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Little friends, and garlic mystery solved?

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Well, we’ve passed our forecasted high of the day and have reached 30C/86F, with the humidex putting us at 35C/95F, this afternoon. We did, however, get RAIN this morning! I was awakened by the sound of thunder, so I quickly went outside to make sure the cats and birds had food before the rain hit. The storm blew past us, but it did start to rain while I was still outside. I’ll take the nice, gentle rain, thank you very much!

Unfortunately, it looks like this will be the last rain we’ll have in a while, and tomorrow the smoke is supposed to be back. What rain we did have never reached the fires up north. :-(

While doing my evening rounds yesterday, and checking the old kitchen garden (the floating row covers are doing their job; no signs of critters trying to get under them, and our carrots are recovering!), I stumbled on a pretty green friend!

It was just hanging out on the leaf of one of the flowers that made its way through the layers of mulch we put on this garden, two summers ago. We’ve seen a lot of frogs this year (likely because all the ponds and ditches have dried up), but we don’t often see the green tree frogs.

It didn’t seem to like us giants hanging around, so we let it be, though I must admit, it is very tempting to want to hold it.

I also was able to get a picture of some furry friends.

Rosencrantz and Nosencrantz were calm enough to just watch me as I went by. Toesencrantz, unfortunately, is more skittish and was hiding.

I so want to boop Nosencrantz’s nose. :-D

While the girls and I were checking the garlic beds, I showed them this odd garlic.

It looks like garlic is forming inside the stem, and this one is getting pretty big. I’d noticed another had started to show signs of this happening a few days ago. This is only in the Racombole garlic, which is split between the two garlic beds, so the girls started looking around in the other bed, and we found several more.

This one was the strangest looking one, and it may explain what’s happening.

This looks like a garlic scape! This might explain why the Racombole seemed to have fewer scapes than the other two varieties. Instead of growing out the tops, as they should have, the scapes look like they got stuck in the bottoms of the stems in quite a few of the plants. Since they didn’t get harvested, bulbils are now forming inside the stems, eventually bursting through. Only this one had the rest of the scape emerge from the stem for us to see.

It also looks like something tried to give this one a taste!

In theory, we can keep the bulbils and plant them in the fall. Hardneck garlic are bi-annual, growing seeds in their second year. Planting the cloves, rather than the bulbils, and harvesting the scapes by passes that, allowing for large bulbs with lots of cloves to form. If we planted bulbils, we sould get small bulbs that are basically one big clove. Kind of like the garlic we had to harvest early, because the plants died back so soon.

It should be interesting to see the bulbs that form under the plants that have these trapped bulbils growing in their stems. I would expect they would be smaller bulbs, though with conditions this year, I expect all of them to be smaller. I don’t expect to have any suitable for planting next year. This year, for our fall planting, we are looking to double the amount of garlic we plant. I should order them soon; they will be shipped when ready for planting in our zone, so ordering early will not be an issue. We will just have to decide where we want to plant them this fall, as we rotate things.

I am finding that half the fun of gardening is planning out next year’s garden! :-D

The Re-Farmer

In the garden, and critters not in the garden

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Well, we seem to be back to having all the rain systems passing us by again. We are a bit cooler – as I write this, we are at “only” 26C/79F – but our humidex puts us at 33C/91F. Which I suppose helps, as we didn’t need to water the garden at all, yesterday. I probably could have left them be for another day, but I used a water soluble fertilizer on most of it, this morning.

This is the biggest of the Pixie melons that I checked on this morning. I just love how perfectly round they are! :-D

We had a whole bunch of poppies blooming this morning, including this tiny one. So far, it’s the only one with petals that are almost the pink they are supposed to be.

Unfortunately, the potatoes are getting more grasshopper damage these days.

They seem to prefer to eat the flowers! There is a fair bit of leaf damage, though the potatoes are doing so well, they can handle it pretty well right now. Though this seemed odd.

The Purple Peruvian fingerling potatoes have virtually no damage at all! I think I found only two leaves that had been chewed on. That’s it. All the other varieties, meanwhile, have quite a lot of chewed up leaves. Apparently, these potato leaves taste bad to grasshoppers! :-D

I don’t know what it is about today, but the entire household seems to be having a hard time. Perhaps it’s the humidity? I’m actually feeling an oppressive weight in my upper chest and throat that gets worse when I lie down, making it hard to sleep, and my chronic cough has been an issue, even though the rain we did get cleared the smoke out of the air. I don’t know, but we’re all barely able to drag our butts around to get anything done, and we all feel like falling asleep where we stand. Even the cats are sprawled all over the house in furry puddles, sleeping.

