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!
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.
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 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.
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.
I got a late start to the day, unfortunately. I just didn’t get to sleep until sometime past 3am.
What got me going was nothing pleasant, though. The septic pump was running and not shutting off again. I checked the filter, and it was running dry, so I shut it off. After priming the filter and turning it back on again, it just drained the filter and kept running dry.
We’ve got an old garden hose with a missing male coupling set up in the basement, just for times like this. It’s hooked up to the cold water tap that the washing machine used to be hooked up to, before the laundry set up got moved upstairs. Every now and then, I run it through the drain in the floor, towards the septic tank. There is a bottleneck it always hits, roughly under the basement wall. It takes some wiggling and shifting before the end of the hose can get through what opening is left. Usually, from there, it’s clear to the tank. Lately, though, it’s been hitting another barrier. This morning, I wasn’t able to get through it with the hose. When testing out the septic pump, though, it was working as normal again, so I left it.
I’ll get back to that, later!
Once outside (and after playing with any kittens that would let me!), I started on transplanting shallots with the peppers in the high raised bed. I kept forgetting to do that, and I didn’t want it to be forgotten again!
I considered doing the yellow onions, instead – none of those have been transplanted, yet! – but decided against it. They will form larger bulbs than the shallots, and I figured they would do better with more space than the shallots need.
One thing about the cover being sized to fit the box beds in the east yard: the frame is narrower, but longer, than the high raised bed. Which means there’s contact with the logs in only 4 small spots. This meant I didn’t have to worry about squishing any of the transplants when I put it back on. This cover has fencing wire on it, and a larger mesh. I am hoping that, as the peppers get taller, they can grow into the fencing wire arch, which will support them, while their growing habit should still leave enough light and air for the shallots to grow.
We’ll see if this actually works out!
With those done, the next priority was getting the Zucca melon in, and for that, I had to set up the kiddie pool as a garden bed.
We used it to grow melons last year, so it already has drainage holes in the bottom. I added a fairly thick layer of grass clippings on the bottom. This should act as a bit of a sponge to hold water, before it finally drains out, as it breaks down.
For the soil, I “stole” several wheelbarrow loads from the last bed that needs to be shifted over. The alternative was to push my way through the overgrown grass to the pile of garden soil in the outer yard with the wheel barrow, and sifting each load.
The soil in this bed just needs weeding, not sifting, and most of the weeds had deep tap roots. Aside from the tree roots and a bit of crab grass, it didn’t take long to weed the soil after it was loosened with a garden fork, then shoveling it into the wheelbarrow, where I could get any other weeds and roots I might have missed.
I had to remind myself not to fill the wheelbarrow as much as usual. The soil is still quite moist, making it a lot heavier than usual. All that meant was that it took three loads instead of two, to fill the kiddie pool deep enough.
Finally, the zucca melon could be planted! These can grow melons up to 60 pounds in weight. If they actually grow this year, they should need take up a lot of space! Last year, they were in the bed where the bare root strawberries went last year. The plants never thrived, and what melons began to from, started to rot and die before getting more than 6 or 8 inches long. After prepping the bed for the strawberries, I now know that bed was being choked out by elm roots, too. This won’t happen with the kiddie pool as a raised bed. Last year, the pool was set up and the end of one of the beds I’ve been working on, quite close to the elms and maple. When I cleaned it up in the fall, there were no tree roots in it at all, unlike the fabric grow bags! So hopefully, this year, the Zucca melon will actually have a chance to grow and thrive!
Once that was done, it was time to go inside for lunch. As I was eating, I realized I was hearing the septic pump … and it wasn’t shutting off!
So I hid my food from the cats and headed for the basement. After priming the filter a few times, and it would still run dry, I tried pushing the hose through the floor drain again.
It did not work out very well at all.
First, I couldn’t get past the nearer bottleneck. After much fighting, I finally got it through the opening, but then it hit the second bottle neck, and that was it. It would not go past and into the tank.
Unfortunately, to do this, I was absolutely killing my left arm. Yes, I’m mostly ambidextrous, but if I need to do anything that requires a higher level of control or strength, I use my left arm. It was absolutely brutal on my damaged elbow.
I finally gave up, left septic pump off, and headed back upstairs. The fact that I hadn’t finished eating and was still very hungry did not help!
