Today was definitely on the chilly side. Even overnight; apparently, we dropped to 3C/37F last night, which is colder than was forecast. I’m glad we got that plastic over the winter squash!
We’re supposed to drop to 4C/39F tonight, which means we can expect it to get colder. I never removed the plastic cover on the winter squash, though. We got rain last night, which means the squash didn’t get any natural watering, but I do have the soaker hose still set up with them. I rarely used it, as filling their collars with water several times was more efficient. Today, however, I lifted one corner of the cover, hooked up the hose, then covered it again, letting the soaker hose run for an hour.
We did reach our expected high of 12C/54F this afternoon, so the girls and I took advantage of it to get some final harvests done on some things.
I started off in the East garden beds, pulling most of the corn (I left some stalks just to have a bit of protection for the bush beans). There were very few cobs to harvest and, as you can see, they were very small. I did find some yellow bush beans to harvest, though, then later found a few of the Royal Burgundy in the main garden area.
The chocolate cherry had the most to pick green. There were a few Black Beauties and Sub Arctic Plenty to pick. These are now sitting near the window in the cat free zone (aka, the living room) to ripen.
I also picked as many dried super sugar snap pea pods as I could find, as well as the dried radish seed pods. The girls, meanwhile, pulled all the spoon tomatoes, then sat with the plants to pick up the ripest ones. That took long enough that I finished first, then joined them. We made sure to not have any little stems on them before adding them to the bowl. It’s a lot more difficult to get those off if they’re left for later! With the Spoon tomatoes, we did NOT harvest the green ones. They’re so tiny, it really wasn’t worth doing it. So those went into the compost with the vines.
I suspect we’re going to have another year of compost tomatoes next year, and that most of them will be Spoon tomatoes!
Later on, before covering the eggplant and peppers for the night, I harvested a couple of kohl rabi and Turkish Orange eggplant. I have no idea if the eggplant is right, but at this point, it’s unlikely the greener ones will finish ripening, even with protective covers. The plants were already drooping from last night’s cold, in spite of the cover and bottles of hot water to help keep them a bit warmer. I chose the two that looked the most orange, but the rest still have green on them. I don’t think eggplant is something you can pick and will ripen indoors, like tomatoes and peppers can.
The kohl rabi I picked are pretty small, and there are just a few left, but I wanted to snack on them. That bed is almost done.
While the day was chilly, it was quite warm in the portable greenhouse! We have kept the “door” rolled up for quite some time but, yesterday, my daughter unrolled it half way and pulled the zippers down.
The thermometer in there was reading over 30C/86F, late this afternoon!
I’d moved our succulents and coffee plant into there yesterday evening. I’m glad I remembered to, as they likely would not have survived the night, but they would be very happy with the heat they got today! I’m hoping to keep those outdoors as long as possible, as they seem to be doing much better than in our living room.
In the next photo, you can see our first male luffa flower starting to bloom. They fell off when I moved a leaf to get the picture, but there were ants climbing around the stem and base of the flower. Which means, pollinators are still getting into the greenhouse. I still plan to hand pollinate, should the opportunity arise.
My daughter and I were checking on it when we spotted our first female flower buds starting to form. No visible baby luffa yet, they were were too small, but we knew they were female flowers, and those form in singles, while the male flowers form in clusters.
As of now, we no longer have any tomatoes in the garden. There are still bush beans, which will probably be killed off by the cold tonight. I’m debating when to just pick the green peppers and bring them in. I’m really surprised by how well the summer squash is holding out. I don’t expect things like the pumpkins, melons, bush beans, the stalled pole beans or sunflowers to survive tonight’s cold, but you never know. Things like the remaining radish plants that still have greener pods on them, the root vegetables, kohl rabi, chard, and even the tiny onions we’ve got growing in the old kitchen garden, can handle frost. We harvested some herbs at the last minute but I haven’t covered that bed with anything. The basil probably won’t make it, but I think the other herds might. We shall see in the morning.
Meanwhile, I’m now going to find some suitable containers, set up something to watch, then start opening up those dried pods and collect their seeds!
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.
Okay, so I took advantage of MI Gardener having a 40% sale on seeds. Which means I got a lot of things I wouldn’t normally have been able to get and still stayed in budget. Most of these will be for future gardens, as we continue to build more beds and extend further afield.
Here is what I ordered today. Click on the images to see them better. I’ll include links as I list them below, this time in alphabetical order.
Oh, the crazy thing about going back and looking up the links. When I placed the order, I selected “in stock” items only. Going back, I just went through all the seeds, not just categories and not just “in stock”. I found that quite a few things I ordered are now listed as out of stock – but there are things that I see listed as in stock, but weren’t there when I was placing the order from the in stock only list!
Must. Not. Place. Another order!!
Ah, well. Here is what I chose today. All links should open in new tabs.
Anise One for our developing herb garden. I had no idea anise could grow here, but it’s only 75 days to maturity, so we should have no problem.
Bachelor’s Button – blue Bachelor’s Button – pink Years ago, I lived in a city where Bachelor’s Button practically grew wild and always loved them, but I had no idea they were also edible! These are deer resistant, so they will be planted strategically.