Speaking of furry puddles…

The big woodchuck was under the bird feeder earlier today – along with a chipmunk! You can’t really see it in the photo, but the woodchuck’s back hips are just sort of flattened to the ground, like a puddle.

It came back again later, then got some company.

The little one wandered over and started munching. They look peaceable in the photo, but when the littler one got too close to the big one, the big one attacked it! Had it flipped over on its back, teeth at its throat, in a heartbeat!

Then it let the little one go. This was clearly a dominance thing, not an attempt to do real damage. The little one didn’t fight back, but submitted to the big one. Given the size – and likely age – difference, that was probably a wise decision on the little one’s part!

With today being a day where manual labour seems to be out of the question (and there is much of it that needs to be done, but couldn’t be, because of the heat we’ve been having), I decided it was a good time to write out some plans and lists, and make some diagrams, for next year’s garden. I’ve got our catalogues out and started some wish lists, as well as working out what we want to do for next year. The girls and I will go over things and hash out details, using what we learned with this year’s gardening. Having this worked out early will be useful as we clean things up at the end of this growing season. The main thing I’m trying to figure out is what to use to build the first permanent, high raised beds, which will be where we currently have the low raised beds bordered with logs. Buying lumber is out of the question for our budget, but the barn and sheds got picked over by our vandal over the years before we moved here, quite thoroughly. The barn used to be full of salvaged lumber. I have a few ideas in mind, but it looks like it’ll be a while before we can see if they’re even possible. Ah, well. We’ll figure something out.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: morning rain, and solution found

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For the past while, we have been pretty much constantly checking the weather radar. Yesterday evening, it was getting discouraging, and the predicted overnight rain kept getting pushed back and the weather system passed us by to the south. This morning, however, I was thrilled to see a system pushing rain right over is. Granted, based on the radar images, we should have been raining right at that moment, but at least we weren’t going to be missed entirely.

We did get at least some rain last night, as the ground was still damp when I came out to do my morning rounds. It even started raining while I was out there! A very light rain; the sort of rain that, had I not been outside being rained on, I wouldn’t have been able to tell it was happening, but still, it was rain!

While checking the furthest garden beds, I was accompanied by Creamsicle Baby, who has finally started to allow us to pet him again. Frustratingly, when the cats follow us around those beds, they have a terrible habit of going into the pea trellises. This morning, I had to chase Creamsicle off the pea plants he was rolling on, only to have him come right back and start playing with the trellis twice, pulling their pegs out of the ground and getting tangled in them!

Even as I checked the garden cam this morning, I saw Butterscotch going through the pea beds, all four kittens following along, and every one of them went through the pea trellises, running, bouncing and rolling around.

Those poor peas just can’t seem to catch a break!

Other things, however, are doing quite well.

I’m really impressed by how well these Hope Black Dye sunflower transplants are doing. These are from the ones we tried starting indoors, but never germinated until well after we’d direct sown the other half of the seeds outdoors. The seedlings have pretty much quadrupled in size since they got transplanted. I don’t expect them to have a chance to reach maturity, given how late in the season they got transplanted, but part of the reason we grow sunflowers is as a privacy screen and wind break, and these might still accomplish that. Assuming they don’t get eaten. This morning, I saw deer tracks in the soil at the very ends of two bean beds, but no signs of anything new critter damage, so here’s hoping!

Every time we go out to these garden beds, we can’t help but check on the melons. They are getting so big!! This variety isn’t supposed to get as large as, say, the cantaloupes we see in the grocery store, but they are still supposed to produce lots of 4-5 pound fruit. The Pixies are supposed to reach about 1 1/2 pounds in size. I’m really, really excited about these. Melons are among my favourite foods, but we rarely buy them, as they are a treat, rather than an essential.

One of the challenges we’ve been having as been with the potatoes. Since discovering some critter damage, we unrolled the feed bags we’re growing them in to full height. If these had been indeterminate potatoes, we would eventually have done that by continually adding more soil, but these turned out to all be determinate potatoes, so there is no advantage to doing that.

Unfortunately, that meant there was nothing to support the bags, and the plants kept flopping over. Especially while being watered. If we had mulch, we could have added that to help fill the space and keep them from flopping over, but we don’t have anything right now. At least it’s been working to keep critters out, but some of the bags were flopping over to the point that I was concerned the stems would all break, and they’re still in their blooming stage.