After cleaning myself up and finishing lunch, I went back at it, this time with a daughter. I still couldn’t get the hose through at the floor drain, and neither could my daughter. We ended up getting the tool kit so we could open the access pipe, instead. Normally, these can just be opened with a special screw cap – bronze, in our case – but that is fused in place. The entire top needs to be removed, and that’s held in place with screw clamps around strip of rubber and… some kind of finely corrugated metal that I think is aluminum.
So we got that pulled off and tried again with running the hose through. It worked much better, this time! We got through the first bottleneck fairly easily, and it was only a bit more effort to get through the second bottleneck. Finally, we were able to push the hose all the way into the tank!
At which point I went outside and opened the lid to take a look.
Do you know that it’s very hard to see anything when looking into a dark tank in bright sunshine? Meanwhile, I was being totally paranoid and holding my glasses against my face every time I tried to lean over and see. Finally, a cloud passed over the sun, and I could see!
But what did I see?
Well, I could eventually figure out where the float was. There’s a lot of gunk floating at the top, but I could see a couple of spot with flowing water in them – that would be water from the weeping tile, since no one in the household was using water at the time. I got my daughter to try wiggling the hose around, but I still couldn’t see it. It was somewhere under the gunk.
What I think is happening is, as the pump runs and the liquid level drops, the float is probably getting hung on something. Something that running the hose through manages to knock loose, finally allowing the float to drop and trigger the pump to stop running.
As I closed up the tank and went back inside, my daughter kept working with the hose. She could actually feel when she managed to knock something out of the way. I turned the water on, and she kept at it for a while. The septic pump turned on while she was doing this, and we could see water flowing through the filter, so this was now running as normal.
After she was done with that, I took over and ran the hose in the floor drain, towards the weeping tile under the new part basement floor. We know the weeping tile in the north corner is somehow messed up. Plus, we get tree roots growing through. We could see the water turn silty while I pushed the hose, with the water running, as far as it could go.
Once that was done, I decided to not bother tightening the cap on the access pipe again, since we will likely be running a hose through there, instead of the floor drain, regularly. So my daughter put away the tools and headed out while I closed things up and hung the hose back up where we store it. There’s quite a bit of water on the floor, with all the rain we’ve been having, the floor is damp or flooded in places, even with all the fans and blowers running.
Our electric bill is going to be brutal. With the equal payment plan, I won’t be surprised of the monthly payments don’t jump quite a bit, and not just because they’re increasing the price per kw, either.
That all took way longer than it should have, and I was very frustrated.
My husband, meanwhile, helped the only way he could… and I’m torn about it.
He used his Amazon credit card to buy me a commercial level drain auger, so we won’t be fighting with a hose. I don’t know that it will clear the nearer bottleneck, though. I fear that is the cast iron pipe collapsing, and that running an auger through would damage it more. That would really mess us up, since repairing that would probably require breaking through the concrete floor in the basement, and excavating between the basement wall and the septic tank outside, to replace it.
*sigh*
I don’t even want to think of it.
That done, and the water flowing through properly again, I needed to destress.
For me, that means manual labour! Yay!
I headed back outside (topped of the cat food for the evening, played with a kitten…) and to the garden.
We had reached the hottest part of the day by then, and I realized I’d forgotten about the melon bed. We have a few small piles of straw mulch from last year that I raided.
The Zucca got watered after transplanting, of course, but after the mulch was laid down, I gave that a good soaking, too. I had considered putting a jug in the middle for watering, like with the pumpkins and drum gourds, but using the kiddie pool as a raised bed, with the grass clipping base, makes that unnecessary. It will take a while for water to drain, so the Zucca roots should find all the water they need before it finished draining.
I soaked down the mulch on the other beds, too.
Last of all, I started working on shifting the next low raised bed. That meant breaking new ground where the bed will be shifted over, and turning the sod, first.
I didn’t get very far. It was just too hot!
So I’ve left it for now.
My current plan is to try going to bed early, and hopefully actually falling asleep, so that I can get an early start tomorrow. This bed should go much faster than the last one, as it’s nowhere near as weed filled. I want to get at least a few hours in, in the morning. It’s supposed to get a lot hotter than today, in the afternoon. Which makes it a good time for us to do our combined birthday/father’s day pizza night, courtesy of my older daughter.
