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Our 2024 Garden: potting progress

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Well, I ended up doing a bit more than I expected to, yesterday evening!

The first thing I did as plant a few more pre-germinated Wild Bunch winter squash seeds. To make space, I changed out what the pots were sitting in.

They are now in a baking pan, over a cooling rack, to allow air to circulate under them. This is a recommendation from Gardening in Canada, as a way to keep the pots from getting moldy or starting to fall apart. The problem, though, is they can’t be bottom watered while on this, which means they’ll be watered mostly by misting.

I would love it if Costco got another shipment of these baking pans. They are basic, 9×13 pans and were very affordable. I didn’t realize just how good the price was, until they were gone and I tried finding more, elsewhere, only to find they cost 4 or 5 times more! Even the restaurant section of the wholesale store I checked out was ridiculously expensive.

Also, that’s the last of my 3″ biodegradable pots from last year. The new ones I got are 4″ pots, which is what the green plastic one is.

Speaking of “biodegradable” pots. The last thing I potted was the coffee tree I got for my daughters. I repurposed a pot that we’d planted thyme in, last year. The thyme had been started in one of these biodegradable pots and the whole thing was potted up. Unfortunately, the indoor thyme got forgotten about and died. It was set aside until tonight, when I finally went to remove the dead thyme – and pulled out a pot! It was completely whole; only brittle from being so dry. No degradation occurred while the plant was still alive, at all. That is not how these pots are supposed to be! When it comes time to plant these outdoors, I will most likely break the pot up so that at least the roots won’t be constrained. If I can remove them completely without damaging the roots, I will!

But I digress…

After potting the pre-germinated seeds and rearranging the aquarium greenhouse to fit them, it was time to work on the San Marzano tomatoes. I decided they needed to be done, even though they are still recovering from their accident, as they were just getting too crowded. I used another deep cell tray to transplant into, but instead of filling it with seed starting mix, I use a Pro Mix potting soil I picked up today. As usual, I premoistened the soil, first.

Good grief, there were a lot of sticks in it!

I can’t even say it’s a brand problem. My second bag of Miracle Grow seed starting mix was full of sticks, too. The first bag of Miracle Grow had them as well, though not as bad. The first bag of seed starting mix I got – Jiffy, I think, but I can’t remember for sure – was probably the best of the lot, with only a few sticks in it, but it was also a much smaller bag.

Once the new tray was full of potting soil, I went through the San Marzano seedlings. A couple were pretty much dead, so I just pulled them. After removing and potting up the “spares”, I top dressed the ones left behind with vermiculate, then set it back at the window.

They are definitely still in rough shape. I hope that, now that they have more room, a bit of fresh soil and the vermiculite, they will recover faster.

As for the spares I transplanted out, there were only 9 strong enough to transplant to the new tray, plus one that got transplanted into a cell in the original tray that lost its seedlings to the fall.

I’m honestly not sure these will all survive. 😞 We shall see!

That left 12 cells available. I had the small tray with 12 cells planted with three different types of tomatoes in them, so I decided to thin those by transplanting. With the Chocolate Cherry and the Black Cherry, there were 4 “spares” to transplant out, but with the Forme de Coeur, a couple of cells had 3 seeds sprouting when I thought I’d planted only two, giving me 6 “spares” to plant out.

Once I started working on them, though, I realized I would have to plant all of them out of the little tray, so once these were done, I planted the remainder into 4″ plastic pots.

The outside rows of 4 pots are the Black Cherry and Chocolate Cherry. I didn’t have room for all the Forme de Coeur, though…

… so the last one went into the bin with the peppers and thyme.

Hopefully, I didn’t want too long to transplant these from those little trays! This one’s looking particularly rough. 😞

I hadn’t planned to be filling an extra fourteen 4″ pots, so these ones were filled with a mix of seed starting mix and potting soil.

The other small tray with the peppers in it will need to be potted up, too. I’ll probably use Red Solo cups for those, since I only have 4 or 5 of the green pots left, and the new biodegradable ones I got, I’m saving for the winter squash. For the peppers in the small tray, I don’t think I’ll thin them by transplanting, though. Instead, I’ll just keep the 4 strongest seedlings of each variety.

Speaking of room, I need to make a decision on these guys.

These are getting large enough they’ll need to be moved out of the aquarium greenhouse. The question is, do I try to thin by transplanting, or do I just thin them?

Who am I kidding. I can’t bring myself to just yank and kill off so many strong, healthy seedlings! However, transplanting them means 7 more pots, on top of the 6 already here. I can fit them in the mini greenhouse frame at the window, if I can move out the onions and shallots.

Hmmm… onions are a cool weather crop. I could start hardening them off and transplant them outside.

