potting up

Potting up and look what I found!

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This morning, my daughter helped me get all our plants out of the cat free zone (aka the living room) to the table I set up for them outside. The living room doesn’t have very good light unless things are right in front of the window, and there just isn’t space for the large pots that we have. Plus, the living room has become an oubliette, and what goes in there tends to get forgotten about! It’s a good thing we’ve got mostly succulents, and they can handle getting dried out rather often!

Getting the plants out is not an easy task. I can carry the pots well enough, but we’ve got the makeshift door to the living room that my daughter would open and close for me, making sure no cats dash into their forbidden zone. Then I had to make my way to the front door. The cats, of course, were very curious about what was going on, so we were wading through cats to get to the entry. Then there are two steps I need to go down. Normally, I need to use the arm bar for any steps in the house. No such option with a plant pot in my arms! Thankfully, the washing machine is right there, so I could put the heavier pots on it. Then my daughter could squeeze past and open the door to outside for me, where we had to run interference on a Sir Robin. The little bugger is fast! He almost got into the house!

After many trips, we got all the pots out and I could start repotting, as well as giving things a thorough soaking.

It didn’t take me long to realize I didn’t have enough potting soil, nor enough pots. At least not prettier pots. I’ve got lots of greenhouse and nursery pots, suitable for the garden or food forest, but not really for house plants.

I got our smaller succulents repotted – one of them was in a pot that was so old, the plastic was starting to crumble and crack, every time I moved it! We also have the coffee tree that I got for the girls a while back. It was a sort of cluster of trees when I got it, but they all started dying off. We were down to two, when I brought them out today, and one was dead. The other, however, had burst into new life, with bunches of new leaves! It didn’t need a new pot, but it did need an immersion soak for a while.

When I did as much as I could, I decided I needed enough stuff to make it worth a shopping trip. The garbage dump is also open today, so I did our dump run first. I really hate doing dump runs now. The area in front of the pit is worse, every time I got, and it’s getting to the point that there’s hardly room for vehicles to get in and turn to back up to the pit. Normally, they use a front end loader to push the stuff along the edge further into the pit, but it’s just not getting done.

Bah.

Anyhow.

I ended up finding what I was after, in three places. My first stop was Canadian Tire. I thought I might find the potting soil there, but what they had was not the right kind, and they were sold out of quite a bit. I did find some other things that we needed, though, plus I got a couple of extra bags of stove pellets. One for the litters, one for the garden, as mulch.

From there, I went to the Dollarama, and that’s where I found the pots I was looking for, and much more reasonable prices. The challenge, though, is finding pots stable enough to hold large, heavy jade plants. Most are really narrow at the bottom, and get quite tippy, but I found some square ones that were only slightly narrower on the bottom.

Then it was off to the Walmart. They had a large display of bags for the garden outside, and I found large bags of the potting soil I was after. I was very tempted to pick up some peat and more manure as well, but not today.

I grabbed two of the biggest bags of potting soil

Then it was inside to pick up a few more things, including more canned cat food for the outside kitten soup, and kibble for the inside cats.

By the time I was done and home, it was getting close to feeding time for the outside cats. Since I needed to get them away from the truck that was pulled up to the house, I went ahead and did that early.

After I parked the truck, I spotted someone!

The toritie… calico… tortico is back!

It has discovered the joys of kitten soup, too.

I did eventually catch glimpsed of the fluffy orange kitten, with the white and grey, that always seem to stick together. Those two have become fairly regular visitors to the food bowl, but I haven’t seen this … toritico, since we first spotted the kittens, not long ago. I think there is still one more out there, possibly a calico, but I’m not sure.

Then it was back to potting up the plants.

Which took way longer than expected.

I probably could have used more pots.

Ah, well.

Here are the before and after pictures.

There was one large jade plant in a very tiny pot. That one was pretty easy, as it just got transferred to a bigger pot. The other two big pots where something else, entirely! For starters, there are a lot of individual plants in those pots, largely due to broken branches regrowing. They were also a lot floppier, as neither of them could get the full sunlight they needed.

There are now ten jade plants, plus two tiny pots of little jade plant babies. Nine of those came out of the two big pots. I could actually have gotten more, but I chose to pot some smaller trunks together.

With some of the pots, you can see black “pipes”. There were four of them in one of the big pots. Those are spare parts from plastic shelves that I set up in the old basement. The ceiling is too low for the full height of the shelves, and the unused vertical pieces came in very handy to add support the jade plant when it started falling over under its own weight. Then I discovered that they worked really well to water from below. So now, I’ve split up the pipes between four pots.

You can see three pots with orange paracord in them. That’s what I used to tie some of the more bendy, floppy stems to vertical supports. Once they have had lots of sunlight for long hours, the should get strong enough to support their own weight. There’s one pot that could have used some supports, too, but I ran out of anything of suitable size.

The biggest, square pot didn’t get fully repotted. I took out the smaller side stems, but left the biggest ones, and just worked in fresh potting soil at the top.

