seeds

Our 2026 Garden: preparing to direct sow

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First up, I’m happy to share this photo of Havarti.

After how bloody and swollen he was after his spay yesterday, then disappearing when the cleaned out isolation shelter was dry and ready to hold him for the night, I honestly would not have been surprised if he didn’t make it. Instead, when I came out to do the feeding this morning, there he was, mostly cleaned up, among the cats swirling under my feed, very eager for food!

I just came back from the evening feeding. He is doing very well – but it’s so hot out there, most of the food I set out this morning was still uneaten! No appetites in this heat, that’s for sure. They have plenty of water available, and plenty of shade, and we have cat puddles all over the place.

One of the things I did today was pick up the trees at the post office.

I haven’t bothered to open the box, yet. It’s in the living room, where the air conditioner is, and no cats to try to tear into it.

The house is cooler – we’ve got the AC, my husband and I have box fans in our rooms, and the girls have their AC in their upstairs apartment. They also managed to get the old basement door to open (the knob needs replacing) and the wire mesh door we made for it is set up, allowing air circulation from the cooler basement.

The old basement is damp enough that I got two blowers and an oscillating fan going. The new basement has weeping tile but, after a rain barrel was allowed to overflow the summer before we moved here, the corner where that barrel was still gets damp, so I’ve got an oscillating fan on that corner, too. I still need to set up the summer window in the old basement, which is a combination of wire mesh and window screen, so no critters can get through. The extra air circulation will help with the dampness in that basement, too.

With the sump pump going off fairly regularly, and the hose set up to drain under a bed in the old kitchen garden, it means our tiny bok choy, beets and parsnips will get watered from below, too.

The heat was still getting to me and I ended up going down for a nap in the living room, with the AC running, for an hour and a half – I set a timer this time – shortly after lunch.

Then I went into the new basement. With all the transplants now outside, I cleared the set up that was on my work table, putting the full spectrum lights away (now I suddenly can’t remember if I shut off the shop light…). This gave me room to re-organize my seed packets and think about what I can direct sow, now that the soil temperatures are more than warm enough. Normally, I wouldn’t sow these things for another week, but the soil thermometer I picked up tells me the soil is ready, and the long range forecast shows no sign of frost. With all the protective netting I’ve been setting up, though, if there was a possibility of frost, I would be able to cover the beds that need it with cloth.

After going through my seeds, I set aside a number of packets into a separate bin, as thinks I can potentially direct sow in the next few days.

No, I won’t be sowing everything in that bin! The second picture shows part of why. Granted, that’s in the sun room, but still…

Most of what’s going into the garden beds will be transplants. I don’t actually have a lot to direct sow.

In the high raised bed, I will be planting bush beans, interplanted with onion transplants. I will be planting pole beans in the middle of the bed that has the daikon radish and white turnips winter sown into it.

The flower bed at the end of the high raised bed will have cosmos and nasturtiums transplanted into it. I have marigolds to transplant among the vegetable beds, but I also plan to direct sow more. I have bachelor’s button and other flowers I’d like to direct sow, but I’m not sure where, yet.

There is a space in the trellis bed that should have room to transplant cucumbers into it – if we have any to transplant. I do have the bi-colour pear gourds, though. I might transplant those, instead. There is also enough space between where the carrots are planted (I still can’t tell if we have any, after the second sowing) to direct sow something that isn’t too large and bushy.

One of the empty beds in the main garden area is meant to have some tomatoes, plus the celery and peppers transplanted into it. Onions will be interplanted among them. There aren’t a lot of surviving peppers, though. The spacing I have will determine what I will direct sow there. These are long beds and I might have extra space for the celery. They are a short season variety I could potentially direct sow more of.

Another bed, where the garlic was planted last year, is meant for squash or melons, but after the tray of winter squash, melons and cucumbers got decimated by something in the basement, it will be a while before the new seeds even germinate, never mind be ready for transplant.

I have two varieties short season corn to direct sow, but the area they are going in still needs to be uncovered and prepared. If we have any that survived, I hope to interplant winter squash transplants, or direct sow pole beans among them.

The bed along the retaining wall in the old kitchen garden will be direct sown with summer squash. I have 5 varieties to plant, possibly 6, if I have the space. That bed still needs to have hoops to hold protective netting set up over it, though.

In the newly finished bed I have at the chain link fence, I am looking to transplant winter squash and melons – if the new seeds replacing the eaten ones germinate and survive! I might end up buying transplants at some point, but I don’t know if it’s necessary, yet.

Among the other seeds I will sow as I find space are things like fern leaf dill, which I plan to treat as a perennial, and other varieties of peas and beans, including garbanzo beans, though those might wait until next year. The Caspar eggplant transplants don’t look very robust, but they are a short season variety, so I might direct sow more along with the transplants, just so see how that will work out.

With the heat holding on for so long in the day, I expect to only get the evening watering done tonight. I will try to get up earlier tomorrow and see what I can get done before it gets too hot out there. The highs are supposed to very slowly get “cooler”; starting tomorrow, we’re expected to be below 30C/86F for the next while. One of my apps says to expect rain starting Tuesday night (today is Friday), thunderstorms on Wednesday, and rain continuing through Thursday morning.

Right now, at almost 7:30pm, we’ve finally dropped to 28C/82F, though the “real feel” is still 29C/84F.

Time to find the bug spray and do the evening watering!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: direct sowing four beds

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So May has been just all over the place, this year. This morning, it was snowing. We have frost advisories for tonight. It’ll be almost a week before things really start to warm up again.

This has had an unfortunate affect on our winter sown beds. Most of what germinated did not survive the temperature fluctuations, after the mulch was removed.

What was sown in them, however, was all cool weather crops that can be direct sown before our last frost date, as soon as the soil can be worked. Which means, we still have time.

I started off in the old kitchen garden, with the bed that has clear vinyl over the wire raised bed cover that my daughter helped me move aside.