Speaking of planting things outside, the last thing I did for the evening was set the snap pea seeds between wet paper towels for the night. Tomorrow, they go into the ground!

I love having cool weather crops that can be planted so early – earlier than usual, this year. I’m hoping the long range forecasts are at least close to accurate! Even if things end up cooler, this is stuff that should survive anything but an unseasonal deep freeze. Hopefully, we’ll soon be seeing our garlic coming up, as well as the snow crocuses.

Spring may finally have arrived!

The Re-Farmer

An unplanned outing on a gorgeous day

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First, the cuteness!

I caught Peanut Butter Cup being adorable in her sleep.

She has quite settled in, and I’ve even woken up to find her curled up on me! The only down side of that is, she’s got… digestive issues. Little Miss Leaky Butt has inadvertently created much laundry. She’s gotten better, but not as much as the others. For a while, we had a whole lot of cats having… liquidity issues. We had been using the Kirkland brand of cat food before changing up to other brands, including the donated kibble. I try to have different brands and flavours as much as is affordable (plus wet cat food, which we’ve been giving them more of, for other reasons), but when it comes to price per kilogram, the Kirkland brand is still the best deal, so that’s the dominant brand of kibble they all get. I wouldn’t have made any sort of connection until I read a blog post about the Kirkland dog formula changing, and the effect it had on their dog. I haven’t been able to confirm, but found that others have wondered if the cat kibble formula has also changed. Since our own cat problems reduced when they started eating mostly other kibble brands (when the bins are topped up, they can get mixed together), I am now suspicious as to the cause. PBC, however, is still a messy girl at times, even on the other brands.

I’d hoped we wouldn’t have to make another trip before our stock up shopping, but we ran out of kibble. For the prices, it was worth the cost of gas to go to the nearest Walmart to pick some up, and still have budget left over for other necessities. My younger daughter came along with me to do some of her own shopping.

Our first stop was at Canadian Tire, where we were able to sanitize and refill two of our 18.9L water jugs. Since we were there anyhow, I picked up 4 more of the deep cell planting trays, plus a couple more base trays to replace some cracked ones. I need to pot up some tomatoes. My daughter found a couple of replacement spatulas that we hope won’t melt like some of the others we have! We went through most of the store just looking at things and talking about what we need to pick up over the next few weeks/months. In the process I was very happy to find a campfire coffee percolator on clearance! I’ve been on the lookout for one, to include with our other firepit cooking supplies, but they’ve always been so insanely expensive. Now we have a very basic 9 cup coffee percolator that includes an extra handle for hanging over the fire, for just under $18.

Once done there, we headed to the Walmart, split up and got our necessities. I got the cat food we needed, plus some items for the pantry. Canned, flaked tuna, packed in water, dropped in price to 97¢ per can, down from $1.97 per can. Canned meats and seafood of all kinds seem to have almost tripled in price over the past few years (depending on where you shop, of course), so to see a price actually go down to something close to pre-illegal-lockdown was a nice surprise. Mind you, only the girls like canned tuna, so it’s just for them, but anything extra for the pantry is always a good thing.

My daughter and I caught up again at the Walmart McDonalds, where I’d ordered lunch (my daughter hadn’t had breakfast before we left!), so she took the cart and loaded the truck while I waited for the food. While heading back to the truck, I remembered that I wanted to go to the Dollarama that shares the parking lot. My daughter had just finished bagging our stuff and loading it into the truck, so we left the food for later and she went into the store with me. While there, I found a few more things I wanted for starting seeds indoors. My daughter found some stuff, too – and got a present for me. A new hat for my collection!

It’s the absolute blingy-est adult sized hat I could find! Not only does it sparkle, it’s fluffy. 😂 It was actually the only blingy adult sized hat they had, but I’m absolutely giddy over it.

It doesn’t take much to make me happy.

We need to make something for our entry wall just for hanging up our hats. We have so many of them! 😁

Today we reached our high of 10C/49F, with some lovely sunshine. The only unpleasant thing was the winds were high enough to buffet us on the drive home. We’re supposed to continue being nice and warm – even reaching as high as 18C/65F next week, which is going to feel down right tropical.

Since potting the pre-germinated winter squash seeds I’d made a video of, 2 days ago, I potted up 2 more yesterday, and this morning I found more had germinated, so I’ll be potting those tonight. I will also be thinning by transplanting the San Marzano tomatoes, now that I have more of the large celled trays. The seedlings are a bit beat up from their fall, but almost all survived. I also need to pot up the other tomatoes and peppers in the small trays. That can be done over the next few days. With the pleasant upcoming weather, though, I want to set my snap pea seeds to soak, then tomorrow I want to plant them, along with some of the Uzbek Golden Carrots I made seed tape out of, plus spinach, in the bed that’s ready for them. I’ve decided to plant the snap peas in this bed, instead of the shelling peas, since we have fewer snap pea seeds, and it’s a relatively small bed.

