It’s hard to be having a heat wave like we are now, and have to think about last frost dates before planting things! Our average last frost date was June 2, but this year it’s listed as a range from May 28-31.
On the one hand, I’ve been eyeballing the long range forecasts. They tend to change often, sometimes multiple times in a day, but we are no longer having predictions of overnight temperatures below freezing. So far, nothing lower than 5C/41F in the overnight lows expected in early June.
On the other hand, I’ve been eyeballing the dandelions. If you’ve been following Maritime Gardening, you may have heard his way of using the stages of dandelions to judge when to plant things. When the greens emerge, the soil is warm enough to plant cold hardy seeds like peas and spinach. When the flowers are blooming, the soil is warm enough to plant things that need a bit more warmth, but can still handle a night of frost, like brassicas. When the dandelions go to seed, the soil is warm enough to plant everything else.
Our dandelions have been blooming for a while, and lots are starting to go to seed.
So I should be able to direct sow or transplant pretty much everything right now, but I still want to be able to cover things if we do get a frost.
Since I didn’t want to render myself immobile again, today I decided to work on the tiny raised bed garden and transplant the herbs I bought a few weeks back.
This bed got prepped in the fall, so there wasn’t much it needed – other than finally reinforcing the cover that cats keep lying on!
I took the cover over to the garage, along with some leftover pieces of hula hoop, which is what is already being used in the cover, to add to it. I got one installed, but when I tried to set up the other, it kept snapping on me. Thankfully, I had a piece of pipe of some kind my brother had passed on to me, along with lumber, shelving and numerous other small items he knew I would find uses for. It was perfect for the job, and I still have some left over. There was also a short bamboo garden stake that I wove through the chicken wire across the top. That will both support the wire (and the weight of cats) and make it easier to carry the cover.
Then it was time to ready the soil. It had a grass clipping mulch that was set aside, then I used my little hand cultivator to loosen the soil so I could better remove the rhizomes. Unfortunately, I was also finding tree roots; this time, from the nearby ornamental crab apple. I think there’s actually a large root running under the bed, but if there is, it’s deep enough it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s the little capillary roots that can become an issue!
After a few years of amending this bed, the soil was really nice and fluffy, already. I did amend it more with the rehydrated coconut coir, plus some manure. The soil was insanely dry, so I made sure to give it a very thorough watering once the amendments were mixed in.
I then set the pots in and moved them around until I figured out where the herbs would go. I’ve got English Thyme and Golden Yellow Thyme that are kitty corner from each other. The other corners have oregano and Greek oregano. In the middle, closer to the walking onions, is lemon balm, with the basil across from it. Once transplanted, they got another watering.
After they were transplanted, I carefully scattered the mulch around them, making sure it was under their leaves and stems.
Then it got another watering.
Last of all, the cover was set in place. No kitties will be rolling around on or digging these up!
The next area I plan to work on is the wattle weave bed. The tiny strawberries in there are blooming up a store right now, so I’m not going to transplant them until the fall. They don’t take up a lot of space. I think there is enough room to plant both the eggplants and peppers in this bed. We’ve grown both in there before, and they did surprisingly well, so that should work out.
We’re going into the city for our first stock up shopping trip tomorrow, though, so that won’t happen for a couple of days. The transplants are all looking really strong and healthy this year – even the ones that got dumped upside down when the wind knocked the greenhouse half over! If things work out, we should be able to get all the transplanting and direct sowing done over the next week or two. I’ll be quite happy when that is all finally done!
I have to keep telling myself. It’s still only May. With the weather we’ve been having, it feels like I’m behind on things, but I’m actually ahead!
She also fits perfectly in the “hammock” created by the netting over the fence wire.
The remaining netting, that is! The overlapped sheet had slid off. Sadly, I had to get her off her comfy spot so I could fix it. I think it’s secured enough to no longer be an issue, so she can enjoy her hammock again.
Making this raised bed cover using the fence wire was such a pain, I swore never to use it again. The stiffness of the wire, and the thickness where the cross strands are wrapped made it so difficult to work with, and the wood had to be doubled up to hold it. But this cover has turned out to be the best one. It’s the strongest, and being able to reach through the openings is very handy. Laying plastic or netting over it can be a challenge, since they catch on the wire twists, but it still holds better than other frames we’ve made. The heave gauge wire even makes it easier to carry with just one person, since the wire is easier to grip, and so much stronger.
We still have a fairly large roll of the fence wire left, so I do see more like this one in the future. Hardware cloth or similar finer mesh will be used more often – with hoops to support them – as those won’t need to have netting placed over them to keep critters out, but pollinators can still get in and out.
I did not expect the covers to make such excellent beds for the kitties, though. Bonus, I suppose! They have their comfy spots, and it keeps them off the plants!
It’s just past 5:30pm as I write this, and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. I am SO tired! Please forgive any odd sentence structure or typos, because I’m sure I’m going to miss many when I got over things before hitting publish!
The cats had me up at about 5am this morning. I got up and fed them – the morning feeding includes kicking all the cats out of my bedroom except Butterscotch and Freya. After the dry kibble is dispensed, I pour some cat milk into a small bowl for our elederly Freya (Butterscotch gets the rest of the little carton), and then I sit beside her on my bed, holding the bowl for her while she eats until she is done. This saves her from having to jump down from the bed to eat, and she can stay all curled up in whatever cat bed she’s in.
Yeah. I’m a suck for the cats.
After a while, I let the other cats back in, then tried going to bed for a couple more hours. I swear, the cats know exactly when I fall asleep for real, and that’s when they start getting into things they shouldn’t, and start making loud noises. Or just going crazy. Tissue got the zoomies this morning. So what sleep I did manage to get was highly interrupted. I can’t even keep the door closed, because then they start scratching at it and that keeps waking me up.
The temperature had dropped to 2C/36F at 5am. By about 8am, it had warmed up to a whole 8C/46F. Which was about when I started heading out. First, the kitties got fed, and I got a daughter to help out. Not with the feeding, though. With kitten catching! Kale and Sir Robin the Brave are incredibly fast about getting into the old kitchen, and haven’t learned to stay away from moving feet, or closing doors! After luring the adult cats away with kibble, I closed the inner door into the sun room and my daughter started handing me bowls of wet cat food to set out for the littles, plus one with both wet and dry cat food for Poirot at her cat carrier nest. Another bowl with part kibble and part wet cat food went into the cat house for Caramel and her babies.
