progress

Our 2024 Garden: grass clippings are gold!

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I’m going to be feeling this tomorrow, but I got what I wanted to do, done – and then some!

I just finished mowing the area of the outer yard that I’d been able to mow previously. I had considered mowing until I finished a tank of gas at first. Since this area had already been done before, even with the constant stopping to empty the bag, that would have meant expanding the area I was able to get done last time. In the end, though, I just filled one last wagon load and stopped. I finished at about 3:30 or so, and we’re at 25C/77F, with the humidex at 28C/82F, and we’re not even at the hottest part of the day, yet.

I spread out only a couple of wagon loads on the black tarp I’ve got over the previous year’s squash patch. The rest, I used right away.

I did the eggplant and hot pepper bed first, because it was closer. These have not been doing well, and I’m hoping the extra layer of mulch, on top of the paper and cardboard mulch, will help. That took most of a wagon load, and what was left went into the compost ring next to the eggplant and peppers bed.

Next I did the bed that needed it the most: the bell peppers and onions in the high raised bed. They are pretty crowded in places, so it was a bit more difficult to keep the mulch away from the stems and bulbs, but I was still able to get a good layer down. There was just enough left in the wagon to mulch the surviving bush beans, which I didn’t bother taking a photo of.

The last wagon load was used to mulch the chocolate cherry tomatoes at the chain link fence. I also added some supports to the tomatoes that didn’t already have cages around them; I only got two cages, as these are dollar store cages and I wanted to test them out before getting more. The Goldy yellow zucchini by the gate got a bit more mulch, too.

There was just enough left in the wagon to lay a deep mulch down at other chain link fence bed, by the vehicle gate. This is where there are just two Purple Caribe potatoes growing, and where I’ve started kohlrabi. Since everything is so sparce at that end, there is a ridiculous amount of weeds. So the two potato plants are now mulched, as is each side of the tiny kohlrabi seedlings, and the empty space in between.

After putting everything away, I also rolled up the mosquito netting still attached to the chain link fence, and just left the rolls fastened at the top of the fence sections.

By then, the heat and humidity was really starting to get to me, and I was more than happy to finally get inside!

Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, so I want to make use of the clippings I’ve laid out on the black tarp to finish mulching around the San Marzano tomato and onion bed, and then lay more mulch down around the onions, shallots and summer squash. If there’s any left over, I’ll see if I can mulch the rest of the bed with the melons, bush beans and onions going to seed. That will be done early in the morning, before things start getting hot. Depending on how I find the soil, I might do another watering.

Grass clippings are gold!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: hot peppers and first corn silks!

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We’re looking at another hot day today, so I made sure to give the garden a good watering while it was still cool.

We have a couple of hot peppers developing, just on one plant so far. I also spotted our first corn silks this morning!

I found some new female winter squash and a pumpkin blossoming and hand pollinated them. Today was the first time I found a female squash blossom in the squash bed with the corn, which got transplanted after the ones with the peas and beans. The area around the pumpkins and winter squash is getting hard to walk through to water, the vines are getting so big! I need to find a way to set up supports for the hose above ground at each bed, so it doesn’t get dragged on top of the vines. I really should have set up the soaker and sprinkler hoses around the beds before they got so big.

Quite a few things that were looking wimpy and behind are starting to perk up, too, like the last onion transplants and the melon bed. Most of the tomatoes are getting big and bushy. I have not been on top of the pruning this year and, at this point, don’t really intend to do much of that. I’ll take off some of the lower leaves, but the stalks that grow out of the leaf “elbows” just got away with me. I figured I may as well leave them, since they will produce fruit. The black cherry tomatoes are vining so tall, the double lilac bush with branches above them is actually helping to support them! That group will need extra support around them, though.

The tomatoes growing in the concrete blocks, both at the chain link fence and the retaining wall, are not getting bushy, though. They are starting to produce tomatoes, but the plants themselves are not as strong and bushy as the others.

I’m going to have to rethink what we grow in those blocks. Perennials like the mint and chives are doing great. We did successfully grow cucamelons in the retaining wall blocks, though their vines remained spindly. They did not do well at the chain link fence. Onions and shallots don’t seem to do well in them, either, which is odd considering how well the chives are doing.