Tomorrow, I also want to check on the bed that is solarizing right now and see how it’s doing, after today’s warmth and sunshine. We ended up ordering some sulphur pellets online, to increase the acidity of our very alkaline soil. I will wait until those arrive and add some to the bed that’s solarizing, before I plant the purple caribe potatoes in it. Potatoes like a pH of 5-6, and ours is 8; probably higher. Our test trips and pH meter don’t go any higher. I’ll probably be adding it to all our beds – or as many as possible, before we run out. From what I’ve been reading, our high pH may be more responsible for some of our troubles than anything else, including the relatively low NPK in all our soil tests. The two dump truck loads of garden soil we purchased years ago had adequate amounts of NPK when tested, and that’s been used in all our garden beds, but even the purchased soil tested as alkaline.

We are supposed to be heading into another drought this summer, so anything we can do to improve things is going to help. The first year we tried to grow melons was a drought year with heat waves, and we had a surprisingly good harvest from them. This year, I plan to grow several types of melons, so I hope it works out for them again.

Tomorrow is 6 weeks before our last frost date and, if I can manage to make space in the aquarium greenhouse, I plan to start pre-germinating another batch of seeds. I’ll be looking closely at days to maturity to decide which ones I will be starting, but I expect we’ll start more seeds pretty much weekly, if not more often, at this point.

I really need to figure out how to make space for all the pots, though. We may have to kick the yard cats out of the sun room a bit early! We won’t be able to leave the sun room door open overnight anymore once we start putting plants in there. I’m not worried so much about the cats; they tended to ignore the bins and trays of seedlings last year. It’s the skunks and racoons that we need to keep out!

We’ll figure it out.

All in good time!

The Re-Farmer

Still there, and thinking warm thoughts

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Well, it stayed cold enough that the snow we got is still there – with a bit more. We might get more flurries later today, and then the wind is supposed to pick up.

It’ll all be gone by tomorrow.

I counted 33 yard cats this morning – but I didn’t see Sad Face anywhere! Which means there’s another new one in the bunch.

I plugged the heat lamp in the sun room back in. They had really enjoyed the warmer temperatures and only a few continued to hang out in the sun room, but now that the temperatures have dropped again and the snow is back, every time I look out the bathroom window, there’s a crowd. Several crowds, actually, on and under the platform.

They will not be happy when they loose their platform so I can set up for my plants. 😁

Breakfast in the snow!

I got a good shot of the cat with the damaged eye. The hematoma doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller, that I can tell, but he seems to have no vision issues. He’s certainly more lively and active now, after having spent several days being quite lethargic and shivering in the sun room. I’m glad he sought out the warmth and shelter when he was feeling sick. Now that he’s improving, the down side is, he’s no longer letting me touch him. I managed to sneak pet his back while I was petting Driver (on the far right of the photo), but he quickly moved away. He is less skittish then he used to be, at least. The cats were all very hungry this morning, so I let him be rather than interrupt his breakfast.

With the chill and snow out there, I wanted to share something more spring like, so here is a video from MI Gardener to enjoy.

Some of these “hacks” are things I’ve already been doing, or trying to do. The first one is to have hose guards on his raised bed corners. That’s something I’ve appreciated about the higher raised beds, as the beds themselves are the hose guards. The only problem is that I typically have several hoses joined together, and the couplings tend to get caught on things. I’ve seen people use curtain rods they picked up at thrift stores; the round kind, where one half slides over the other to adjust the width. Setting them so the outside half is on the top allows it to rotate as the hose is pulled around it, which keeps things from getting stuck.

In the comments under the video, someone described how they’ve put permanent hose guards in their beds, made from small fence posts – then topped them with tennis balls for safety, so their grand kids are less likely to hurt themselves on them. What a great idea!

Using a board across the beds is something else I do, though I don’t have the knees to get right on one and squat to reach the soil! Mostly, I use them to lean against and support myself with one hand, while using the other to do what I need to do. Handily, we’ve got quite a bit of scrap boards that can be used for that, though they tend to be pretty rotten and damaged, and I’ve had more than a few of them crack and break up!

I’ll have to remember the “using the pot to make a transplant hole the right size”, tip.