Then I continued my rounds, leaving the sun room closed up, even though all three mamas were out. The white and grey mama has been seen nursing the creche babies more often, now that her third baby is in the sun room again.
Poirot’s grublings are getting more mobile, so I set up a a bit of a shield for them.
I’ve been saving cardboard for the garden in the old kitchen, and there just happened to be a couple of pieces of cardboard that was used as spacers inside a box that were just perfect for this. In the second picture, you can see how they’re set up to cover the gap between the shelf and the wall, and cat carrier and the wall. This should be enough of they accidentally squirm out of the carrier. As they get more mobile, we might just move the carrier to the floor, so they can go in and out as they wish.
Once done with tending the colony, the first thing I do it switch out the memory cards. As I go out to the sign cam, past where the food forest is being built up. That corner gets very sun baked and dry in the summer, but these guys don’t seem to mind at all!
They are absolutely everywhere. It’s impossible to not walk on them, but they don’t seem the least bit bothered by that. I don’t know what they are, but if I had to guess, I’d say they are some type of pansy? Whatever they are, they are pretty indestructible!
The next thing was to check on the garden beds. Especially the one where I just planted peas, yesterday. I thought they were fine until I got to the northernmost end, where I saw the cats had been digging. *sigh* Hopefully, they didn’t actually dig up any seeds, but I really couldn’t tell. I was trying to figure out some way to cover things when I remembered I still have grass clippings saved to use as mulch. There isn’t a lot left, but enough to do the job!
The soil got a gentle watering, first. After the grass was laid down, that got watered down, too. Partly so it wouldn’t blow away too easily.
The plastic covered beds all got watered, too. With the sprouting seedlings, it’s hard to tell which are what I planted and which are weeks. Some that I suspected to be weeds were starting to show their true leaves, and I was correct: they are maple seedlings. So I pulled as many of those as I could, along with identifiable stuff like dandelions – so long as pulling them wouldn’t disturb any other sprouts.
The low raised bed that no longer has plastic on it got watered. I’d tried blocking off one end of the cover and hoped that would be enough protection until I could do the other end. This morning, I discovered, I was wrong.
*sigh*
After repairing the digging damage as best I could, I got creative. This is all temporary.
In the first picture, you can see I just stuck some boards across the opening. The stick holding them in place is secured at the top through the mesh, so those could only go so high, so I used what I could find to add verticals on the inside. Hopefully, the cats won’t try to jump through the gaps.
In the next picture, you can see the twine I wove through the mesh to close up the end. Again, temporary, but this should hold for a while.
After the watering and weeding was done, I headed inside for breakfast, before going back out and continuing what I hoped to get finished today.
It was almost exactly 10am and I just sat down with my food when the phone rang.
It was my mother.
No one showed up to do her med assist this morning.
I should have gotten a call, but I got nothing. My mother had tried calling the case coordinator, but it’s Saturday; her office is closed.
So I told her, I would quickly finish eating, then head out to give her her medications. She wanted me to dispense her other two meds for the day, too, in case her med assist didn’t show up for those times, either, but I refused. Got quite a mocking for following the rules. So what will you do? she asked me. Come out two more times?
I said, yes! I will!
I told her, there’s a reason your medications are in your lock box. You were messing with your medications, forgetting if you took them, etc. Oh, I wasn’t that bad, she said. Yes, you were, Mom. That’s why you have a lock box! She actually seemed to stop and think about that!
One of the things I did was write up a note and leave it in their notebook, stating that I had dispensed that morning’s medications and at what time.
I also told her that, since I was out anyhow, I would make a trip to the nearest Walmart to do a bit of shopping. I had planned to do it later in the weeks, but I could do it now. The Walmart carries 2L plastic milk jugs, which she finds easier to handle, so I told her I was thinking of getting a plastic jug for her. I did just get her a carton, but…
She does still have milk, but it turns out she had dropped the carton while trying to open it and spilled some. So more milk, in a better container, was a big yes from her!
I ended up leaving with a small shopping list and some cash. One of the things she was running low of was the topical pain killer she’s been using on her knees. She’s now using it on her back, too, so she’s going through it faster. I had already been thinking of checking that out, too, as I figured it would be a better price.
Since it was well past 11am by the time I was going to head out, I offered to make a lunch for her, but she said she had leftovers from yesterday’s Meals on Wheels, so she was fine. Once I knew she was settled, I headed out.
My first stop was actually a Dollarama that shares a parking lot with the Walmart. There were a few small things that I wanted to pick up and, of course, I went through the garden supply section. I ended up picking up four 4′ metal posts. Not T posts, but the same idea. They have hooks in the metal to hold trellis netting. They would have been perfect for what I was doing yesterday – and easier to set into the soil! We will be trellising pole beans and more peas, though, so new posts will not go amiss. I probably should have gotten more, but I should be able to get some more next month, if I need to.
After I was done at the Dollarama, it was across the parking lot to Walmart.
I got a few things that were not on my list. 😄
One thing that was on my list was more wet cat food. Since we are giving wet cat food to the kittens, we’re going through it faster. Normally, at Walmart, I pick up cases of 32. Looking at the new prices for the individual cans, though, I realized it would actually be cheaper to buy them loose, than by case lot! I ended up using some of their cardboard flats and got 48 cans of paté for the inside cats (paté works better when making cat soup) and 24 cans of chunks in gravy for the kittens.
They had sales on canned food for humans, too, and I got a flat of 24 cans of tomato soup for the pantry, too.
I also went through the garden centre. I picked up some replacement Yukon potatoes, since I’m sure the ones I’ve been chitting are no longer viable. Their herbs and vegetables were out, so I went hunting and found a few herbs. I got English Thyme, Golden thyme, two containers of oregano, lemon balm and basil. These will go into the tiny raised bed in the old kitchen garden, which has a cat proof cover already.
As for my mother’s list, the topical painkiller she uses was there – and cost $11 less than at her local pharmacy! That’s a huge difference!
The store was very busy, so it took a while for me to get everything I was looking for (and then some), and I was really tired and hungry by the end of it. I had some frozen stuff in my cart, so I stopped to get some take out that I could eat while driving, then headed out, making sure to update my family and let them know I was on my way to my mother’s, then home.
Which is when things went sideways.
Literally.