Last night, I think I found a solution.

This is how they looked this morning, so it seems to have worked!

What I’d done is cut small holes near the tops of the bags, then tied them together with twine. The double row was tied together in groups of four, while the bags in the front were tied in groups of three. Then, just in case, extra twine was run around the front, tying them to the chain link fence. So now, the bags are holding each other up, while also protecting the plants from critters. It’s just insects we’ll still need to keep an eye on.

Hmm. One down side of finally getting some rain. There are some storms passing to the south of us, which means we’ve lost internet. The WordPress editor’s autosave has been spinning for a while, and once that starts, it doesn’t recover even once the connection is back. Which means that I can’t save my draft, and once our connection is up again, I’ll have to open whatever draft was last autosaved, then copy and paste whatever got missed into it, before I can publish it, and close this window.

Oh, the internet seems to be back again! Let’s see if I can publish this!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: some growth, some critter damage, and WE GOT RAIN!!!!

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I just have to start with the exciting part. We actually got rain today!

Okay, so it was maybe only for about 20 minutes, but it was a nice, gentle, steady rain, and enough that after several hours, the ground is still damp. Not only that, but we’ve got a 90% chance of more rain overnight and into tomorrow morning.

Thank God!

Hopefully, by then, the smoke will finally clear out of the air, and some of that rain will hit the areas that have fires right now.

It is not going to make up for months of drought and heat, but it will certainly help. Even the completely dry, crispy grass has started to wake up and show green already.

It was lovely and cool when I did my rounds this morning, then a daughter and I went and checked all the garden beds just a little while ago.

I’m really glad we set up the chicken wire over the gourds and cucamelons. I found this critter damage this morning. It looks like something, likely a woodchuck, leaned on the wire and managed to nibble on a leaf through the gaps. Just one leaf here, and another on the other side of the chain link fence. Without the wire, we probably would have had a lot more damage.

While I was checking on these, Nosencrantz was playing on the concrete block leaning on a tree nearby, so I paused to try and get her to come to my hand. I managed to boop Nosencrantz’s nose before she ran away. Toesencrantz, on the other hand, was far more interested in trying to get at a lump of dirt on the other side of the chicken wire! He could get his paws under the wire, but the tent pegs held and he couldn’t get the lump out. Not for lack of trying! So that confirmed for me that the kittens were doing the digging in the dirt. More reason to be glad for the wire! The dirt lump got broken up, so as to remove further temptation.

The cucamelon plants looks so tiny, but they are starting to develop fruit! The chain link fence gives an idea of just how tiny these are. I’m looking forward to seeing how they do in this location, which gets more sun than where we grew them last year. They produced quite well last year, for a plant that’s supposed to have full sun.

While checking things out with my daughter, I found new critter damage. When I checked the bed this morning, the damage wasn’t there. These are the Champion radish sprouts. Not all of them were eaten, and the purple kohlrabi sprouts next to them seem to have been untouched. Which would lead me to think it was grasshoppers, not a groundhog, except that after the rain, there were NO grasshoppers around. I didn’t see any in the morning, either, but I usually don’t, that early in the day. They tend to come out later.

Unfortunately, this bed has only the wire border fence pieces to hold up the shade cloth. We are out of the materials to make another wire mesh cover, so with the shade cloths not being used, this bed is unprotected, and there’s really nothing we can do about it right now. :-( On the plus side, it wasn’t a total loss, and I’m thinking the woodchucks, at least, are preferring the easy pickings under the bird feeder.

At the squash tunnel, we found this lovely friend, resting on a Halona melon flower. The melons, winter squash and gourds are doing quite well right now, though all the garden beds are due for another feeding. The baby melons are getting nice and big, and we keep finding more. I was really excited when my daughter spotted this, hidden under a leaf.

These are the first flower buds on the luffa! I was really starting to wonder about them. They started out well, then went through a rough patch, but since I started using the soaker hose, they are already looking more robust again.

In checking the onion beds, my daughter spotted an onion that had lost its greens completely, so she picked it. It will need to be eaten very quickly. It is so adorable and round! This is from the onions we grew from seed. Though I’ve trimmed the greens of almost all the onions, we’re finding some of them with broken stems. Most likely, it’s from the cats rolling on them, as I’ve sometimes seen Creamsicle Baby doing.