With the carrots, I’ve used scrap boards to cover the seeds until they germinate. Only because I tend to have plenty of those, but not cardboard! What’s fun is to move them aside to check for germination – and finding frogs sheltering under them! Slug eating frogs must always be encouraged. 😁

I like his pretty dibbler tool. Since mobility is an issue for me, I tend to use something longer. Some days, I’ve used 4′ long support stakes as dibblers. Those are handy to mark out shallow trenches for smaller seeds, too. If I need larger holes to plant in, we’ve got lots of sticks or tree branches that will do!

Another commenter mentioned a tip I’ve heard of before that I definitely want to try, for the low raised beds. Get a piece of PVC pipe and use it to drop seeds in place. That would solve both mobility/pain issues, and short-people-like-me reach issues!

Just a side note, when it comes to reach; the lower the bed, the harder the reach. So for a low raised bed, accessible from both sides, like what he has, I’d recommend going no more than 3′ wide, but with a high raised bed, 4′ wide works just fine.

I’m really looking forward to winter finally being done with us!

The Re-Farmer

Various things

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It’s another chilly and wet day, so no progress outside.

The rain continued through the night, and this area where I’d scattered all those seeds is now full of water again. That will either benefit the seeds, or drown them!

Speaking of seeds, the first Wild Bunch Mix winter squash seed has a root emerging already! At least, it was 1 this morning, though when I check it again later today, I’m sure there will be more. I could just see them, starting to show through the snips in the outer shells I’d made.

I had some errands to run, so I headed out early enough to get to the post office before it closed until the afternoon. Then it was off to town, where I made a quick stop at the grocery store for a few things, then went to one of the hardware stores. I will be running out of seed starting mix soon, with all the seeds in the Wild Bunch Mix I have pre-germinating, so I wanted to get more of that. Then, after looking around, then finally asking someone, I found it!

I found vermiculite!

I couldn’t find it when I checked while in the city, yet there it was, locally. Quite a few bags in stock, too. I missed them at first, because the packaging is almost identical to one of the brand’s potting soils. I’m hoping this will help keep the moss and mold in some of our pots at bay.

My daughter had finally fixed some problems with her bank’s updated app, and was able to treat us today, so the last stop before heading home was for some take out from a Greek restaurant in town. A “Greek” restaurant, but with the most massive menu I’ve seen anywhere!

While I was out, I got a message from my husband telling me a package I was expecting tomorrow was in. I’d already been to the post office and it wasn’t there – or so I thought – so I stopped in again on the way. I figured it had to have been a non-post office delivery, but nope. As I was going in and out of the store, the rain turned to snow, then back to rain, then back to snow, then back to rain…

We’ll be getting that until at least midnight. Tomorrow is expected to be chillier than today, then things should finally start warming up again, the day after. Winter just doesn’t want to let go! This freeze/thaw cycle, though, is just tearing apart the gravel roads.

Once at home and looking at the packages I picked up, it turned out that what I thought was something else was the package my husband told me was in. Which is nice on the one hand, since it was something he ordered for me, but not so nice on the other, since it means his replacement CPAP hose and nose pieces aren’t in yet. He’s leaking air. He needs a new mask/headpiece (a hose arrangement the nose piece attaches to), too, but they were out of inventory.

On a completely different note, I got a call from my mother. She got another letter under her door from the public housing department that owns her building. It was a notice for beg bug spraying. She has been refusing to allow them in, as she believes one of the guys stole some stuff from her – stuff that she considered valuable, but are only valuable to her. She phoned the number on the letter and told the guy, she’s not afraid of bed bugs, but she is afraid of people coming in and stealing her stuff (the time she thinks this happened was more than a year ago). The guy said she must have misplaced them. This wouldn’t be the first time she’s believed someone has stolen from her. She had an envelope of money go missing and she all but directly accused one of her neighbours of going into her apartment while she was in the lounge. A couple of months later, she found the envelope.

So what my mother wants me to do is go through her stuff for her. The stuff in question, however, would be of interest to my sister for her genealogy records, so I suggested she call her. We could possibly do it together.

My daughter, however, pointed out something to me.

Personally, I don’t think my mother has bedbugs, so I haven’t been worried about it. However, if she *does* have bed bugs, and I start going through all the stuff in her bedroom, I’d be bringing them home – and with this house, we’d never be able to get rid of them. We’d have to move out and empty the house.

I’m going to have to call my mom back and tell her this. It’s one thing to go to her place and help her with her groceries. I’m basically just in her kitchen and little dining table, all near the door. It’s quite another to be in her bedroom, digging through her closest and shelves, going through stacks and stack of papers she’s got tucked in them.

*sigh*

She was going to call my sister then get back to me, but I’d better call her back now and get that over with.