Based on the current forecasts, we’re supposed to get hotter every day until Monday (it’s Wednesday, today), but not get any rain until Saturday evening. After Monday, it will cool down a little, with no other rain in the 10 day forecast.
We shall see.
We’re in the final stretch to get things in the ground! For transplants, it’s just those last few San Marzano tomatoes, the yellow onions and a few shallots, and the Orange Butterfly Flower. Those have to go somewhere where they can be treated as a perennial, and I’m not sure where that will be just yet!
For all the garden plans we made over the winter, we’re basically flying by the seat of our pants right now.
There is one white and grey with a distinctive line of darker colour beside one eye. That one is more comfortable with contact, and I was able to pick it up and cuddle it. I was seeing the other two – one that has markings that are more black than grey, and another white and grey.
I turned to do something, with the one kitten in the sun room with me, when I turned back to the cat shelters and noticed three kittens playing around! The mama brought over her last baby! I didn’t see the mama, but I had heard her calling to her kittens, distracting the one I was paying attention to at the time.
After all this time, I was sure we’d never see that fourth kitten again, yet there it is!
Working on the garden bed later one had a different distraction, and one that I quite enjoyed. I heard a utility vehicle driving around beyond the outer yard and, when it sounded closer, I went over to see. The renter was checking the fence line in preparation for rotating their cows to this quarter section. I had a nice chat with her, and even showed her around the inner yard to see what we’ve been doing – and the tree that fell on the outhouse! She told me she found some trees fallen on the fence line, but nothing she wasn’t able to just move aside, herself.
The weather we’ve been having has made things difficult for them, too. Normally, they would have planted in the field on our quarter section by now, but they’ve missed the window of opportunity because of the rains, and how muddy the field is. They might just leave it fallow this year or, possibly, plant some sort of cover crop.
After our bit of a visit, it was back to sifting soil. I got about half way done when I stopped for lunch.
Before I’d gone outside, I’d restarted my June Garden Tour video upload. I figured it would be done by the time I got back inside.
It was at only 53%.
???
What the heck?
I left it running as I had my lunch and checked again.
56%
My husband came by around then and I expressed my frustration. It’s only a 26-27 minute long video. I’ve uploaded videos, with the same quality settings, before and had no issue. I even did a speed test, and saw no reason why my upload would be taking so long.
He asked about the file size, which I didn’t know exactly. I figured it would be about what my other videos were. I did some looking and comparing.
It was 20 gigs.
The last garden tour video I uploaded wasn’t as long, and it was just over 1 gig.
I exported the draft again. According to the software, the exported file size could range from 740 mb to 2.7 gigs, based on the default settings I use.
It saved at 20 gigs again.
So I’m trying again. This time, I went into the advanced settings and lowered the quality. The software now tells me the exported file should be between 530 mb and 1.89 gigs.
I’m trying to think of reasons for this. About the only thing I can think of is that I used my current phone to make the recordings that went into the video. When doing videos where I set up the tripod, I use an older phone of my that is currently being used just for recording on a tripod. The newer phone allows for higher quality images and video, hence larger file sizes. Which would make sense, except that I use this phone to record hand held video. Plus, the software goes by the file sizes in the draft video, as well as the quality settings, when it gives an estimate for the finished video being exported. The size range it gives is pretty wide, but the final file size shouldn’t be almost 10 times the high end of the estimate!
I also deleted, rather than overwrote, the previous file this time. It’s now taking longer to export than when I tried it earlier. The export is taking longer this time, so maybe that will also make a difference.
Well, we’ll see what we get this time.
I hate having to reduce the quality of a video like that, though.
If this worked out, I’ll set it to upload again, and hopefully will actually be able to share a video with you, soon!
The Re-Farmer
(oh! It just finished exporting. The new file size is just over 3 gigs now. Time to actually watch it and see how much quality was lost!)
Okay, so yesterday was a bit of a blowout, and I got very little done on the bed that needed to be shifted to its permanent position, before it can be planted in.
This morning, the goal was to get out there by 6am, and I almost got it! We discovered some cat destruction and cleaning that up delayed things a bit. My older daughter, sweetheart that she is, made me a hearty breakfast. She has fully switched over to sleeping days and working nights, so this time of the morning is when she and her sister usually share a meal before she heads to bed for the day. I’m usually not up this early! At least, not on purpose.