So it looks like we should be looking at saving the blocks for things like perennial herbs. The old kitchen garden is meant to eventually be a combination herd garden and kitchen garden, for both annuals and perennials. Basically, mostly things that we’d want to harvest as needed throughout the summer. I want to see if we can grow things like rosemary (which would be an annual, in our short growing season), sage or savory, which we tend to use quite a lot. We know now that chamomile will self seed nicely. We’re not using the thyme we have right now, as we don’t have a lot of it, and I want to see if it will either self seed or survive the winter, if it gets mulched well enough. In the fall, I want to find someplace to transplant those “wild” strawberries out of the wattle weave bed to where we can just let them do their thing.

Ah, the fun thing about gardening. I’m always thinking years in advance!

I rather enjoy that.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a little harvest, and odd blooms

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That whole “get outside early, before it gets hot” thing is just not working. After finishing my morning rounds, it was already 25C/77F, with the humidex putting it at 31C/88F! As I write this, it’s actually cooled down a tiny bit, but it’s going to go right back up again this afternoon.

One of the garden beds that has me a bit perplexed is the eggplant and hot pepper bed. I have not tried to replace the plastic around the box frame, that got shredded by the wind, so they’ve been exposed to the wind and temperatures like everything else beside them. That bed does get a bit more sun than the other two beside it. The peppers and eggplants, though, just don’t seem to be growing. This seems like more than transplant shock. They’re just stagnating, and I don’t know why.

Which makes what progress I am seeing in them a bit surprising.

As small as they are, I am seeing flowers opening up among both the Classic eggplant, and the Little Finger eggplant. There are flowers on the Cheyenne hot peppers, too, but I would almost expect that. These peppers were started the earliest. They should be big and bushy and have fruit developing by now, so having a few flowers appear is late for those. For the eggplant, though, would have expected flowers to appear after they’d gotten much better. Especially considering how large the fruit is supposed to get at maturity. The normal fruit size, even for the Little Finger variety, is bigger than the plants are now!

Aside from that mystery, I found a couple of ripe strawberries among the older plants in the asparagus bed. Yesterday evening, I’d picked a few from the bare root strawberries that were planted this spring, and the tiny strawberries grown from seed in the old kitchen garden. The strawberries in the asparagus bed are having the hardest time of it, because the deer keep eating the leaves, so anything out of there is bonus.

There are sugar snap pea pods developing, and I’d picked a couple last night. This morning, there was just one, ready to pick. I’m only picking these because, the more they are harvested from, the more they will produce.

The real bonus this morning was the garlic scapes!

Almost all of the scapes were ready to be harvested. Of the ones remaining, they should be ready to harvest in the next day or two. So we’ll probably have one last harvest, and then be done for scapes for the year.

We need to plant more garlic. 😄

The mint that keeps trying to take over the bed is managing to get into the raised rectangular bed with garlic, tomatoes, onions and shallots in it. Since I was weeding them out, anyhow, I picked enough for a day’s use.

It’s not much of a harvest, and this year, it doesn’t look like we’ll get much that can be harvested through the summer. The bush beans have been decimated by slugs, so I don’t expect anything from them anymore. They mature fast enough that I could replant, but there’s no point, unless we can get rid of the slugs.

I should pick up some cheap beer for slug traps. Even the last Zucca melon is getting decimated, and it’s of a size they normally wouldn’t be able to damage that much. There is evidence of slug damage on some of the melons and winter squash, and at least a couple of melons have simply disappeared, but they seem to really like the Zucca melon – enough to get up into that kiddie pool raised bed it’s planted in!

The shelling peas are of a size that they need to be trained up into the trellis netting. There are very few pole beans, but they are getting tall enough that trellis netting needs to be added on that side of the bed, too.

The hot pepper growth has been stagnant, but so have the bell peppers in the high raised bed. They’re not getting any bigger, though they certainly look healthy, small as they are, and some of them are starting to bloom, too!

Most of the tomato varieties are also showing blooms. The only ones that aren’t are the last San Marzano transplants. Considering how much later they were planted, that’s not a surprise. The ones planted in the old kitchen garden almost all have flowers and are getting tall enough we’re going to have to start clipping them to their bamboo stake supports.

Along with all that, we need to get the weed trimmer and lawn mowers out before the grass gets too tall again. We still have standing water in places, and the ground is still saturated in others, but we should still be able to get at least some of the mowing done. That will give us grass clippings we can add to some of the garden beds as mulch, too.