Butterneck Squash This one is a Canadian heirloom variety that is apparently almost extinct! So of course we’ll have to grow some to save seed. 90-100 days to maturity.
California Wonder Bell Pepper these are to restock our pepper seed inventory. It’s a thick walled pepper, which caught my attention. Some varieties we’ve tried had surprisingly thin walls. 75 days to maturity.
Canary Yellow Melon I’m as much a sucker for melons as I am for winter squash! 80 days to maturity
Caraway Another one for our future herb garden. 70 days to maturity.
Coffee Seeds (coffea arabica) I always like to have at least one “for fun” thing and one “challenge” thing. This will be a “challenge” thing – and to be grown as a house plant, as this is a zone 11-13 item. 2-4 years to maturity, and yes, this is a real coffee plant that we could potentially harvest beans from to make our own coffee. This one is more for the girls, since they are the coffee drinkers in this household.
Dazzler Red Cosmo I got this because the red is a less common colour for them, and they are great for attracting pollinators. 75-90 days to maturity.
Gold Rush Wax Bean (Bush) I did already get a tri-colour mix of bush beans, but I’ve almost used up the yellow bush bean seeds I had in my current collection, so this is a replenisher. 55 days to maturity.
Golden Boy Celery I’ve never grown celery before. The one time I tried, it was a pink variety and I started them way too late. These ones, however, are 80-90 days to maturity, so I shouldn’t have that problem.
Golden Hubbard Squash Yeah, I’m a sucker for the winter squash! These are a smaller and more prolific variety of Hubbard that grows to “only” 5-15 pounds. 95-110 days to maturity
Hales Best Jumbo Cantaloupe Melon Yup. Another melon! These are described as being more drought tolerant and thrives in hot weather – kinda like we’ve got right now. 85 days to maturity.
Long Grain Rice I looked these up out of curiosity and was shocked. We can actually grow this variety of rice here! Gotta try it! 90-100 days to maturity.
Manitoba Tomato This is an all purpose tomato, and the variety my mother used to grow here, so I know these should work. With only 65 days to maturity, we could direct sow these, instead of starting them indoors.
Meadow wildflower mix One of these days we’ll get a wildflower mix that will take! 90 days to maturity.
Oaxacan green dent corn (x2) There aren’t a lot of seeds per packet, so I got two of these. As a dent corn, we would be growing these to make corn flour. Only 80 days to maturity, too!
Orange flesh honeydew melon Oh, look! Another melon! We have the green flesh honeydew (none of the melons we have this year are going to produce, and I still don’t know what happened), and now orange flesh. 75-110 days to maturity.
Red Long of Tropea onion We’ve grown this variety before, and they did really well. We have our own onion seeds, but none of this variety. 90-110 days to maturity.
Red Wethersfield onion While I think we these are the red onions we have in the mix of our own seeds collected, they were from onions that had died off after transplanting – we thought! – but came up the next year. We’ve never actually successfully grown edible bulbs of these, so I figure it might be worth trying again. 100 days to maturity.
Rouge vif D’Etampes / Cinderella Pumpkin This variety caught my attention partly because it’s listed as being able to last in storage longer. 110 days to maturity.
Russian Tarragon Another one for the future herb garden, and it apparently overwinters well with little protection. Not sure if that applies to our zone 3 winters, but no zone is listed at all for it. 60 days to maturity.
Stowell Evergreen Corn (x2) Another corn, and another addition to our collection of white things! This variety is listed as drought tolerant, which is important for where we are. There aren’t a lot of seeds in the packet for something that needs to be wind pollinated, so I got two. 80-100 days to maturity.
Tom Thumb Dwarf Pea (x2) This variety grows to only 13-18 inches high. No trellis needed. Which would make it much, much easier to protect from deer! Not a lot of seeds per packet, so I got two. 45 days to maturity.
Triticale (x2) Okay, this one is for well into the future! At some point, we do want to grow our own grain to make flour. I’ve already got some heirloom wheat that is particularly noted for making good bread flour though, even with two packets, the amount of seeds I have for those would be grown only to collect more seeds for the first couple of years! The triticale comes in 500 seed count packets, but I still got two. Even so, the first crop would be mostly to get more seed for larger, future plantings. Thinking well ahead on this one! 85 days to maturity.
There we have it! My second order with MI Gardener, in as many days, and third order this summer. 😄
While there are still some things we will get from other sources, these orders will set us up for several years, as we build and expand on our garden beds and growing areas, plus more flower seeds for the pollinators. The additions for the herb garden has brought that goal closer to reality by quite a bit. There are many other herbs I’d love to get, but most of them need a much longer growing season than we’ve got. At least until we get a permanent greenhouse.
I seem to have become addicted to getting seeds like I used to be with getting yarn. Seeds are cheaper, though! Especially with sales like this one. This order totaled US$36, with a savings of US$24. No shipping costs, either. Plus, they have a points program and I now have enough points to get $5 off my next order.
Which is not going to happen for a while. I’ve got lots of seeds now!
Honest!!
At least until their new inventory comes in, after this blow out sale clears space for them.