She’s not going to be happy, but then, she’s been refusing to allow her place to be treated. Actions have consequences.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

It’s baaAAAAaaccckkk…. (and a WP frustration)

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Yup.

It’s white out there again.

Yesterday’s rain turned into snow overnight. At the time I was doing my rounds, it was more rain than snow, but still coming down.

It won’t last long. Areas such as the driveway are full of puddles but no snow, and we are expected to have a high of 8C/47F today, so it won’t last long. A couple more chilly days, then things are supposed to warm up again.

While giving the yard cats their food and water, I tried to do a head count. Every time I counted, the number got higher! I counted 33 at most.

A couple of the ladies are definitely looking round. With Adam and Brussel, it’s hard to tell, since they have such long fur, but I’m sure they’re getting big, too.

While checking the trial came files yesterday, I found that cats had triggered the gate cam a couple of times, with their baby making activities, as well as just rambling around the driveway.

Including one cat with distinctive patterns I’ve never seen before!

My guess is, he lives across the road from us. I know our own cats go across to two different properties on the regular, and I know other cats live there, too. One of them likely just followed ours back. The gate seems to be as far as he went, though, because we’ve never seen him in the yard.

On a completely different note, I’m not sure I solved any problems by using Google Photo to store images to post here. I tried it before but forgot what wasn’t working about it. Now I remember.

WP seems to still be storing the images in my own WP media files account. They’re still taking up space.

I think.

The image of the cats above, for example, was uploaded to my Google Photo account (which comes with my blog’s gmail address). After using the image block to select the image using Google Photo, it works fine in the post – but then shows up in my WP media files. If I look at the address for the image itself, it goes back to WP media. Which means I save nothing by saving the files externally. WP just automatically stores it locally. With some of the recent images, I hadn’t resized them first (I having worked the kinks out of using the software on my new computer yet), so that means full size files are being uploaded into my blog posts.

Except…

While adding the above photo, I notice it said “inserting” image, not “uploading” image, as it would if I were adding the image from, say, out of my phone.

It could be just a thumbnail showing up in my media files.

The main reason I have my doubts about it is because I’ve sometimes used the free images available through WP. They specifically say that if you use these images, they don’t take up storage space in your account. Yet those images also show up in my media files, and if I open the image in a new tab, I can see it tracks back to my media storage, not Pexels or Openverse. I don’t see anything in the source code that suggests the images are anywhere but in my own account’s storage.

Yet, these images are “inserted” not “uploaded”.

So…

Are the images I am storing externally taking up space in my account or not?

All I know is, my storage space just went from 98.2% full to 98.3% full.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: starting winter squash and chitting, on a chilly day (video)

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We got quite a bit of rain overnight! Enough to completely fill the rain barrel I’d returned to the corner of the sun room. When I came out this morning, I had to put the diverter back on!

It was still raining ever so slightly while I was out (I counted 31, maybe 32 cats this morning). The only garden related stuff I did was to take the mulch off the sunchokes and asparagus beds – the last beds that needed to be uncovered – so they can thaw out faster.

The rain looks like it has stopped, but it’s too muddy and chilly to do the work I had intended to do outside today. I did end up setting out the Purple Caribe potatoes to chit in the old kitchen.

A couple of them were large enough that I cut them in half, and those ones are perched on the carton in such a way that they will have air flow under them, so the cut areas will dry out.

Looking at how many 1kg give us, I’m rethinking where we will put the 2kg of German Butterball potatoes. My thought had been to put them where the squash were planted last year, but that’s a huge space. I’d basically just have one row of potatoes. So now I’m thinking we might use one of the low raised beds, instead, where the soil should be softer.

We really need to think about increasing the acidity of our soil. It is very alkaline, and pretty much everything we are growing needs soil that is at least a little acidic. We should pick up a bale or two of peat, but that has a very minor and slow effect on acidification. A lot of the usual soil amendments, like adding compost, actually increases the alkalinity, which is the last thing we need. I ended up running errands in the small city yesterday and was looking for Sulphur, but saw nothing. We do have a box of fertilizer we found when cleaning out the old kitchen years ago that is for acidifying the soil; it’s meant for azaleas, but should work for other things, too. If it’s still good. Does water soluble Miracle Gro have an expiry date? I have no idea how old this stuff is. The box was opened but, based on how full it looks, it may only have been used once!

Since today was an indoor kind of day, I started pre-germinated some winter squash.

We’re at just under 7 weeks before last frost, which I hope is enough time for these. Not knowing what varieties are in this mix means we will have different days to maturity among them. I’m still hoping to be able to start some other varieties of winter squash as well – ones we actually know what they are! I’m just not planning to grow entire rows of each. With pre-germinating the seeds, I can start just a few of each and not have to be as concerned about germination rates like when they’re sown into pots or pellets.