The last part of my route to my mother’s is a provincial trunk road, from one highway to another, that leads to my mother’s town. This is an east/west route.
The wind was coming from the south.
As I was driving towards an area of wide open fields, I saw the entire horizon was covered with what looked like black smoke. Once clear of some trees, I could see it swirling over the fields – but no flames.
It was dust.
Basically, the topsoil from the south side of the road was being blown to the north side of the road.
As I was being buffeted by the wind, driving through it.
Which is when I heard and felt something behind me and looked in my mirror just in time to see the cover over the box of our truck blow off, into the ditch and keep on going!
I pulled over, but by the time I did, there was no sign of the cover. I’m sure it was still being blown across that field for some time!
I had stuff in the box of the truck, and it was already getting scattered across the box. I gathered it all together and crammed it mostly into the back of the cab, making sure nothing went to the front that could get mixed up with my mother’s stuff.
I made sure that there was no way those metal posts would be able to slide and hit a window!
Once everything was put away, I continued to my mother’s place. Wow, what a difference in how the truck felt while driving! The wind swirling into the box of the truck was very noticeable.
When I was done at my mother’s, I was able to get for damage, which you can see in the second image in the slideshow above. There was enough flex on the box when the cover was torn off that it cracked the tail light cover.
But I didn’t get a chance to see that until later.
As soon as I entered her apartment, my mother, who was lying in bed, started saying, Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! I’m so glad to see you! while getting up to sit on the side of her bed.
I’m doing poorly, she tells me. Maybe I should go to the hospital. What do you think?
I certainly did not voice what I was actually thinking. My mother has cried wolf so many times, and uses having us take her to the hospital as a way of getting attention.
I asked her questions about what was going on. She was pretty vague about it; as if she expected me to already know. She told me she took one of the new pills (the T3s), but it didn’t seem to make a difference.
I told her, these pills aren’t magic. They are just stronger painkillers. As she kept on basically about what her expectations were (take pill: pain ends utterly and completely), I told her that her prescription for these is just a couple a day, morning and evening, as needed. I’m on the same pills, same dosage per tablet, and I can take up to 9 of them in total, per day. So it really depends on the individual.
She was pretty shocked that I could take so many per day, when she had a limit of two per day.
As I was putting things away, she lay back down in bed and suggested that maybe using the topical painkiller would help (confirming, finally, exactly what it was that was causing her problems this time). So that’s what we tried. She asked me to do, not only her hips (the pain is mostly just on one side), but her entire back as well. As I was doing that for her, she said to add lots, so I did it second time. As I was putting away the tube, she started saying she could feel a difference, already!
Hopefully, that will be enough.
My brother and I are planning to be there tomorrow for Mother’s Day, so we’ll be able to check on her more thoroughly, then.
Meanwhile, whenever I had a few moments, I kept my family and my siblings updated on things. I told my mother that I had frozen things in my vehicle and had to get them home, so I was soon back on the road. A daughter was sweet enough to have the gate open for me when I got in.
After everything was unloaded, and the new transplants and bags of seed potatoes secure in the portable greenhouse, it was time to feed the outside cats. I had another daughter on kitten duty, too! Other than doing a quick check to make sure none of the raised bed covers were blown away, I was more than happy to finally settle in at home.
So much for my garden and planting plans for the day! As I write this, we have continued to get warmer. It’s past 7pm now, and the temperature has risen to 24C/75F, though with the wind, it does feel a bit cooler. Not much, though! One of the local weather groups I follow on Facebook has been posting information and the coming heat way, with significant heat warnings to come.
We’re supposedly getting rain right now, though the current systems are skirting right past us. Later this evening, we’re supposed to be getting real rain. One of the things that the weather nerds that run the group noted is what appears to be pyrocumulous clouds forming in some areas! These are thunderstorm clouds that are created by heat; you might typically see them form over volcanoes, but can also form over forest fires, if the conditions are right. Scary stuff!
Tonight, the coolest temperatures are supposed to be at around 5 and 6am, at 14C/57F, and then start heating right up. The heat wave is supposed to hit us the hardest on Monday and Tuesday, but still be very hot on Wednesday and Thursday.
On Friday, the temperature is supposed to drop right down, with overnight lows of 0C/32F, and a mix of rain and snow. Saturday is supposed to be only slightly warmer.
Spring weather is so chaotic.
Well, if we can work around the hottest parts of the day, I should still be able to get at least some of those walnut seeds planted, get more areas prepped in the garden and, if all goes well, even do more direct sowing done. Chances are, though, that very little will get done until after the heat wave passes, and we’re back into cooler temperatures. At which point, we’ll be needing to protect some things from frost! For now, we’ve been able to leave our transplants in the portable greenhouse day and night, but we’ll have to bring them inside on those coldest nights.
As for me, it’s time to pain killer up and get to bed. If the cats are going to be waking me up at 5am anyhow, I may as well take advantage of it and get work done outside, before it gets too hot! I just have to work out what time I’ll be meeting up with my brother at my mother’s place tomorrow.
My husband had a medical appointment this morning, so that was our first order of business.
Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.
We got there maybe 10-15 minutes early for his 10:15am appointment. After checking in and settling into the waiting room, a receptionist came by and said, “you know you’re appointment is at…” I’m not sure if she said 11 or 11:30. We double checked our calendars and confirmed, we had 10:15 – which was the time his doctor gave him when he had his last telephone appointment. She then said it should be okay, they might be able to fit him in. So when we were taken to the examination room at 10, we figured things were worked out and we’d have his appointment at the time we expected it to be at. We just had to wait a bit.
And wait.
And wait.
After half an hour, my husband was simply in too much pain and had to leave. He took the truck keys and headed out, while I rescheduled. He now has an appointment later in the month – and we have a physical printout of the time and date, this time.
I remember when we first got a doctor after the move, in this same clinic, that there were several times we’d come in for an appointment, only to be told it was a different time. The thing is, we are very diligent when it comes to getting the appointments correctly into our calendars. Getting to an appointment is not always easy; particularly for my husband. The last thing we’d want to do is make a wasted trip.
Which is what today turned out to be.
I was not impressed.
After we got home, I had lunch (my husband can’t eat when he’s in this much pain), then headed outside.
My goal for the day was to plant the walnuts, or get as close to planting them as possible. The first thing I wanted to do was mark where they would be planted. The markers will remain after they are planted, so we know where they are, so I found some older bamboo stakes and other markers and added bright orange paracord to their tops for visibility. Then I headed to the outer yard, to the area the Korean Pine are planted.