I placed an order with MI Gardener previously, and it arrived a while ago. So why did I order more? Well, MI Gardener prices are some of the best around right now, even when ordering from Canada. I’m on their email list and they announced a 25% off sale that started today. I happened to be up past midnight, so I went ahead and placed an order to take advantage of it. In fact, I might even made another one. I haven’t decided yet.
I took advantage of our winter sowing experiment to clean out my seed inventory of older seeds, so part of my goal was to replace things with fresh seed. With the sale, I’m continuing that, but I am also building my my seed inventory with extra. How much we actually plant will depend on how many beds we have ready this fall for winter sowing as well as for spring sowing and transplanting next year.
So, without further ado, this is what I ordered last night/this morning.
This time, I’m going to link to each item I ordered. All links should open in a new tab. They are list below in the same order as in the images above.
Tigger Melon This was something I had in my wish list. It’s a tiny, personal size, melon. More importantly, it takes 90 days to full maturity, and we average 99 days between first and last frost. In theory, we could direct sow them and get a harvest, though I would start them indoors, just to be safe.
Summer Savory This year, I bought a summer savory transplant. We plan to expand our culinary herb garden, and this will be part of that. Only 65 days to maturity.
Golden Sweet Pea I got another colourful variety last time. We have other peas as well. I just like to have a variety to shake things up. 😊 60 days to maturity.
Black Futsu Squash We have a variety of winter squash seeds, but we’re still experimenting to see what we like. This variety has an edible skin and stores 4-5 months. It needs 110 days to maturity, so definitely one to start indoors.
Orange Currant Tomato This looks very much like an orange version of the Spoon tomatoes we’ve been growing for a few years now – and it the only tomato that has anything we can harvest at the moment. It would be great if these do as well. 65-70 days to maturity.
Yellow Swiss Chard We have Rainbow Chard. We have Fordhook Giant Chard. Why not Yellow Chard, too? As with the other chards, this one is heat tolerant, drought tolerant and can grow in cold weather, so it can be succession sowed as well as winter sown. 28-57 days to maturity.
Sweet Siberian Watermelon One of these days, I’d really like to get watermelon! I only get short season varieties, of course, but so far, none have done well. The one Cream of Saskatchewan melon we got last year about about the size of a baseball, and they’re supposed to be much bigger. This variety is supposed to produce 15-20 pound fruit, yet has only 80 days to maturity. It does come with the warning that it needs lots of room to spread!
Shogoin Turnip a good cool weather variety that needs only 40-60 days to maturity. Plus, it’s really pretty.
Lemon Squash In our first couple of gardening years, we had good summer squash production. Then… nothing seems to be growing! I’m hoping this variety will do better. It’s supposed to be prolific, and only 50-60 days to maturity.
Hailstone Radish with finally being able to grow radishes, and even radish seed pods, through winter sowing, I’m more than happy to experiment with different varieties. This one is only 25 days to maturity!
Garbanzo Bean Okay, this is an odd one. Until fairly recently, I didn’t even know garbanzo beans, aka chickpeas, could grow here. I happen to really like chickpeas. However, they are also drought tolerant, nitrogen fixers. They are 100 days to full maturity, though, so it’s touch and go for this one.
Early Prolific Straightneck Squash So this seems to be another winter squash with an edible skin? The description specifies it is like zucchini, and that the whole thing can be eaten. I’m not sure, but with our luck with any squash these days, I’m willing to try it! Heat tolerant and somewhat drought tolerant. Only 70 days to maturity.
Chicory Okay, I’m not sure how to categorize this one. Perhaps it’s one for the kitchen garden. The leaves can be eaten, and it can be used medicinally, but it’s mostly the roots I’m interested in, as they can be used as a coffee substitute. I remember my parents sometimes buying it at the store, but never tried it. I don’t drink coffee, but my daughters do, and that stuff’s getting really expensive. So… worth a try. Especially with only 80 days to maturity.
Caspar Eggplant I’ve definitely got a “white” theme going on this year! This is described as a rare Japanese variety. Of course, I see “rare” and I’m all for growing it to save seeds. 😄 75 days to maturity.
Blueberry Tomato yes, another tomato to try! A cherry tomato with a lovely appearance. Hopefully, it’ll taste as good as it looks. 75-85 days to maturity.
Purple Savoy Cabbage Growing cabbages is something that’s been our list for when we have more space in the garden. Cold tolerant and good for storage. Only 65-70 days to maturity, too.
Daikon Radish I actually meant to order this last time, but they were sold out. I got the icicle radish instead. My younger daughter really likes Daikon radish. The last time we tried to grow it, something ate them as soon as they sprouted. With winter sowing, we might actually succeed this time! Best of all, only 55 day to maturity. Long for a radish, but well within our growing season.
Florence Fennel This is another one that we tried before, but it did not succeed. We didn’t have the right growing conditions for it. This is one of those vegetables we like, but almost never buy, just as a matter of budget priorities. 70 days to maturity.
And now I’ve gone and removed everything I’ve ordered from my wish list, so I don’t accidentally buy them again! 😄
All of these cost US$27, which is pretty darn good!
