progress

This and that

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I seem to still be in recovery mode today, even after taking yesterday as a day of rest. I tend to forget just how draining it can be after spending time with my mother, even when she’s having one of her better days!

It’s also working out to be a hotter day. We’ve got a high of 26C/79F for today and tomorrow and, depending on what app I’m looking at, we’ll be hitting either 29C/84 or 31C/88F by the end of the week.

I did get at least one thing accomplished – finally! I cut away the web of roots and got the water pipe out from where I’d tried patching it, to the tap.

It took more digging and cutting to find the bottom of the tap and cut it free!

The only thing holding it upright was the web of roots, and that length of conduit pipe.

The short sections of rigid pipe were filled with dirt and roots. A couple of them had to be blasted with water before I could get them off the water pipe.

I did find where water can been coming out, when I did the patches and tested the tap. Quite a split in the pipe!

How the ground pipe was joined to the tap pipe was not what I expected. I thought there might be some sort of threaded connector. The metal pipe is jammed into the water pipe – and it is still very water tight, and very secure! I’ll probably have to cut it off, if I bother to at all.

I would like to use the original tap again. Even parts of the original metal pipe, too, if I can. However, my intended replacement for all this is to use an ordinary, heavy duty garden hose that can be easily removed, as needed. The dirt and roots in the short sections of pipe reinforce my plan to have a long pipe, from house to tap, to protect the hose.

For now, however, I will not remove the rest of the pipe, to the house. There are going to be much larger roots to cut through, plus it runs through a higher traffic area that gets regularly mowed, so I don’t want to dig a trench until I’m ready to put in the new system. I’m very interested in seeing how that hose end that comes out of the ground is attached to the water pipe!

So, for this project I need to get a long enough heavy duty hose, enough pipe, with drainage holes, to fit together and reach from house to tap, angled fittings for the ends that will get a removeable seal around the hose to prevent water, dirt or critters from getting in, and appropriate pipes and fittings to attach the hose to the tap assembly. For the tap itself, I want to build a box for the vertical pipe with the tap mounted on the garden side. I liked the original post’s little roof over the tap and will probably expand on that, to double as a shelf or something. The box will have a door at the back to access the hose and pipes, with room enough to store a few things, like the cord that will be used to pull the hose through the underground pipes, should it ever need to be removed, repaired or replaced.

Once this is installed and complete, I plan to make a vegetable washing station under the tap, using salvaged materials I’ve found around the property.

Hopefully, by the time it’s done, it’ll be good enough to last another 50 years or so.

After I finished up with the tap and hose set up, I headed towards the house and checked out the old kitchen garden. I was finally able to get a photo of one of the developing luffa.

I’ve been able to spot three of these. Hopefully, they have been pollinated and will develop into mature luffa gourds before we get frost. These are so high up, there’s no possibility of hand pollinating!

Before heading back to the house, I had an adorable surprise.

Tiny, familiar kittens.

Octomom had brought them to the house!

I only saw 4 of them, including this one.

They still can’t move very fast, so I was able to catch this one and hold it for a little while. This one is completely black. I saw the other black one, and it appears to have a white patch on its chest. I also saw the brown and the grey tabbies. Where the other 4 are, I could not see. Eventually, Octomom came around for them, but only two followed her across the yard. The rest were still hiding under the storage house.

While I was outside, I started to get some messages from the Cat Lady. She was at the vet with the kittens, and the prognosis is not good. They would have died within the week, she was told. As it is, they have a cat virus (calci), herpes, low glucose, low oxygen, pneumonia, infected ears and sores in their throats. The kittens have been at the vet all day, and the bill is getting high. I feel so bad about this. We were only going to pass on the one kitten, so now it’s double the expense for her, and we have no way to help out.

Priority is going to be spaying and neutering, because a lot of this is exacerbated by the sheer number of kittens.

Oh, wow!! Something just happened while I was writing this!

Two Toes is letting Tin Whistle nurse!

I had been expecting the kittens to at least try to nurse on her, since Decimus leaves the room once she’s done with nursing, and batting them away when they want to nurse more. They had not been trying, though, nor did Two Toes, until just moments ago!

Two Toes is doing really well. She seems quite happy, loves head pets, and gave me kisses today!

Whatever fight she was in that left her with a broken leg, the fur on her face and head is full of scabs that are healing well.

The only down side is poor Snarly Marlee! She does NOT like the kittens. The girls try to bring her into the living room for a while, so she can get a break, while they are there.

Hopefully, it won’t be for much longer. It would be fantastic if we could adopt them all out!

The Re-Farmer

Painting and log prep progress

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My trip to pick up a parcel ended up taking longer than expected. It was a Purolator delivery, which now delivers to our post office, if we use their address, and we pick it up from there. Other times, we’ve had to go to town to pick it up, or to the slightly further town my mother lives in.

Not this time!

For some reason, they decided to drop it off at another, even further, town to the north of us.

Then didn’t tell us.