I’ll need more pots, though.

Among the last seeds I want to start indoors, by about 3 weeks before last frost, are several types of melons.

Last year, we started so many squash and melon seeds, then had entire trays where nothing germinated. A real waste. I think we’re going to have a much better success rate using the pre-germination method. It should be interesting to see how much of a difference it makes, as time goes by.

The next few days are supposed to continue to be colder and wet, with possible snow, with Friday having a high at, or just below, freezing (it’s Tuesday as I write this). By Sunday, we’re supposed to be back up to the double digits (Celsius), but our overnight lows will be staying close to freezing through most of May. We don’t expect to be direct seeding anything until June, but there are quite a few cold tolerant things we’ll be able to direct sow once the current cold snap is done.

May will be our month for building more raised beds, and harvesting more dead trees to build with.

There is so much that needs to be done!

Weather willing, we’ll have more prepared garden spaces than we had last year, but I’m not sure we’ll reclaim enough to match what we were growing in – well, trying to! – the year before.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: bed prep, and a comparison request

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Well, it finally got done! At about 1am, the video I meant to post yesterday was finally uploaded to YouTube, which then was going to take another hour to process it, in three different quality options. I waited until the lowest quality one was done, so I could select a thumbnail, then went to bed!

The question is, was it worth it?

I’ve watched the video myself, selecting the highest quality option, but I really can’t see much of a different.

Here is the video in question.

Could I ask a huge favour?

Could you please watch this video on YouTube, selecting the highest quality option, then compare it to this one…

… also on highest quality option?

Then let me know in the comments how you watched it, and if you could see any difference in quality or play.

I’m using my new desktop to watch these, and the YouTube settings for both allow me to watch them at 2160p/4K.

When exporting the older video in my software, I used the default “good” quality setting. There is little difference in file size with either “good” or “high” options, so it should not have taken so very long to upload. I don’t know if it was an issue with our internet, or with YouTube itself. Or both. I’ve had this happen before where the upload took so long. it was basically stopped. I gave up and started over again. The problem with doing that is, no matter how far along the upload was, trying again starts at the beginning, not from where you left off. In that case, when I tried it again, it uploaded much faster and without any problems the second time around. I seriously considered doing that again with this one, and probably should have.

Please feel free to let me know what you think!

The Re-Farmer

Sloooowwww….

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I was intending to write my daily post earlier, with a video that I edited together.

Well, that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

Photo by invisiblepower on Pexels.com

I save the video as high quality instead of merely “good” quality. Which makes a 12 minute video into a much larger file.

It’s 70% uploaded to YouTube, but will apparently take another 2 hours and 19 minutes to upload.

I thought it would finish uploading while I did the evening chores and made myself something to eat, but I think the upload paused when my computer went to sleep or something.

*sigh*

Ah, well. I guess I’ll post it tomorrow!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden, and the morning so far

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First, the cuteness!

Syndol was keeping me company this morning!

I counted 33 yard cats during feeding time. !!

But Syndol was my only helper.

While doing my rounds, I was able to get a bit of work done on the bed against the chain link fence.

It’s finally thawed out enough to dig into. I just loosened things up this morning. There are many roots and rhizomes that need to be removed, some of which are now drying in the sun until I can get back to it later.

Syndol would follow me along as I worked my way down the bed, reaching out every now and then to bat at the garden fork, or the roots I was pulling up!

He’s such a cutie!

On another note, my younger daughter now has a nice new pair or steel toed shoes.

I confirmed that the pain in my left foot was from my outer toes hitting the edge of the steel toe cap. The problem is not so much the shoe, as my deformed feet. *sigh* This is not something that is going to get better, so I got my daughter to try them on and walk around in them for a while. She can feel the edge of the toe cap, but it’s not a problem for her.

So it’s back to my old ones or my rubber boots, until I can get another pair of steel toes. I’m really glad my daughter can use these new ones!

Before working on the bed by the chain link fence, I uncovered the carrot bed and removed more of the mulch over the carrots. Unfortunately, there are still frozen chunks that just won’t move. The three beds in this location do get quite a bit of light throughout the day, but no morning light, and that seems to be making the difference.

Which means the carrots frozen in the bed are likely not salvageable. Lesson learned!

Oh! I got a call while I was writing the above. The Cat Lady updated us on Wolfman. He did get those fancy drops and his first treatment, and his eye is already looking almost completely healed! The vet says that for sure the injury was blunt force trauma of some kind. There may even be a tiny fracture in the bone. We’re at a complete loss as to how this happened! He’s going back to the vet on Monday, and they’ll get a look at the back of his eye to see if there’s any other damage to be concerned about, but so far, he’s healing up really well.