Oh, look at me… I’m already going through what they’ve still got in stock to see if there’s something else I want to order.
😂
Anyhow.
We will now have lots of options to choose from when we do our winter sowing in the fall. Last fall, I just scattered mixes of seeds. This time, now that I’ve seen how things worked out, the sowing will be more planned and more attention paid to spacing. Plus, our seed inventory is built up again, so if some things don’t work out, there are other things that can be sown in their stead.
Of course, that means continually adding more garden beds!
When I went out this morning to feed the yard cats, I had an adorable little surprise. Fluffy Colby was with some other cats INSIDE the sun room! I found the other three kittens around the cat shelters and they did run off, but Colby stayed close.
When it was time to bring out the kitten soup bowls, I found him sharing a tray with Havarti. He ran off a bit when I put the kitten soup bowl down, but he was soon back, sharing with with his cousin.
The garage kittens, sadly, still won’t come closer.
Today, my plan was to focus on finally giving the garden, and the food forest additions, a deep watering. Particularly since tomorrow will be hotter again, and I will be doing my Costco shop in the city. Tomorrow is supposed to reach 25C/77F. Today reached a comparatively cool high of 23C/73F. I didn’t need to go anywhere today, so I hoped to get some progress outside.
Well, of course, that changed.
My husband called in refills for his injections, so a trip to the pharmacy was in order. Of course, I combined errands as much as possible, grabbing our big water bottles to refill at the grocery store after getting the meds. Then, since I was there anyhow, I checked out the sales and picked up a few things.
Nectarines always tended to be more expensive, but they still were usually under $2/lb in season.
The next image is of a beef tomahawk steak. This is a cut I almost never see. I know people on carnivore that prize these as having an excellent protein to fat ratio. I just can’t imaging spending $84.95 ($55.09/kg) for about 3 pounds of bone-in meat (1kg=2.2lbs) that would be just one meal. Sure, that might be enough for the entire day on carnivore, but… yikes!
I did pick up a family pack of stew meat, though, which was in the $20 range.
Once back at home, I was soon outside doing the watering. When I got to the high raised bed, though, I also did some harvesting. In this bed, I had left one Purple Prince turnip to go to seed. Which it did.
It’s probably past its best stage for eating, but it wasn’t regrowing a new seed stalk, so I figured it was harvest it, or it would start rotting.
In the next photo, you can find the fuzzy friend I found on one of the leaves. I broke off that section of leaf and set it aside, so as not to disturb the caterpillar. I have no idea what type of caterpillar it is. Hopefully, not something I will regret saving!
In the last image, you can see the turnip with the Uzbek golden carrots I also harvested. I was careful to pull the biggest ones. I’m leaving the smaller ones to give them a change to get bigger, instead of just harvesting the entire bed as I was considering doing. I found a single orange Napoli carrot large enough to harvest. I see hints of orange on some of the other carrots, but for the most part, it’s the Uzbek Golden carrots that have been growing. The Napoli carrot seeds were a couple of years older, and I finished off the last of what was left in the packet. I didn’t expect many of those to germinate.
For all the garden struggles this year, things are still kicking! In both winter sown beds, the radish seed stalks that the deer ate are trying to recover.
They’re blooming again, and sending out more leaves in some of them.
While watering the Spoon tomatoes, I noticed something. When they were being transplanted, I pruned off the bottom leaves before planting them inside the protective collars. One transplant had a larger branch that I pruned off. It was so nice and strong, I decided to just stick it into the ground between two other tomatoes and giving it a chance to grow.
It’s still tiny but, as you can see in the next image above, it’s producing tomatoes!!! The entire plant is maybe 8 inches high, if that. Just one little branch, and it’s producing!
As for those Royal Burgundy beans in front of the Spoon tomatoes – the whole three plants that emerged – one of them has a tiny bean starting to grow! I didn’t get a picture, but one of the yellow Custard beans planted with the tomatoes in the East yard had a whole bunch of tiny bean pods forming. It’s really late in the season, but we might actually have beans to harvest before summer is over!
Even the sugar snap peas are trying to make a come back! Some of them are dying back – they are well past their season – but after the deer munched away at them, some of the plants are pushing out new growth, and blooming! I’ve got one Super Sugar Snap pea plant that I’m leaving (and the deer have left alone) to fully mature so I can save the seeds, but it looks like we might have a few more fresh pods to enjoy, too.
If the deer don’t get to them, first!
It’s encouraging to see some signs of the garden trying to recover and grow. The tiny summer squash are getting a bit bigger, and blooming, though still just male flowers. The winter squash seem to be recovering a bit, too, and some are blooming. The melons are still tiny, but some of them are blooming. The pumpkins are doing quite well, and one of them even has a female flower bud showing!
Whether or not any of this will have time to recover, grow and produce before our season runs out is questionable. With some things, unlikely. Looking at the monthly forecast, it’s possible we’ll have all of September with no frost, though we would probably still need to cover things on colder nights. August, at least, looks like it’ll stay pretty warm. Of course, such long term forecasts are completely unreliable. I’m still going to assume our average Sept. 10 first frost date.