If the shipping address is just a box number, they call us and ask which depot to drop it off in. My husband got no such call. He didn’t even know it was coming by Purolator. When he placed the order, he thought it was coming by mail. They’re not very good about informing how things will be delivered!

Ah, well. It was just a bit of an extra drive. I still got to pick up the mail, where I found our seed packet arrived, in advance of the crocuses we ordered, as well as my subscription shipment of lysine for the outside cats.

Once I got home, I was soon heading outside to get ready to paint the stump bench and folding table, which included hosing them down and giving them a scrub. I left them to dry while setting up the paint supplies, only to hear a strange noise in the leaves above me.

It was starting to rain!

Of course… 😄

It wasn’t much, but that was okay. I was planning to work on the trellis bed logs while the bench and table dried, anyhow.

I’ll start with the logs.

I wanted to start with the largest log that is going to be a bottom log in the bed. The other large one we recently cut might be an issue. It has a bend in it that I’m either going to have to work around, or find a straighter dead tree of the right size.

I brought over one of our saw horses to make debarking easier. I love that draw knife! The hard part was at the wide end. It just did not want to roll over and stay put, so I could do the underside! It took some fighting, and a handy wedge shaped rock to keep it from rolling back, but eventually, I got it all done.

The next step will be to hose it down, then trim away the branch nubs and other lumps, before moving on to the next log.

Ideally, I would char this before setting it in the ground, but to char a log this size all over, I would need a torch of some kind, and I don’t have one. Still, just debarking it will help, and all the bits of bark will be part of the garden bed layers.

By the time this was done, what little rain we had was long gone, and the bench and table were dry. Here are the before and after pictures.

I debarked the stump supporting the bench, too, then pressure sprayed it with the hose. It really should have been debarked when the bench was first made. I found sawdust and ant damage under the bark. Not enough to affect the stability of the stump, yet. It’ll hold that bench for a few more years!

I did not paint the stump or the end supports. Once all the greenery grows back, it should look like the bench is just floating.

These will get at least one more coat of paint before they’re done. If the forecasts are at all accurate, I should be able to do that tomorrow afternoon, then more rain supposed to hit our area.

It feels good to finally get at least a bit more progress on those trellis bed logs! This project is taking so much longer than it should have. 😕

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: how does the garden grow?

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I had a couple of surprised while going my rounds this morning. The first were these…

Two more volunteer potatoes have popped up!

The one in the straw would be from the All Blue potatoes we planted there last year. The one by the log would be from the Bridget we planted last year.

I also found some ladies!

Plant ladies, that is.

I don’t know why Instagram doesn’t sort the pictures in the order I upload them. I also don’t know why some of the files end up corrupted. They look fine when I upload them, but after I hit publish, I’ll find one with issues. Ah, well.

In the above slideshow are:

Caveman’s Club gourd: There have been male flowers for a while, so if these female flower buds survive long enough to bloom, there should be male flowers around to pollinate them.

Montana Morado corn silk: Finally! The tassels have been up and many already dropping pollen, but this is the first – and, so far, only – corn silk that has shown up. I was really starting to wonder. The Tom Thumb popcorn has tassels, too, but also had silk show up not long after. With the purple corn, there’s a much larger gap in time between them!

Goldy Zucchini: This one little yellow zucchini has been here for a few days now. It doesn’t seem to be getting any bigger, but the other flower buds seem to be at the same stage. This is the only surviving yellow zucchini plant, and the slugs are just all over it, so it’s not thriving. There had been a second one that germinated in the same hill and was starting to develop its true leaves, but there’s very little left of it anymore. I don’t know why the slugs like this one plant so much!

Honeyboat Delicata: Finding a female flower in full bloom was a very nice surprise! Unfortunately, there are zero male flowers on any of the other Honeyboat Delicata. I ended up taking a male flower from another squash to pollinate it by hand. That should be good enough for the fruit to actually develop, but we won’t be able to save seeds from it, as they would be a hybrid. Mind you, maybe we want a Delicata/hulless pumpkin hybrid. 😄

It looks like we may actually get winter squash this year. Because they are all planted near each other, any squash we get will be cross pollinated. I’m hoping we will at least be able to have mature squash to taste, and see which ones we like the most. After that, we can focus on just growing one or two varieties we like, in such a way that we can save seed.

And finally, one more nice little surprise.

Our first beans are starting to form.

These are volunteers in the compost heap!

I have no idea what kind they are. There are no beans that we planted last year that could have ended up with viable seeds in the compost pile. Also, no beans that we planted last year had green beans with pink flowers.

I am very curious about what we will get out of these, and will probably leave at least one plant unharvested, so we can see what the dry seed looks like.

Oh, and one last little update. We had the Irish Cobbler and Red Thumb baby potatoes with supper last night, and both were delicious. I just love how the Red Thumb potatoes are pink, all the way through! We’ll be leaving the rest to harvest in the fall, but at least we know they are good, and worth growing again.