Two of the aloe vera just needed to have their soil refreshed and topped up. One pot, however, had two plants in it – plus three babies! So now there are four large pots and three tiny pots.

The big, purplish succulent in the rectangular pot was bigger than I thought. It really could have used a longer pot! This plant lays down on the ground and sends new roots out, all along the stem. It also propagates very easily, so there are a couple more in another pot, along with the tiny survivors of another fuzzy leaved succulent.

With so many pots now, there’s no way we have enough room for them all. I’ve started offering them out and, so far, have one taker. Hopefully, they will take several pots! If we got the jade plants and aloe down to just one pot of each, that would be great!

They’ll be staying outside for the rest of the summer, so hopefully, we’ll find new homes for them before they have to come back inside.

When this was finally done, it was starting to get pretty late. I did the evening watering, including the new food forest additions. It was getting pretty dark by the time I was done!

It’s now coming up on midnight, and I haven’t even eaten supper yet!

I am so ready for bed.

Food first!

😄

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: potting up, and protective covering

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Okay, we got some useful garden things done!

First up, the transplants.

In the first image, you can see the seedlings that need potting up. They all should be much bigger than this, but it’s just not warm enough, even with using the heater and the heating pad, in the basement.

With concerns about the outside cats potentially knocking the transplants over when we moved them out, I decided to use some storage bins to hold the Red Solo cups I was going to re-use to pot up into. They’ve been stored in the sun room all winter, so they had to get a cleaning of cob webs and whatever other debris managed to get on them. Thankfully, the old basement is where the laundry used to be, so we still have the old laundry sink that I could soak them all in, then scrub the ones with drainage holes in the bottom to transplant into. I also pre-soaked the seed starting mix with hot water, so it still be at least not cold, by the time the cups were filled and the seedlings transplanted.

These bins hold only 9 cups in them, so that basically became my default for the maximum number of transplants to pot up into. Which worked out really well. With the Black Beauty tomatoes, there were only 4 large and strong enough to pot up. With the Chocolate Cherry, there was only 5 to pot up, so they got to share a bin. The Spoon tomatoes and the Sub Arctic Plenty both filled one bin each. The Sweetie Snack Mix peppers and the Turkish Orange eggplant both got one bin each, too, with almost zero “extras” that didn’t get transplanted.

In the second photo, you can see them after they were all potted up, before I topped them with vermiculite. The potted up seedlings are small enough that I could use the lids on the bins, but I had only 2 of them handy at the time. The next photo is after the vermiculite was added. Then I got more lids for the bins from the sun room and my daughter helped me get them out of the basement. Which was actually quite dangerous. We started with me taking them through the old basement and up the stairs to where my daughter was waiting at the door, one bin at a time. She would grab the bin at the door (keeping the cats from dashing downstairs) and take it to the old kitchen, while I went to get the next bin.

The old basement stairs are narrow; each step is about half the width of a typical step. It is also steep than most stairs are, and there is very little space at the door. Which means I could only go to the third step from the top before I ran out of space. Even going sideways and carrying the bin on one arm, I couldn’t reach the door knob, so having my daughter open the door was an essential. Once she had the bin, I could go higher and close the door, but just going up and down these stairs is simply not good. I go down them backwards, like on board ship or using a ladder.

After a few bins, my daughter kicked me out of the basement and we traded places. Apparently, I sounded like I was in a lot of pain. Which I was, but I wasn’t going to say anything, since I know it’s not any better for her!

In the last picture, you can see all the bins and trays now set up on the freezer in the old kitchen. I was so tempted to put them into the portable greenhouse. The thermostat in there was reading more than 40C/104F! Pretty impressive, considering we never got above 4 or 5C today (39 or 41F). And that wind!! Yikes! The problem is that we’d just have to take them back inside after a couple of hours, and I didn’t want to do that today. We’re still forecast to have -6C/21F tonight, though we’re not expected to reach those temperatures until 6am tomorrow, and I know it will drop below freezing inside the greenhouse, even with the heat sink. They will go into the greenhouse tomorrow, after I get back from running around.

Once that was done, I grabbed a late lunch, then headed to the post office to pick up a parcel. On the way back, my cell phone started ringing. I don’t have hands free, so I couldn’t answer it. When I got home, I found a message from the home care coordinator asking about something strange my mother had told the morning home care aid about her puffer, and having already taken it in the hospital.

???

I called back and left a message telling her as much as I knew, then called my mother. I hadn’t gotten through to her this morning about her telephone doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning, so I told her about that, first. She wasn’t impressed that it was in the morning, but it’s at about the time she gets her morning meds, so she’ll be up, anyhow – and I intend to be there, too. I then asked her about the puffer. She told me a completely different thing from what the apparently told the home care aid. She also seems confused about the type of puffer they used with her while she was in the hospital, and the original type she was using before then – which she has started using now. She had an unopened refill from before she went to the hospital, and the other type was done, so she started taking it on her own. I have no idea where she had it stashed away. Then I found out she’d already taken it three times today. I told her, she’s only supposed to take it once in the morning, then again before bed. Not several times throughout the day. Plus, we already talked to her doctor about it. This was an experiment to see if it would help with her breathing at night. It didn’t, and she turned out to be developing pulmonary edema, which she no longer has after being in the hospital for a couple of weeks.