So it was about 6:30 before I finally got started on the bed and, my goodness, what a difference it made! The morning was still wonderfully cool, making the work so much easier. Especially since this part of the main garden area is already in full sun at this time.
The first thing to do was finish breaking new soil inside the area the bed will be shifted to. The only think I could really do at this point was turn the sod over, root side up. I was able to pull out the largest of the tap roots, and some clumps of sod just got tossed towards the trees. If this were just a lawn, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but this is all crab grass, dandelions and creeping Charlie. Simply flipping the sod wasn’t going to be enough.
Once the new ground was broken, I have to figure out what to do with the soil in the raised bed. Most of it is in what will be a new path. It still had some mulch left on it for the winter, so I took as much of that off as I could. It won’t be useable as a mulch anymore, though. Too much creeping Charlie mixed in with it. I ended up spreading it near the end of the bed that was most recently planted in, where it will eventually be covered with cardboard or landscaping cloth, if I can get some, and wood chips.
I decided to just clear the soil from marker to marker, moving it aside to make room for the boards that will be laid down where the log frames will eventually go. The sod was just piled on top of the rest of the bed for now. The soil on this side of the bed is clear of creeping Charlie enough that I will actually sift it, later on, and salvage as much as I can. We’ve spent years amending this soil. It’ good stuff!
At this point, I finally had a 4′ x 18′ rectangle of turned soil, full of weed roots.
I had been collecting cardboard intended to be used for the paths, but this bed needed it more. I used every scrap I could, and just managed to cover the area, though not to the edges. The cardboard got a good soaking, tromped on, then soaked some more.
Once that was down, I used boards to mark the boarder of the bed, where the log frame will go.
Then I soaked it all again.
I had a bit of clean straw left from something else available. “Clean” being a relative term. Everything as those elm seeds all over. I scattered it on the carboard, then got some grass clippings to cover the cardboard completely.
Then I soaked it all again.
By this point, about 2, 2 1/2 hours had passed, and it was time for a break.
We are looking at a high of 25C/77F this afternoon. I’ve decided I’m going to let that soil piled on the side bake in the sun for a while, then sift it and start moving as much of get bed’s soil over the grass clippings as I can. Hopefully, I won’t need to get more soil from the pile to top it up.
I’ve decided to take advantage of the time and make a trip to get more cat food, and possibly a few other things. My daughters need to replace their box fan upstairs. It’s unfortunate there was no way to set up the air conditioner my brother gave us up there. It’s needed up there way more than anywhere else in the house! The heat is why my daughter has to work nights; otherwise, her computer and drawing tablet overheat and start randomly shutting down or glitching out. During the day, they set up the box fan in the south window to blow the hot air out. They have other fans, but that one in the window makes the biggest difference.
So that’s the next thing on my to-do list.
Time to get changed and head out.
The Re-Farmer
ps: I almost forgot to mention. The kittens are gone! I saw them in the sun room in the morning, but by the afternoon, they were gone. They are still gone. The mama has moved them somewhere pretty far afield. It’s a shame. The kittens were really liking the run room!
As for Broccoli and her babies, I don’t see them when I bring kibble to the shed, but yesterday evening, I saw Broccoli chilling on one of the old benches, while her kittens played nearby. This morning, the kibble inside the door was gone. They may not be inside the shed anymore, but they might be under it.
We did get one thing done this morning; the Dwarf Korean Lilac is kicking into full bloom, so we finally got our group picture done. By the time we finished that, it was coming up on 9am, and that’s when I finally started on the next garden bed.
As an aside, though, it looks like the kittens in the sun room, and the old garden shed, have been moved. I saw the kittens this morning, at feeding time, but by the time I was coming in from the garden, they were gone. I’m hoping they’re just staying cool under the cat house. Unfortunately, we’ve seen both skunks and racoons going for the kibble today, and that might have been just too much for the mama. As for the garden shed babies, I left food inside the door, but saw and heard nothing from the back.
We shall see if they’re still around somewhere.
The main thing I wanted to work on today was that next garden bed.