We’re past the middle of July and not having the sort of harvests we expected, had we been able to plant everything we intended to, but we will have something, at least. Looking back at garden pictures for this time last year, I can at least say we’re not “behind”. It just feels like we’re behind, because I’m seeing so many people in my Zone 3 gardening groups, posting pictures of their harvests and gardens. There are very few people in those groups that are as far north as we are, it seems.

We are definitely having good progress, though. It’s been a good growing year so far, with plenty of heat, sunshine and rain – but not too much of any of those! It’s been juuuust right.

For now! 😄

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: progress, and first harvest

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I got to see some nice progress in the garden this morning.

First, the tomatoes.

The first Roma VF tomatoes that showed up are now starting to change colour from green to yellowish and now kinda orange.

I still am not sure how we’ll be able to tell when the Black Beauty and Indigo Blue Chocolates are ready to pick. They practically started out at the colours they’re supposed to be, when ripe. I guess it’ll come down to how soft they feel, and how easily they come off the vine. The very first Black Beauty tomato that showed up is getting quite large, so that’s another thing to use as a guide, I guess.

We also have squash and gourds developing – I hope!

The G-Star patty pan squash are looking big and healthy – the slugs don’t seem to like them! Here, the first flower buds are forming, with both male and females forming at the same time! With everything else, we’ve just been seeing male flowers. There is one exception. We have one yellow zucchini plant that the slugs seem to just love, but it’s surviving. There is a single female flower bud, with a bright yellow baby squash under the flower, but the male flower buds are just barely emerging. It’s unlikely the female flower will have any male flowers to pollinate it when it finally opens.

The second photo is of our very first female African Drum gourd flower bud!

I was not expecting it to be fuzzy.

A few other winter squash are also starting to show female flower buds, including the Crespo squash. Hopefully, the buds will actually reach the blooming stage. With the Crespo squash in particular, the only ones that showed up before now, dried up and fell off long before they got big enough to start blooming. They sure have a lot of male flowers, though! More than any other squash that has started blooming.

It was thundering and threatening rain while I was checking the garden beds, but I went ahead and made a first harvest, before heading in.

I dug around and gathered our first Irish Cobbler potatoes. These are from under 2 plants. There were still tiny potatoes among the roots, so I left the plants in the ground to hopefully keep growing.

I just picked enough for one meal. We’ll leave the rest to fully mature before we pick them again; there just aren’t that many plants, so the longer we leave them be, hopefully the better the harvest in the fall. We’ll likely try the Red Thumb potatoes too, but with the Purple Peruvian growing in feed bags, we’ll probably not bother with those. We’ve grown them before, anyhow, so we know what they taste like.

We had quite a lot of rain last night. Enough to refill the barrel by the sunroom to overflowing! With all the thunder I was hearing while checking the garden, I didn’t start any outdoor jobs. Instead, a daughter and I went into town to refill some water jugs and pick up a few things, including kitten kibble. I ran out of that last night. The storm I was hearing passed us by, though, so we should be able to get at least one of those frames done this evening.

For all that our garden ended up much smaller than intended for this year, I’m happy with how things have been turning out.

The Re-Farmer

Today’s progress

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Last night was another chilly one, as we went down to 9C/48F – but not chilly enough for the furnace to turn on this time! The thermostat was turned down to 10C/50F for the summer, but we never expected it to actually get lower than that!

Today we hit 26C/79F. We keep getting storm warnings, but I can’t rely in them hitting us, so I made sure to water the garden. Starting by hooking up the soaker hose and just leaving it while I made a run into town to pick up some prescription refills for myself, refill a couple of our 18.9L water jugs, and fill the tank on my mother’s car. Thankfully, the gas prices in town have not gone up with the new tax, though it has in other parts of the province, including the city. Rather backwards on that, but I’m certainly not going to complain!

I haven’t heard from the garage about our van, yet, which means he hasn’t had a chance to look at it. Thankfully, we have access to my mother’s car, so it’s no hurry.

I wasn’t going to do any heavy stuff in the heat of the day – the rest of the week is supposed to be much more reasonable! – but that just meant catching up on smaller things. While moving the hose to the different beds with sprinkler hoses, I went ahead and planted some of the Red Swan beans we have so much of, in with the purple corn. These beans are both a fresh eating and dry bean, but this late in the year, I think we can only reasonable expect to have fresh beans in what’s left of the growing season. Hopefully, they will work out with the corn to climb. I considered planting bush beans, instead, but I’d rather pick beans from higher up!

After finding the newly sprouted summer squash eaten by slugs already, I sprinkled fresh corn meal around all the squash mounds. I spotted another seedling in the next mound over, and I didn’t want that one eaten, too! I also sowed more summer squash again. If this third planting doesn’t take, that’ll be it for trying to sow them. I just came back from checking the garden beds while there was still enough light, and I did find a few slugs around a couple of squash, but that’s it. Hopefully, this new application of corn meal will be enough to keep them from returning.