We also found a green zucchini big enough to pick. I’ve checked all the plants, and while there should be at least one golden zucchini, I’m not finding any. Every plant is starting to produce fruit now, too, even if just tiny ones, and no golden zucchini. Odd. Perhaps the package was mislabeled and we got a different kind of green zucchini instead? There are differences in the leaves that suggest two different varieties, even if the fruit looks much the same.

Oh, in the background of the onion picture is the Montana Morado corn. We’re always checking them and the nearby Crespo squash for critter damage. There does seem to be some, but I am uncertain what to make of it. One corn plant, in the middle of the furthest row, lost its tassels and top leaves, but none of the others around it were damaged. It has a cob developing on the stalk, so I pollinated it by hand. Then I spotted another stalk, in the middle of the bed, that also lost its tassels. But what would have done that, while ignoring all the other plants around it? Very strange.

And finally, we have the poppies.

The Giant Rattle Breadseed poppies continue to bloom in the mornings, loosing their petals by the end of the day. Their pods are so tiny at that point, but in my hand, you can see the pod from the very first one that bloomed. It has gotten so much bigger!

We also found a couple of these.

My mother had ornamental poppies in here, and even with the mulching and digging we did, some still survived. This photo is of the bigger of two that showed up in an unexpected place: where my daughter had dug a trench to plant her iris bulbs. Somehow, they survived, and now we have two tiny little ornamental poppies. :-D

In hopes that we will get rain tonight, we will not be doing our evening watering. If we don’t get rain, we will water everything in the morning, instead.

The Re-Farmer

Smoked out

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Today, we finally have cooler temperatures! According to the hourly forecasts, we should be at about 23C/73F right now, but we’re still at only 18C/64F, which is awesome. There are still predictions of rain, all of which have been passing south of us. We desperately need rain. I’ve been reading about how it’s affecting some of our farmers. Those growing things like oats have had their crops gone crispy. Cherry producers (I didn’t even know we had a cherry industry in our province!) have had their cherries bake, right on the trees.

On top of all that is the smoke. I had to make a trip into town this morning, and it’s even worse there. There are fires on the other side of the lake, which is likely why. There are no fires near us but, today, the smoke is heavy enough to affect visibility quite a bit. I was talking to my mother on the phone a little while ago, and the smoke coming into the house was so bad, I had to excuse myself for a couple of coughing fits while talking. I’ve been able to reduce my mystery coughing fits pretty well over the last few years, but with this smoke, I’ve had more in one day than I’ve had in the last 4 years since we’ve moved here. I’ve actually reversed the fan in my window to blow the smoke out, even though I would normally be drawing the cooler air in while we’ve got it.

This adorable monster was eating our bird seed this morning. I saw one of the smaller ones out my window, heading to the bird feeder, just a little while ago. I should probably chase them away, but as long as they’re eating the seeds, they’re not eating my garden, so… I’m letting them be for now.

I’ve got the garden cam set up to try and see what has been eating our peas. The only things that got caught were a skunk and Butterscotch going by. Skunks are omnivores, so it could potentially be a skunk, but the one I saw was just passing through.

When doing the watering last night, I uncovered the beds with radishes, chard, kale and kohlrabi. This morning, I left them uncovered. We’re overcast, so they don’t need the shade, and if we do get rain, I want them to get some!

While talking to my mother about the current drought conditions, I mentioned that there are people whose wells have gone dry. I told her I thought my brother had said our well is 80 feet deep. It’s a number that’s been bothering me, but I couldn’t remember him saying anything different for this well. The old well in the pump shack (which predates my family owning this property), I remember him saying is about 110 feet. My mother, however, corrected me. She didn’t know about the old well, but she did remember that the well by the house is a little over 150 feet deep.

I suddenly feel much, much better. There is no way my brother would have been wrong about that, since he was heavily involved when all the work was being done, so I don’t know where I got that 80 feet from. Especially since I know we have a deep well pump. “Deep” is a relative statement, depending on the geography and elevation, but I know that in our area, even 80 ft would be considered pretty deep. However, if we’re loosing pressure while using two hoses at the same time (granted, one of those hoses had been running a sprinkler for an hour) at 150 ft in current conditions, at 80 ft, our well would probably be dry right now. Which is a rather alarming thought.

And so we pray for rain, for respite for our farmers and firefighters, and to clear some of that smoke out of the air!

The Re-Farmer

Flowers and friend

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Today is supposed to be the hottest day of our current heat wave.

Of course, forecasts remain all over the place.