The first picture in the slide show above was before I stared doing anything. You can see a row of onions along the south wall that are doing well – but the ones along the north wall are pretty much gone! I think the one on the south were partially shaded by the wall, keeping them slightly cooler, while the ones inside the north wall had no respite. I should have propped up the cover to allow air circulation on the hotter days, but there was no real way to do that.

Which is why the first thing I worked on was the walls of this bed.

There were a number of stakes that were high enough that the cover got hung up on them, and I spent some time hammering them deeper. The top logs aren’t particularly straight, and one of them is quite a bit narrower at one end than the other. I secured them better, while also using straw to fill the gaps under them, as well as to make everything more level. I ended up using leftover pieces from the stakes I’d cut for the in-progress garden bed at the chain link fence and most more stakes to further secure the walls.

You can see the end result of that in the second picture.

Once that was done, I spent some time removing more of the leaf mulch remaining. Even with the vinyl over the cover, wind got in and blew things around.

After clearing the rows, I re-sowed the Hedou Tiny bok choy and the variety mix of beets. I had considered getting one of the snail rolls of onions from inside to add along the north edge, but changed my mind. I had picked up a packet of parsnips at our local general store – because I just could not resist buying more seeds! – and sowed some of those, instead. I think I’m the only one in the household that likes parsnips, so we don’t need a lot.

That done, I watered everything from the rain barrel right away. Then I grabbed the soaker hose I’d brought over and hooked it up to the garden hose to test it out. It was working fine, so I laid it out between the rows, making sure the right end was set up at one corner, where the hose could be screwed on without having to take off the cover.

This soaker hose is quite long, though, so after pegging it down between the rows. there was enough length left over to go along the walls around the entire bed.

Once it was set up and pegged down, I hooked up the hose and left it going while I worked on the next area.

In the wattle weave bed, I’d planted some Tom Thumb dwarf peas along the back, and transplanted garlic and a few onions along the front. After removing most of the mulch when things started to warm up enough, I made sure to set netting over it, to keep the cats out.

I don’t know if any of the peas germinated or not, but when I moved the netting aside and cleared away excess leaf mulch, I saw no sign of pea sprouts at all. The package has only 25 pea seeds, so I planted the entire package. I do still have an extra of this variety, though, that could be succession sowed somewhere else, if I want. We have other varieties of peas, though, so I would probably go with something different.

The garlic was doing fine, and most of the transplanted onions are showing growth. In the green plastic collar, the mystery flowers I found and transplanted into this bed are coming up nicely, too. Once the peas were planted and watered, I just needed to slide the netting down the hoops and peg them down again. Those fiberglass hoops I used in place of the wire the kit came with are working out really well.

After that was all done, I messaged my daughter to help me put the raised bed cover back on. I turned off the water and moved the garden hose first, to remove the tripping hazard! The last image shows both beds, all covered up again.

The cover fits a LOT better now. No hanging up on stakes, and no weird gaps under the frame that I had to fill with boards or rocks or pieces of brick, to make sure no cats got in, and to keep the wind from flipping the whole thing over. I was better able to tuck the excess vinyl under the edges, so nothing should catch on the wind. The boards I’d used along the edges before were no longer needed, so they went on top, to weigh down the vinyl and keep it from billowing in the wind. The pieces of wood I used before kept getting blown off!

I will keep that vinyl cover on for a few more nights. Then I will replace it with mosquito netting, so it doesn’t get too hot under there, while still protecting the bed from cats.

That done, I moved to the garden beds in the East yard. I worked on the cabbage bed and the kohlrabi beds at the same time.

The first thing was to remove their covers. As you can see in the first photo, the leaf mulch got blown all over the rows I’d planted into. I cleared away excess leaf mulch and, in the process, did find a few tiny seedlings.

In the second image, you can see I also found a friend!

When it was clear enough to start sowing (which you can see in the third image), I used a bamboo trellis stake to create a furrow, and did my best not to kill off the few seedlings I found in the process. Hopefully, they will survive.

Once the kohlrabi and cabbage were all re-sown, they got a thorough watering from the rain barrel, and the covers were set back on.

I debated whether I should find some plastic to cover them for the night, since we are expecting frost, but these are meant to be sown before last frost, so they should be fine.

At this point, I was done for the day. The next things I need to re-sow are the spinach, chard and carrots. I’m pretty sure the daikon radish and white turnips don’t need to be re-sown, but I’d have to lift the poly to be able to see just how many have made it. The greenhouse poly is semi-transparent, with condensation on the inside, so it’s really hard to tell.

This will wait for another day. Hopefully not tomorrow, as I would love to be making the trip into the city to bring my daughter home from the hospital!

This weekend is the May long weekend – Monday is Victoria Day – which is when a lot of people traditionally finish getting their gardens in. Not where we are, though, and certainly not this year!

I’m happy with what I was able to get done today, though. It feels so good to be working in the garden again!!

The Re-Farmer

Medical update and Our 2026 Garden: more seeds are in

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Two things were supposed to happen today, and one was a “hopefully will happen”, and one shopping request, taking advantage of my being in the city..

The “hopefully will happen” thing was for my walker to come in. I kept checking the tracking and it just said it had arrived in the city on Friday. No “in delivery” or anything like that. I hoped to go to the mail before they closed over the lunch hours to pick it up, but started to think it might not happen.

The other thing I was waiting for was for the septic guy to arrive. He had said he would be here around 10, but couldn’t say for sure. We were prepared in case I had to leave before he got here, with one of my daughters set to do the cat watch while the tank was open, to make sure none came to close. Having a cat fall in would be disastrous.

The main thing that was scheduled for today was my appointment at the sports injury clinic in the city, in the afternoon.

The last minute request was for a stop at Walmart. I had forgotten a couple of things the last time I was there, so my older daughter requested I pick up a few things for her. She has not been well at all lately, and needed some health related items. When my husband found out I was hitting the Walmart, he let me know he was on his last bottle of distilled water for his CPAP humidifier. So I had a short list to take advantage of the trip.