After finished up in the garden and bring the little harvest in, I used some of the carrots, onions from last year – yes, we still have a few! – and an entire head of fresh garlic in a beef and barley dish for my husband and I. The girls hate barley, but my husband and I love it, so they get to make their own supper using some of the fresh fish I picked up for them, yesterday. There will be enough of the beef and barely for my husband to have tomorrow, as well, while I am in the city. My younger daughter is having some PCOS issues right now, so she won’t be able to come with me this time. Which is fine; I don’t actually need the help, but I do like her company. I’ve been doing so much better myself, since I’ve been on the anti-inflammatories, I’ve actually been able to handle these outings better, too. I’m only taking them at the end of the day, instead of twice a day, before with my last meal before bed. I can take them up to 3 times a day, as needed. I just haven’t needed to take that many!
I haven’t taken any pain killers at all since I started on the anti-inflammatories. I do still have pain. Particularly if I lie on my left hip for too long, and I still have issues with my injured left arm. The pain, however is now more specific, and really not all that bad. Nothing worth taking more meds over. I should probably take some painkillers before I leave for the city, though, since I’ll be doing a lot of walking on concrete, and these shopping trips really take a lot out of me.
In the bottom row, we have Tricolor Mixed bush beans, Rainbow and Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard, an Assorted Mix of beets, White Egg turnip, White Icicle radish and a rainbow blend of carrots.
In the middle is Bi-colour Pear gourds, my “just for fun” item, yellow scallop squash, Gill’s Golden Pippin winter squash, green scallop Bennings squash, Spring Blush peas and White Vienna kohlrabi.
In the top row is Red Beard bunching onions, Borage, American and Giant Noble spinach, Kandy Korn sweet corn, Purple Vienna kohlrabi, and an envelope to collect and store our own seeds in.
From this batch, these are the ones that will be planted this fall, before the ground freezes.
Rainbow and Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard
Assorted Mix beets
White Egg turnip
White Icicle radsih
Rainbow Blend carrots
Spring Blush peas
White and Purple Vienna kohlrabi
American and Giant Noble spinach
I am not sure about the Borage. I’ll have to do some research before deciding if those will be planted in the fall or started indoors in the spring.
Everything else except the corn and bush beans will be started indoors.
Bi-colour Pear gourds
yellow and green patty pan squash
Gill’s Golden Pippin winter squash
Red Beard Bunching onions.
Hopefully, starting the summer squash indoors next year will work. Direct sowing hasn’t been working out for those, for some reason. We didn’t have a slug problem this year, thanks to the many, many frogs, so that wasn’t the issue. We should be able to winter sow summer squash, but when I tried that for this year, none germinated. Most were old seeds, but there were new seeds in there, too. When I planted potatoes in that bed later, I did find a few seeds, but most seemed to have just disappeared. I did have to cover the bed with netting because of the cats, so they might have had something to do with the failure, too.
This, all on its own, is the makings of a decent garden for next year. We have other types of beans, winter and summer squash, melons, peas, corn and our own onion seeds. Of course, we’ll also be getting seed potatoes in the spring, and will probably try the little bell peppers and orange eggplants again. We have herb seeds that I might start indoors, if we have space, or we might cheat and buy transplants again, instead.
So there we have it! The beginnings of next year’s garden, much of which will actually be planted this fall.
Hopefully, we’ll have a better growing year than this one, because something really weird is happening with this year’s garden. It’s been so frustrating. We should be at the peak of growth and harvesting right now, and there’s basically nothing – and not just because of the deer! I’ll be talking about that in my garden tour video, and you’ll be able to see exactly what I mean.
Speaking of which, time to try and record some video. The rain has stopped, but we’re supposed to get thunderstorms later this evening!
I’ve ordered seeds for next year’s garden already.
There’s a reason for that, though. For starters, we can already see how things went with direct sowing in the fall, and how they’re doing now. So while these are for our 2026 garden, some will be planted this year, before the ground freezes.
Another reason is, MI Gardener has refused to raise their prices making them more affordable, even when taking the dollar difference into account.
As low as their prices already were, they also have a 20% off sale, and free shipping to boot.
I took advantage of that.
Well. Just for the seeds. Everything in their site is on sale for a week, but ordering things bulkier than seeds over the border is not something I plan to do.
When I did the winter sowing, I made seed mixes using up a lot of our seeds that were starting to get old. All our radish seeds, spinach, a summer squash seed mix I’d accidentally bought extras of a few years ago, beets, Swiss Chard, etc. were all finished off when I made our seed mixes for the winter sowing.
Here is what I ordered today. I ended up taking three screen caps of the entire order, to get all the little thumbnail images.
Borage: this is an herb I’ve been meaning to get for a long time. Many uses, and a great pollinator attractor.
Kandy Korn Sweet Corn: I have the super short season Yukon Chief for next year already. Having a longer season variety means we can have a longer season for corn, and no overlap on pollination times, so we can still save seeds.
Fordhook Giant and Rainbow Swiss Chard: the same types that I finished off in my winter sowing seed mixes, these will be planted in the fall.