We’re going to hit 34C/93F but it will feel like 40C/104F

No, we’re going to hit 37C/99F and it will feel like 37C/99F.

We’re going to get thunderstorms today.

No, tomorrow.

No, the evening of the day after and into the following morning.

No, we’re going to get thunderstorms today – but only a 60% chance, with less about 5mm of rain.

We’ll see what actually happens! As I write this, we are at 30C/86F, and there’s enough wind to make it rather pleasant in the shade. While I was doing my rounds this morning, it was a very comfortable 17C/63F.

One of the few non-garden areas we’ve been giving at least some watering has been the spirea next to the storage house – the one area we are allowing the spirea to grow – and the grape vines (there are only a couple of clusters on the vine this year). More specifically, right at the corner of the house, where these flowers are growing.

When we first saw these flowers, it was a real surprise, because the plants were completely buried by the spirea. Since then, we’ve been cleaning up the spirea, taking out the dead bits and keeping it under control, but it still hid the plant and we wouldn’t see anything of it until the flower spikes shot up.

This spring, with the warm May we had, the spirea had been leafing out and starting to show flower spikes. Then that -8C/18F night hit and killed off the flower buds and damaged the youngest leaves. So the spirea is a lot thinner this year, even with our watering. Which means, for the first time, we could actually see the plant this flower is from, and it has grown much larger. You can tell by the flowers, though, that even with watering, the heat is getting to it. The flowers are smaller and shriveled looking compared to how it usually blooms, even when buried by spirea.

The spirea, meanwhile, has recovered to the point that it is starting to bud again. This will make the pollinators quite happy!

We have more poppies blooming this morning, too. About 4 of them were open, or partly open. I gave the old kitchen garden a bit of a watering this morning, too, making for some very photogenic flowers. :-)

Yesterday evening, after the girls were done watering the garden beds, I filled the rain barrel at the house, so that we would can water the old kitchen garden with a watering can, while the hose is running. I don’t expect to get any rain to actually fill the barrel. :-/

While at the barrel, I saw something scuttle across the two kohlrabi plants in the carrot bed that are covered with netting. It turned out to be this little friend.

That’s the downside of using floating row covers to protect our plants. The frogs have a harder time getting under the cool leaves. The netting isn’t stopping the flying insects from getting under them; they just cant’ figure out how to get out again. Which should be a big foggy buffet, if the could just find the edges that they can crawl under! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: morning in the garden

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Now that we have Halona melons developing, it is so much more fun to check the garden in the mornings! Check this out.

These melons are visibly bigger than they were when I looked at them yesterday evening. I checked them again this evening, and they are again, noticeably bigger! Not only that, but we are finding lots more new ones, plus some larger ones that we hadn’t seen earlier. None as big as the one I’m holding in the photo, though.

I’ve looked over the Pixie melons, and while there are lots of flowers, they all seem to be male flowers. Which is interesting, since the Pixies are 70-75 days to maturity, while the Halona are 75 days to maturity, so you’d think it would be the other way around.

This is a photo of our very first WINTER squash! *insert happy dance* They are starting to get quite big, and this type are quite enthusiastically climbing the squash tunnel. I forget which ones these are; the markers are hidden under leaves right now. :-D

Well, if I needed clearer proof that something is eating our peas, this is it. Half the pod of this purple pea got et. There were still a few that were ready to pick. Maybe 5 or 6 pods. Just enough to include with my breakfast, as an edible garnish. :-D

This evening, I refilled the patched rain barrel and, while I was waiting, I checked over the peas more thoroughly. Enough are showing signs of nibbles that I moved the garden cam so I can hopefully see what critter is the cause. We’ve seen deer and raccoons going by, but they’re not eating anything, however the camera was not being triggered by anything in the pea beds. In fact, last night, nothing triggered it at all, until I walked past it this morning. I now have it up against the lilac hedge on the North side of the pea beds, and lowered on the flag stand, so I’m hoping it will work.

Two more poppies were blooming this morning!

They drop their leaves by the end of the afternoon, though. I was talking to my sister about them and mentioned that they were supposed to have pink petals, not white, and she said that it’s from the heat. If things were cooler, they would be the pink they’re supposed to be. Interesting. She also confirmed that it’s likely the heat that is causing our peas to struggle. I agree that this would be the major factor, though I’m sure a combination of factors are just making it harder for them to thrive.

And that’s before having critters eating them!