Things were still confused, but we agreed we would talk about it when I’m there tomorrow, and she could show me what she had. I then called the home care coordinator back and got her right away. We talked for a while and confirmed my mother told different things to them than what she told me. I then found out they were giving her two puffs in the morning, but not in the evening (with the disc type of puffer, a dose is one puff, while the other puffer, a dose is two puffs, which is why the pharmacist and I decided to fill the prescription for the disc type). So there’s a mix up right there, too. Not that the puffer has been helping her in any way, but a neighbour of hers has asthma, so she decided she needed a puffer, too, and the doctor was willing to test it out with her rather than go through the years it would take to refer her to a specialist and get all the respiratory testing done.

Hopefully, we will get that straightened out tomorrow.

After I was done on the phone, it was time to get out and see what I could do to protect the winter sown raised bed.

I have a cover for the bed, but it needed some maintenance work first, so I brought it closer to the garage, where my tools where. One of the things that needed to be done was secure two sections of the mesh. The jute twine it had been tied together with before had degraded and broken apart. I’d already had to replace the twin in the other join and used paracord for that, so I did the same thing again.

The hoops supporting the mesh are sections of pipe that turned out to be rather too strong. They are held in place with strips of metal strapping, but would get pushed downwards – usually because of a cat jumping on it! So I wanted to get those nice and snug, then screw them into place.

I had helpers.

Syndol and Judgement decided the mesh was a night place to sit!

After the hoops were secured, I brought the cover over to the raised bed, but had to get a daughter to help with the rest, because of the wind. We got the cover on the bed, then opened one of the 8’x12′ plastic I’d picked up to cover it.

It was a lot thinner than I expected. Definitely not 7mm, which is what the guy looking up the information for me said it was. I suspect he didn’t quite understand what I was asking for.

Still, it will work for now.

We made sure to water the bed before putting the cover on (and I had to fix yet another hole dug into it). I noticed there are more sprouts coming up, so getting it covered to protect it from tonight’s cold will be a good thing!

After unfolding the plastic, we rolled and tucked the excess under the frame as best we could, but that wind was still threatening to blow it off. After looking around, I found a couple of sticked I’d joined with twine threaded through sections of a hula hoop to create a support for ground cherries flattened by the wind, a couple of years ago. That did well to drape across the top of the cover. We also found some lighter old boards to set on top as well; you can see the end result in the last photo above. Hopefully, it will be enough, but with how strong the winds are, I’m not entirely sure!

If it does hold out, it will protect the sprouts from tonight’s cold – and I plan to leave it on to also protect the bed from the cats! When it’s less windy, I’ll see if I can find a better way to secure the plastic, too. It’s meant to be temporary, though, so we’ll see. When the plastic is no longer needed, I have to find a way to close up the ends of the cover, so it can still be used to keep the cats out.

Since the coldest time of the night will be around the time I’ll be feeding the outside cats before heading to my mother’s, and then I’ll have to hit our own pharmacy in a different town when I’m done there, I’ll have to get my daughters to keep an eye on things and, when it starts warming up, move the transplants into the portable greenhouse. We’ll probably need to leave the door tied at least partly open so it doesn’t get too hot in there. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be only 9C/48F, but if it could get as hot as it did in there at our current temperatures, it’ll get even warmer tomorrow. By the weekend, we’re expected to get highs above 20C/68F. Hopefully, before then, we’ll be able to get more progress on the trellis build. We’ll also have our Costco stock up trip in a couple of days.

Things are going to be busy over the next while!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: potting up and wind damage

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Well, our plans to set netting over the beds I prepared yesterday got kiboshed. It was just too windy!

We did get some other stuff done, though.

Today, my daughter was available to help pot up some more pre-germinated seeds.

We got 4 of the 5 Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon seeds potted up, as well as a couple of Honeydew. There were still 2 Honeydew seeds, and the Kaho melon seeds, that were not germinated, so we ended up combining them into one tray. I’d gotten rid of the one Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon seed that didn’t germinate, as it seemed like it was not viable, but the remaining Honeydew seeds look like they might still germinate. I’m not sure about the Kaho seeds, though. They may simply be too old.

With the pre-germinated seeds potted up, there wasn’t room in the tray for the container with the remaining seeds, plus the container with the Zucca melon seeds, so they got stacked. The large Zucca melon seeds would need longer to germinated, but it does seem like it’s taking too long. I’m not sure we’ll get any at all this year. We shall see.