Also on the list it so finish assembling the log frame on the one low raised bed. I was able to accumulate more cardboard that I plan to put under the logs, first. So they’ll need to be rolled away, the ground under where they will go needed to be levelled off more, the carboard laid down as a weed barrier, then the logs rolled back and permanently attached to each other. I just plan to cut notches in the shorter end pieces to fit them over the ends of the side pieces, to set them snug against each other. I still have some broken pieces plant supports I got a few years ago. They were hollow metal tubes coated in plastic, and with so many rocks in our soil, they broke very easily. I’ve used some of them, already, on the current trellis bed. I used an auger bit on my drill to make a hole through the logs at the short ends, then drove the broken lengths of supports in, to hold them together. I plan to do the same thing when assembling the new frame. It needs to be done very soon, as the winter squash is starting to grow into the paths, and will soon be too big to move out of the way without damaging them.

Meanwhile, the temperature and humidex is already starting to get hotter again. Our humidity levels are supposed to reach over 90% at times. I’m amazed we have an only 25% chance of rain this evening. I would have expected thunderstorm warnings. We do have a small system with storms in it passing us to the north, but not anywhere near where we are.

Well, summer is summer, and I’d better get used to the heat, if I’m going to get anything done.

The mosquitoes, on the other hand, are something I will never get used to!! Mosquitoes, horseflies, deer flies… they’re all just brutal this year!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: direct sowing chard and summer squash

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What a gorgeous day today!

We didn’t get too excessively hot – our high was 19C/66F – which made a huge difference. As I write this, we’re at 17C/63F, with a “feels like” of 15C/59F. That’s more my kind of weather!

Best of all, we had a break from the rain. We should have another break tomorrow, and then it’s supposed to rain for another two days.

Still, we got enough sunshine to dry some things out.

Today, I wanted to get some direct sowing done – finally!

I decided to plant chard where the spinach is done. That required first removing the netting I set up that turned out to not be long enough to go all the way around the bed. Once that was cleared and put away, I pulled the sad little remaining spinach plants – I wish I knew why they did so poorly! – and weeded the bed. We don’t have a lot of carrots, unfortunately. The cats would go in where there was no netting to keep them out, and use that corner of the bed as a litter box, digging up quite a few carrots in the process. I’d hope to plant more, but it’s too late in the season for carrots, now. Of the overwintered onions that had been transplanted at one end, there are three that survived the transplanting, and they are starting to go to seed!

Speaking of seed, I had both Bright Lights (a rainbow variety) and Fordhook Giant seeds. The cats had gotten into them and chew through the packages, so now they’re all mixed up in the a Ziplock baggie. These are not new seeds, so it will be interesting to see how well they germinate.

Once the planting and weeding was done, I grabbed one of the new nets I picked up at a dollar store and set it up around the bed. I added a couple more support posts around the perimeter. These are salvaged from the frame of a canopy tent a tree fell on, so they all have screw holes in them. Very handy to string line through, to hold the netting in place and keep it from just sliding down the supports! The netting is wide enough that it can reach the trellis netting in the middle, as well as to the ground outside the raised bed. I didn’t bother fastening the netting to the middle, since it’s mostly to keep the cats out. Once the netting was in place, it got some ground staples to hold it down, since it kept wanting to creep back up!

That done, it was time to go to the main garden area, and the last bed that got shifted over. The empty space between the shallots and the yellow bulb onions needed something in it!

The white patty pan and Magda squash that was planted in pots in front of the house did not germinate, so I replanted them there. I also grabbed the G-star pattypan seeds, and planted all three varieties between the onions and the shallots. I used broken bamboo stakes to mark were I’d planted pairs of seeds. I hadn’t pre-soaked them or scarified them, so I made sure they got a deep watering. Then I raked up some of grass clippings and used it to mulch around where the seeds were planted. Then I dampened the mulch, too!

I completely forgot that I wanted to replant the Seychelle pole beans by the Crespo squash. I can do that tomorrow. It’s really late for pole beans, but I’m going to take the chance.

Aside from that, the garden is now finally all in! There are no other beds to plant things in. That will be our next focus: build more beds for next year! Especially the trellis beds. Plus, of course, harvesting more dead spruces to frame all the beds.

Once that was done, I tended to the tomatoes in the old kitchen garden. I didn’t bother taking pictures, since it’s hard to see. They’re starting to get big and bush, and starting to flop. So I grabbed some jute twine and wove it around the pairs of bamboo stakes at each tomato plant, and the tomato stems in between. That was more finnicky work than I expected! The leaves are so dense the jute twine is mostly hidden, but it’s doing its job, and holding the vines up between the support stakes.