I’ve been really dreading this one. In the end, I decided all I can really do is work on the area that was path, first, and just flip the sod. There’s no way it can be properly weeded. It’s not even worth trying to sift it.
I started at the north end of the bed, where it has been extended to 18′, but only got maybe 2 1/2-3 feet of sod turned. Around then, I got a message from my husband, asking when I was planning to go to the post office to pick up some parcels. I had originally thought to do it after I’d turned the bed, but it was already 19C/66F, and I was baking in the sun. My app said the “feels like” was also 19C/66F.
It lies.
So I stopped at that point and picked up the parcels. I now have my tips for my new impact driver! A really good range of shapes and sizes, too.
After I got back, my daughter made us lunch – cold chicken salad sandwiches, because no one wants to cook in this heat! My daughter is still recovering from arm damage, trying to mow the lawn with the push mower. Yesterday, her grip strength was so non existent, she actually had to ask me to finished changing the toilet roll for her, because she couldn’t squeeze the stretch spindle enough to fit it back into the holder. Today, she is much improved.
Which is great, because I needed her help with the riding mower, after lunch.
The last time I used it, last year, it was only the second use after my brother had fixed and upgraded all sorts of things on it and brought it back, when I stopped the mower to move something out of the way, and then it wouldn’t move. The engine was still running. There was just no go, forward or reverse. I didn’t want to bug my brother about it, so we just used the push mower for the rest of the season.
The challenge for us was how to safely look under it to see what was going on. When this happened before, there was a chain that fell off. My brother got that replaced and adjusted a number of things to ensure it would not happen again. I figured, that must have somehow fallen off again.
With the truck, however, we now have a way to get a look under the riding mower. We opened the tail gate and set up the ramps my brother gifted to us. Then we pushed the mower onto the ramps, then blocked the wheels, so we could safely look under it.
Well. Under the front of it.
After not finding the problem from there, we reversed it, so that the engine was up the ramp. That was rather more difficult to manage, because of the weight distribution. Even blocking the front tires didn’t want to work as well, since they wanted to turn and roll off, anyhow!
We got it secured, though, and my daughter ended up crawling under it to see. She found a loose belt that the pedal at the front should have been engaging. After fighting with it for a while, she asked me to fight with the pedal, to see if I could get it to lift up more, rather than push down. Which I was able to do, and that gave her the slack she needed to get the belt on. We tested it out (after charging the battery!) and it worked!
I started some mowing while my daughter put stuff away and went back inside, but not for very long. It was just too hot. So I parked the mower in the shade and took a hydration break. When I came back out to continue, I made sure to have a wet towel to drape over my shoulders to help keep cooler. It really helped a lot.
The poor riding mower was really struggling. The grass is so tall, it’s going to see, but there are some types of grass in the driveway area that is different, and more fibrous. This old mower just doesn’t have the juice to handle them. Sometimes, if I go just a couple of inches forward at a time, I can get through without it getting too overworked, or getting clogged. In a few places, I would have to go over the same patch several times, and even reverse over it, before getting it properly cut. It seems counterintuitive, but it seems to work better when I have the blades set lower, rather than higher. You’d think I could go over it at the highest setting, then lower it for another pass, then lower it again for a final pass, but nope. When it’s higher, the blades just bend the grass, without cutting anything!
Meanwhile, the grass is still pretty wet and not trying out, because it’s so tall, so things clog up, too. After my second mowing session, I parked the mower in the shade to cool down, then used the hose to try and wash off anything stuck around the blades. I’ll head out again to try and mow a bit more. There’s no way I’m getting more done on the garden bed today. We’re at 24C/75F, and the humidex puts it at 28C/82F. It’s not going to start cooling down until about 8pm – three hours from now – and won’t reach reasonable temperatures until maybe midnight. If I’m going to get progress done on the beds, I’m going to have to be out there, digging, at 6am.
Which means I’ll be doing a bit more mowing before putting the riding mower away, then heading to bed early. The problem is, even if I head to bed early, that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to sleep! I tried that last night, and had all sorts of disruptions keeping me up. 😢
Meanwhile, I am totally behind on visiting blogs, so if you’ve got a blog that I follow and you haven’t heard from me lately, I’ve just not been able to spend the time online for it! I’ll have a lot of catching up to do, when I finally get the chance.
