to get more chicken wire, but they only had 2′ wide rolls in stock. I ended up getting a 4′ x 50′ (1.2m x 15.2m) roll of 4 inch square wire mesh fencing. I even remembered to pick up a new hose nozzle to replace our broken one. Paid a lot more than I usually do; I usually get the Walmart cheapies, but I figured it was worth paying for quality for a change.
Then it was across the way to the Walmart to get more cat food and a few more little things, including a garden hose for the front of the house. It’s only 50′ but it’ll be enough to water the old kitchen garden, and as far as the grapes. Which, I am happy to say, are actually showing leaf buds! I thought for sure they had been killed off this winter, but they survived! Yay!
The down side of making the trip is that it basically wiped me out. I’ve been pushing myself too much of late and, while it feels good to do it, this broken old body doesn’t recover like it used to. :-( Once the girls unloaded the van and put everything away, I ended up crashing for a couple of hours. By the time I was mobile again (to find lunch waiting for me! <3 ), I still wasn’t up to doing much. Particularly since we were getting into the hottest part of the day. So we waited a couple more hours before heading outside.
I am really happy we got the new hose and nozzle!
While my daughter watered the old kitchen garden and anything else she could reach on that side (and planted that mystery bulb I found among the tulips), I started watering the north east garden beds until my daughter could join me. It was very handy to have her using the hose on some beds, while I used the watering can on others. Though we hadn’t needed to water this morning, by this time of the day, everything was thirsty again. Especially the newly planted corn and sunflower blocks.
While watering the Dalvay peas, I decided it was time to fill the gaps.
I figured that whatever was going to germinate, already has, and what hasn’t by now, isn’t going to. With these peas, we had a lot of seeds left over, so I went around with a bamboo stake and poked holes in the gaps between the seedlings, sowed new seeds, then covered the holes with fresh soil. Then the beds got thoroughly watered again.
That’s one thing about this area. It’s almost impossible to over water out here.
The King Tut purple peas also have gaps where seeds did not germinate, but there were no extra seeds left over from that packet, so whatever has come up is all we’re going to have for this year. We’ll still have a decent number of plants, and they are supposed to be rather prolific, so I’m hoping they work out.
And that’s about my limit for today. Other than bringing our transplants that are hardening off back into the sun room for the night, my body is letting me know that I am done like dinner!
I think maybe getting to bed before midnight would be a good goal to shoot for, this evening… ;-)
The crab apple trees near the old garden area are starting to bloom. Not all of them yet, but this one was looking gorgeous, today. :-)
This morning, after all the garden beds were watered, my older daughter and I got to work on the corn and sunflower blocks. She started by making furrows for the seeds and watering them, then I followed behind to plant.
We managed to get 2 corn blocks done, with radishes planted in between, when we stopped for lunch. It started raining, and for a while I thought we wouldn’t have a chance to finish, but it did get done! Mind you, I was getting rained on while planting the last seeds, but not enough for it to be an issue. :-)
These are the three types of corn that got planted today. At the far end in the photo, is the Sweetness, then Early Eh, and finally the Montauk, in the foreground.
Because the soil is hardest packed the further north we go, we planted the April Cross Chinese Radish, a Daikon type radish, in the northernmost corn block. The packet had much fewer seeds than I expected, so we were able to include them in only 3 of the 5 rows. There was enough Red Meat Watermelon Radish to interplant with the remaining two blocks of corn. Hopefully, both varieties will help with breaking up the hard soil and, once harvested, will give the corn’s roots more room to grow into. This is really late for radishes to be planted; they can be planted as soon as the soil can be worked, however with their short growing season, it should still work out.
The blocks of 3 rows were for the sunflowers. The Mongolian Giant got planted in the block to the north; with how big they are supposed to get, I figured that would work out better. There aren’t a lot of seeds in the packets, but at 2 ft apart, I did end up filling two rows. There will still be the transplants to include, about a week from now. The 3 row block that’s to the south got the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers. The flags mark the block with the Hopi Black Dye and, not being a giant variety, they were planted 18 inches apart. That filled 2 rows as well. Not a single one of the packet we started indoors has germinated, so there is nothing to transplant. We will have more Mongolian Giant transplants than will fill in the one row left in that block, so we might end up splitting them between the two blocks. I didn’t think ahead, and planted seeds on the northern rows. Any Mongolian Giant transplants could end up shading the Hopi Black Dye – though with zero germination from the first packet, I wouldn’t be surprised if none of these germinated, either. I am at a loss as to why the ones we started indoors completely failed to germinate.
Now that these beds are done, we have some time before we can start transplanting, which should be enough time to get the squash tunnel built, and create more beds for them and the other transplants that need them.
Two weeks from now, if all goes well, all the planting (not counting successive sowing) should be done!