I also took some video of the raised beds that got shifted over. I’m planning to do a progress video. I was going to do it tonight, but I’m falling asleep at my keyboard, so I think I’ll call it a night, and work on it tomorrow.

All in all, it turned out to be a decently productive day! Not bad for it starting out as such a bad pain day, this morning. Not bad at all!

The Re-Farmer

I’m feeling totally wasted!

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It has been a looooong day!

Of mowing.

My hands are shot, so I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to write, and I’ll probably have typos all over the place. This would normally be a post loaded with photos, but I don’t feel like embedding Instagram photos.

So… this was my day.

Doing my morning rounds I, as always, checked all the garden beds after feeding the cats…

… and the kittens. Much kittens. Adam and her kittens have been in and out of the sun room all day, and I’ve seeing the four behind the garage playing around all day, too. Those ones, it turns out, are Slick’s! (aka: Octomom). I thought they were Brussel’s, but nope. I saw Slick mothering them.

I’m glad she had only 4 kittens this time, and not 8!

Also, it turns out the dark grey kitten with the white eyeliner is NOT the sunroom kitten. We have two of them!

I was quite happy to see the first scapes appearing in our garlic. We are so looking forwards to eating scapes again!

All the strawberries – the older ones with the asparagus, the ones in the wattle weaves we started from seed last year, and the everbearing ones we got as bare roots this spring – are developing berries. Now, if we can just keep the birds and deer from eating them first, we might have a decent amount to enjoy this year!

Quite a few of the first bed of winter squash we transplanted are blooming now. All male flowers for now. I even saw a few tiny flowers on some melons!

Quite a few of onions that overwintered and got transplanted into the first trellis bed are developing seed tops. I look forward to being able to collect our own onions seeds for next year!

The Crespo squash is also blooming quite a bit. There’s some sort of small weed that’s showing up in almost all our beds, but there’s a rather surprising amount around the Crespo squash . Since I was able to do some mowing yesterday, I gathered up grass clippings to mulch around the Crespo squash, leaving space where the beans were plants. There’s still just 3 or 4 beans growing on one side, and I plan to reseed them, though it’s getting pretty late for pole beans right now. The grass clipping mulch should help take care of those weeds and, with more rain on its way, get the squash vines off the wet soil.

Then, since I was gathering grass clippings nearby, anyhow, I mulched around the strawberry and asparagus bed. That one is almost impossible to weed properly. I made it to fit the spacing the asparagus needed, but that left it too wide for me to reach without stepping right inside the bed.

I did some weeding in the spinach, snap pea and carrot bed. I ended up pulling some of the larger spinach. Even the tiniest ones are bolting, but a few had leaves large enough to actually use. I’ve been using them in sandwiches all day today.

Soon after I was done my rounds, I went to town with the 20L jerry can to get premium gas for the mowers. At the last minute, I decided to hit another store and pick up a bunch of artificial flowers. Then I went to a hardware store and found small engine oil for our push mower, before finally getting the fuel for the lawnmowers. On the way home, I swung by the cemetery and left flowers by the stones for my father, my father’s uncle, my brother, my grandmother, a cousin and her baby. I’ll have to come by another time with some soap and water and give the stones a wash. Birds are no respecter of persons! Later, I want to grab the cross with a solar powered light in it, that I got for my MIL’s grave, and set it out with flowers. I’ve never actually seen her grave. When my daughter and I went to tend to is, and my FIL’s request, since he can no longer make the trip out, we couldn’t find it. We did find a sign saying a number of markers have been removed due to flooding, and would be repaired and returned. I would hope it’s been replaced by now!

Once I got home and fueled up the push mower, it was time to start mowing! We’re expecting rain starting tonight, and all day tomorrow, so I wanted to get as much done as I could. I didn’t even try using the riding mower. I tried using it yesterday, but it just can’t handle the tall, wet grass very well.

For the first while, I worked on the south yards. These were the worst, even though we’d actually been able to mow parts, previously. Unfortunately, these yards are also where all the kittens are! The area behind the garage was just brutal to work on. There is no longer standing water, but the ground still squelches when I walk on it. I scared off the garage kittens quite a few times, but after a while, they did start to get used to me and the noise, and would come out and play more often, ducking to hide only when I got close again.

The south west yard is where the kibble and water bowl houses are. That corner needs to be done with the weed trimmed, but I got as close around the cat shelters as I could.