Giant Nobel and American Spinach: while I am looking to save seed from what we have now (we didn’t eat much spinach this year; they bolted too quickly), these are new varieties that I hope will do well. They will be planted in the fall.
White Egg Turnip: all our turnip seeds were used up, so I will be trying this interesting looking variety for our fall planting.
White Icicle Radish: these will be sown in the fall, but not for their pods, though I will probably allow at least one go to seed. My younger daughter likes the daikon radish, which was sold out. This is a smaller relative, and I think she will enjoy these. I recall seeing a variety of radish sold specifically for their large seed pods that I’ll keep an eye out for as well.
Spring Blush Pea: a new variety to plant in the fall, along with other peas we still have.
Bi-Colour Pear Gourd: my “for fun” item.
Purple Vienne Kohlrabi: I used up the last of our old kohlrabi seeds to plant in the fall, and most of the ones that are growing now are the purple ones. Definitely doing to plant more in the fall!
Red Beard Bunching onion: I’ve tried a red variety of bunching onion twice before, and they didn’t succeed. I want to try again with this variety. For bulb onions, we will have our own seed.
Assorted Beet Mix: I planted the last of our beet seeds in the fall, and have the most robust beets growing right now. I decided to go with a mix this time. I like variety!
Green Scallop Benning’s Squash: we’ve got white scallop squash, but they don’t seem to like germinating here. We have more seeds for next year, but I want to try a green variety, too.
Gill’s Golden Pippin Squash: a new and versatile variety to try. I have lots of different types of winter squash seeds, still, both large and small. I like variety!
Tri-colour Green Bean mix: we have a number of different beans left, but the first bush beans we ever grew were a tri-colour mix, and they were the most successful we’d ever grown.
Rainbow Mix Carrot: to plant in the fall. We still have a couple of varieties of carrot seeds left, so we could also start some in the spring, as space opens up, too.
White Vienna Kohlrabi: of our old seeds, it looks like only a couple of the white kohlrabi germinated. These will be planted in the fall. I think they will fair better, not in a mix.
Yellow Scallop Squash: because I like variety, and I really like patty pan squash!
While I will probably pick up other seeds for next year between now and spring, between this order and what I still have in my seed bin, we don’t actually need anything else, besides things like potatoes. It may still be July but, with fall planting in mind, plus working on getting more beds either reworked or made new, I hope to have a larger garden next year, and get a head start on it, this year. After all, almost half of our growing season is already gone!
The beans with the tomatoes are doing really well. At first, it seems that one of the seeds had not germinated, but it did eventually show up. That makes for a 100% germination rate of these old seeds.
Too bad a cat dug one of them up. *sigh*
In the foreground of the first photo, you can even see some of the self-seeded carrots coming up!
In the next image, you can see the second planting of beans coming up in between the corn. Of the first planting, there ended up being a total of three, maybe four, that came up, and only one of them came up strong and healthy. Considering these are the same seeds in the same bed, it’s hard to know why the first sowing failed so badly.
The last image is of the Arikara squash bed – and the corn in there is so much bigger than the ones in the other bed!
I really like using the stove pellets to mulch around seedlings. The pellets land around the small plants, rather than on top of them. Then, after being watered, the pellets expand and fall apart, with the sawdust creating a nice, fairly thing, but really light, mulch. So far, it seems to be working out with anything I’ve used them around. It helps that the 40 pound bags are so cheap, and a little goes a surprisingly long way!
Once my rounds were done, my older daughter came out to help me remove the netting around the trellis bed. We had an unfortunate surprise while pulling it out, though. I’ve seen frogs – even large ones – squeeze through the rather fine mesh but, unfortunately, a garter snake didn’t make it. My daughter found it stuck around and under the corner of the bed. It hadn’t been dead for long, but long enough that a big beetle was chewing on its head. We had to cut a section of the netting off, because we couldn’t get it loose from the netting.
As my daughter said, it’ll be good when we no longer need to use netting! At least not this netting. It’s always a concern that a kitten or a bird will get caught in it. I never thought a garter snake would get caught!
We were being eaten alive by mosquitoes while we got the net down, stretched it out, folded it in half length wise, then started rolling it up on a bamboo stake for storage. They were after my daughter a lot more than me for some reason, so once the netting was rolled up enough, I sent her inside while I finished. It’s now tied off and in the garden shed. I made sure it was resting higher up in the shed so, hopefully, no critters will get into it.
That done, I brought out some of the trellis netting we’ve used in previous years. This netting has 4′ square spaces, making it easy to reach through to weed or harvest.
I started off by weaving a bamboo stake through one edge of the netting, where there is a pair of lines about a half inch apart, instead of 4 inches. I tied one end to the vertical post at the corner, then stretched out the netting flat before tying it to the next post. Then I added the next bamboo stake, weaving it into the netting and joining it to the first stake, before tying it off to the next couple of vertical supports, then did it again.
The netting ended on the third stake, so I added another piece of it to a fourth stake before joining the stakes and matching the netting up. That left a lot of excess netting at the end, but I just bunched that up and secured it while trying off the stake to the vertical.
