seed haul

Our 2026 Garden: West Coast Seeds are in, plus an update

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Oh, goodness. What a morning.

I heard back from the garage when they checked their messages this morning (they don’t check while the shop is closed), and the mechanic agreed that it was likely a burnt fuse. I ended up talking to him on the phone and we made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon so they can look at it.

Then, I headed to the post office to finally pick up our packages. One of them was my West Coast Seeds order that came in almost two weeks ago!

Also, I’m an idiot.

I’m also short. Have I mentioned, I’m a bit on the short side?

Well, I didn’t open the garage door quite far enough. As I backed out of the garage, I hit the door. Broke the light above the box on the back of the cab. Just cracked the plastic, but still… What a doofus!

Our driveway may be mostly clear, but there is still that mix of hard packed tire tracks and softer snow on either side. The hard packed snow was already getting slippery – we have been warming up all night and were just a few degrees below freezing. Still, I got through all right and onto the road.

Where it started again.

That strange shuddering that wasn’t there when the mechanics test drove the truck before I took it home.

I was still on 4 wheel drive, as I needed it to get the truck unstuck, so I stopped and switched to 2 wheel drive. After that, it ran fine.

Then I saw the clock.

The time was wrong, but the clock was visible. I turned on the radio, and all the display information came on, as usual.

The console display is working again so, obviously, it’s not a burnt out fuse!

When I got to the post office, though, I confirmed that the warning dings for keys still in the ignition or headlights left on, that are supposed to start when the door is opened, didn’t.

I got our mail and a few groceries in the store, then headed home. As soon as I was settled, I sent a message to the garage, along with the picture of the broken light, asking what it would cost to get it fixed. Then I asked him to call me so I could tell him what was going on with the truck. I did add that it was NOT a burnt fuse, but maybe the ignition switch?

He called me back right away. I described what was happening, both with the shuddering back while on 4 wheel drive, and with the console display being on again, but not the warning dings that should go off when the door it opened.

He doesn’t think it’s the ignition switch, as he thinks that would cause other issues as well, but he will check it out.

He also asked how much we had left to pay off the truck. He knows we just can’t have this happening all the time, and we’ve already talked about trading the truck in a bit. We’ll see what happens when I get there, tomorrow.

I would really, really like to get our stock up shopping finally done!!

Meanwhile, I got to check out my new seeds and decided to make a short video of it.

You can also see how the seedlings are doing. Not the best. I’ve added “walls” around two sides of the trays to help keep the heat from the heater from blowing right past everything, and moved the thermometer to one end, away from the heater. I’ve actually seen that thermometer at 20C/68F since moving it closer to the trays! When I was doing the video, though, it was more like 17C/63F or so. It really should be closer to 24C/75C for the seedlings, but we just have no way to give them that. Still, I’m seeing more of the extra California Wonder bell pepper seeds I added, just in case, emerging. We’ve only got 3 surviving Caspar eggplants, but at 75 days to maturity, technically I could direct sow those.

There we have it, though. My little West Coast Seeds haul

I’m looking forward to trying these.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: MI Gardener seed haul (video)

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Yes! They finally came in! My last two orders from MI Gardener. USPS tracking simply told me they had arrived at a facility in Canada. That’s it. Not even that it arrived as destination. Just… Canada. Somewhere. 😂

I picked the packages up before I headed to my doctor’s appointment, so it was some time before I was home and able to open them up. I went ahead and did a seed haul video as I got them out.

I just realized I goofed in the video. The first order of seeds I did was on July 8, and there were no sales when I placed that order. Then I placed an order on August 1st, for a 25% off sale. Then a 40% off sale started the next day, so I placed a third order. If you visit the links, you can read more about each item. Links will open in new tabs.

With that caveat, here is my seed haul video.

While the video was uploading, I headed outside for my evening rounds and checked out a few things.

The first image is the Jebousek lettuce in the bed that self seeded in the garden bed by the chain link fence that was basically destroyed by cats getting under the mesh cover. There will be plenty of seed to collect, soon.

The next two images are of ripening Turkish Orange eggplant. Whether we enjoy these or not, these are not something I will be growing again until we have a polytunnel or a greenhouse or something. They are way too sensitive to cooler temperatures!

In the last image, we have our FIRST luffa flower buds. These clusters are the male flowers. The female flowers have a single flower on the end of a teeny developing luffa gourd. Who knows. Inside the portable greenhouse, it might still have time to fully develop. Unlikely, but one can hope, right? 😁

While out there, I even managed to pick a small handful of purple bush beans.

We’ve been having a fair bit of rain in the last while, so I haven’t been watering the garden. When checking it last night, things looked a bit dry, so I figured I’d do some watering. With our Dark Grey Zone soil, overwatering isn’t really possible.

I couldn’t belief how dry things were! It really showed when I was filling the upside down plastic jugs by the summer squash, and the collars around the winter squash. It took a shockingly long time to fill them with water, it was draining into the thirsty soil so quickly. Almost faster than the hose could fill them! I refilled them two or three times before it finally started to drain more slowly.

It got dark before I could water the old kitchen garden, so I did that, this morning. It, too, was really dry.

They should be good for a while, though. We weren’t supposed to get any rain today, but as I was driving back from my appointment in the late afternoon, I drove into a wall of rain. It was coming down so hard that I was seriously considering pulling over to wait it out. It let up a bit, though, but as I drove the last couple of miles to home, I was fully expecting to get completely soaked while opening the gate.

But then, it was gone. When I reached the gate, had all but stopped. By the time I closed the gate up again and was heading for the house, the clouds parted and the sun came out!

The deluge was welcome, though. We still have a lot of wildfires right now. Most are in the “monitored” category, so nothing is being done about them for the moment. Some are listed as either “being held” or “under control”, with a few that are still listed as “out of control”. We are no longer under any alerts for air quality from the smoke, so that’s a good sign.

Tomorrow, I’m off again to the city for our Costco shopping trip. A good time to be doing it, as we’re going to be getting some really hot days coming up. Depending on which app I look at, we’ve got a couple of days that might even exceed 30C/86F! I’ll see if the garden will need watering in the morning; if it doesn’t, I’m pretty sure it’ll need it by evening! We might be watering twice a day again, if the forecast is accurate. By next week, though, it’s supposed to drop right down, and we’re supposed to get overnight lows of 5-6C/41-43F We’ll be covering some of the garden beds again, in that range. They’re no longer predicting overnight lows at or below freezing in the second week of September anymore, which is when we would typically expect first frost.

At this point, my focus is getting more on being ready for next year. There isn’t much more we can do about this year’s garden if the temperatures drop. Things are just too far behind.

Ah, well. We’ll see what happens when it happens!

The Re-Farmer