The cats and kittens were not happy.

I even had time to do the west yard, around the fire pit area, though I didn’t even try to go behind the storage house, where there is an open area between rows of trees. It got so full of water there, so it’s bound to be really wet. However, it gets very little light, so the grass there is so sparse, being overground there isn’t really much of an issue.

At that point, I finally stopped to have lunch. It was past 3pm by then, and today the dump is open from 2-6pm Once I finished lunch, I brought the truck into the yard and my older daughter helped me load the garbage and recycling.

I had quite a nice surprise when I got to the dump. My cousin-in-law was there! He was with the attendant dealing with electronics garbage and didn’t seem me, so I just got rid of our recycling, then drove to the pit. I was just finishing up when he drove to the pit, too, and we finally got to say hello. It’s been a long time since we chatted.

After we said our goodbyes and I was getting ready to leave, I spotted something very strange on the ground beside the truck I hadn’t noticed when I first got out. It was so strange, I had to call my cousin over to see!

I found a foot.

It had just enough flesh on it to hold the bones together, but it was most definitely a foot.

Then I found another one, a few feet away.

Then I found a “hand”.

The “hand” did not have an opposable thumb.

My guess is, they were from a bear. A hunter probably processed one, tossed the unused bits and pieces in the pit, then some animal dragged them out.

Not something I ever expected to see in my life, that’s for sure!

The dump run done, as soon as I got home, it was back to mowing.

I was able to finished off the north and east yards, much to the discomfort of Caramel, who dove under the tarp covered pile of boards she has her two kittens in. I saw no sign of Broccoli’s two, around the old garden shed, though I did see them this morning.

When I got those done, I kept pushing the mowing further into the area between the spruce grove and the garden beds. This is an area we’re going to be dragging trees through, and part of it is where the trellis beds will be built, so I wanted to get as least some of it done, in the more level areas.

I also finally mowed a path through the maple grove. Just enough that we can walk through from near the old kitchen garden, around to where the main garden area is. This took me near where the old tap and its part and pieces are lying on the ground, waiting for when we can set it up again. That will happen after we get the pipes we want to run the hose through, to protect it, before burying it in a trench.

All this means we have FINALLY been able to mow the entire inner yard. Not between the trees, but at least the higher traffic areas!

Yay!!!

My next area to do was in the outer yard. I’d already cleared part of it in front of the chain link fence, between the vehicle gate and the people gate, so we could actually access the people gate again. Today, I cleared a path to access the burn barrel to the electricity meter, then back to the people gate. Once that triangle of paths was made, I worked on clearing the grass inside the triangle.

Not only had this area not been mowed yet this year, but it’s one of those areas that’s really dense and had different, tougher, grasses in it. Which means, for most of this area, even with the mower on its highest setting, I had to go forward with the wheels up first, drop the mower and back up over the same area, then go forward again normally. Basically going over the same sections, three times. I had to do this in the inner yard, too, but not as much as this one section. It was almost as difficult as going over the wet area behind the garage.

I had just a small triangle left when I ran out of gas again. It was actually worth refilling the mower to get that little triangle. 😄

And that was it. I was done. The temperatures are really nice right now, there’s still light out, and I probably could have kept going, but I was DONE. I’m going to need someone to put the bath chair in the tub for me later on, so I can shower.

I was working on that last bit when my daughters came out. The ground is finally solid enough that they can set up the ladder against the house, and it won’t sink into the ground. They were finally able to clear the eavestroughs. My older daughter just came in and updated me. Since her sister was up on the roof, anyhow, she cleared away some of the elm branches from the tree in front of the kitchen window that were overhanging the roof, while my older daughter hauled the branches away to the burn pile. That would have been quite a big job, and rather precarious in places.

I’m going to be so much more comfortable when we can get rid of that tree!

I’ve also been informed, we need to get more bug spray. The mosquitoes are insane, and we’re running out. At least it isn’t horseflies anymore. When I was moving the back hose over so I could mow, I heard buzzing like there was another wasp next back there. There wasn’t. It was hundreds of horseflies, all in that corner of the house!

I’m heading into the city tomorrow for our second shop, so I’ll make sure to add that to the list!

I definitely will need to pain killer up tonight. I’m going to be paying for all that mowing. It was worth it, though. Everything looks so much better and, now that it’s done, it’ll be so much easier to keep up. We’ll even be able to use the riding mower on it!