Such good news!

Now… where was I?

Ah. Garden stuff!

Before heading outside, I turn on the lights for the seedlings and check on them. Check these out!

They are just exploding in size! Even the comparatively small luffa are growing so quickly! I’m quite thrilled.

I will have to decide, though; will I thin them by removing, or transplanting? I’m very tempted to try transplanting the extras. The more potential transplants, the more likely we’ll have at least one survive outside.

I still have time to decide.

Among my goals for the day is to finish up that bed at the chain link fence, but I will start on that after I’ve gone to the post office when it reopens for the afternoon. According to the tracking information, our potatoes are ready for pick up at the post office, and the owner of the store has signed for our Fed Ex delivery, so that’s ready for pick up, too.

I hadn’t decided on what will be planted in the bed by the chain link fence. Once that’s done, it should be suitable for the 1kg of Caribe potatoes. Then we’ll just have to prepare space for the 2kg of Butterball potatoes.

We shall see how it works out!

Lots that can finally be worked on outside!

I’m loving every minute of it. 😁😁

The Re-Farmer

This day feels longer than it should! 😁

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First, the cuteness.

We haven’t named this one, but that pattern over his nose makes me think of Nosencrantz, every time I see him!

Nosencratnz is doing well at her new home, btw. 😊

I counted 32 yard cats this morning. Remarkably, while I was petting a bunch of the males as they ate on the cat house roof, Broccoli not only allowed me to pet her, but even pushed her way through the boys to get better pets! Even Caramel let me pet her, in between trying to bite my hand.

Yesterday evening, I got a call from my mother, and arranged for me to come over today to help her with her shopping. This morning, however, I got another call from her. She had a rough night, and wanted me to decide for her, whether she should go to the clinic in her town. At least she wasn’t talking about going to the emergency! That would have been in the nearer city. After talking to her for a bit, it seems that she had issues with heartburn again, but my mother can’t quite understand what that means, and always tries to blame whatever food the TV or magazines tell her is bad. We talked for a while and I reminded her of the list of foods that can make it worse. I remember she had it taped to a cupboard door in her kitchen at some point, but I have no idea if it’s still there. She keeps insisting on eating foods that are known to cause heart burn, though, then blames other foods that don’t, but that she has decided are bad for her. It’s really hard to talk to her about this stuff, because she can’t understand so much, including basic anatomy. We have tried to explain things to her, even showing her diagrams or looking up medical information, but if it doesn’t match what she had decided it is, she doesn’t accept it and promptly forgets it.

One thing that did seem to finally get through was talking about processed meats. She keeps trying to say she needs to eat less meat. If it weren’t for the meat we’ve been bringing over for her, she’d be eating nothing but garlic sausage and deli chicken. At least she eats eggs! I spent some time talking about how, as we get older, it’s important for us to eat high quality protein, and some of the ingredients in processed meats might be triggering her heartburn. She seemed to actually hear me for a change.

Still, what she wanted was for me to decide it I “wanted” to take her to the doctor or not. I told her no, that’s her decision, and we’ll see how she feels when I got there!

So I left I bit earlier and picked up Chinese food for lunch, which she actually did eat. As we were talking on the phone, she’d mentioned going there for onion rings (she still thinks they serve cat meat, because someone said something, and she saw a thing on the news …. ). Onions are among the things she shouldn’t be eating. Deep fried foods are also among the things she shouldn’t be eating!

She hadn’t had breakfast, though, so she was happy for the meal!

There was one unfortunate surprise, though.

When I reached her door, I saw some things on her walker, which she parks next to it. There was a jar wrapped in paper two, a carton of eggs, and two carrots.

Under it was a piece of paper.

I immediately recognized our vandal’s handwriting.

It seems he’d swung by her place, left the stuff, but never knocked or anything like that. Who knows how long it was sitting there.

I brought the stuff inside and ended up reading the letter out to her. It was all the usual stuff about the farm and me and my brother, some invented accusations, and how she’s going against the wishes of my late father and GOD!!! Complete with underlines. Then he threw in a comment about going to the doctor. From past calls he’d made to her, before his number was finally blocked, he told her he was dying, but didn’t say from what. He still seems to think she can give him the farm somehow? Either way, it’s clear he still thinks the property should go to him, but 1) he already has a farm and 2) if he’s dying, what’s he going to do with it, anyhow? It’s not like he’s got any kids to leave it to.

Our theory is, he’d simply sell it. It’s the money he’s really interested in.