My daughter and I then went through some of my herb seeds to figure out what else we could be starting inside. In the end, I decided that I will buy transplants, instead, for the ones we want. I also seem to be missing some seed packets! I’ve no idea what happened to them.

We also talked about some of the flower seeds. I’d picked up some Baby’s Breath for my daughters, as my older daughter in particular really likes them. They looked them up and, apparently, they are considered invasive in our area. Which I find strange, since we already have some in a small flower garden where my mother had planted them, ages ago. They barely survive and are certainly not spreading! It’s part of the reason I got more seeds.

Once we were done, my daughter ended up staying in the basement for a while longer to use the exercise bike, so we could keep the heater on for longer. Later, we both headed outside to feed the cats, then go through the garden beds. I wanted to make sure she was on top of the plans I had, in case they had to take over for me for some reason.

She was very happy to see that her tulips are coming up, and we even spotted a few grape hyacinths emerging. No sign of the snow crocuses, though. We pulled back the black tarp to check out where I was thinking of planting the asparagus and strawberries, and it does look like the weeds and crab grass have been killed off well enough to use the space. The only issue will be the roots from the nearby elm trees, and I’m really hoping we can finally cut those down this year. In trying to clean the area up, I found stumps that showed others have tried to clear them away in the past, and they grew back, so I’ll have to take that into account when we finally get those taken down. It still blows me away, how much their roots have been getting into the garden beds and choking things out.

We checked on the beds that I want to cover with the netting, and had to refill more holes dug by the cats. Very frustrating, that we couldn’t cover them because of the wind.

Speaking of the wind, in the next photo of the slide show above, you can see an area in our spruce grove I was finally able to get to. I tell that we lost a few trees over the winter, and saw some that look like they came down within the past day or two. Cleaning up in there is going to be a huge job!

We checked on the netting I put over the bed at the chain link fence yesterday. Much to my surprise, one of the supports at an overlapping section had been completely pulled up and almost took a few others with it! It seems like the extra netting with the drawstring that would normally be the end of the row cover got caught somehow. Hopefully, that won’t happen again, and there was no damage.

The portable greenhouse was getting some wind damage, though.

In the last photo in the slideshow above, you can see the tear along the zipper. It has gotten bigger – big enough that cats could easily fit through, if they wanted. I’m not sure how to reattach it to the zipper. I did add some clear duct tape above the tear, in hopes it will prevent it from tearing more. We also found a tear in one corner where the tie downs are attached. The loop of fabric the cord was tied to actually tore loose from the plastic. The loop is part of a tie that is fastened to the frame itself on the inside, so it can’t go very far. The clear duct tape came in handy to cover the hole and, hopefully, prevent it from getting worse. I know the covers on these little greenhouses don’t last long, but we don’t even have any plants in it yet! High winds were why I’d hoped to set it up in a corner closer to the house, but the ground is just too uneven there.

I’ve been looking at 6mm greenhouse plastic online. What I’d really like to do is get a roll of it, but that’s well out of budget right now.

I keep looking at various notifications on my weather apps, telling me things like, light rain coming soon, or, rain will end soon. The problem is, we’ve had NO rain at all. According to the weather radar, we’ve got a system right on top of us, and we’re supposed to get rain for the next couple of hours, yet I’m not seeing a drop of rain out my window. At this rate, I’m going to have to hook up the hoses and start watering the winter sown beds! I might even have to fill the rain barrel I’ve set up with the hose, to have warmer water for the garden beds, because we sure aren’t getting any rain to fill it! Nor are we expecting any, for weeks.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a cooler day than today, though with the wind, today felt downright chilly. I’m really hoping the wind dies down, so we can get those nets set up. Given my pain levels today, it’s probably good I’ve got an enforced day of rest.

My husband, sweetheart that he is, ordered some Tai Fu lotion (not an affiliate link), that came in today. We’ve used this stuff, in balm form, in the past and it helped, but we were a lot less broken back then. I’m looking forward to trying it when I go to bed tonight. I hope it helps. Lord knows, the prescription stuff I tried a few years ago didn’t do much, and I’m hurting a lot more these days, then at that time. Between the lotion, and today’s enforced rest, I’m hoping to be able to get some work done tomorrow!

We shall see.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: new acquisitions, potting up and protecting the garden beds

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While I was waiting for the clinic to call about the cats, I was able to find a bunch of things for the garden.

While at the Canadian Tire, I just couldn’t resist.

I picked up some bare root strawberries, and asparagus crowns.

The asparagus that was have now, which has been drowned out for the past couple of years, is a purple variety, so I grabbed a package of Purple Passion to basically replace them. They had a couple of varieties of green asparagus, and I chose Jersey Giant. Each package has 5 crowns in it.

We already have the Albion Everbearing strawberries that did so well last year, except for when the deer kept eating the greens. I got another everbearing variety – Ozark Beauty. I also want to try the White Carolina strawberries again. We tried them a few years ago, but not one of them survived.