Along with watering the main garden with the hose, it was time to refill the old rain barrel out by the Crespo squash and new raspberries. I’m trying to make sure the squash out there get extra water, because that corner gets so dry and sun baked. For the garden beds in the south yards, I used water from the full rain barrel by the sun room, then left the diverter off so that, if we do get more rain, it’ll get refilled.

While watering the old kitchen garden, I took the time to take the cover off the shallot bed and do a thorough weeding. The first of the poppies in there has started to open, and I can tell these are more of the Double Scarlet, not the Giant Rattle poppies we grew there before. Darn. Still, these do seem to be an eating poppy, not an ornamental one, so that’s okay.

The shallot greens were starting to get too tall for the wire cover – a problem I did not anticipate! – and were falling over too soon, so I harvested enough of the greens to take some of that weight off. Then I decided to harvest some of that mint that’s been invading our paths; it’s much taller than the ones I transplanted into the retaining wall blocks! My younger daughter might try some of the mint to flavour a panna cotta. Sounds good to me!

I also spotted our can of marking paint when I got back inside, which reminded me to head back out again and use it to mark the rocks and high roots in the southeast yard, so we can see them when mowing the lawn. We’ll have to get more of that marking paint. I finished off the can, and it has been very handy.

I made sure the kibble was topped up for the evening – I don’t want to do it too late in the day, or we’re just feeding skunks and racoons. Of course, I still saw a skunk before coming back in, just a little while ago. The kittens were also out and playing. I was able to catch and pick up another of the white and greys, and give it a cuddle. It didn’t like being picked up and put down, but it tolerated being held and snuggled just fine!

I was happy to see the tiny tuxedo enjoying the bed and stuffy the Cat Lady donated to the yard cats. There are other beds in the cat house, but these are in the water bowl shelter. Even the littlest kittens have figured out how to use the board leaning on the edge as a ramp, to drink water in there. Of course, we have water bowls at their height, but it’s good that they can get at the ones in the shelter, too.

Among the two litters that now spend so much time in the sun room, there are a couple that are white and black, very much like their mother, but one of them is most definitely a tuxedo, even tinier than the singleton! I spotted the two tuxedos playing together, and can see that it’s going to get hard to tell them apart, once they’re both adult sized!

I think I managed to get a decent amount of stuff done today, even if it wasn’t the big stuff that needs to be done, too, just yet.

The Re-Farmer

Trellis bed progress

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Finally!

With last night’s storm, I was happy to see the tree my brother cut down that got hung up on other trees had fallen closer to the ground. It’s not going to drop any further, though. It’s now hung up between the trunks of a group of trees. We can, at least, reach most of it better, though, so we’ll be able to work on it eventually.

With today’s slightly cooler weather and a nice, clear day, I started working on getting those dead spruce trees my brother cut down for me, out of the bushes.

I took photos and will eventually put it all together in a video but, for now, this is what I managed to get done today.

Gosh. That doesn’t look like much, now that it’s done! 😄 It did, however, take a LOT of prep work before these logs could finally be dragged over.

The two trees that were on the ground were almost completely hidden by underbrush. I used the weed trimmer to clear a path to them first, then did a bit around the trees themselves. There were too many hidden branches, though, so I had to shift gears.

The top of the first tree extended a lot more than I thought it did. I used the little mini-chainsaw pruner to clear the branches, then remove the most crooked section of the top, before working my way down the trunk. I had the wagon nearby to put the branches in, and made a few trips to the branch pile near the fire pit, cleaning up as I went along.

Once I got it clear enough, I was able to pull the entire trunk out from under the stuck tree, then continue removing a few more branch stubs. Next, I measured 18 feet from the thick end of the trunk, and used the electric chain saw to cut it. I used a rope to drag the top part through the trees and into the garden, which was harder than it should have been. I neglected to roll it over and check it, first. There turned out to be a stub of a broken branch at the end, acting like an anchor!

Needless to say, I made sure to check the 18′ piece before I dragged that away, too!

The top of the tree is around 16-17′ long. Too short and thin to make the long walls of the beds, but it will do nicely, cut into 4′ lengths, to create the end walls.

The other tree that was flat on the ground was looking very crooked – spruces tend to be like that at their tops – and I thought it was shorter than the first one. As I cleared more dead branches and tried pulling it out from under the stuck tree trunk, I realized it was a lot longer, and thicker! In fact, when I finished clearing the branches and measured out 18′ from the end, I was still at the far side of the stuck tree! It was simply too big to pull out first, like I could with the first tree.

The top was moved first. I hadn’t bothered to measure it, since I figured it would be too short, but when I dragged it between the posts that are 18′ apart, it almost reached, end to end! The thinner top, though is still pretty crooked, so it will likely not be used as a side wall.

Then it was time to drag out the rest of it. I rolled it around to cut away any branch stubs that might cause problems, but the trunk was quite a bit larger and heavier, and getting caught on things. While I was working, I was constantly finding very old and rotting branches and pieces of tree trunks hidden in the undergrowth, that have clearly been there for many years. They made for a rough surface to drag on. I ended up tying a plastic bag around the end of the trunk, to reduce friction. It helped a lot but, by then, I was getting pretty hot and tired, so I got a daughter to pause making supper to come help me drag it out.