Plus, we now have lots of grass clippings to use as mulch in the garden!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: transplanting DONE! onions and shallots

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Yes!!!

It’s official! I am done with the transplants.

Except the Orange Butterfly Flowers. I have no idea where to put those. I might just stick them in a pot or something.

I was very happy for a pleasant breeze to cool me down while I was working. I got the last of the bed turned and weeded, the boards laid out to mark where the log frame will go, and the soil evened out and leveled off as best I could.

Since I was wanting to finish off the onions and shallots, I decided to work in a grid instead of rows. I marked off 5 rows lengthwise first,, about 3 or 4 inches apart, then made cross rows, also every 3 or 4 inches apart.

Once the lines were marked out, I used the jet setting on the hose to drive water into all the marked lines. It makes it messier to transplant into, but it evens out the soil and gives deeper moisture for the roots to reach for.

After that, I just laid out the transplants where the lines crossed, starting with the yellow bulb onions at one end. I got to about half way down the bed, maybe a little more, before I finished them. Then I planted the shallots at the opposite end. Last of all, I used the grass clipping mulch I’d removed earlier today, to scatter a light mulch around the transplants.

I was very happy to see that this left me an open space where something can be direct sown. I’ll go through my seeds to see what I’ve got that will mature in less than 2 months, since we basically just have July and August left for a growing season.

This is really late for onion transplants. My intention had been to interplant them with other things, but that doesn’t really work out with the winter squash and melons, since those will get bigger and overshadow the onions. At least I got some in with the tomatoes.

We shall see if the weather holds long enough for all these onions to fully mature!

I’m now going to let my self breathe for a bit. I have some direct sowing to do, including where the spinach was planted, and that’s about it. After a break, I’ll get back to working on the trellis beds. Hopefully, we’ll dry out a bit and the winds will die down, and we’ll be able to harvest more logs for the raised bed frames. The forecast of rain to start this evening and continue for about 4 hours has changed. Now it’s saying we’ll get some rain for about an hour, around 10pm. On Friday, though (today is Tuesday), they’re still saying rain all day, starting about 5am Friday morning, through to 1am on Saturday morning. Aside from the brief rain we’re supposed to get tonight, though, we’re not supposed to get any rain at all until Friday.

I might actually be able to do some mowing! How exciting!

The Re-Farmer

Garden bed progress

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Well, I got some done this morning…

In starting on the last bed that needs to be shifted, I broke up and somewhat leveled the ends and one side, so I could lay out the first boards. The bed that is being shifted had quite a lot of grass clipping mulch around the edges to try and keep the weeds at bay – or at least easier to pull. In the previous bed I’d done, I worked the grass clippings into the soil as it was shifted, but this one had enough that I removed most of it, instead.

Then it was time to start loosening the soil that needs to be shifted, weeding as I went along. It has been taking longer than I expected. I’m shocked by how far from the trees I’m fining elm roots. They have reached pretty much all the way to the end of the bed! I’m not trying to pull them all out, since the bed it going to be raised higher than before, but I could get some of it. Particularly the roots that would get caught up in my garden fork as I loosened the soil!

I suppose it would have been better if the soil in this bed got sifted, but it’s still too wet for that and would just clog up the hardware cloth.

I got maybe a third of the bed weeded and partially shifted before I had to stop for breakfast and hydration. I’m not looking forward to going back out. It’s about 9:30am, and we’ve already reached our expected high of 19C/66F. While my weather app says the humidex is also 19C, when I’m out in the full sun, it sure feels hotter, even though the morning sun is just barely reaching above the spruces while I’m out there! The winds are picking up again, too, and I swear I heard thunder in the distance. There are no storms in our forecast. We’re expecting showers starting around 7pm. It’s actually supposed to start cooling down a few degrees from now on. I think I’ll actually give myself a couple of hours before heading outside again. Now that I’ve got the big stuff done around the bed, the rest shouldn’t take long, and I should be able to get most, if not all, of those onions transplanted when it’s cooler, and before the showers start.

The rest of the garden seems to be holding out well. I’ve removed the mosquito netting that was over most of the melons in the first trellis bed. They are starting to get big enough that they need the extra room. All the other transplants seem to have gotten over any transplant shock and are starting to grow noticeably bigger and stronger. That zucca melon that I found looking smushed, however did not survive, so we’re down to just two of those, and they both look strong and healthy.