I made one last check on the tracking and found, lo and behold, the walker was in and ready to pick up! Yay! So I left shortly after 11 to get it, before heading to the city. The septic guy had not arrived yet, but everything was ready for him.

When I got to the post office, I had two parcels to pick up. One was the walker, and the other was my seed order from MI Gardener! More on that, later.

Once everything was loaded in the truck, it was off to the city.

The first thing I noticed when I drove in was a gas station on the outskirts with a price of $1.489/L Local prices rare $1.889/L Driving through the city, I saw $1.889, $1.629 and $1.559, so the prices were just all over the place! I was definitely going to get gas before coming home.

Then I drove right past the clinic.

I did that last time!

I found a place I could turn off and park to double check the address, then headed back again. I was too busy looking at gas prices and completely missed it, even though it is right net to a gas station!

One of the higher prices ones, though.

I’m glad I left early, because that gave me plenty of time for doing things like this. 😁

I was still almost an hour early when I checked in, but that was okay. They had one comfortable armchair in the waiting room. One that was far less painful to sit on than a regular chair! I didn’t get much sleep last night, partly because of the pain in my hips, so I took advantage of the situation and drifted off for a bit.

When the doctor called me in, we talked a bit about the last time I was there, when I got the cortisol injection to my left hip. This time, I mentioned that my right hip was also starting to bother me, so it was decided to do both.

As for the rest…

My Xrays were not in yet. There was nothing we could talk about or do, without them. He marked the file so that they will call me when they come in, and we discussed whether I should go ahead and make an appointment for next week. In the end, I suggested they call me, and perhaps even have just a telephone appointment, depending on what the Xrays show.

As I was telling him about my fall before Christmas, explaining my injuries, I brought up the walker and asked if I could get a note or something, to submit to the insurance company. When my husband got his walker, it was in another province and done through home care, which also covered the cost of the walker, the bath chair and arm bars in the tub/shower of where we were living at the time. It turns out that here, they write a prescription. Which he did for me, after asking questions about the style and type of walker (4 wheels with a seat), and included in the notes why it was needed. Which is pretty much just for when I’m working around the yard, for the most part.

When we were done, I didn’t need to make another appointment, so I just headed out, saying good bye to the receptionists as I went by. Once in the truck, I paused to message the family, when there was suddenly someone at the window.

It turns out there’s a fee for the cortisol injections – and they only take cash. It was only $20. I asked her where the nearest bank machines were, and she mentioned one that was near the Domo gas station I was planning to go to, next. So I told her I would go to the gas station, then the ATM and be back.

When I got to the Domo, the line was quite backed up. Today is Monday. Monday and Thursdays is when they have a 4¢ off/L deal, and a lot of people were taking advantage of it! So I filled that tank at $1.449 It still cost almost $85 to fill, as I dropped below half a tank by the time I reached the city.

That done, I parked and got the cash, then headed back to the clinic. I asked, just in case, and they don’t do direct billing with any insurance companies, but they always give out receipts. So I got that to include with the prescription for my husband to send out, after getting the invoice for the walker from online.

Every little bit helps.

Finally, I headed to the Walmart, where I had to stop to eat. It was about 2pm by then. I hadn’t had lunch and was starting to get dizzy. It was a quick McRaunchies meal, and then I did the shopping. One of the things I’d forgotten before we nowhere to be found, but I got everything else on my three short lists lists.

That done, it was time to head home. By then, it was starting to rain a bit, but not much – until I got closer to home. At which point, we were getting real, solid rain! An absolute downpour of much needed rain! I was so happy to see it!

By the time I got home, it was around 5pm, and the downpour had stopped, though it was still raining a bit. I drove up to the house to unload, then fed the cats so I cold safely drive the truck out of the yard to park in the garage.

We have a bit of a conundrum with the yard cats right now.

Furriosa and Bug have gone into heat.

Both are ridiculously tiny, and they didn’t want the attention, but the boys have been after them. The boys are twice their size and many times heavier! I contacted the rescue about it, and we’ve sort of worked out a plan. Bug, Furriosa and a little black and white female like to hang out in the isolation shelter. We can’t approach them, but we can close the ramp door and keep them there. That would also keep the boys away! From there, we can make arrangements for spays. We’ve been trying to focus on getting Slick who we barely see these days, but the larger adult ferals are not the same sort of concern. If the littles get pregnant, they are so small, they won’t survive.

So the goal right now is to catch them when all three are in the isolation shelter and close it up, even if they are with other cats. Unless those other cats are intact males, of course, but we can remove them once the ramp door is closed.

Anyhow. I digress.

Once the purchases were put away, I assembled the walker. I love it! I didn’t get a picture, though, as I had to hide it in the old kitchen right away. Otherwise, the indoor cats will crawl all over it and piss on it, or use it as a scratching post. I expect to be able to work outside tomorrow, and will be able to get a picture then.

Finally, I got to open up my envelope of seeds.

Starting from the top left, yes, I got more coffee seeds. These are for my daughters, and any successful tree would be a house plant, with some time outside in the heat of summer.

Below the coffee seeds is another packet of Blue Berries. The packet we got before had only 8 instead of 10 seeds. It looks like they all germinated, but I wanted to have extra of this variety, just in case.

The Marsh Mallow is something I’ve been interested in trying pretty much since I discovered I could get seeds for it. It’s a plant I’ve read about in my herbals, long ago, but didn’t know could be grown here. All of the plant is edible, except the seeds/pods, as a vegetable. Sap from the root was used to make the first mashmallow confections. The leaves and flowers can be used as an herbal tea, and has medicinal uses both when ingested internally, or used externally. They do require more marshy and damp conditions to grow, so that part will be a challenge. It’s worth a try!

Below that is a fresh Purple Savoy cabbage packet. I probably still have some left, considering there’s 150 seeds in the packet, but I’m pretty sure the ones I winter sowed did not make it. I might try starting some indoors, just in case. Either way, I now have extra seeds.