I am thinking of planting these in a section of the main garden area that has been covered with a black tarp for a couple of years, now. We had grown squash and pumpkins in there, previously. I want to move the tarp to cover the rest of what used to be the squash patch. Hopefully, the asparagus will do better there. I’ll probably interplant them with the strawberries, too.

But not yet.

Something else I got but didn’t get a picture of were some 12′ (I think) lengths of tubing. They’re more flexible than the 5′ lengths I tried before. I plan to use one of them, cut in half, to make a netting support over the 4′ square Albion strawberry bed, so we don’t have to worry about them getting eaten by deer again! I might work on that tomorrow.

The first thing I did when I got home, though, was pot up some pre-germinated melon seeds. The four Sarah’s Choice seeds were ready to go!

I had just enough pre-moistened seed starter mix left to fill 4 cups to plant them in. The cups have drainage holes in them, and they and the other seeds are now in a tray over the heat mat. I took the old heat mat out completely. It was cold, and no longer working.

There are a few other seeds starting to germinate. Nothing with the Zucca melon. I expect to be planting more pre-germinated seeds in a couple of days. I want to give some of the seeds more time.

With the old heat mat removed and the new one shifted over, I also moved the tray with the seedlings over. There are still a few blank spots, but enough sprouts are up that it shouldn’t be on a heat mat anymore – but I do wish that old mat was still working though, because I think they would still do better with one.

That done, I headed outside again.

I’ve noticed that the cats have really been digging around in the winter sown garden bed at the chain link fence. While I was at the Dollarama today, I picked up some row covers that I hoped would work out.

This bed is narrow, so those metal supports would be fine for it. It was the mesh that was important. It’s open enough that the wind can blow through it – the mosquito netting we’ve been using gets turned into a sail rather quickly! – and rain can get through, but it’s fine enough to keep the Chinese Elm seeds from choking everything out, once those start to drop. Plus, the ends can be closed up, which will keep the cats out.

I wasn’t sure how many I would need to cover this garden bed, so I got 5, just in case. In the second photo, you can see some of the damage the cats have been doing.

Setting them up with the wire supports was a bit of a challenge! The wire is supposed to be run through evenly spaced pockets in the mesh. That was the first problem! The wire is thin enough to pass through the mesh. It was hard just to get it through the opening of the pockets! The other end, meanwhile, kept getting caught up in, and through, other sections of mesh.

The set came with a solution for threating the wires through the pockets, though I doubt it was intended as such. Each kit has a bundle of 5 supports. They are held together by fitting the ends into a white plastic cap, one for each bundle of ends. I used one of those caps on the end of a wire support and, as long as there was enough tension to keep the cap from falling off, the wire slid through quite easily. If the cap did fall off, it could be pushed back through the pocket to the wire.

It took a while to get the hand of it, though. The wires and the mesh kept wanting to get all tangled up with each other. Plus, every stick or twig or leaf on the ground seemed to automatically get caught in it! What I eventually figured out was to first make sure the netting was bunched up in the middle of the wire, then stab one of the ends into the ground next to my leg. At least a little bit. I was sitting in the shade, so while the ice and snow was melted away, the ground was more frozen than in other places. It was enough to keep the wire upright, though, and I could just add the next ones as they were done.

I set up the first two assembled kits at each end of the bed. The kits have a drawstring at each and to close them up, but I needed to overlap several of these to ensure no gaps. Once the ends of the beds were covered, I assembled two more kits to fill in the space. Once the ends were closed with the drawstring, those got set in place with ground staples. In one area, the two kits overlapped enough that they didn’t need anything else, but another join got secured with more ground staples.

I think this will work out very well for now. I could probably remove that mosquito netting entirely and use it somewhere else. If the winter sowing survived, this netting can stay until things start getting too tall for it. The mess easily slides up and down the wire supports, so it’ll be easy to reach under to weed.

The bed was incredibly dry, though, so I used the water from the heat sink in the portable greenhouse to water it, then refilled the container. With sort of defeats the purpose of the heat sink, but there are no plants in there to protect right now.

When it was time to refill the container, I also prepped something else I found in the Dollarama.

Coconut fibre bricks! It’s been years since I’ve seen these. I’ve got one of them in a bucket of water to expand until tomorrow. I plan to incorporate it into the soil that’s in the pots I’ll be using for the luffa inside the portable greenhouse. It will be a while before the luffa can be transplanted, I’ve got time to get those ready. With the coco fibre in there, it should help keep the soil fluffier, and hold moisture more evenly. I’ll save the second brick to amend soil in one of the garden beds, later.

The garden bed at the chain link fence is not the only ones the cats are damaging. After I finished refilling the heat sink in the greenhouse, plus the watering cans, I checked out the main garden area. The garlic bed and the summer squash bed have both been dug into. Some of the garlic was almost completely dug up! We’re going to have to cover them.

Tomorrow.

For now, though, they have the supports in place.