The first photo is the “before” shot. The bamboo stake in the foreground is at one of the Korean pine. There are two others straight down the right of the image. The bamboo stakes marking them are pushed through chicken wire cages protecting them – somewhat, at least! – from critters.
You can just barely see in the top left corner, a hint of orange. That’s marking a chicken wire cage surrounding an ash tree my mother gave me a couple of years back. There used to be three more Korean pine on that side, but those did not survive, and the ash tree is planted where one of the Korean pine used to be.
That ash tree was my starting point. From there, I paced off and marked off every 20 feet or so to the north. There was space for two markers. I marked off one more to the south of the ash tree. There was room to mark another, but we discovered that area is low enough to flood in a wet spring – and that’s what killed off the last of the Korean Pines planted on that side!
I’ve got 8 walnut sees and one sapling, which left me with five more areas I needed to mark off. I started off in line with the Korean pine, but ended up changing things up. I ended up marking three spots in a triangle; not quite 20 feet apart, but close. I then needed to leave a gap at the gate into the main garden area. I ended up marking spaces closer to the inner yard fence line than the Korean pine, and spaced them so they were staggered with the two pines in this area, rather than in line with them. The Korean pine have a potential spread of 30 feet, so I needed to take that into account when it came to the spacing.
The next two pictures show the markers, though most of them are very hard to see.
The corner where I set a triangle of markers then needed to be worked on. There were a LOT of poplars trying to take that space over.
I ended up filling two wheelbarrow loads of the poplars for the branch pile, and one of those probably should have been two loads! I kept finding more and more of them as I worked my way through.
Getting into the corner area, I found the remains of fence wire in the tall grass. It looks like there might have been a sort of double fence there at some point. If there was, it would have been to protect newly planted trees from cattle. If that’s what it was there for, it didn’t survive. Aside from some lilacs at the property line fence, there’s just poplar lots of tiny self-seeded spruce.
I’ve left the spruces for now. We’ll let them get bigger and eventually transplant some of them into the spruce grove, after we’ve been able to clean and clear away the dead trees and underbrush.
There was also a pile of old tires against the corner of the fences.
Because of course there is. Is there any part of this property where we don’t find old tires strewn about???
Once that corner was done, I went across to the other markers and cleared more poplars. That side didn’t have anywhere near as many to clear out, thankfully.
In the long term, assuming these all survive, we will have a row of four walnuts along the west side of the outer yard, plus one ash, there will be an open space for driving through – someday, it would be great to put gravel down and have an actual driveway to the second gate – then three walnut in the corner, a space to drive into the main garden area, then two move walnut next to two Korean pine. The last Korean pine is planted on the other side of the gate to the inner yard by the fire pit.
If they don’t all survive, well… we’ll find something else to plant out there. These will serve not only as food forest trees (except the ash, of course), but as part of the shelter belt.
By the time I got the poplars cleared out, I was done with this job for the day. The temperature was apparently just 11C/52F, with a “feels like” of 17C/63F, but it felt a lot hotter than that to me! Mind you, I was working in full sun the whole time, so that might have something to do with it!
I may not have been up to digging holes after that but, after a hydration break, I was up to doing some less strenuous stuff.
We’ve had some more rain overnight recently, but the covered beds couldn’t get any, of course, so today I took the covers off the old kitchen bed and the one in the east yard, then gave them a thorough watering before covering them again. I ended up watering the mesh covered bed at the chain link fence, too. We may be getting rain, and even have standing water in ponds and ditches, but the soil surface still dried out insanely fast. So far, nothing winter sown seems to be sprouting in that bed. The East yard bed has lots of things sprouting in it, and they all look exactly the same. I’m guessing they’re radishes. The old kitchen garden bed still seems to only have spinach coming up in it.
Then it was time to get a couple more winter sown beds covered, too. I got out the Pex pipe cutter we bought when we had to fix the bathroom plumbing and set to measuring and cutting the pipe I’d picked up to use as support hoops.
I’d picked up a couple of 10′ pipe to use over the 4′ square beds. Those got cut in half, and will be placed in an X formation over the beds they’re intended for.
The roll of pipe I got was supposed to be 50′ long. I cut it to 5′ lengths and ended up with an extra piece almost 3′ long.
The first image above is all the 5′ lengths, plus the leftover short bit. I’m sure we’ll find somethin that will be useful for!
I then raided the old garden shed and found short pieces from broken bamboo stakes. These fit into the 1/2 inch pipe quite nicely. I used those to set up four pipes as support hoops in the high raised bed, then joined them across the top with a couple of not-broken bamboo stakes. I repeated the process over the area where mixed flower seeds were planted in the fall. Each bed got 4 hoops, so I had 2 left over.
One of the reasons I wanted to cover these beds was to protect them from critters. The ground level flower bed in particular gets catted a lot. Protecting from critters just needed netting, but I went with plastic covering, instead. While the plastic would serve as a mini greenhouse, what I was really after was something to keep the humidity in. The soil surface – right where the seeds are – is way too dry. It’s possible some stuff had started to germinate, only to dry out and die. All I can say is, I’ve seen seedlings start, and then they disappeared.
After the supports were in place, I brought over a couple of watering cans and have the high raised bed a thorough watering. Then I used one of the 8’x12′ plastic sheets to cover it.
The wind was a major issue.
In the end, I found some more broken pieces of bamboo stakes and set up the two leftover pieces of pipe over the plastic, to help keep it from ballooning in the wind and blowing away! You can see how those are set up, with Syndol next to one of them, giving everything an inspection. Even with the extra hoops over top, I had to grab rocks and scrap pieces of boards to weight down the edges.
When it came time to do the ground level bed, I got one of my daughters to give me a hand this time! Covering that bed went much, much faster with help! The wind was still a major issue, but not as bad as with the high raised bed.
My hope is that the plastic will keep the humidity levels higher over the beds, so they don’t try out and things can finally germinate.
I have a couple of much longer sheets of plastic and I want to put one of them over the bed with summer squash winter sown in it. That bed already has netting over it to keep the critters out. As with the other beds, it’s completely dried out on the surface. I can see some things germinating in there, but no summer squash. I think overnight temperatures are going to be warm enough that I can set the hoses up, too, so that should make watering things in the main garden area much easer!