The Tom Thumb Dwarf peas are because I haven’t seen any sign of them germinating in the old kitchen garden’s wattle weave bed. There are only 25 seeds in a packet, so I don’t mind planted extra, even if the winter sown ones do end up germinating.

I got more Spring Blush peas because I was sure the winter sown ones had been killed off by those cold nights we got after I removed the mulch. Now that it looks like most of them have survived and are sprouting, I will happily use these for a second sowing.

Then there are the sunflowers! Both varieties, Black Russian and Mammoth are supposed to be good for eating. When we grew sunflowers before, it was partially to create a privacy screen, what with our vandal going around and doing things like shouting at us or giving us the finger from the road as he drove by. We didn’t get a lot of fully mature seed heads. I want to try them again, this time in hopes of being able to have seed to feed the chickens we’re getting, as they should be adult size by the time the sunflowers are mature.

Weather willing, and if the deer don’t get them!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: graduation, and new sprooooots!

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First up, some good news in progress that made it worth being up way too late again.

At around midnight, I was contacted by someone from the new rescue. Some spaces are opening up, and she was wondering what friendly yard cats might be available to take in for fostering and adoption?

She had a few in mind from pictures I’d sent before, but requested more up to date photos and videos that she could show to potential fosters. My daughter and I did that while doing the morning cat feeding. Unfortunately, a couple of times when I thought I was taking video, it turned out it wasn’t recording. Instead, I had a second or two of video of our feet or whatever, taken at either end of what was supposed to be a video for the rescue! We have a whole bunch of adult males in particular that are so friendly, it’s almost impossible to get still shots of them, as they are all over each other, trying to get pets.

So I will have to try again later today. If all goes well, we might be able to have our tiny girls that are friendly, but still too small to spay (even though they are almost a year old) be taken in. Or Sir Robin. Sir Robin desperately wants to be an indoor cat! I haven’t even seen some of the adult feral females in a few days which, unfortunately, means they may well have just had kittens somewhere in their hidden places.

Tis the season.

Speaking of the season, here is how our seedlings are looking.

Two snail rolls have graduated to the upper level and are now under the shop light, giving them a few more inches of space that I couldn’t give them with the gooseneck light fixture they were under.

The Golden Boy celery is thriving since being “potted up” to the snail roll! That poor little luffa is getting its true leaves, but is looking pretty sickly. The summer savoury is looking very leggy and weak, but the tarragon – the very few there are – are looking stronger.

The second picture is of the eggplant and peppers tray. Those seedlings are looking very sad and weak, and there are so few surviving. I’ve already resown them, but I won’t try again. They are short season enough that I might try direct sowing, instead.

With how few there are, I’m seriously considering “potting them up” into a snail roll. I could easily fit them all into a single roll, with room to spare. I’m just not sure how well they’d handle being transplanted. It can’t be much worse than they are doing now.

In the other snail rolls, we have more growth.

In the first picture, you can see quite a few more of the hollyhocks now. There are still two or three seedlings disguised as vermiculite in there.

In the next picture, you can see a second Orange Currant tomato is up – plus there’s another elbowing its way up that I didn’t even see until I looked at the photo, later.

It’s the same in the next picture. I could see one Manitoba tomato had emerged, but looking closely in the photo, I can see the stem of another, pushing it’s way up.

Still no sign of anything in the Chocolate Stripes or Blueberry tomatoes, and still no Florence Fennel visible.

All in good time.

Tomorrow is the last business day of the month – payday – so we are expecting to do our Costco stock up trip in the city. I’ll see what they have for seed starting mix. I only got one bag and it’s pretty small. I might only get four seed snails out of it. I won’t be starting more seeds for a couple more weeks, but I will probably be starting more. Costco carries the big Pro Mix bags, which would last me for the rest of the seed starting season. I might have to sift it before using it. I haven’t heard people talking about needing to do that with their seed starting mixed this year at all, though, so it might not be an issue. I might need to get more potting soil, too. I still have some but, with so much material getting sifted out, I don’t have as much potting soil as it appears in the bag! Any time I pot something up, I would be using potting soil rather than seed starting mix.

We really need a better set up for starting seeds indoors.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: next batch of seed starts

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Today, I started on the seeds that are in the 6-8 weeks before last frost category.

These are what I sowed.

In the first picture are the four varieties of tomatoes we will be growing this year: Chocolate Stripes, Manitoba, Blue Berries and Orange Currant.

I just realized I made a mistake of some kind for the days to maturity on the Blue Berry tomatoes. That’s probably supposed to be a 65, not a 95!

In the second picture are Florence Fennel, Crackerjack Marigold, Dwarf Dazzler Cosmo and Jet Black Hollyhock.

I did a lot of prep in advance. I had enough bubble warp to make the eight snail rolls that I needed, so I went with that, this time. The bubble wrap has perforations to make 12″ square sheets. I made strips 3 sheets long, then cut them in half, giving me strips that were 3′ long and 6″ wide, using clear packing tape for where I needed to join pieces together. I saved the masking tape for holding the rolls together, labelling half the strips I needed in advance.

Then I used hot water to moisten the seed starting mix. I had a bit left over from last time, plus added the new bag I got. No sifting needed! It took almost a gallon of water to get it sufficiently damp! I also set up a heat mat and a plastic tray under the shelf the seedlings are on, to hold the rolls.

Once everything was set up, it was time to make the seed snails and plant some seeds.

I had a bit of a surprise with the tomato seeds. Specifically the seed counts. I always empty the packet of what I’m working on into a bowl to make it easier to grab the seeds, one at a time – usually with the tip of a damp bamboo chopstick for small seeds. The Orange Currant packet said 25 seeds, but there were only 18. I normally would have planted about a dozen seeds and saved the rest; I chose varieties with growing seasons short enough that I could try again if germination or survival rates were low. I ended up using the entire packet.