I still feel like I’m behind on everything in the garden, but things do seem to be managing all right so far.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a bit of morning progress

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While doing my rounds this morning, I found a cheerful surprise.

One of the Crespo squash is blooming!

I should probably prune it off for now, so that more energy should go into the plant itself getting bigger, but it’s just one of three plants blooming, and it looks so pretty.

We do still have a lot of standing water all over, but the area around the garden bed I needed to work on was much improved. Still very wet, to be sure, but at least workable.

The weather forecast predicted a quick thunderstorm and rain at about 8am, so I was out there by about 7. There was a good chance the tiny storm on the radar would miss our location entirely, so I wasn’t too concerned. Mostly, I wanted to get things done before it got too hot – and things were getting hot pretty fast!

The main thing I wanted to get done was to break and turn the sod in the new area. That ended up taking a bit longer than expected. The wet ground did make it a bit easier to remove some of the bigger tap roots and rhizomes. This area, however, turned out to have a lot more tree roots under it – most of which were deep enough to leave alone, but shallow enough for the garden fork to get hung up on them. It also has a lot more, and bigger, rocks. Again, a lot were deep enough to leave after the sod was turned, but in many places I couldn’t push the fork into the ground without having to fight to get around rocks.

But that part is now done, and I left it to go in for breakfast. It’s supposed to be very hot today, so I don’t mind leaving the exposed roots to bake in the sun. The stalks from corn that was grown here last year were still around, so those are going to be buried when the soil that needs to be moved, gets shifted over.

I had the hardest time falling asleep for some reason, but woke up at 5am, so I’ve only had 2 or 3 hours of sleep. I can barely keep my eyes open right now.

Napping through the hottest part of the day is probably a good idea, anyhow!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: next bed’s progress, and squished!

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Part of my morning rounds now includes checking on all the garden beds.

With the kiddie pool planted with Zucca melon, near the strawberries, I made sure to check them out.

One of them was squished!

The mulch around it was flattened, too, in an almost perfect circle. It looked like a cat took a nap on it!

I lifted it up and found that it did not seem to be damaged. I found some short support posts that used to be part of a canopy tent frame that a tree fell on a few winters ago. I set one beside each melon. A cat could still lie on the mulch beside in between, but not on a melon plant – at least not without being right up against a stick!

Yesterday, I’d turned the raw sod on the next raised bed that needed to be shifted. I’d hoped the exposed roots would get to back in the sun, but instead, they got watered by the series of storms we got. I was going to my mothers, so I didn’t do any weeding, as it would have been too messy. Instead, I used the thatching rake to break up some clumps around three sides and level them a bit, then set out boards to mark where the logs will go.

Then I just used a garden fork to turn the soil from the bed in it’s old location, piling it into the new location. Against, I didn’t try to weed, so it went really fast. This bed was in so much better condition than the last one, with all that creeping Charlie in it! Once the soil was moved, I used the rake to level the edge, as well as the area where the bed was that would become path, before adding the last of the boards to frame around it.

Then I had a few things to do, before doing to my mother’s and helping her with her groceries. These days, she just gives me her list and I do the shopping for her, and put it all away. It was actually a pretty good visit, until just before I left. She’s started to talk about coming here to the farm for a visit. The problem is, she behaves so badly here, especially towards my family, they don’t want her here. She also has no interest in seeing what we’ve done here at the farm. She want to see reasons to tell us what we’re going wrong, tell me how terrible I am at taking care of the place (because I’m doing things differently than she did), and rag about what a terrible parent I am for keeping the girls tied to my apron strings (the idea that they chose to out here to help with the property, and their disabled father, just doesn’t sink in with her), and so on. I tried to explain to her about the problems with her behaviour. The truth is, I’d love for my mother to come and visit. I’d love to be able to show her the progress we’ve made, and talk about our plans. But that is not anything my mother has any interest in.

One of the things I’d showed her on my phone was some video I’d taken of the tree that fell on the outhouse, then of the swaying of the trees. She commented on all the “dry” trees (the dead spruces), and I said we need to cut them down. She asked if I’d talked to my brother about this and I told her, yes (I’d already told her I’d sent him the video), and that we’d be cutting down the dead trees. Then I corrected myself and said that it would mostly be my younger daughter doing that.

At which point, my mother started saying that using a chain saw was a “man’s job”, and she can’t do that. I told her, Mom, anyone can use a chainsaw. But that’s a man’s work! I should get my brother to do it!