So that is on my to-do list, hopefully for tomorrow. Deep water and cover the summer squash bed. I’m trying to figure out how I can do the same for the end of the garlic bed that was also winter sown. There’s just a few feet that would need covering, while the garlic doesn’t need covering at all. This bed is also already covered with netting, so it’s protected from critters, but that one end could really use the humidity being covered with plastic would give it.
We’ll figure it out.
The priority is getting those walnuts planted. Once those are done, then we can shift back to finishing the trellis build, and get other beds prepped and ready for planting. It will be a few weeks before we can put the transplants into the garden, but there are some things that can be direct sown, before then. The area the asparagus crowns and bare root strawberries will be planted needs to be prepped, too. More digging! 😄
The next few days are supposed to be quite a bit hotter. Sunday is even supposed to hit 27C/81F! The 10 day forecast shows us as having quite a few days hotter than 20C/68F. The overnight lows, though, are still looking to be below 6C/43F for most of May, so even with it being hot during the day, it’s still going to be too cold at night to leave the transplants overnight in the portable greenhouse.
Well, we’ll see how it goes. Things are going to be very busy in the garden for the next while!
In the first image, you can see the seedlings that need potting up. They all should be much bigger than this, but it’s just not warm enough, even with using the heater and the heating pad, in the basement.
With concerns about the outside cats potentially knocking the transplants over when we moved them out, I decided to use some storage bins to hold the Red Solo cups I was going to re-use to pot up into. They’ve been stored in the sun room all winter, so they had to get a cleaning of cob webs and whatever other debris managed to get on them. Thankfully, the old basement is where the laundry used to be, so we still have the old laundry sink that I could soak them all in, then scrub the ones with drainage holes in the bottom to transplant into. I also pre-soaked the seed starting mix with hot water, so it still be at least not cold, by the time the cups were filled and the seedlings transplanted.
These bins hold only 9 cups in them, so that basically became my default for the maximum number of transplants to pot up into. Which worked out really well. With the Black Beauty tomatoes, there were only 4 large and strong enough to pot up. With the Chocolate Cherry, there was only 5 to pot up, so they got to share a bin. The Spoon tomatoes and the Sub Arctic Plenty both filled one bin each. The Sweetie Snack Mix peppers and the Turkish Orange eggplant both got one bin each, too, with almost zero “extras” that didn’t get transplanted.
In the second photo, you can see them after they were all potted up, before I topped them with vermiculite. The potted up seedlings are small enough that I could use the lids on the bins, but I had only 2 of them handy at the time. The next photo is after the vermiculite was added. Then I got more lids for the bins from the sun room and my daughter helped me get them out of the basement. Which was actually quite dangerous. We started with me taking them through the old basement and up the stairs to where my daughter was waiting at the door, one bin at a time. She would grab the bin at the door (keeping the cats from dashing downstairs) and take it to the old kitchen, while I went to get the next bin.
The old basement stairs are narrow; each step is about half the width of a typical step. It is also steep than most stairs are, and there is very little space at the door. Which means I could only go to the third step from the top before I ran out of space. Even going sideways and carrying the bin on one arm, I couldn’t reach the door knob, so having my daughter open the door was an essential. Once she had the bin, I could go higher and close the door, but just going up and down these stairs is simply not good. I go down them backwards, like on board ship or using a ladder.
After a few bins, my daughter kicked me out of the basement and we traded places. Apparently, I sounded like I was in a lot of pain. Which I was, but I wasn’t going to say anything, since I know it’s not any better for her!
In the last picture, you can see all the bins and trays now set up on the freezer in the old kitchen. I was so tempted to put them into the portable greenhouse. The thermostat in there was reading more than 40C/104F! Pretty impressive, considering we never got above 4 or 5C today (39 or 41F). And that wind!! Yikes! The problem is that we’d just have to take them back inside after a couple of hours, and I didn’t want to do that today. We’re still forecast to have -6C/21F tonight, though we’re not expected to reach those temperatures until 6am tomorrow, and I know it will drop below freezing inside the greenhouse, even with the heat sink. They will go into the greenhouse tomorrow, after I get back from running around.
Once that was done, I grabbed a late lunch, then headed to the post office to pick up a parcel. On the way back, my cell phone started ringing. I don’t have hands free, so I couldn’t answer it. When I got home, I found a message from the home care coordinator asking about something strange my mother had told the morning home care aid about her puffer, and having already taken it in the hospital.
???
I called back and left a message telling her as much as I knew, then called my mother. I hadn’t gotten through to her this morning about her telephone doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning, so I told her about that, first. She wasn’t impressed that it was in the morning, but it’s at about the time she gets her morning meds, so she’ll be up, anyhow – and I intend to be there, too. I then asked her about the puffer. She told me a completely different thing from what the apparently told the home care aid. She also seems confused about the type of puffer they used with her while she was in the hospital, and the original type she was using before then – which she has started using now. She had an unopened refill from before she went to the hospital, and the other type was done, so she started taking it on her own. I have no idea where she had it stashed away. Then I found out she’d already taken it three times today. I told her, she’s only supposed to take it once in the morning, then again before bed. Not several times throughout the day. Plus, we already talked to her doctor about it. This was an experiment to see if it would help with her breathing at night. It didn’t, and she turned out to be developing pulmonary edema, which she no longer has after being in the hospital for a couple of weeks.
Things were still confused, but we agreed we would talk about it when I’m there tomorrow, and she could show me what she had. I then called the home care coordinator back and got her right away. We talked for a while and confirmed my mother told different things to them than what she told me. I then found out they were giving her two puffs in the morning, but not in the evening (with the disc type of puffer, a dose is one puff, while the other puffer, a dose is two puffs, which is why the pharmacist and I decided to fill the prescription for the disc type). So there’s a mix up right there, too. Not that the puffer has been helping her in any way, but a neighbour of hers has asthma, so she decided she needed a puffer, too, and the doctor was willing to test it out with her rather than go through the years it would take to refer her to a specialist and get all the respiratory testing done.
Hopefully, we will get that straightened out tomorrow.
After I was done on the phone, it was time to get out and see what I could do to protect the winter sown raised bed.
I have a cover for the bed, but it needed some maintenance work first, so I brought it closer to the garage, where my tools where. One of the things that needed to be done was secure two sections of the mesh. The jute twine it had been tied together with before had degraded and broken apart. I’d already had to replace the twin in the other join and used paracord for that, so I did the same thing again.