While working on this tree trunk, I found the fourth tree my brother had cut down. It is another big one, and he felled it in the opposite direction. It’s almost completely hidden, not just by undergrown, but other trees, and I’m honestly not sure how I’m going to get at it.

As for the tree that’s stuck, that one is even bigger. This is one that’s going to have the thickest 10′ cut off and taken to where we plan to build the shelter for the outdoor kitchen we plan to build. These trunks are far too thick to use for raised beds, as they would take up a lot of growing space. Rather than cut them in half or something, we will instead use them as vertical supports for the shelter.

But I was not about to work on either of those logs, today.

I started to put things away, but I really wasn’t happy with having done only two trees. Especially when there were other thinner dead trees, right there.

Yup. I ended up cutting down another tree.

Gosh, that thing felt so light, after fighting with the big one! Even though I used a hinge cut, it still fell off to one side and got a bit hung up on other trees. It was easy to get loose. I just put the rope around the trunk near the stump and pulled it until it fell the rest of the way. It also fell across the stuck tree, which made it much easier to work around.

Then it was just a matter of clearing a few branches – there weren’t very many at the bottom half – measuring out and cutting 18′ and dragging it out.

The top of the tree is resting on top of undergrowth, and I left it there for now. I am not sure how much of it will be useable. It won’t be useable for the walls on the raised bed, but it might be useful in other ways.

I’m still going to have to cut down one more smaller tree for this bed. There’s one that looks like it’s similar in girth as the log with the plastic bag on the end. I’m planning to make these beds 2 logs high, but I want the bottom logs to be the bigger, thicker ones.

This time I have the draw knife, so I want to de-bark the logs and cut away any remaining branch nubs, lumps and bumps. I didn’t do that for the high raised bed, and I can see that it would be much better to do it than not.

I want to get at least one bed built, with the vertical trellis supports in place, before cutting down more trees for the second one. Ideally, I’d put in the vertical supports for both beds, along with the horizontal supports to make a trellis tunnel, right from the start, but we’re going to have to work on things piecemeal for now. Plus, we will be building at least one, probably two, more of these, so this one is the learning experience!

I’m happy with the progress, and I’m paying for it now, but I’m actually not having as much trouble as I’ve had in the past. Of course, tomorrow might prove me wrong, but it seems my body is finally starting to handle things better. Yes, I’m stiff, my left knee tried to make an escape, and a thigh tried to go into a conniption fit, but I’ve certainly had far worse pain, stiffness and joint instability after far less work.

It just feels so good to finally be able to work on this!

The Re-Farmer

Baby bed, drainage and feeling frustrated

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Would you look at this tiny worm?

I found a cardboard carton large enough for the mama to fit comfortably in and lined it with one of the blankets the Cat Lady donated to us for the kitties. Unfortunately, I really spooked the mom when I opened the door; enough that she ran out the hole in the back of the shed she’d been using to get in and out. I suppose that made it easier, since I didn’t have to worry about her reactions. I quickly put the baby in the bed box outside the shed, cleared the netting and other odds and sots where the baby had been lying, fit the bed box in, and left. The whole thing probably took less than a minute to do.

Picking up that tiny baby, though. Wow! It must have been maybe hours old, the first time I spotted them a few days ago.

The mother is Baby Beep Beep, which means she is NOT the mother of any of the sun room kittens.

In other things, we got quite a lot of rain last night. I’d used the rain barrel to water the front garden beds, as it was full to the top, and got it down to maybe a quarter or a bit less. This morning, it was full to the top. Not overflowing, but close, so I put the diverter on for now. We’re expecting more little thunderstorms passing through tomorrow. This morning, I was hearing thunder around us, and even got rained on a bit.

The potted herbs on the front step seem to be doing well. The lemongrass is getting taller. The spearmint in one pot by itself, and the thyme and oregano in the other, seem to be recovering from being transplanted well. Those two post have drainage holes and are sitting on trays, but the pot the lemon grass is in does not have any drainage holes. As I was weeding, I could see it was way too wet, so I just got a hammer and a nail and made one drainage hole.

I got this picture after it had been draining for more than half a minute, and there was still lots of pressure!

The bottom and sides of the pot are lined with grass clippings, and I don’t really mind there being some water accumulated in the clippings. Having a drainage hole higher up will work well, I think. It’s not like I could tip the pot and put holes in the bottom!

The down side is that, after weeding the Chinese elms that were sprouting in that pot, my hands smell like stagnant water. Yes, I’ve washed them. Several times. The smell still lingers. Ick.

I moved the last of the Jiffy Pellet trays to the steps near these pots. There is still that one Lemon Cucumber that sprouted, nothing else. It’s probably too late in the season, but when it gets its true leaves, I’ll find somewhere to transplant it. One cucumber plant is better than none.