The Blue Berries tomato had a seed count of 10, but there was only 9. I even double checked the packet to make sure nothing was stuck inside. Not a bit deal.

The other two varieties, meanwhile, had more than what the packet’s seed count said. I planted a dozen seeds each of those and have some left over if I need to try again.

I’m not complaining about the seed count. MI Gardener even did a video on Instagram, I think, talking about why they do see counts instead of weights, and that they always try to have over counts, but mistakes sometimes happen. Their seed packets are only $2 each, so I’m really not worried about it.

The strips I made for the seed rolls were all quite a bit longer than needed. This is deliberate. It gives me enough slack that I can “pot up” the tomatoes more than once, as the seedlings get bigger.

With the Florence Fennel, I made that roll bigger because I wanted to plant quite a bit more. Those can also be succession sown. We don’t normally buy bulb fennel, even though we enjoy it, because it’s one of those “treat” vegetables, rather than a staple. Hopefully, we will have lots to enjoy. I’ve tried growing them once before in the old kitchen garden and they were mostly a fail (the leaves could be used, but we never got bulbs). We didn’t realize, at the time, just how much the ornamental crab apple trees shaded everything. That’s been largely dealt with but, this year, I’ll be sure to set them where they will get more light!

With the flowers, I plan to direct sow some of the left over seeds later on, to extend the blooming season. They are going to be scattered all over the garden areas, rather than into dedicated flower beds.

I’m a little perplexed, though. I had wanted to start some of the aster seeds I saved from a packet of memorial seeds. I distinctly remember labelling a paper seed envelop (from some of the free ones we got with our seed orders) for them, as well as one for the asparagus seeds I’d collected. Now, I can’t find either. The other seeds I’d collected were larger so they went into little spice jars. I have those. They all should have been together in my seed storage bin, and I just can’t find them anymore!

I really want to plant those memorial asters again.

But I digress…

Once I got all the seed rolls done – which used up all the seed starting mix I had! – I topped them with a bit of vermiculite. Even the hollyhock, which the packet said not to cover. I just dusted a bit for the benefit of the seed starting mix surface; not enough to actually cover the seeds. After that, they all got a thorough misting.

Then I had a couple of problems.

The first was the tray they were in. All those rolls were heavy enough I had to be very careful not to break the tray when moving it.

Then there was the problem of light.

Once they were under the shelf and on the heat mat, I tried to set up one of the full spectrum lights I have. Unfortunately, the only place I can clamp the fixture onto is the edge of the table, and the lights didn’t quite reach under the shelf. I had to pull everything out and set things up closer to the edge, which I had hoped to avoid doing. It leaves me very little work space on my table.

I was just finishing up when my daughter came down to see how I was doing (she’s been taking over the outside cat feeding of late, letting me sleep in in the mornings, and get jobs like this done). I took advantage of her and got her to help me transfer the seed rolls out of the plastic tray and onto one of the metal baking sheets I had been using to hold seedlings in the Red Solo Cups. They are too wide to go under shelf were I’d originally intended the tray to be, which is why I hadn’t used one in the first place. In the second picture, you can see how it’s now set up, on a strong and sturdy metal tray over the heat mat and with the lights.

I had not intended to do so many seed snails but, for this year, they are the most practical way to do it, and they really do save a lot of space.

The next group of seeds that will need to be started are in the 4-6 weeks before last frost category. I’ll do those around the middle of April or a bit later. More than enough time to get more seed starting mix.

Hopefully, we’ll have a good germination rate – and the mouse or whatever that ate my pepper seedlings won’t like anything growing here!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: Yellow Celery – I hope this works!

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Well, it was time.

The yellow celery (Golden Boy celery) had outgrown their tray. They needed potting up.

The question was, how to do that without damaging their roots?

That’s the down side of scatter sowing such tiny seeds. Especially when the germination rate was so high!

I decided the best way to do it was to set them into a seed snail roll.

As with the onions, I wanted to use potting soil rather than a soilless seed starting mix. That meant, more sifting. Which had its own challenge. Wearing a dust mask again was out of the question. I just can’t wear a mask anymore, and trying to last time was really awful. Yet not having some sort of protection was also out of the question because of how much dust sifting the dry potting soil would raise up.

My solution turned out to be pretty simple. The clear plastic garbage bag I use to protect my work surface is large enough to cover the entire bucket, and have enough slack that I could grip the handles of the colander I am using as a sifter and shake it. Yes, small amounts of dust did come out from below, but this was at floor level and it wasn’t an issue.

Before I started, I emptied the old, cracked tray I was using to collect the big pieces. This is what I got.

The depth of the soil barely reached my second knuckles. Meanwhile, just look at all those pieces that got sifted out! Totally insane. This bag was purchased last year, and I’ve heard that a lot of people were having the same issue. A few sticks is pretty normal, but nothing to this extent. It wasn’t even just one brand, either. Hopefully, the companies have gotten better at making sure their raw material is properly composted before bagging it up and sending it out!

That done, it was time to prepare the seedlings.

The first picture is the “before” shot. You can see how dense they are. The tray is bottom watered, and roots are showing out the opening. Roots that would be quite entangled. How to get the seedlings out and apart, then transplanted, gently?

In the second picture, you can see what I decided to do. I had a tray (a thoroughly cleaned and repurposed meat tray that we’ve had for a few years now) that was wider and flat. I carefully moved the whole clump over into the tray, then very gently started to loosen the seed starting mix to untangle and free up the roots a bit.

Then I got some hot water and thoroughly moistened the sifted soil. The seed starting mix the seedlings was in was really quite cold. Not good! I wanted to transplant them into soil that was at least a bit on the warm side.

I had prepared a strip of packing material – this time, using a clear repair tape I happen to have, instead of painters tape, to join three sections to make one long strip. I started out by laying a thin layer of soil over about 3/4 of the strip, as I wasn’t sure just how much of it I would need to use. Then it was time to VERY carefully and gently pull apart and set out the seedlings.