So… we aren’t doing enough, because we’re not doing things the way she wants them to be done, but we’re also not supposed to be doing any “men’s work” because we’re female.

Well, at least this time, she didn’t go on about how sorry she feels for me, not having a man around the house.

I guess, because my husband is disabled, he’s not a man anymore?

She says awful stuff like that all the time, but when I tried to explain that people don’t want to be around her because of this, she twisted things around to make herself as the victim and me as the big meany.

Not a good way to end the visit.

I did have somewhere else to go, though. I’d made arrangements with a homesteading friend to buy some eggs. She wasn’t going to be home, so they were going to be tucked into a safe spot outside, where I could also leave the payment. I didn’t want the eggs to be outside in this heat for long – when I started writing this, we were at 23C/73F, with the humidex putting it at 28C/83F, and it was hotter where my mother lives than here – so I wanted to leave as soon as I could. I actually got there before my friend had left, so we even got to catch up for a bit – and she gave me extra eggs, because she needed the room in her fridge! 😄

I was considering whether or not I could continue on the bed once I got home, but there’s no way I can do that kind of work in this level of heat and humidity. It will wait until the morning.

Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter by the afternoon, and we’re supposed to get more rain in the evening.

*sigh*

I’d really like just a few day’s break in the rain, so the ground and dry up a bit and we can try mowing some lawn again. At least the parts we managed to do, previously, since the taller stuff is just too wet. We’d need probably a week without rain before we could do anything about those areas.

Or a couple of cows to graze the outer yard for a week or two!

We really need some grazing animals! As long as we could keep them out of the garden beds, I’d be letting them graze in the main garden area. That would be good for the soil, too.

My daughter wants sheep, for their fleece, as she wants to spin her own yarn. I would like a couple of milk goats. That would be on top of the chickens I want to get!

We’ll get there. It might take a while, but we’ll get there.

For now, building up the garden beds is the main focus.

My brother and I were both saying how we don’t remember there ever being so much water in the yard before. Even when it flooded, a couple of springs ago, it didn’t get this bad. Yes, the flooding was more severe in places, but the ground didn’t get saturated right up to the house, and stay saturated for so long, like it is now! Every time it rains, the standing water returns, because the ground it just too saturated to absorb it. This, even though we have high drainage in our soil, what with it being basically gravel with a few inches of top soil.

Oh! I found an excellent picture of what our soil is like, at this web site.

This image belongs to Joselito (Lito) M. Arocena, UNBC and was taken in Edmonton, Alberta, but it’s exactly what we’ve got here, too. If there is any different I could find, it would be that we have more small rocks in between the second and third layers.

I keep hitting them with the garden fork or spade, while shifting the beds!

Yet another reason why raised beds are the way to go for our gardening!

For now, I just want to get these last two beds done, and get the last of the transplants in. If there’s room for direct sowing, that would be bonus, at this point.

The Re-Farmer

Low raised bed progress

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I was able to get some progress on shifting the next low raised bed, while it was still cooler, this morning.

My focus was on breaking raw ground and flipping sod in the area the bed will be shifted to. I’d only done about a foot at one end, last night. I was able to turn all the sod in the marked off area with only a few interruptions, like breaking up a cat fight! I was hitting a lot more rocks with the garden fork in this bed, compared to others! With so many, I only took the time to toss out the larger ones.

By the time it was done, things were starting to get hot, so I stopped there. The next step will be to move enough of the soil from the bed’s current location to be able to set out the boards marking where the logs will be. Then the soil will be moved to the permanent location.

For now, however, the turned soil will be left for the feed roots to bake in the sun. I’ll pull out the biggest ones as I continue, but most of the smaller roots should get killed off just from being exposed to heat and drying out.

I’m hoping to get this bed done and the last tomatoes transplanted, fairly quickly. This afternoon, we’ll be heading out to get birthday pizza. Along the way, we need to go to the Purolator drop off in my mother’s town. Our 4 pound bucket of lysine is in! Tomorrow (Friday), I’ll be going to my mother’s to help her with groceries, which usually takes up most of the day. The forecast now says rain on Saturday, but not until the evening.

Still lots to get done!

The Re-Farmer

ps: I was about to publish this, when I saw movement on the critter cam. Was it the mama going to the babies?

No!

It was a racoon, looking for kibble!

I used the critter cam to shoo it out, only to see a skunk run past the sunroom door after the racoon ran out.

Still no mama visiting the babies.

😢