This has been a very frustrating gardening year. The intension had been to expand the garden again, or at least use as much as what we did last year. With the weather and the heat, we weren’t able to build those trellis beds in time, which means two large sections, where we’d planted potatoes and melons last year, aren’t being used at all. We got transplants in, but didn’t have room for all of them, which means we have far fewer paste tomatoes than I intended. That was the one type I wanted to have a lot more of, since making our own tomato paste last year went over so well. Along with the weather and heat issues, I’ve lost more than a few days that would have been good days to work outside, because I had to help my mother out, and she demands I take a “holiday” when I’m with her, and not be “in a hurry” to leave. When I point out I have work to do, she just says, “what work? You don’t have cows!”

*sigh*

We didn’t do anywhere near as much direct sowing as intended, because there weren’t enough prepared beds to sow into. As it is, we had to use the old kitchen garden differently then intended, just to get things in the ground. That’s okay. Normally, I’m quite flexible about such things, but after a while, it just gets frustrating. In the end, instead of expanding the garden this year, we’ve got a smaller garden then last year. One positive thing, at least, is that we aren’t having the no good, terrible growing year we had last year!

I was feeling good about the garden in many ways. We have tomatoes growing and starting to produce fruit. The Gold Ball turnips, which disappeared last year, are growing well. Yes, something is eating the leaves, but not enough to hinder their growth. We’ve got two types of carrots, and both are doing well. The bush beans are struggling a bit, but they’re growing. Even the tiniest of onion transplants – the ones so small, they probably shouldn’t have been transplanted at all – are picking up. I’m happy to see so many pea pods forming, even though the plants themselves seem a lot shorter than I expected them to get. I think it’s the squash patch that is most encouraging. They failed so badly last year, and now I’m seeing the winter squash getting big and strong. It even looks like we’ve won the battle against the slugs! I’ll just have to keep up with sprinkling that corn meal. We might actually have fully mature winter squash to harvest this year

The melons germinated so late, they probably won’t get a chance to produce fully mature fruit, but they are recovering from being transplanted nicely and, you never know; we might get a long, mild fall and the frosts will hold off until late in the year again.

Then I see people sharing pictures on the local and Zone 3 gardening groups I’m on, showing their huge plants and talking about the vegetables they’re already harvesting. How can they be harvesting beans already? How is their corn so tall? One person was even eating fresh tomatoes! In June!

I try to remind myself that Zone 3 is about winter temperatures, and covers a large, geographically diverse area, so a lot of these people have a last frost date in the middle of May. Even with local groups, most of the members live well south of us. With this year’s very early and warm spring, even people with later frost dates took a chance and planted earlier. We’ve also had a decent amount of rain, though some people did lose or partially lose their gardens to driving rain, winds or hail.

Still, seeing all those photos of huge, lush garden growth and harvests, suddenly my garden seems really pathetic, and way behind, without even taking into account the things we didn’t get built in time to use this year.

I know better than to compare our situation to others, because it’s so different, but when I’m already feeling so far behind, it’s easy to start feeling down about the whole thing.

Things are supposed to cool down over the next few days, and the storms are supposed to stop for a while. Which means we should finally be able to chop our way through the undergrowth and get those trees my brother cut down for me! This should have been done weeks ago.

Well, it is what it is.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Stuck

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As things cooled down, I was able to get some stuff done outside, which had me in and out of the sun room quite a bit.

I had to be careful not to step on any kittens!

Yes, most of them were running away and hiding, but a couple of them were not.

This is why.

Now I understand why I kept seeing this kitten doing things like napping in the middle of the floor, or just moving around slowly. It can’t see.

One eye was completely stuck closed, and the other was open, but not wide open.

I was able to pick it up and gently dampen the eye until the gunk finally started to come off. The kitten was not happy with the rubbing on the eye, of course, even though I was more about getting it wet then actually rubbing. After a while, though, I got the big stuff off and the eye started to open, so I left it at that. I didn’t want to push things too far.

There was another kitten with gummy eyes, but it was just around the eye lids, not gluing them shut, so it would still see. We will have to make cleaning those eyes a regular thing. That’s one way to socialize them, I guess. Handle them while their eyes are stuck shut!

The good thing is, the kittens are starting to eat kibble, which means they’re going to get the lysine it’s coated in. That will help them fight off the herpes that’s causing this. If things start getting worse instead of better, we’ll see about getting eye drops for them.

While I was tending to the kitten, Baby Beep Beep came in, with a mouse. She growled constantly as she ate it, but didn’t leave! I think she might be the mom of the littlest kittens. Later on, I saw Adam skulking around the door – with another mouse hanging out of her mouth! Towards the end of the day, when I was ready to come in, I found her lying just inside the doorway, nursing. She’s the mom of the bigger kittens – the black and white ones that look so much like her! That means the grey and white cat I’ve been seeing in the sun room (I believe the girls call that one Pistachio), would be the mother of the in between sized kittens, including the ones with the gooby eyes.