These are the parts and pieces from a gazebo tent that was broken when a piece of tree fell on it. I had a bunch of shorter pieces – all pieces that were broken in half – that I put around the garlic bed, as it won’t need a lot of height. The tent pieces all have holes in them that had screws or pins running through them, which are prefect for holding twin in place. I ran the twin through to make Xs across the bed, as well as straight across and the sides. I did the same with taller supports I put over the bed sown with summer squash.

We have a couple of types of netting that is large enough to fit over these. We’ve got black netting that is more open, but for that, we’ll have to put something on top of the support posts, so they won’t tear through. There’s also the mosquito netting I’ll be moving off the chain link fence. We have other netting, too, but they are for trellising, so the openings are large enough for a cat to fit through.

The roll of bale twine I used on this has been sitting in the sun room all winter, and the cats have been pulling out the middle and playing with it. By the time I got things untangled while threading it through the support posts, it was starting to get quite chilly out there! As I write this, our temperatures had dropped just below freezing. According to the short range forecast, though, we’re expecting overnight lows of -6C/21F. At those temperatures, we’ll want to put some sort of protection over the winter sown beds. Something more than netting! That’s the down side of having removed the mulch, so the ground could thaw out. I will probably spread some of the mulch back lightly over the beds again. The beds are even looking like they could use a good watering, too! We didn’t get a lot of snow this winter, so things are pretty dry right now, and there is no rain in the forecast for some time. What rain and snow we’ve had lately hasn’t been enough keep these beds from drying out.

Tomorrow, we’re looking at a high of 15C/59F. That will be a wonderful temperature to get things done outside!

As long as I don’t overdo it. I got chilled enough while working the twine through the supports, I still haven’t warmed up, even after a hot meal and a hot cup of tea! My entire body is stiffening up and starting to really ache.

Time to pain killer up and get to bed. Hopefully, the painkillers will be enough to let me get some sleep!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: potting up pre-germinated squash

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Well, I went and did it. I potted up the very enthusiastically growing winter squash. I even did the luffa. Of all the seeds I started only 1 luffa hasn’t germinated yet, and it still might.

I’ve decided I will go the Costco shopping tomorrow and, while in the city, try and find a second heat mat to put under the winter squash tray. If they’re out of stock… well… we’ll see how it goes!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: potting and potting up, and stuff

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Today I was going to be helping my mother with her grocery shopping, so I took advantage of the trip, leaving a bit early to swing by a hardware store. I didn’t find everything I was looking for, but found other things I needed, instead. Then I swung by another store to pick up something for my mother I knew she was intending to skip this time, before finally going to the grocery store. I was intending to pick up a couple of their prepared hot meals that my mother likes so much, for our lunch. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any this time. They did have pieces of hot rotisserie chicken, though, so I got some and other ingredients for our meal. We were running low on kibble again, so I bought an 11kg bag that I hope will last us.

After taxes, it cost $50, which is totally insane.

My mother was happy with what I got her for lunch, which was nice. As we were eating, I kept waiting for her to bring up about the situation with the exterminators coming in at the end of the week. We went over her shopping list, then discussed whether she was up to going to the store with me, or just giving me the list to do the shopping for her. In the end, she decided to stay at home. The local senior’s centre has social activities in her building on Tuesdays, which she loves, and all she needs to do it walk down the hallway to attend.

I finally brought up that we needed to talk. I could tell by the look on her face, she new exactly what I wanted to talk about. It was a look of rather scornful humour that I see way too often. I explained to her that the public housing department is required to do this, and they really could evict her if she doesn’t go along. She kept smirking and scoffing in response, (all this for just one bug?) before bringing up the things she is convinced an exterminator stole from her. Particularly the old passports. She had four of them together, she says, and now there’s just two. I didn’t even think to ask, why would someone not only go digging through her boxes papers to find them, then take only two of them. Particularly since the exterminator is in and out very quickly. I reminded her that she’s accused people of stealing before, only to find the “stolen” item later. It’s entirely possible she decided to put them someplace “safe” and forgot where, as happens to everyone. I also brought up a few things she does that are far more of a safety and security thing than someone using 70 year old passports that look nothing like modern ones to make fake ID, but that just had her going off on a rant that completely contradicted her concerns about “scam people”.

I managed to get the conversation back to the exterminator visit – and found out hers is not the only apartment that’s going to be treated. I took a moment to check my email and found a response from my sister. It turned out she had also suggested that my mother just get a motel room for Thursday night, but she refused. My sister’s house is not very accessible, and my mother didn’t want to stay at her place, anyhow. So my sister was planning to come out at 7am on Friday morning! With that confirmed with my mother, we worked out that I will come out on Thursday afternoon to bag her fabric items and move furniture away from the walls in most of her apartment. My sister will have to do the stuff in my mother’s bedroom when she gets there, since the bedroom is so tiny, it can’t be done in advance and still have space for her to sleep. Plus, of course, her bedding needs to be bagged.