The hoops supporting the mesh are sections of pipe that turned out to be rather too strong. They are held in place with strips of metal strapping, but would get pushed downwards – usually because of a cat jumping on it! So I wanted to get those nice and snug, then screw them into place.
Syndol and Judgement decided the mesh was a night place to sit!
After the hoops were secured, I brought the cover over to the raised bed, but had to get a daughter to help with the rest, because of the wind. We got the cover on the bed, then opened one of the 8’x12′ plastic I’d picked up to cover it.
It was a lot thinner than I expected. Definitely not 7mm, which is what the guy looking up the information for me said it was. I suspect he didn’t quite understand what I was asking for.
Still, it will work for now.
We made sure to water the bed before putting the cover on (and I had to fix yet another hole dug into it). I noticed there are more sprouts coming up, so getting it covered to protect it from tonight’s cold will be a good thing!
After unfolding the plastic, we rolled and tucked the excess under the frame as best we could, but that wind was still threatening to blow it off. After looking around, I found a couple of sticked I’d joined with twine threaded through sections of a hula hoop to create a support for ground cherries flattened by the wind, a couple of years ago. That did well to drape across the top of the cover. We also found some lighter old boards to set on top as well; you can see the end result in the last photo above. Hopefully, it will be enough, but with how strong the winds are, I’m not entirely sure!
If it does hold out, it will protect the sprouts from tonight’s cold – and I plan to leave it on to also protect the bed from the cats! When it’s less windy, I’ll see if I can find a better way to secure the plastic, too. It’s meant to be temporary, though, so we’ll see. When the plastic is no longer needed, I have to find a way to close up the ends of the cover, so it can still be used to keep the cats out.
Since the coldest time of the night will be around the time I’ll be feeding the outside cats before heading to my mother’s, and then I’ll have to hit our own pharmacy in a different town when I’m done there, I’ll have to get my daughters to keep an eye on things and, when it starts warming up, move the transplants into the portable greenhouse. We’ll probably need to leave the door tied at least partly open so it doesn’t get too hot in there. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be only 9C/48F, but if it could get as hot as it did in there at our current temperatures, it’ll get even warmer tomorrow. By the weekend, we’re expected to get highs above 20C/68F. Hopefully, before then, we’ll be able to get more progress on the trellis build. We’ll also have our Costco stock up trip in a couple of days.
I ended up using a dollar store shower curtain I’d got to potentially use around the eggplant and pepper bed last year, but ended up using the dining table protectors instead. That should help out with warming up the soil and, hopefully, kill off any Creeping Charlie and crab grass in there. I will probably use one of these two solarized beds to plant our potatoes.
I also removed most of the mulch from the wattle weave bed and had a pleasant surprise.
In the first image, you can see the wild strawberries (or whatever they are), which I was expecting. What I was NOT expecting, but hopeful for, you can see in the next image. That is thyme! It survived the winter!
In the next photo, you can see an overview of the long part of the bed. There’s a sort of lighter colour mass about half way down; those are the self seeded Chamomile. Hopefully, it dropped seeds and will come back again this year.
The very last photo is the thermometer in the covered bed. It looks cloudy because I took the photo through the plastic cover. It looks like it was about 18C/64F in there.
Looking around, I couldn’t see much of the green seedlings I uncovered while removing most of the mulch. I likely damaged them too much. There were a lot of seeds scattered in there, though, so I expect more to be coming up soon.
The temperature inside the portable greenhouse was a fair bit higher!
40C/104F! That would definitely start warming up the water in the heat sink I set up, though when I popped the cover off to check, it still seemed cold. That would be in comparison to the very warm temperatures I was standing in!
The next image, meanwhile, is a screen cap taken right after I got a photo of the thermometer, showing what the outside temperature was at. 5C/42F A 35 degree difference (Celsius)!
It should be interesting to see what the thermometer says in the morning, after the 0C/32F we’re supposed to drop to, tonight.
Oh, I also remembered to remove most of the mulch from the strawberry bed in the main garden area – and return the chicken wire over the top. It was quite frozen under there, and there’s no sign of the Albion Everbearing strawberries we have planted there.
The next time I should have time to do anything of note in the garden will be on Wednesday, and right now, the forecast for Wednesday is for a high of 14C/57F with a mix of sun and clouds. It should be a very good day to be working outside!
Meanwhile, I moved things around with the seed trays in the basement. I had the containers with pre-germinating seeds on top of the light fixture over the heat mat, but that light turns itself off, so what little heat it produces doesn’t last long. I thought I figured out how to reprogram the timer, but it seems to have not made any difference. It’s been a while, and there has been no sign of germination. They’re just too cold. So I ended up moving the trays with the chitting potatoes to the top shelf with the winter squash, under the shop light, then set up the second heat mat under aquarium light. So now the tray with the eggplants, peppers, tomatoes and luffa seeds is on one mat, and the three containers of melon seeds are on the other.
When I checked on them before shutting things down for the night, I was already seeing hints of radicals! They will be ready to be potted up by tomorrow or the day after!
Amazing how just a little bit of warmth makes such a huge difference!
My main goal was to get the raised bed cover in the old kitchen garden covered with plastic to create a cat proof space and greenhouse conditions over the rectangular bed. Not only we were able to get that done, but my daughter and I got the portable greenhouse I got on clearance a while back, set up too.
Of course, things didn’t go as expected, but nothing too extremely off.
With the raised bed cover, I had to bring over a couple of cinder blocks to support the small log I was using to weigh down the plastic at one end. That required chopping the end of the sump pump hose free of the ice, so it could be moved and not be under a cinder block. I’m actually glad that it needed to be done. So far, there hasn’t been enough seepage for the sump pump to be triggered, but the water level in the reservoir is slowly increasing. With the end of the hose completely encased in ice, if it did get triggered, it would not have been able to drain. The end of the hose is still filled with ice but, now that the black plastic hose it out and exposed to the sunlight, that will melt away rather quickly.
For now, the sides of the cover are weighted down with various things but eventually, I’d like to try something different to secure the plastic over the cover. I’ll have to think on that, first, and see what materials we have that I can use.
Then there was the little portable greenhouse.