Once again, our temperatures have lurched from one direction to the other! From days cold enough for the furnace to turn on, and overnight lows below freezing, we’re back to the heat. It’s past 7:30pm as I write this, and our temperature is still at 24C/75F. A week from now, we’re expected to hit 31C/88F.
Well, by then we should be transplanting our squash seedlings, so that will be good for them, at least!
This morning’s job was to direct sow our bush beans. I am so glad we picked up that extra hose. The mini-beds we made for them needed to be soaked, re-soaked, then soaked again, before I even planted the seeds. I can’t believe how quickly things have dried out already, though I suppose with the winds we’ve been having, I shouldn’t be surprised. You can even see that the pea trellises have been moved around by the winds! I even found one end of a cross piece had come loose after one particularly windy days. The bags may work to startle critters, but they also act like sails.
The yellow and green bean packages had 200 seeds each. With a 20’/6m double row, we still had seeds left over. The purple beans were packed by weight, and a 50g package was just enough for its double row.
Once planted, they all got watered, and watered again! Normally, I would have pre-soaked the beads, but these were inoculated seeds, and I figure soaking them first would have washed off the inoculant!
After the beans were done, we set up the sprinkler to start soaking down the rows for the corn and sunflowers. We left it running over one side for a few hours, then moved it to cover the other end. Much to my surprise, the sprinkler can cover all but 3 rows. There isn’t a lot of pressure, this far out!
Our afternoon project was to see what we could do about protecting our spinach beds. After scrounging in a little shed near the barn, we dragged out the last of some narrow old, salvaged boards. Many of them had several 3″ deck screws in them that had to be removed, first. There were 13 boards, and we ended up using 12 of them, because they were not all the same length.
The roll of chicken wire (or 1″ hex wire) we got was 25′ (7.6m) long and 4′ (1.2m) wide. We have three spinach beds we need to cover. While the beds themselves are about 3-4′ (about a meter) wide and roughly 15′ (just over 4.5m) long, the rows of spinach were, of course, less than that. So we were able to use the roll to cover 2 spinach beds. Well, mostly.
We stole a couple of hoops from the small beet bed by the garlic beds to hold the wire up in the middle. The sides are held in place with sticks, that have a bit of mesh hooked onto their tops, so they are helping hold that up, too. Once we get more hoops, we’ll be able to stop using the sticks to hold up the mesh, which will allow us to move the covers to harvest the spinach.
The edges of the chicken wire were sandwiched between boards that were screwed together. Because of the different lengths, we had to cobble them together. A couple ended up with small gaps between the ends of boards, but they were still secure. The covers don’t really leave much room to do a second sowing, though, which we could do any time now, if we wanted. I think I will skip it, and save the seeds to sow later in the summer for a fall crop.
Like everything else we’re doing this year, this is a temporary thing, so we don’t need to get too fancy. When we build our permanent, high raised beds, we will make protective covers that fit properly, and be properly framed and supported. Right now, neither one completely covers the rows of spinach, so the ends might still get nibbled at, but it should be fine. If we want, we can tie on brightly colored or metallic ribbons to flap in the wind and discourage critters.
I’ll have to make a trip to the local dollar store again and see if they’ve restocked on things like pinwheels. I’ll pick up more hula hoops, too. I figure a couple more rolls of the chicken wire would not be a bad idea. I think we still have enough of that wood in the basement that we can make one more cover for the third spinach bed. For the small beet bed, I’m hoping the mosquito netting we ordered will come in soon, but if not, we can use chicken wire.
While in the city, I also picked up 200’/60.9m of yellow rope to string around where the corn and sunflowers will be planted. If what I read about deer not having good depth perception, so having two shorter fences a few feet apart works as well as a high fence, is accurate, we should be able to string just one “fence” of the yellow rope around half the garden, since it’s already so close to the barbed wire perimeter fence. Since most of the other half will be edged with squash, which deer don’t like, we might not need to do much more than that. We shall see!
Now that the blocks for the corn and sunflowers have been soaked down, tomorrow’s job is to plant the corn, with radishes in between to help break up the hard soil, and direct sow the rest of the sunflowers. The transplants are not done hardening off yet, and all our transplanting will wait until after June 2, regardless of what the weather forecasts are right now! The forecasts change so often, I don’t really trust them beyond a couple of days, and, even then, they are frequently wrong for our area.
Once the seeds are sown, we can finally get back to working on the squash tunnel!
Well, it hasn’t really cooled down all that much, but I wanted to at least get the asparagus planted.
The first thing was set the crowns to soak in water before covering the cardboard with a layer of soil, and laying out the sod around the edges to make a sort of wall to support the height of the bed. The base got a very thorough watering. Then we mixed a load of soil with peat, thoroughly soaking it in the wheelbarrow while mixing it with a spade.
That took a while. :-D
The wet peat mixture was used to create the hills for the crowns. They’re supposed to be planted 2 feet apart. With the bed being longer than 6 feet, they were staggered a bit.