That finally worked out, I headed to the grocery store with her list. As I was getting her stuff, I noticed they had some sale prices on some things that were even better than in the city, and decided it was worth going back, later. I got my mother’s stuff and was at her place just as the social event was being set up and my mother was already in the lounge, so I took care of putting everything away. She didn’t like that I used the main doors (the other people would see her shopping), though. I used them because they have the automatic door openers that I can activate with my knee, rather than putting the bags down and fighting with keys and very heavy doors. After I put everything away, I started going down the hall to the lobby to say my goodbyes, only to have her meet me and tell me to leave out the other doors! 😄😄

Which was fine by me, but I found it very funny.

I went back to the grocery store for the third time (the cashiers were laughing at seeing me again!), got a few things that were sale. I got about $160 of stuff that would otherwise have cost me about $300 at regular prices in the city. More, if they were regular local prices! A quick stop at the gas station, and I was on my way home. I only had one more side trip, as my husband message me to let me know he had a notification that another package had arrived at the post office. As I was getting it, though, the postmaster had another package she hadn’t make a pick up slip for yet.

I love it when packages come in early!

By the time I got home, though, I was totally drained. While I took a break, my younger daughter headed outside to weed the third raised bed in the west yard for me.

With how things have been going, the past few days, I’d neglected to check on the squash seeds that were still pre-germinating. I remembered to check them this morning, and found little squidlings! So once I was done taking a break, I went to get them planted.

Squidlings! 😄😄

I had three 5″ biodegradable pots left from last year, so I used those for the three biggest seeds, and 4″ pots for the rest.

Because the seed leaves were already pushing themselves out of their shells, I planted them so that the leaf portions were partially emerged from the soil.

The previous batch of seeds I planted are still on the heat mat, and I can see little hills forming where the seedlings are starting to emerge, but these ones are far enough along, they don’t need to be on a heat mat. I did set the pots in water, though. The soil was premoistened, as always, but I want those pots to absorb water, so they don’t dry out the soil.

The gourds, meanwhile, have finally been moved to the mini greenhouse frame in the window.

The next thing that needed to be done was to pot up the early peppers from their tiny tray.

Yes, one pot looks completely empty. There was one cell that I didn’t think had any peppers germinating, but two seedlings started to show up this morning. I wasn’t going to leave just one cell in the tray, so I transplanted the stronger looking one, with as much of the soil around it as I could include. It’ll probably not survive being potted up, but you never know!

Most of the cells had just one seedling in them, but a few had two, and one had three. I thinned them to have just four seedlings (including the one that you can barely see in the vermiculite) per variety. With the hot peppers we already have, plus the Sweet Chocolate peppers, we have way more than we need, and can afford some losses.

At this point, we have pretty much run out of space in the living room for seedlings – and we don’t have anywhere near as many as we started last year! Tomorrow is supposed to be a warm and dry day, so I’m planning on snagging a daughter to help me empty the sun room, clean up the messes the critters left for us over the winter, then set things up for the transplants. The sun room is staying warm enough overnight that I think it’s safe to start moving them out of the living room set up.

Looking at the 10 day forecast, I’m seeing days forecast with highs above 20C/68F! At those temperatures, the sun room will probably be hitting closer to 30C/86F, so if we are we are able to start putting transplants there this week, we will have to make sure to have the ceiling fan going, and the doors wide open during the day.

The bed my daughter weeded today is also bowing out at the sides, to I’m hoping to fix that, tomorrow, then work some sulfur into the soil.

Oh, that reminds me; while at the hardware store, I found they had a sulfur powder available. This can apparently be dusted directly onto the plants, or added to a watering can, rather than being worked into the soil like the granular stuff we got. That might be worth getting later on, but I want to see how the beds do with the granular sulfur worked into the soil, first. Getting a bale of peat would be higher on the priority list right now, though.

For all the running around I was doing today, at least we got a few things accomplished at home, too!

The Re-Farmer

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

Our 2023 garden: got a few small tasks done

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I headed outside when things started to cool down and gave the garden beds another watering. I also snagged the trays of Spoon tomatoes and “potted them up”.

Which was just taking off the lower leaves and adding more soil to the cups. These were all so tiny when they were transplanted from the Jiffy pellets, the cups were barely half full of soil. Even now, a couple of them are so small, the cups still couldn’t be filled to the top. A few of the largest ones, however, actually seem to be showing the beginnings of blossoms!

We’ve got 30 of these, plus the Romas, and I still don’t know where they will be planted. It all depends on how much progress there is on the new trellis beds that still need to be built!

Next, I transplanted the lemongrass.

I treated the pot a bit like filling a raised bed; on the bottom, I put a layer of grass clippings, which got a good soak, then potting soil. The potting soil was really dry, so it took quite a bit more soaking to get it moist.

For the lemongrass, I decided to break them up and plant them individually, instead of in groups. That meant breaking up the biodegradable pots. These had been started in smaller, square, biodegradable cells of the same material, so when I potted them up, I just put the whole starter cell into the bigger pot.