I started getting messages from the Cat Lady while I was writing this. There’s a cheap spay day coming up, and she wanted to know if we have cats to do. Of course we do, but the ones we can catch are all male. She will contact the clinic and see if they are good with a group of males. The rescue will cover the costs completely.
Oh, and her youngest daughter has a birthday coming up. The Cat Lady asked her if she wanted cash, or a new bike, for her birthday. She wanted neither.
She wants the Wolfman!
They’ve already got so many of our cats, permanently! We were afraid this would happen!
Anyhow…
When she hears back from the vet about doing males, she’ll get back to me, and let me know how many they can cover.
If we can get Sad Face done, that would make a huge difference. Hopefully, it would reduce his aggressive behaviors! It took 5 years to be able to pet him. Getting him into a carrier right now is something else entirely.
Well, time to get back outside and to a bit more mowing, then call it a night, so I can get that bed done tomorrow. We seriously need to get those last transplants in!
Well, I was able to get the frame of the low raised bed in place – it’s as done as it’s going to be, at this point. Tomorrow, transplanting needs to happen in there.
I got that second 18′ log debarked, but that got done after I found a way to move the first one into place.
The smaller logs that will be used as vertical trellis supports came in very handy! I used them as rollers, to drag the log across. The 4′ log at one end also made it easier to drag the side log into place, though it kept wanting to roll up the hill of soil!
These beds will be 4′ wide on the outside, so I had to make sure the log was positioned on the inside of the markers. The side I lay this log down on used to be part of the path, so it was still pretty compacted.
After debarking the second 18′ log, it was easier to drag into place, since I just needed to get it in the path next to the high raised bed, then roll it into place. This side is where part of the newly widened path was garden bed. Not only was the soil under there softer, but I hadn’t shifted the weeded soil over quite far enough. I had to spend some time pulling soil away from that side until I could finally roll the log into place, and have it inside the markers.
The 4′ end logs were butted up against the side logs, and that’s as far as they’re going to be done at this point.
Eventually, notches will be cut into the ends of the 4′ logs that the 18′ logs will fit into. Then I’ll use an auger bit to drill through the notched ends and drive a metal rod through, to hold them together.
But first, more work needs to be done.
The soil under the logs needs to be leveled out a bit, and there are gaps in places that need to be filled in. I’m also hoping to get a hold of more cardboard. Lots more. Landscape cloth would be better, but I can get cardboard for free. I want to cover the paths with cardboard, then layer wood chips on top, and I’d like part of the carboard to be under the logs. That will require rolling the logs aside, or lifting them, to get the cardboard under. So final assembly will have to wait.
Meanwhile, I weeded, loosened and leveled the soil hill inside the bed, making sure to NOT pull the soil all the way to the logs. There’s just enough space to work in.
I’m shooting to get up earlier in the morning and start transplanting squash, while it’s still cooler. We’re supposed to reach a high of 20C/68F tomorrow. As the forecast reads right now, we will start getting rain at 11pm tomorrow, and it will continue to rain until 7am on Tuesday. So I should be able to get more progress in transplanting during the day on Tuesday. Wednesday is now supposed to be rain free, with a couple of hours of possible showers late Thursday afternoon. Hopefully, that will give lots of time to get more progress.
As for the stuff that has already been transplanted, everything is looking just fine. Hopefully, that means little to no transplant shock!
I’m really feeling time flying through my fingers right now, so I just made a point of seeing where we were at in the garden, at this time last year.
We also had brought Decimus in with her babies at this time. Which means that Clarence, Shadow in the Dark, Mitsy and Tin Whistle are officially a year old now. Ghosty is a touch older.
Wow. We were sure hoping to have found forever homes for them all, long ago! 😢
Ah, well.
Anyhow…
So it looks like we’re at almost the exact same stage in the garden as we were last year! We used a lot of grow bags last year, but they are currently being used as beds by Broccoli’s kittens!
There’s one very good thing about rain we’ve been having.
Last year at this time, the air was full of smoke from wildfires burning all over. There are currently 5 fires burning in our province right now, all way up north, and all listed as under control.
A most welcome bonus with all that rain!
Okay, time for me to start getting ready for an early bed time, and an early rise tomorrow!
The Re-Farmer 