The spot I wanted to set it up, as it was the most sheltered from the wind, while still getting lots of sun, had a pile of snow from clearing a path in the way. The eavestrough extension hose was also partially buried under there, which means the snow that melted off our entry roof drained under the pile of snow.
Once the snow was cleared off, my daughter and I took turns with an ax, chopping the ice away and shoveling it clear.
In the end, though, we couldn’t use the spot. Once the frame was assembled, we tried to find a good space to set it, but everything was just too uneven. The most level ground we could find was behind the kibble house, and even there, we had to set some scrap pieces of rigid insulation under one side to level it out.
Once we worked that out, we put the cover on. It gets tied to the frame on the inside, which my daughter did while I was on the outside, holding the cover in place. For the bottom ties, we had to tilt the entire thing so my daughter could reach the corners.
As careful as we were, we did end up with a couple of tears in the cover. One, I was able to use clear duct tape to secure together again. The other was right along a zipper in the doorway, so the tape isn’t going to work there. Ah, well. I don’t expect this to last more than a couple of years. The cover, I mean. I expect the frame to last longer.
Once the cover was tied down and the frame back in position, we used the ties and tent pegs that came with the package to secure it to the ground. The metal tent pegs were pretty wimpy, but three of them did the job. At the fourth corner, the frozen ground was simply too solid. After digging around in my garden supplies in the sun room, I found a single tent peg that was a lot strong, and was able to hammer that into the ground. Still not all the way, but enough to secure the line to the greenhouse.
This may have been the most level location, but it is very much in the way. Especially those tie downs! I knew the black cord would be a problem, and could just see myself tripping over them because they are both dark and very thin. So I got some bright orange paracord and wrapped that around the lines for visibility.
In the end, I decided to take some video of both projects and put it together, rather than post a whole bunch of photos on Instagram to embed here. So, here is a short little video of the set up we got done today.
I’m glad we were able to get both done today, before the temperatures drop over the next couple of days. It will make quite a difference for the winter sown bed. As for the portable greenhouse, I will be monitoring the temperature inside, but it will be a while before we have anything to put in there.
I want to get other seeds started over the next week or so. The replacement bulbs I ordered should be arriving on Monday, so I’ll have enough light for more seed starts, plus what we’ve already got going.
While I’m happy we got these done today, I’m afraid I may have over done it. I’ve been stiffening up and starting to hurt after just a few minutes of sitting down, and my left thigh is still feeling a mess from the cramping. Enough to make me very nervous about going to bed.
Well, while I was working on the video, it ended up being my right thigh that started to give me trouble, starting to cramp up on me! I was able to move around and stretch it out, so I’m hoping I’ve managed to avoid another bout, but now both my legs are feeling unstable. I’ve been working on staying hydrated, etc., but it just doesn’t seem to be making a difference. Even when I tried to nap this morning, I was in so much pain I finally broke down and took more painkillers – one of the ones from my previous prescription. As much as I was still hurting after taking those, it turns out it still worked better than the new ones. I think I’ll see about getting a phone appointment with my doctor to talk about that.
Tomorrow is Sunday, so that will be my day of rest. Hopefully, that will give me some recovery time. It also happens to be our anniversary – my husband and I will be celebrating 37 years of marriage. We’ll be doing a lunch date on Monday, though. We will both be going to the lab in the morning for fasting blood work, so we’ll be having a lunch date afterwards. With his mobility issues and pain levels, we certainly aren’t going to make multiple trips. Not even for an anniversary! Just going out once is going to be difficult for him.
*sigh*
It’s past 10pm now. I suppose I should try going to bed.
As I was finishing my morning rounds, I decided I had to get that cover off the high raised bed and move it to the old kitchen garden. The snow is still deep in the main garden area, but the bed in the old kitchen garden I want to set it on is already almost snow free.
Getting to the high raised bed was not going to be easy. I had to break a path in – literally! With the thaw/freeze cycles we’ve been having for the past while, the surface of the snow is hard, but not hard enough to hold much weight. I had to stomp my way through, breaking the surface layer, until just before I reached the high raised bed, where the surface was solid enough that it actually held my weight.
There was no way I could carry the raised bed cover while making my way back, though. My balance isn’t that good anymore! Thankfully, that wasn’t really an issue.
Once I was clear of the deep snow, I could carry it normally. This cover, made using fence wire that needed to be sandwiched between two boards to secure it, is probably the strongest of all the covers I made.
If you click through to the next photo, you’ll see that the cover almost perfectly fits over the bed in the old kitchen garden! Which wasn’t at all intentional. When we first planted in this area, the bed was more triangular in shape. It was too wide at one end to reach the middle easily, so when I used logs to make it into a higher raised bed, I made it rectangular, but just worked with the space I had. I don’t think I actually measured anything. The covers are all 3′ wide by 9′ long. At one end, by the rose bush, it fits perfectly between the vertical corner supports at that end. The end closer to the house is slightly wider, but not enough to be an issue.
The challenge is going to be, how to cover it with plastic. Not only does it need to keep the cats out, but it has to be secure enough that the wind won’t blow it away.
There are gaps around the sides and one end of the bed that a cat could potentially squirm through. Which means my original thought of somehow securing the plastic directly to the wood frame itself is not going to be good enough. What I might be able to do is have the plastic go on the outside of the bed and secure it into the path in some way that would allow me to lift the plastic to tend the bed, as needed. How to keep it from being blown loose by the wind is going to be the main issue. I know that simply using ground staples to pin it in place won’t be enough. The wind would tear the plastic free in no time.
We have small logs from when the branch piles were chipped, each about 4′ long, stacked beside the wattle weave bed. I may just use some of those to weigh down the edges of the plastic, all along the outside of the bed. It will take several sheets of the plastic I have, though, and those will need to be taped together with clear tape. I’m definitely going to need to get a daughter to help me out with that, because I know the wind is going to make that job quite difficult!
Before we secure it, though, I’m going to see if I can remove the mulch, then add more snow to the bed before covering it with plastic. The melting snow will help “water” the bed. The mulch might still be too frozen, though. If so, we’ll put the plastic over it for a day or so, which should thaw things out faster, then try again.
If this works out as I hope it will, that will give this bed a head start. This is the bed that has:
– spinach – four different varieties – Swiss chard – two different varieties – Shallots and onions – saved seed – Kohlrabi – both purple and green – Hedou Tiny bok choi – saved seed
There are a lot of older seeds in this mix, so it’s hard to know just how many would germinate, even if they did survive the winter.