I was able to get all of them in, and did add more soil to the roll to fit them all.

The remaining seed starting mix got added to the bucket of sifted soil. I added more hot water and mixed it all up before adding another layer of soil to the roll; just enough to cover the roots.

Before rolling it, I added strips of masking tape to the end, so it just needed to be lifted into place, with the tape already handy to close up the roll.

With the two layers of soil in there, the result was a pretty thick roll. I could use the plastic underneath to hold the soil in at the bottom, but there wasn’t much that could be done at the top, and soil was falling out. Once it was taped closed and the roll set upright, I found a few seedlings had fallen out with the soil. I found some gaps and carefully set them back in. I then used some of the soil that fell out to fill in the top of the roll and support some of the seedlings that seemed to need it more.

Now, it’s back in the tray under the shop light. Both trays were empty of water, so I added warm water to the trays to maintain bottom watering.

While I was doing all this, I had the heater going. It’s aimed under the shelf I have the trays on. The thermometer is kept at the far end, and the temperature was only about 13C/55F. Holding my hand under the shelf, though, I could feel it was a lot warmer just under the trays. So I set up the thermometer next to the tray with the snail roll, which is at the far end from where the heater is.

The first picture shows the “potted up” celery back in their tray. After setting up and leaving the thermometer for a while, I got a reading, which you can see in the next photo above.

It’s just barely touching 25C/77F! This is great, as cold is the big issue here. The ambient temperature really should be about 20-24C/68-75F

Since the heat is under the trays, that will warm up any water that is in them which, in turn, will warm up the soil and seed starter mixes. Not by a lot, but enough to hopefully keep the chill off the roots. Plus, it will be better for the fresh pepper and eggplant seeds I sowed to hopefully replace the ones eaten by a mouse or whatever it was.

The hygrometer reading is low, though. Ideally, it should be between 50% and 60% – even 70% for some plants. Hopefully, the bottom watering and occasional misting helps counter the ambient humidity at least a bit.

The celery seedlings now have a nice deep roll to spread their roots into, so they should be good in there for a while.

Hopefully, they will survive this! I seem to remember that I used the entire packet of seeds for this, so there’s no trying again if they don’t make it.

Well, we shall see, soon enough, I guess!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: “potting up” the onions, and setting things up

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Okay, I got some good progress today!

My first goal was to “pot up” the onions in their seed snails. For this, I wanted to use potting soil, rather than more seed starting mix. I have a bag of potting soil from last year with plenty still left in it, but I knew it was really full of sticks. Which meant I needed to sift it, first, because there was no way it could be used in the snail rolls as it was.

I got out a bucket and a colander that I use for harvesting in the summer, and started sifting in batches. The potting soil was bone dry which made it easier to sift, but also meant there was a LOT of dust. Even misting with water didn’t really help much. I did try to use a dust mask, which is difficult all on its own, since I can’t wear masks anymore. It was either breathing dirt without it, or struggling to breathe with it. Definitely a no-win situation. It didn’t actually help much, to be honest, but it was better than nothing.

I was blown away by just how many sticks I sifted out.

That pile on the side? That’s what I sifted out of what you see in the bucket. I poked my finger in to measure, and it was up to my second joint, so about 2 inches deep. Good grief! It was almost more sticks than soil!

The next step was to moisten the sifted potting soil. I used hot water for that, so it wouldn’t be a shock to the plant roots. It took a remarkable amount of water to moisten it, and I was just aiming to get it wet enough to be able to stick to itself.

Then it was time to get the onions ready.

This is how they looked to start with. These rolls all fit into one bin, and the seedlings are looking pretty good.

The length of them did make unrolling the snail a bit of a challenge! They were tangled together, and wanted to twist around each other as I unrolled the snail.

In the first photo above, I unrolled the first seed snail. These were bottom watered, and you can see that the soil is moist all the way through, and the roots are all the way to the bottom. Some of them seemed a bit crowded, so I did adjust a few of them to space them out a bit. In the second picture, you can see where I’ve added the potting soil on top. From there, it got rolled up and taped closed again.

It was a lot bigger, of course. Only two could fit in the bin I was using, but I did have a second, slightly smaller one, available.

Here are the “potted up” onions. In the second picture, you can see that one of the snails is a lot smaller. That’s the bunching onions. It’s a good thing those didn’t need as much soil, because I was scraping the bucket to get every last bit out for that roll. I really didn’t want to have to sift more!

These are now back in the living room. They are the only things I have space for there, this year.

In order to do this, I had to completely clear my work table. That meant taking away the trays, lights, heat mats, and everything under and around them.

With the onions done, I could then arrange the work space to be ready for the next batch of seed starts. I have the top shelf from a plastic shelf that was too tall to fit in the old basement, and it was used last year to hold trays higher up. That’s what I am using it for again now.

My poor little peppers and eggplant.

Hopefully, the new seeds I sowed yesterday will germinate – and won’t get eaten! I had some concerns about not having heat mats under them anymore, but before I set up the shelf, I made sure to create a wall of cardboard around the back and at one end, then moved the heater so that it was blowing under the shelf. That made a big difference, and the warmth is kept under the shelf enough to warm the trays from below. Not that the heater is on all the time, but even when the furnace is on, now that the opening between the basements is uncovered again, there is heat blowing in and the cardboard, etc. holds it around the plants surprisingly well.

Which you can see better in this next picture.

The insulation leaning at one end it just there until it’s needed later; the cardboard forms a “wall” behind it, out of frame. I’ve got the flaps of the cardboard box under the back legs, so I had to put something under the front legs to level the shelf. Then I set up the insulation pieces, which protect the cutting mat from warping, and the heat mats, ready and waiting. With the seedlings so close to the shop light, the plant lights aren’t needed for now, so they’re just clamped to the table in the front. There is no place to clamp the lights to use them on top of the shelf, anyhow. Everything gets plugged into a power bar with USB ports that I have set up above my work table.