In other things, my plans changed with a phone call, and I headed out for most of the day, but that will be in my next post. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: first!

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I completely forgot to post this, this morning!

Our first poppy is blooming!

This is the Giant Rattle Breadseed Poppy, from Baker Creek. The flowers are very different from the poppies my mother grew with I was a kid; those had bright red flowers with black at the bases, similar to the Remembrance Day poppies. She may have gotten the original seeds from Poland. It should be interesting to see how big the pods get. The plants themselves had a rough start and are very small, even compared to the ornamental poppies. These are supposed to get very large (hence their name.. LOL).

Interestingly, the photos at the website show pink, not white, on petals.

The Re-Farmer

Cute fuzzy things in the morning

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I got to see all sorts of adorable things this morning. Starting with these guys!

They were very rambunctious this morning. :-)

The girls have informed me that the calico that looks like Cabbages has been named Broccoli. The tabby twins have also been named, but I forget them right now.

The fourth kitten, sharing breakfast with her mother here, does not yet have a name.

I also saw an adorable, fuzzy little monster this morning, but I wasn’t able to get a photo. The woodchuck was by the old garden shed, then ducked under it as I came over.

I’m happy to say that adding two bigger rocks and a bunch of broken bricks seems to finally be enough to keep the woodchuck from digging its way back under the stairs. I think it still tried, though. A small, gap-filling piece of insulation had been braced between the brick wall and the big rock, before. Looks like it got pushed inwards.

One last adorable bit of fuzziness! This bee wasn’t even gathering nectar or anything. It was just sitting there, like it was taking a nap while it was still cool. :-)

I got a few things worked out in the garden, before coming in from my morning rounds, but that will get its own post. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Critter battle update, a mini harvest, and we’re getting poppies!

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First, a bit of a follow up from yesterday. After blocking the woodchuck holes by the house and in the old garden area, I headed out a few times to check on the one by the house. Twice, I found things disturbed!

This picture was taken after the second time I found it dug up. The first time, I had started to remove the plastic around the back of the mock orange, saw that things had been pulled out, and started tying it back again. As I was fussing and making noise, I could actually hear little grunting noises coming from under the stairs! I found some rocks had been dug up a bit on the other side, too, but just a little. After blocking the other side, I tried spraying water into the little gaps remaining, to try and pursuade the woodchuck to leave out the other side. We never saw it, but I came back later and it seemed to be gone, so I blocked the opening again. A couple of hours later, what you see in the photo above it what I came back to! After making as sure as I could there was nothing inside, I blocked it off again. As of today, it has not been disturbed again, so here’s hoping the critter has decided it’s not worth the effort.

Later in the evening, I found this in the old garden area.

Much to my surprise, the first den we found was dug into again! It was just a small hole compared to before – the buried sticks seemed to work in preventing further digging. I blocked it off and, when I checked it this morning, it was still buried. Once again, I’m hoping the woodchuck has decided it’s not worth the effort and have moved on.

After doing the watering this morning, I picked a tiny little harvest.

There was one zucchini big enough to pick, and I gathered the last of the garlic scapes (unless I missed one or two). Plus, we have our first peas. :-D Only two pods from the purple peas. Because the pea plants are so stunted in growth, the weight of the pods were keeping the plants they were on from being able to reach the trellis lines. At least we’ll be able to taste the peas. I’m curious about how the purple peas taste. Reviews on the Baker Creek website were pretty mixed!

Unfortunately, it looks like some of the pea plants are not just stunted in growth, but have been nibbled on, too! Where this is new nibbles or not, I couldn’t really tell. I also noticed new nibbles on the Crespo squash. Any part of the squash that started to grow outside the hoop and twine barrier seems to be getting nibbled. We’ll have to find a way to extend the barrier.

Meanwhile, in the old kitchen garden, I’m happy to see pods developing on the Giant Rattle poppies! These had had such a rough started, I wasn’t sure what we would get, so this is making me very happy. For this year, we might have enough pods to taste them, but not enough for cooking with; mostly I want to save the seeds to grow more next year, and fill the bed. Gosh, this brings back memories! When I was a kid, my mother grew similar poppies in this garden, and I remember my late brother and I picking dried out pods and eating the seeds, straight from the garden. We would later have big bunches of the dried pods (well… big, in my childhood memory!) gathered. The only thing I remember my mother making with them was a special soup she made only for our Wigilia (Christmas Eve) dinner.

I did have another harvest this morning, which will get its own post next. :-)

The Re-Farmer