I’m still not sure who the mother of the tuxedo is. I’ve seen him try to nurse on a grey and white, but she wouldn’t let him, so either it was his mother enforcing weaning, or another mother, refusing to nurse a kitten that isn’t hers.

As things started to cool down, I was able to empty most of the rain barrel to water the front garden beds. Then I went around to use a hose in the main garden area. While doing the squash patch, I hoped to see some frogs using the little houses we made for them, but so far, nothing. I also wasn’t seeing any slugs, so that’s encouraging. The second sowing of summer squash still hasn’t germinated. Looks like we’re going to be very short of summer squash this year!

For the tomato beds, I hooked up the sprinkler hoses, and remembered to get some ground staples to hold them in place, facing slightly inwards, so the inside of the beds are being watered, not the paths. The soaker hose takes a lot longer to deeply water the bed, and that gave me time to remove the old straw and what’s left of the cardboard underlay in the area the trellis beds will be built. Once the beds are built, and the vertical posts for the trellis are in, the old straw will be layered back into the beds.

I’d watered the Crespo squash, in the bed far from the house, with the watering can earlier in the day, so the rain barrel out there was due for a refilling, too. After using the watering can, I always leave it full of water, so it doesn’t blow away. When I used that first can of water, it sure was warm from the day’s heat! Not hot enough to harm the squash, thankfully.

When I was done and heading back to the house, I startled some creatures at the kibble house. Racoons. A whole family of them! One big one ran off – I think the same one I’ve been seeing fairly regularly, by itself – but then I saw about four of five little ones and an adult run off. Some of them ran under the laundry platform, which is accessible only though the spaces between the steps. From the noise, I think there was a bit of a panic when they realized they couldn’t get out any other way. I made sure to stay back and to the side, so they couldn’t see me, and could get back out.

Gosh, racoons are cute. Especially when they are little!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: watering set up

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I was able to set up hoses in the three beds with tomatoes in them.

The black soaker hose is definitely the one I prefer to use. It does take longer, and directly waters only the soil directly below it, rather than the plants beside it, but if left running long enough, it allows for a gentle, deep watering.

As for the sprinkler hoses… they’ll do for now!

One of them – the one in the bed with the turnips – is a new dollar store purchase. The spray zone is larger than I expected, and I had to fuss with it so that the hose was on its side and spraying into the bed, instead of watering the grass in the paths! The connector does not rotate freely, though, making it difficult to attach the garden hose without twisting the sprinkler hose. I wouldn’t expect much out of a dollar store hose. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the end of the hose, which is just heat sealed, gives out. 😄

The other sprinkler hose is one of two I found while cleaning up around a junk pile in the yard. I have no idea how old they were, but one of them ended up cracking and had to be tossed, last year. This one has much tinier holes than the dollar store one, so the spray is gentler, but it seems like a lot of them are blocked or partially blocked. The holes were also so small, I couldn’t tell which side of the hose was “up”. Once I had that figured out, I set it to spray inwards as well, and ended up having to use bricks to hold it in place, as it is far less flexible. Later on, I’ll dig out the ground staples I picked up awhile back, and use those to hold the sprinkler hoses in position, and also keep them from flipping on top of the onions!

I keep hearing that tomatoes should never be watered from above, because if the leaves get wet, they’ll get diseased. Not sure how they survive being rained on, if that’s true, but I try to avoid it if I can. With the setup I have now, the sprinkler hoses are still getting the leaves wet. Just from below, instead of from above! Still, it’s a lot gentler than using the spray nozzle on the hose, and while it will take longer to water the beds and it will mean moving the garden hose from bed to bed, it should be more efficient to water them this way. Plus, I can just hook up the hose and move on to other work until it’s time to move the hose to another bed.

When we convert these beds to high raised beds, I want to think about different watering systems to set up. Since we plan to fill the high raised beds hügelkultur style, they shouldn’t need a lot of watering, but some things just need more water than others.

I’m just looking at the forecast for the next week.

*sigh*

Why is it that the one day it’s not expected to be insanely hot, it’s also the day I will be driving my mother around, and won’t be able to do much work outside?

The Re-Farmer

This and that

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I had an adorable surprise when I headed out this morning!

The tuxedo kitten is back!

We haven’t seen the litter of four, for a while. I suspect the mama moved them across the road, to the empty farm buildings there. Quite a few of the mamas seem to move back and forth from there. We had been seeing six kittens together for a while, including this tuxedo, but the other two have not been seen for even longer. That this one is now showing up alone suggests the other did not survive after being moved. I do wish the mamas wouldn’t move their kittens around that that, but it seems to be an instinctive thing for them, no matter how safe of a location they happen to have their kittens at any particular time.

You can just see it in the photo, but this tuxedo actually has stripes! I was able to walk past fairly close before it ran and hid, and one time I got a good, clear look at his side (and yes, I’m 99% sure it is male). His black fur has dark grey stripes in it that can’t even be seen at some angles.

I’m pretty sure the white and grey sharing the kibble tray is its mama. Not completely sure, though. It has mostly been alone, though it also interacts and plays with the other adult cats.