As for our next seed starts, I don’t think I’ll be using the seed trays again. They are all smaller seeds, and for the space, I think I will do more seed snails. I wouldn’t me making them as deep was what I used for the onions, though. More like a third of that height. I have lots of that packing foam available.

I need to remember, though: do not use painters tape to attach them together to make a longer strip. One of the onion rolls started to split at the tape while I was rolling it back up again. It doesn’t like moisture. I’ll have to see what alternatives we have.

That won’t be needed for another week or so.

For now, I’m just glad I don’t need to sift more of that potting soil for a while!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: Noooo!!!!!

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Well, crud.

I checked on the seedlings in the basement today, and discovered carnage.

In the first picture, there were three seedlings – two that I’d planted after the first pre-germinated one. All three, gone.

In the second picture, you can see that one of the cells was dug into – and the stem of a seedling. There were actually two cells that had been dug into.

The third is what’s left in the tray. The row on the bottom is the Sweet Chocolate peppers. They were doing the best. All the cells had seedlings, with the “just in case” seeds sown later also emerging. The row of seven cells had at least ten seedlings, with hints of more emerging. Now, it’s down to two.

The California Wonder row, in the middle, didn’t do as well, but I did have four seedlings. Now there is just one.

The top row is the Caspar eggplant. There were three surviving seedlings, which seem to be untouched. Whatever ate the others doesn’t seem to like eggplant, I guess.

With the evidence of digging, it must be a mouse. There are a couple of ultrasonic mouse repellents plugged in, in both basements. They’ve been there longer than we have, so I’m guessing they aren’t working anymore.

*sigh*

The celery, herbs and luffa in the other tray are untouched.

About the only thing I can be glad of is that these are all short season varieties. In theory, I could even direct sow them. Not that I would expect that to work with our growing season, so I do want to try again, but how do I keep this from happening again?

We could set traps, of course. There are several live traps that are currently stored in the sun room. They’re not really accessible right now, though.

My daughter suggested the three of us find a way to get the big aquarium into the basement to use as a greenhouse again. A mouse can’t climb the glass, and it has wire mesh covers. The original problem remains, though: how to get it down the stairs. There is so little room at the bottom turn something of its dimensions. Not that we can access it, anyhow. We’ve got so many of my mother’s things shoved into the living room, safe from the cats, that we can’t access where the aquariums are, never mind carry the big aquarium, and the shelf that supports it, out. I was planning on getting some of my mother’s stuff out and into the storage house (which is already so full of my parents’ things) so that we could use the big aquarium to house the chicks, but that won’t be until the end of May.

So frustrating.

Meanwhile, our day changed completely. My doctor’s appointment was this afternoon. If the truck behaved and the road conditions were good, I would have gone on to do the Walmart shopping, after. My younger daughter’s appointment was on Monday, but she wanted to come with me as there was something she needed to get at Walmart.

Note, I said “was”.

We were expecting snow today, but when it started coming down, it was harder than expected. If we can see the snow and wind around the house like that, we know it’s a lot worse on the roads. It was early enough in the day that I called the clinic to cancel my appointment. We’re expecting a combination of rain and snow over the weekend, so I cancelled my daughter’s appointment on Monday, too. When I explained about road conditions, the receptionist I was talking to concurred. The clinic is about a 45 minute drive away, and it sounds like conditions were worse there, than here. I’ve certainly driven in worse conditions, but we’ve had so many issues in such a short time, I just didn’t want take the chance.

They are booking new appointments at four weeks right now, so I could have rebooked for the end of March. I told her, we’ll call to rebook closer to the end of March instead, to make the appointments in April. March being the sort of month that it is, I didn’t want to book appointments only to have to cancel them again due to weather.

So, we stayed home today. I ended up going back to bed. I got up again before noon, in enough pain that I could barely walk. I can’t say the nap helped that much, because I still feel ridiculously tired.

Ah, well. It is what it is.

I’ve got to figure something out to protect my seed starts.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: morning seedling mystery

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With our seedlings starting in the basement, I make a point of checking on them at least twice a day. In the evening, I turn on the heater and spend some time down there, getting my steps in if I need to. The celery is doing particularly well, and I’ve been seeing new seedlings coming up, including from the “extra” seeds I added to the pre-germinated ones, just in case. There was one little eggplant seedling that had its seed case stuck on the tips of the seed leaves that I ended up very carefully removing and was surprised to see three seed leaves unfurl instead of two.

In other words, I’m keeping a close eye on things.

Which means I immediately noticed something wrong this morning.

The first picture in the slide show above is the seedling that had 3 seed leaves. You can see part of one of them nearby. The other two, and half the stem, are gone.

I tried to zoom the next picture in, but the stem of that Sweet Chocolate pepper is cut right to the surface. The next picture is also a Sweet Chocolate, while the last one is a California Wonder.

If these were outside, I would be thinking that insects got to them. But these are trays in my basement. One of my daughters suggested it might be mice. We do have at least one mouse in the ceiling of the addition – the skittering drives the cats nuts – but there has been zero evidence of mice in the basement. There was also no disturbance in the soil that a mouse would cause if it was moving around the top of the tray. Plus, these damaged seedlings are sort of all over the place on the tray, and it would be odd for a mouse to get just those ones and not, say, the entire tray.

So what on earth chomped on these seedlings???

Very strange!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: new seed starting set up

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Well, I got one package at the mail.

I’m glad I didn’t decide to just wait until the post office reopened in the afternoon. I forgot today is Wednesday. The store the post office is in closes at noon, every Wednesday, for inventory.

I was expecting the chicken coop to come in several large boxes, but there was only one small box. Only one package slip in my mail box. No coop. There was no “attempted delivery” this morning at all.

Hmmm.

Something to look up when I got home, and after I checked out my new stuff.

This is what I got.

Two new heat mats, two 4 light clamp lamps and one 5 light tripod pedestal lamp, with full spectrum lighting.