I had woven in a plastic coated metal stake at each end of the bed to keep the netting straight. After the horizontal stakes were in place, I pushed the netting down so any excess was at ground level. I then took the garden stakes there were already in place to hold the protective netting that was there before, and used them in the trellis netting. Each one got woven vertically through the netting, then I used them to tighten things up a bit before pushing them into the ground. Where the two nets overlapped happened to be where there was already a longer bamboo stake, so I used that to join the sections together at the same time. Once all the stakes were woven through and pushed in the ground, I used ground staples to secure the netting to the soil, catching in the excess, to make it all fairly stretched out and tight.
I recall from using the netting before that the weight of plants climbing it can cause issues, so I added another level of horizontal bamboo stakes along the middle. These got tied to the vertical garden stakes, rather than the posts for the permanent trellis. This way, the netting is at a slight angle for the beans to climb.
This bed hasn’t been weeding since the protective netting was placed all around it. A lot of the self seeded onions I transplanted into rows were no longer visible.
I started weeding along the trellis side. I probably should have done it before the trellis net was added, but the mesh is open enough to reach through easily. The problem was more my hat constantly getting tangled in it!
As I was working my way along the beans, I spotted a little volunteer tomato plant! I remember finding volunteer tomatoes in this bed last year, too. I’m not sure where the seeds came from!
When I found one, I left it, thinking it would be fine were it was. Then I found another.
And another.
So I thought I would come back later and transplant them once I weeded and could see a space for them.
Then I found another.
And another.
And several others!
As I was working my way down the onion side of the bed and kept finding more even tiny tomato plants, I started pulling them up with the weeds, then transplanting them wherever I had enough space between the onions or the pumpkins. Then, when I finished weeding the bed, I went around the beans side to dig up the ones I’d left there and transplanted them.
By the time I was done, I counted 14 volunteer tomatoes.
Or 15.
I actually counted 13, first, after all the weeding and transplanting was done. Then noticed one I’d missed, so I counted again and got 15. Then I counted again, as I was scattering stove pellets around the bed and counted 14. I counted again and kept getting 14, so I either keep missing one, or I double counted one before.
Of course, it’s also possible I missed some volunteers when I went back to find and transplant them. If so, they’ll be easier to see, soon enough!
The last photo was taken after I’d scattered the stove pellets, but I forgot to take one after it was watered and the pellets were all expanded and breaking up.
This bed now has Red Noodle beans and Hopi Black Dye sunflowers along one side. On the other is onions from last year, going to seed, plus a whole bunch of tiny self seeded onions that I transplanted after clearing and preparing this bed for the beans and sunflowers. Then there is the pumpkins, and now the volunteer tomatoes.
This bed is going to look really interesting, once everything has reached maturity!
Today, I remembered to take some pictures of the radish seed pods that I’ve been snacking on.
The first three pictures are all from the same plant. What a difference! Some pods have just one pea-sized seed “bubble”. Others are longer, looking like they have a couple of seeds developing in them. Then there was a branch that has seed pods of all shapes and sizes!
The last pictures is of a different variety of radish in the winter sown East yard garden bed, with distinctive red lines on them. The seed mix had four different varieties of radishes in it, and I don’t know which is which, though I’m guessing the yellow variety is the one plant I’m seeing with yellow flowers.
I’m really happy with how the winter sowing experiment worked. The last time I tried it, I did the mild jug version, and it failed completely. Now I know that sowing directly into the beds, then heavily mulching, is the way to go for a lot of things. There are a few things I will now plan ahead to winter sow, but not as a mix. Beets, carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, spinach, and radishes for their pods. Also, that one variety of lettuce I planted was insanely prolific, and good at self seeding! I’ll have to be careful when collecting seeds this fall! Oh, the tiny bok choy worked, as did the chard – when they’re not being overwhelmed by other plants! There are also tiny onions all over, but they’re so far behind, I don’t expect we’ll be getting any bulb unions this year. Which is okay. We have the ones that are going to seed, so we can start onions indoors, using our own seeds, in January or February. The turnips also worked out much better than any other time we’ve tried them, so I think we will run through the varieties again to see which ones we like best.
I get the feeling we’ll be doing a lot of direct sowing in the fall from now on! Just in a more organized way. Peas are something else that are supposed to be good for winter sowing – we just have to make sure the bed they’re planted in doesn’t get destroyed by cats, to find out!
Obviously, tomato seeds survive the winter just fine. What variety they are, I have no idea, but if we’re going to winter sow tomatoes deliberately, they’ll have to be a very short season variety, if we’re going to get anything from them. If the Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes turn out to be a variety the family likes, they would be an ideal candidate. Their growing season is so short, we could actually direst sow in the fall, then again in the late spring, to extend the harvest, if we wanted to.
We just need to be sure we actually enjoy eating them, first.
It’s taking us years to get things worked out, with a couple of major set backs along the way, but those set backs have actually helped us in our decision making for the future. Like now knowing that parts of our garden area are prone to flooding during wet years! Having beds raised even just a few inches has saved come of our plantings already.