Well, this is an experiment, so whatever happens, happens!
I had another sleepless night last night (courtesy of the cats!), so my daughters took care of most of the morning stuff. That let me get at least a couple of hours of sleep before I headed out to the garden, just before noon.
We got a smattering of rain yesterday evening, so I used one of the side walls from the broken market tent to cover the onions that were curing outside. Once things were warmer, I uncovered them again, so they could get some sun and air flow.
We’ve got some warm, sunny days coming up, and mild overnight temperatures, so I lifted the bottom half of the vinyl sheets wrapped around the box frame over the eggplant and hot pepper bed.
As you can see in the foreground of the photo above, Syndol is checking out the eggplant and hot peppers I harvested out of there this morning!
This is the rest of today’s harvest. We have a first today!
Yes, a couple still have some green on them, but I wanted to get some of the weight off the plants. It was much the same with the few tomatoes I collected today.
Also, yes, that is a mutant Little Finger eggplant on the left! I actually remembered to bring pruning shears to cut the stems – they are surprisingly spiky! – and it was rather a surprised to cut one stem and get two eggplants! There are two Classic eggplant in there, too. I’m harvesting a bit smaller, as the large ones we’ve harvested before were getting pretty seedy inside. Mind you, we could leave some longer just to collect the seeds, but it’s probably too late in the season for any of the ones still on the plants to have viable seeds to collect.
The long, straight hot peppers were easy to harvest, but the curled one was so twisted around the stalk and another pepper, I ended up breaking off the top of the pepper itself, rather than the stem.
We also have one melon today, and one purple Dragonfly pepper. The colour is very much the same as the eggplants!
Pretty darn good for near the end of September in our area!
The German Butterball potato plants have all died off, so we should be harvesting those, soon. A few of the winter squash are starting to look ready to harvest and get set aside to cure, too. The one Jebousek lettuce that seeded itself should have seeds ready to collect, too. The kohlrabi look like a total loss, though. The flea beetles just decimated them. 😢 We finally got some to actually grow, and this happens. *sigh*
As we build up our raised beds, making it so they can be covered with insect netting is going to be important! I would really like to grow kohlrabi and cabbage and brassicas in general, but it looks like that’s just not going to happen until we have a way to protect them from those flippin’ flea beetles!!
I am so loving these longer days. Not only is it beautifully warm out, at 7C/45F (yeah; I know – in a couple of months, this is going to feel cold!), but it’s 6pm as I start this, and still bright and sunny out!
The dump is open today, so I took advantage of the gorgeous weather to do a dump run – hopefully, we’ll be able to do these a lot more regularly again! – then headed into town. We had a couple of the 18.9L/5 gallon water bottles to refill, so I took advantage of that, too, and took advantage of some sales at the grocery store, too. Then, icing on the cake, I had enough loyalty points to bring the bill down by $20. My husband’s claim for his CPAP supplies may have been reimbursed, but every little bit still helps.
When I got home, I drove into the inner yard to unload and saw this.
Rolando Moon was in there when I drove in to load the truck for the dump, and still there when I got back!
After we were done unloading the truck and parking it, I did a few tasks outside while I still had my rubber boots on, including checking the outhouse. The water in front is so deep, I got my pantlegs wet, even though they were rolled up. While I managed to find rubber boots with wide enough tops that they fit over my calves, they don’t fit over my pantlegs as well. Which gets amusing. One of my calves is a bit larger than the other, so the boot is very snug against the skin. As a result, when I walk around, it makes farting noises.
*snicker*
It doesn’t take much to entertain me.
As expected, the pit under the outhouse is quite full of water. We’ll have to give the outhouse a spring cleaning, soon, if only to get rid of the cobwebs under the seat! Hopefully, this year, we will finally be able to do something about the roof and give the outside a scrape and paint, thanks to the small scaffolding we were able to buy last summer. This outhouse will have to do until we can build the outdoor bathroom we have in mind, and it will probably be at least another year before we can start on that, in the location we have planned for it.
Speaking of things to do, there’s one thing we should be able to manage soon. Take care of that raised bed that Rolando is lounging in! I’ll have to snag one of my daughters to help me move the cover off and set it aside. We can then remove the mulch and harvest the last of the carrots in there. I want to pick up some metal corner reinforcements for all the raised bed covers I made. With this one, I want to add horizontal supports across the middle, at the top of the arches. I’ll need to do that with the tiny one in the old kitchen garden, too. The hoops hold the mesh up fine on their own, but I didn’t count on the cats jumping on them and lying on them quite so much!
Whether I get the extra supports done right away or not, the main thing I want to do is put plastic over it, then put it back on the bed, to make a little greenhouse and heat the soil up faster. The bed next to it, where the corn was last year, has the box cover plus with the third arched cover I made, stored on top of it. I’m quite pleased with how the arched covers fit on the box cover so well; that will come in very handy for when we have taller crops that need to be protected. For now, though, I want to separate them and put plastic on that arched cover, too, and get a second bed warmed up. The first arched cover I made, using strong fence wire, is on the newest raised bed in the main garden area and, at the moment, we won’t be able to get at it. The snow there is still too deep.
Still, if we get at least a couple of the raised beds in the east yard warmed up faster, that means we can do some direct sowing earlier, too! Of course, I can just lay the plastic directly on the top of the third bed in there, and it’ll warm things up just like that, too.
Oh, that reminds me. This morning, I was checking on the seeds I decided to sprout before planting. The container they’re in was just on the coffee table in the cat-free zone (aka: the living room). I keep forgetting how cold that room gets. The damp paper towels were way too chilly. So I reversed how they were in the container, putting the damp paper towel with the seeds on the semi-transparent lid, then covering it with the black plastic base, before putting the whole thing on the heat mat in the big greenhouse aquarium. They need warmth, but not light. Hopefully, that will help. I’ll have to check them more often, since the warmth will also dry out the paper towel.
Meanwhile, we can expect things to get very messy out there for the next while. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to start getting highs in the double digits (Celsius), and even the overnight lows are supposed to stay above freezing! It’s also supposed to stay nice and sunny, too. As mild as our winter was last year, it is still a huge psychological boost to finally have sunshine and warmth!
I just have to post this picture, taken one year ago today.
Yeah, we’re pretty ahead of the game, this year! 😂😄😂😄
The Re-Farmer 