They look a bit like facehuggers. :-D
The crowns were then covered with a rather deep layer of soil, and a light layer of mulch. From what I’ve read, they may need more soil added later.
We will have to make a point of watering it deeply over the next while, just to get the top layer wet through to the crowns. Wetting it in layers should help prevent them from drying out until that’s accomplished.
It’s past 8pm as I write this, and we are finally starting to cool down again. I’m going to see if I can get to bed before 3am for a change. I tried to do that yesterday, and ended up still wide awake at 4am. *sigh* Anyhow, I’d like to get out earlier in the day to continue working on the block for the corn.
Meanwhile, the girls and I have been talking about finding a different permanent spot for the mulberry. One of the best suggestions was to plant it along the north side of the big garden; we intend to plant fruit and nut trees in most of this area anyhow, so why not start now? Then I remembered that the location we were talking about has buried telephone wires somewhere in there. I had tried contacting the phone company about the location and was given the contact information for the Call Before You Dig organization. I ended up sending them an email with our longitude and latitude.
I’ve discovered why people have such a hard time finding our place in the process.
I tried several different map sites to pinpoint our location, but our physical address would not work. I finally just found us manually, and discovered that the road that goes past our place is not labelled. At all. This road has two names; one is the numerical grid number, and the other is my family name. Neither are on the maps.
All but one of the stop signs along our road with the name on them have disappeared. There had been one on one of the stop signs at the intersection near our garden, but not long after we moved here, someone broke the stop sign and the street sign on it disappeared. I am pretty sure this was no accident, since this happened after our first falling out with our vandal, but whatever. The road number was on the other stop sign, so it’s still there. I’d asked about having the road signs with the name replaced at all the intersections that are missing, but I think the councilor I spoke to (who also happens to be the guy renting most of this property) forgot about it. Anyhow. Now that I know that the road that runs past our driveway is unlabelled on any of the maps, I’ll have to find out how to get that fixed.
Meanwhile, I’ve not heard back from the Call Before You Dig people.
Until we do, we’ll avoid planting trees along that strip. There’s already a self sown chokecherry tree there. Those don’t get very big, so we should be able to leave it. The mulberry, however, gets much bigger, so we’ll have to think again about where to put it. It needs to go into the ground right away, so we can’t dilly dally about the decision!!
Today has been a lovely, cool day! Perfect to get those sunflowers done.
I had assistants.
When I started filling the holes with the soil mixture, the Potato Beetle decided to sit his butt over one of the next holes! My first thought was that he was taking a dump and I went to push him away. He just flopped onto the ground and looked at me as if to say, “Yes. Rub my belly. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
Then he moved over to the next hole and sat over it, watching me. When I moved to fill that one, he went to the next one and lay down.
With his butt over the hole.
What a weird cat. :-D
Creamsicle was also fascinated by the holes.
I have no idea what he was seeing down there that was so interesting! :-D
The soil mixture in the little pool got quite a lot of rainwater, along with the water I’d already put into it, so it was quite saturated. I was still finding pockets of dry peat, though! Still, this was perfect, as it meant I didn’t have to drag buckets of water over the very rough ground to water the soil mix, first. I could just go straight to planting.
I decided to alternate the two varieties. The row still marked with flags starts and ends with the variety that can grow 10-12 feet high, while the other row starts and ends with the variety that can grow 6-8 feet high. The varieties ended up lining up with each other where the two rows overlap.
And that will be it for today, with it being Sunday. I just did what had to be done, before we got more rain (if we get more rain; we’ll see if the forecasts are right for a change).
Next, for this area, we will be adding a straw mulch, little by little, as well as taking the opportunity to dig up the burdock that’s starting to come up, as well as the self-sown trees that are showing up.
Tomorrow, weather willing, the priority will be to get more of the squash transplants in. Quite a few more are ready, now. And I might even be seeing some of those gourds finally emerging, too!
Putting in a garden this year is really changing what is being worked on outside. The original plan was to spend the first 2 years cleaning up the inner yard, the next year or two working on the outer yard, and moving beyond the outer yard as we could, after that. With my husband ended up in the hospital for 3 weeks last year, and many trips to the city to see specialists, things got more focused. Which worked out, since we ended up focusing on cleaning up where the old wood pile used to be, and finding that wonderful soil we have planted the carrots in. For this year, we will continue to work on cleaning up the spruce grove, but will also have to get things done in the outer yard, and now keep up on the garden beds. Oh, and build that new outhouse as a cordwood practice building, too.
First, the garden needs to be planted.
Then, we can mark out where we want to put the cordwood building and start clearing the space and removing sod. Cleaning up the spruce grove, etc., will continue in between stages of building. I’m hoping I can borrow my brother and his trailer, and visit a salvage yard for materials to use as a floor/base. I’m thinking along the lines of pavers, but who knows what else we might find! :-)
The Re-Farmer 