I do look forward to when we can make the low raised bed higher, though. Working on the bed this morning, while much improved from working at ground level, was still pretty painful! Plus, the lower the bed, the shorter the reach. Even though these beds are 4′ wide on the outside, it was still hard for me to reach the middle of the bed. With the high raised bed, I can reach clear across, if I wanted to, without difficulty.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with the morning’s work.
My next garden project will be finally working on the old kitchen garden bed that will get wattle woven walls, but I’m going to have to put another job higher on the priority list. When going through the trail cam files this morning, the gate cam had over 100 files – and this camera is set to just take single still shots. Most of those were from the poplars coming up on the other side of the fence, blowing in the wind. Which is not really a step back, since some of them, at least, are of a size that could probably be used in the wattle weaving!
Lots to do, and the weather is finally cool enough to get to it. I’m loving every minute of it!
I’d planted three groups of three seeds of Black Zucchini and White Scallop squash. The zucchini almost all came up – one spot had only two come up – but the white scallop squash saw only two germinate, in one spot.
That left me with two empty spots – and those were being filled with tiny elm seedlings taking over!
So the first thing I had to do, after taking the protecting netting off, was move the mulch aside and get in with the hand cultivator to weed as much as possible.
That took a while.
I really, really hate those elm seeds.
With the white scallop squash, I simply moved the smaller plant into the empty spot beside it. I did the same with the zucchini that had only two plants growing. Then I very carefully removed the extras from the other two spots that had all three zucchini seeds germinate.
I turned out to be wrong. I must have dropped a seed or something, because one of them had four!
I found spaces for them in other beds. Two went into gaps between the three types of winter squash, which are still recovering from getting hit with that one cold night. One went into the end of the bed with the Spoon tomatoes in it. Those all got protective plastic collars. The last one went into an open space in the high raised bed, left from harvesting some radishes and turnips.
Thanks to my SIL using their big zero turn mower on the outer yard, I had a whole lot of grass clippings available. I needed more mulch around the original summer squash bed, plus the one in the high raised bed got a grass clipping mulch, with a final watering to soak the mulch.
Hopefully, the transplants will survive alright. Squash don’t like their roots disturbed, but there was no way I could take them out without using a lot of water and washing the roots off completely. Those ridiculous elm seedlings were wrapping their tap roots around everything!
While our garden is officially in, things will still be planted! We’ll be doing some succession sowing later in the month, but today, it was damage control.
The first bed I worked on was the corn and beans bed. There are now a whole three beans that have germinated, in between the corn, out of all the seeds planted in two rows! The ones planted on the same day, in between the tomatoes in the next bed over, are stating to get bigger, but not in the bed with the corn. I want beans in with the corn as much for their nitrogen fixing properties as for the beans themselves, so I decided to replant.
I still had seeds for the yellow Custard bush beans that were planted here, so that’s what got planted again.
I didn’t have to remove the protective netting, thankfully, and could just make use of the box frame to hold it for me while I first weeded the bed as best I could. There are just so many of those elms seeds sprouting! Many were still too small to try and pull, though.
If you click through to the next photo in the slideshow above, you’ll see my little froggy friend!
It’s hard to tell in the first couple of photos of the garden bed, but if you can make out some pink dots in the photo, those are the inoculated beans. I just spaced them out in the rows the first beans were planted, then went around and simply pushed them into the ground just enough to bury them. Hopefully, these ones will take! I didn’t pre-water the rows, as the soil was still wet from last night’s rain, nor did I water after, since I could hear the incoming thunderstorm.
Once those were planted and the protective netting back in place, it was off to the main garden area.
I had planted Royal Burgundy bush beans near the Spoon tomatoes. An entire packet’s worth. Only three germinated, and one of them got chomped. It seems to be growing back, though.
The one that got chomped is visible sort of between the first two tomato collars.
I could not find more bush bean seeds of any kind while out and about yesterday, so I went with something else, which you can see in the next image above. Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard. Their seeds are of a decent size, so after loosening the soil in around the few bean plants that made it, I was able to space them out fairly well while planting them. Swissh Chard is related to the beet family, and the Fordhook Giant apparently also produces an edible root. We’ve grown it before, a few years ago, but they never got to that stage. We’ll see how it goes this year. We did include Swiss Chard in one of the seed mixes that were sown in the fall. Some have come up, but they were basically too crowded out with other things to get very big. Only now, as we’ve thinned things out over time, are they starting to catch up in size.
By the time I finished sowing the Swiss Chard, it was raining, so I made my way indoors. I had picked up some yellow zucchini seeds, too, so when I head out again later, I’m hoping to get a few of those planted, too.
Maybe.
We are currently under a severe thunderstorm watch, but then my weather app says we’re raining right now, and it’s bright and sunny out there. We’re also at 27C/81F right now, but the humidex has us at 31C/88F. I’ve heard forecasts saying to expect the humidex to make it feel like 38C/100F in places. We’re supposed to keep getting hotter until about 6pm, and then it will very slowly start to cool down after 7pm. Tomorrow is expected to be slightly cooler, so it’s no big deal if things get postponed until then!
I am very thankful for what rain we do manage to get!
The Re-Farmer 