The paper towel wrapped jar turned out to be soup in what looked like a small mayonnaise jar – at least it wasn’t a pickled herring jar this time! My mother was so disgusted after hearing what was in the letter, she didn’t want any of it. At least not anything that he cooked (it was full of onions and chunks of sausage, anyhow!).

Instead, we enjoyed our Chinese food and had a good conversation. She was feeling a lot better once she was up and out of bed, and I talked some more about how sleeping more upright can be a help (another thing that’s on the list I made for her, along with food choices). It would be really helpful for her to have a hospital bed, like my husband – it would even be better for her and her knees – but no. She doesn’t want to “bother anyone”. ?? In our province, our home care service department can provide a hospital bed as a “loan” – that way, if anything breaks or whatever, they simply replace it. The company they get these from sends a couple of people over to bring it in, assemble it and test it out. Easy peasy. But no. She even has a chair my brother bought for her that can be reclined almost flat and would be good to use as a sleep chair, but she won’t do that, either.

As we were talking about how being upright and moving around obviously helped out, she then suggested that if she hadn’t gotten out of bed this morning, she probably would have died.

*sigh*

She was clearly feeling better, but not enough to run errands, so we went over her list. She writes her stuff out in a mix of English, Polish or English with Polish spelling. Then she makes little doodles of what they are, beside each item.

I was very confused when I saw “soup” followed by an =, a drawing of a jar, another =, then a drawing of a cup.

It turns out, she meant “soap”.

For dishes.

We had a good laugh over that!

One thing I did take note of was that she included “turkey or chicken”, but not sliced, with a doodle of a deli chicken.

I can’t even wrap my mind around how she spelled “sliced” enough to remember it!

It’s been a while, and a longer list than usual, so I was hitting both the pharmacy and the grocery store to get it all. Which is fine by me.

My only problem is, I think I messed up with my new shoes. Wearing thinner socks has helped, but only with one foot. My other foot could have used a half size bigger. Not that there was any half sizes to choose from. Normally, I’d be confident that the shoe would eventually stretch out a bit, but I’m not sure how far the steel toe extends. I might be hooped. I won’t return them. I’m not going to take back shoes I’ve already worn in the mud. Ah, well. Live and learn! I’ll work it out, but gosh, it got pretty painful by the time I was done! The main thing is, my mother is now well stocked again, and I was even able to get her a variety of fresh meat in single person size packages, instead of the processed meats she usually gets!

As I was heading home, I remembered to stop at a hardware store. I got metal corner supports to put on the corners of our raised bed covers.

In other garden related things, I got a notification today that our T&T Seeds order of potatoes got shipped today, and should arrive tomorrow!

These are the varieties we ordered; 1kg of Purple Caribe and 2kg of German Butterball.

I wasn’t expecting them to be shipped so soon! The space we will be planting them was still mostly covered with snow, this morning. It was warm enough today that it’s almost all gone, but the ground is probably still quite frozen. Of course, they don’t need to be planted right away; they can be stored for a little while, at least, but perishables like this get shipped based on the local growing zone, which means they really should be going into the ground soon!

The potatoes are not the only things that are on the way. My husband ordered a hand crank for my crossbow. I have not been able to use it for a frustrating reason. I’m too short to cock the bow, using the rope cocking aid that came with it. Basically, it’s got a pair of hooks you place on the string, with a matching pair of handles. With the bow secured with a foot, you bend over the stock, pull the sting with your arms, then straighten up. Once upright, the string should be far enough along to lock in place.

I’m too short.

I even tried shortening the cords on the ropes of the cocking aid, but there’s only so far you can do that without compromising the gear. My husband can cock it but, with his back injury, he can only do it a few times before it becomes too painful.

The hard part has been finding a hand crank that will fit the model of crossbow I have. There was one made for it, but it was discontinued shortly after I bought mine! It took a couple of years, but my husband finally found one that is supposed to work on my model – and was affordable!

So that should arrive soon.

If Fed Ex can figure out the address.

It might just end up at the store the post office is in. We shall see!

I look forward to finally being able to practice again!

Anyhow.

That’s a few of the things going on today.

Tomorrow, the septic guy comes in to replace the pill switch!

I’m so excited! 😄😄😄

Besides that, I think the ground is thawed out enough that I can continue working on that bed along the chain link fence. I was able to pry out the last chunk of broken sidewalk block that was under the one end, but that was it. We hit 12C/54F today, so that should have helped a lot. We’ll see how tomorrow is. We’re expected to have a high of 9C/48F, with possible rain.

Rain would be good. I even drove through rain on my way home from my mother’s today!

Maybe not so good if it comes while the septic guy is working on our tank, though!

We shall see.

Lots to do outside, as things keep warming up, and that now includes preparing the potato patch!

The Re-Farmer