This gave me a chance to do a few things all at once.

Right now, my work table is covered with a gain self-healing cutting mat my darling husband got for me some time ago. Unfortunately, the heat mats make it warp. So I cut some pieces of half inch rigid insulation to size, to go under the heat mats.

The heat mat with the germinated plants in it got a piece of carboard between the mat and the tray as a buffer. Normally, I would stop using a heat mat as soon as the seeds germinated, but it’s so chilly in the basement, that’s not really an option. Especially since I will no longer use a light fixture that puts off a small amount of heat. The buffer will keep the seed starting mix warm, but not too warm.

The large celled tray now has a new heat mat under it. I’ve filled the last empty cells with seeds that were set to pre-germinate, even though they were not germinated yet. Then, just in case, I added a couple of fresh seeds into each cell. I did actually see a single Caspar eggplant starting to break through the surface, but nothing in any of the other cells. It’s entirely possible the seed starting mix, not being on a heat mate, but getting some heat from above, was too cold.

I also added new luffa seeds to the three Red Solo cups where nothing has shown yet, including the one where I couldn’t find the pre-germinated seed at all.

The new lights have a controller with several settings. There are five brightness settings – I put them at the highest. They can also adjust from red, blue or white light, or all three. I have it on all three. It can also be set to shut itself off after 6, 12 or 16 hours. I set it to 12 hours. Each lamp also came with an adapter, so they can be plugged in as usual, or can have USB. I have a power bar hanging above that has a couple of USB slots in it, so I decided to use that.

The only problem is that these are clamp lamps, and cannot stand on their own. Which means I had to move the tray set up to the front of the table for the lights to reach. Only at the front of the able is the surface narrow enough for the clamps. This worktable has a sheet of plywood on top of a narrower table top. The ends are too thick for the clamps.

With a full tray of cells, plus a second tray that’s only partially full, I set things up so that the full tray has five lights over it, and the other has only three.

I’ve still left the shop light above on. That light is manual, so I’ll need to shut it off and on, but that’s okay.

I am looking to pick up more seed starting mix when we are out and about tomorrow then, either on Friday or the weekend, I’ll start more seeds. Specifically, I’ll be starting herbs.

The tall light fixture will be set up in the living room. The onions in their seed snail rolls are getting plenty of light, with the shop light lowered to their level, but the other plants around them could really use better light! That room gets the morning light, and that’s it. It’s pretty dim, the rest of the day. We don’t have a lot of plants anymore, after repotting and donating most of them to the large animal rescue that took Poirot’s orphan kittens last summer. That, at least, will make it easier to give them proper lighting with this new lamp.

The lights themselves were very reasonably priced. The smaller lamps were under $25 each. It was actually cheaper for me to buy as a quantity of two separately, than to buy a single 2pk, which is weird. The larger lamp was under $40, regular price, and I got that one on a 10% off sale.

That done, I went looking to see what happened with that coop delivery.

Now, when placing the order, I was really surprised that would be delivered by Canada Post. When checking the tracking for the two packages I was expecting, they were the same. They even went through the same delivery depots at the same time, though the lights were ordered several days before the coop was.

Any time an order arrived, the trackers say “delivery attempted”. Of course, no delivery is attempted at all. The packages are just left at the post office for us to pick up with the regular mail.

Today, however, the coop’s tracking now said “undeliverable” and “location unknown”.

It also said, Fed Ex.

*sigh*

If I’d known is was going to be Fed Ex, I would have used our physical address. They have actually found us and delivered to us before.

I tried using the “contact shipper” link on Amazon, which took me to a page with a list of delivery companies.

None of them, Fed Ex.

So I went to their website and eventually found a customer service number to call.

After going through the robot sentinel, I actually got to talk to a real human being! Not only that, but he was awesome!

I gave him our physical address, including both the name and the numerical designation for our road. He put me on hold to work on it, then had to come back to ask more confirming questions. I told him, our address doesn’t exist on Google maps. He did, however, find a road with the numerical designation – but under the name of our municipality, not our little hamlet. So I had to explain that that section of road ends at a crossroad, then restarts a short distance off before continuing for several miles. It’s those several miles that are the empty void in the map, and we are in the void. In the end, he was able to take directions and instructions on how to get to us, and how to find our driveway – with the warning that if they miss our driveway, they’re not going to find the next one to turn around in for another mile. I also told him about the sign we have, with our physical address on it, and arrows pointing the way, at the turn off. Because we’ve had this problem before!

We had a lot of laughs while working this out.

I asked if they would be delivering tomorrow, and he said it was very likely. So I told him, I’ll be out for most of the day, though there will be someone home. I let him know we would leave the gate open, and the garage, and the package can be delivered into the garage. I don’t know how many boxes this is going to go into, but it’s warm enough that I don’t mind not parking the truck all the way into the garage, so make room for the boxes.

We will need to figure out where to assemble the coop. It needs to be relatively close to the house, on level ground, and in an area that doesn’t get flooded out in spring melt. Wherever we decide to set it up, we’ll probably have to level the ground. We really don’t have level ground anywhere!

On the plus side, this is a relatively small coop. It would be easy to move, if we ever need to. It could even get set up in the main garden area, where we can let the chickens help prepare the soil for us, where more raised beds are going to be built. The coops is just under 4′ wide, and just over 6′ long. The raised beds we will be building in the main garden area will all be 4′ x 18′. It could be set up where a new bed is planned and either moved 6′ every few weeks, or an extended run could be built to cover the 18′. I’ve got enough chicken wire for that. I’d just need to find the materials to frame it out. The coop design I got has the eggs boxes and roosts above and an open run below, with wire mesh walls. It would be easy to make a door to access an extended run. The only hitch is that access to the nesting boxes are at the ends, so a run on the end would make it harder to reach.

Hmmm… Things to think about.

We’ll have snow on the ground for quite a while yet, though, so there’s plenty of time to figure it out.

The Re-Farmer