For biodegradable pots, they sure don’t break up easy. They were still pretty rootbound in the original cells! So I pulled those pieces out, too. Considering how much handling the roots got, I really hope they survive!

Once transplanted and watered, I very carefully mulched with grass clippings. This pot is set up on the concrete landing of the stairs in front of the main doors. A good, warm microclimate for an herb that needs much warmer temperatures than what we usually grow here. It’s going to get pretty baked, though, so the clippings will help moderate the temperatures as well as protect the soil and transplants. Once the clippings were in place, I was going to give it one last watering.

The handle broke off the sprayer.

*sigh*

I bought is at part of a 2pc set, so I did have another nozzle I could use. I just don’t like it very much. It’s the kind where the spray is adjusted by turning the tip of the spray head. It doesn’t spray very well. Ah, well. Something else for the list of broken things to replace!

Then I finally!!! finished the cover over the shallots bed.

The ends are now closed off, so no cats can walk through and use the shallots as a bed!

As I was finishing this off, I could hear thunder that seemed to be coming closer, so my daughters and I quickly got the rest of the transplants inside. According to them, we did have smatterings of rain today, while I was in the city, and even had a very brief downpour last night! I never heard a thing. There sure wasn’t any sign of it when I watered the garden beds this morning.

Whatever system I was hearing this evening, it passed us by. A good rainfall really would have been nice! It got so very muggy out there!

Tomorrow is supposed to be another hot one, with no expectation of rain at all, so I plan to get an early start. The largest tomatoes need to be transplanted, but I want to put in the supports for the indeterminate Indigo Blue Chocolates first. The Black Beauties can be staked individually.

Which means an early bed time for me, and hopefully a good sleep!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: potting up tomatoes is DONE!

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Finally!!!

I was able to pick up more potting soil after helping my mother with errands yesterday, which means that today I got to finish potting up our tomato seedlings.

I actually was able to “pot up” the Black Beauty and Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes by topping the cups up with soil, first. Then I potted up the last 18 Roma VF tomatoes, which used up my last two plastic bins. I had to move things around, and move the onions right out, to fit everything. The taller seedlings hat to go either to the top of the mini greenhouse frame, or to the shelf, where the onions were. The rest are still short enough to fit in the mini greenhouse frame, though I’ve run out of space in there.

Next was the Spoon tomatoes.

I planted two seeds per pellet, and I made sure to do the ones that had pairs of seedlings first – though one of them had three! For each one, I removed the outer covering on the Jiffy pellets, then separated the seedlings. They’re still quite small, so the cups got filled only about half way.

I noticed the outer covering on the Jiffy Pellets is different this year. It’s more paper like. I remember it being more net-like, before. Those didn’t really break down, and I would find them in the garden while cleaning up at the end of the year. I’m guessing that has sometime to do with the change. With one pair of seedlings, a tomato had actually grown through the outer covering. As I was trying to gently remove it, I ended up breaking the tomato stem clean through! It’s a tomato, though, so I went ahead and planted the tomato top, anyhow. Changes are pretty good it’ll send out new roots and survive.

These are all 35 Spoon tomatoes (I’d mistakenly counted 36, before). I was able to fit 19 onto an oven liner tray, which will allow for bottom watering. The tray the Roma tomatoes had been in, which now had only the spearmint and oregano in it, could fit another dozen. That left only 4 that needed to be double cupped. I’ve run out of both trays and bins.

Those done, I did some more rearranging and removed off the watering can and extra cups, which allowed me to bring the onions back closer to the light. With all those, plus the bin with the Zucca melon and African Drum gourds in it, this surface is now completely full. I don’t even have my work space anymore! The light isn’t as good during the day on here but, early in the morning, it does actually get direct sunlight for a few hours.

The peppers in the large aquarium greenhouse still have new seeds germinating, so I won’t be potting those up for a while. Not that I have the space for it anymore!

I will need to monitor the overnight temperatures in the sun room over the next while. We’re supposed to warm up, but the overnight temperatures are still dipping below freezing. If the sun room can manage to stay at 6C/43F or warmer during the night, I should be able to at least move the onions over. They are about the only thing we’ve started indoors that can handle cooler temperatures. I’d love to be able to move the biggest plants out, which is mostly the gourds and Zucca melon, but they are the most cold sensitive plants we’ve got right now. Daytime temperatures in the sun room have been reaching as high as 20C/68F, which would be great as long as it didn’t drop too far. The times I’ve checked it through the bathroom window at night, I’ve seen the thermometer at around 10C/50F, which would be acceptable, I think. Plus, we’d be closing the doors overnight to keep the yard cats out of the plants, which means it would stay warmer overnight, too.

The cats are not going to be happy, losing their favourite bed on the swing bench, and private dining areas! I’ll be happy to not have skunks and racoons going in there anymore!

All in good time, though. It’s still only April, and a lot of these can’t get transplanted until the middle of June!

The Re-Farmer