Today was expected to be a hot one, so I made sure to get some things done in the garden, before giving it all a good watering. I’m glad I did. We were expected to reach 27C/81F for a high. As I write this, at almost 7pm, we’re still at 28C/82F – only one degree short of the record high for today.

I direct sowed more summer squash this morning – four out of the five varieties that were planted. The G-Star (green) patty pans are doing well. No Magda squash germinated at all, and when I loosened the soil to plant new seeds, there was no sign of the old seeds. The germination rate for the Goldy (yellow) and Endeavour (green) zucchini, as well as the Sunburst (yellow) patty pans was very low, and with some, the seedlings were not looking very strong.

We lost one Honeyboat Delicata to slugs, and I considered planting a few more summer squash in the empty hill, but decided to try an experiment. I took some of the Jiffy pellets that had the Cream of Saskatchewan watermelons in them, and transplanted them. One broke up a bit as I did, and I could actually see an intake seed in it, so it is actually possible they might germinate in the new location. We shall see! No harm in trying.

When I transplanted the zucca melon and drum gourds into the bigger squash hill, I mulched in between the transplants, but didn’t have enough to mulch the sides of the hill. Well, I’ve got lots of grass clippings for mulch right now, so I took care of that, this morning. The main reason it was needed was to prevent the sides from eroding when the hill was watered. I was happy to see that a the transplants – aside from the one the slugs ate – are looking strong and healthy. They are liking this heat! We will have to make sure they get watered often, though. Especially ones like the zucca and Crespo squash, which are supposed to grow very large fruit. The Crespo have lots of flowers on them, but they’re all still male flowers, so I’m hoping more watering will help with that. Where they are is far from the house, gets full sun all day, and the soil out there gets dry very quickly, so we could probably get away with watering them twice a day, if we were up to it. Along with watering everything, I topped up the rain barrel by the Crespo squash, too. I keep a watering can beside it, full of water to is doesn’t blow away, and it’s amazing how warm the water in there got, even though it was still morning, and a few hours before we’d hit the high of the day.

When feeding the cats, I realized we would run out of kibble faster than expected, and before our monthly shopping. Since I’m going to be taking my mother to her eye appointment tomorrow, I decided to do a Walmart trip today. The price difference is worth the cost of gas to drive that far, but of course, I had to combine errands to make it even more worth while! The egg lady was going to be in town tomorrow, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be done with my mother in time to meet her there, so I contacted her and arranged to swing by her place on my way home today. Then, while at the Walmart, I remembered to pick up new hose connectors. I couldn’t remember if I needed to replace male or female connectors, so I got one of each. I drove over the hoses at the front tap by mistake, when unloading the car, which normally would have been okay, except I happened to catch one of the connectors on the sidewalk. More specifically, the metal part under the connector. So while the two hoses connected to each other were fine, the bent metal part resulted in water spraying from where the connector joined the hose.

While looking at the connectors, I also noticed an L shaped swivel connector for the tap, so I grabbed one of those, too.

Once at home, it took me more time to cut off the broken hose connector than it did to fix the hose! So the front hoses no longer leak. At least not at the connectors. The spray nozzle, however, drips. This spray nozzle was actually here when we moved here, and has outlasted all the nozzles we’ve bought so far! So I ended up taking the front plate off of that and soaking it in CLR for a while, then scrubbing it with an old toothbrush. It works much better, now!

I also put the swivel connector on the back tap. That tap is a real pain. It’s difficult to connect a hose to it because of how close to the wall it is, and the angle. We have tried using flexible hose connectors, but they’ve been even more difficult to screw on, and leaked like crazy. Even with screwing the hose directly to the tap, when we move the hose to the side, it starts to drip enough that I ended up putting an old rectangular balcony rail planter under it to collect the water, set up so that when it filled to overflowing, the water would flow further away from the basement wall.

This new connector, however, was much easier to screw on, and angle of the swivel part made it easier to attach the hose, too. Best of all, with everything finally screwed on properly, no more dripping! I like being able to turn the tap on and leave it on.

Hmm… I wonder if, with this new connector, I could attach the hose that runs to the tap on the garden. The last time I was successfully able to attach it, we discovered water spraying from the ground next to a branch pile. The branch piles are gone now, so if I test it again, I’ll be better able to see and mark exactly where the buried hose is damaged.

I think I’ll test that out tonight, when I do my evening rounds!

Along with all that, I had a surprise from the egg lady when I stopped to pick up two flats of eggs. She included some guinea eggs! Enough for all for of us to try them out. She told me that the eggs from guinea hens have higher levels of protein and other nutrients, compared to chicken eggs. I really look forward to trying them!

Well, it’s time to go out and do my evening rounds! One of the things I want to get done is set up the soaker hoses in the low raised beds, with the tomatoes. They should have been set up before they were transplanted, but I wasn’t sure exactly where or how many tomatoes would fit at the time.

It has cooled down to 26C/78F in the time it took me to write this. Better than nothing!

The Re-Farmer