self sufficiency

Our 2024 Garden: not-onions curing and bean seeds collected

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today is October 10, and yes, we have garden progress!

Last month, the 10 was our average first frost date, so I took garden tour video. I might do that again, later today, depending on how other things go. I might also leave it for the middle of the month. We shall see!

While doing my rounds this morning, I finally pulled the red onions in the high raised bed and set them to cure.

The strong fence wire on this cover was perfect to hang them on! Only a few didn’t have enough greens to hang them, so they got set out on the frame to cure.

After I took this photo, I also gathered the whole three shallots that were left by the summer squash, and hung them on the frame wire, too.

I am perplexed by these onions. As far as I can remember, these were supposed to be the Red Wethersfield onions, which have a round, flattish shape. These look more like the Tropeana Lunga or Red of Florence onions we grew before, but we didn’t have seeds for those this year.

So I decided to look at my old post about planting in this bed.

Well, that explains it.

These aren’t onions.

They are the Creme Brulé shallots.

I completely forgot that I planted shallots in this bed. I was sure I’d planted Red Wethersfield in here!

It’s a good thing I use this blog as a gardening journal!

So… those shallots are HUGE! Their size was another reason I didn’t think they could be shallots. Particularly since the ones planted in the bed with the yellow onions and summer squash were so much smaller.

Which had me wondering…

Where are all my Red Wethersfield?

Well… I did know where some of them were, but did they survive?

Not really.

I had planted some of them among the Forme De Couer tomatoes, but we weren’t able to keep the cats off of them. This was all I could find. A few got planted in the wattle weave bed, but I could see no sign of those.

I was sure I had more transplants than this, though!

Ah, well.

I will be keeping these. As we clean up and prepare the beds for the winter, I will find a place to transplant them, then mulch them over the winter. Hopefully, they will survive the winter and go to seed next year, and we can try again.

As for the bean pods with the onions, those are the Carminat purple pole beans I’d left to go to seed. There had been at least a couple more pods, but I couldn’t find them. With one, I did find the torn remains of the pod, so I’d say the racoons were at it again.

These are all the seeds that were in the bods. It looks like only one is damaged.

They will sit in the cat free zone to dry a bit more, now that they are out of their pods, then I’ll package them up for next year. These do grow very well here, so when we plant them again, I want to mark off one or two plants to specifically leave for growing more seed.

Meanwhile, it’s getting close to the time to plant garlic for next year. I will select our largest heads of garlic in the root cellar, rather than buying more.

Which means we will have onion seeds (with still more to collect from the garden), pole bean seeds, and garlic from our own garden for next year. I’ve also saved seed from that blue squash we had to harvest when it broke off its own stem, and we plan to save seed from that one big Crespo squash. There is the possibility of cross pollination with the Wild Bunch Mix winter squash we grew, though, so any seed we save there may not be true to the parent, even if I was able to hand pollinate from the same plant.

It doesn’t look like those Uzbek Golden carrots that bloomed are producing any seed. The flowers are died off, but there’s no seed. Perhaps because these are first year blooms? I don’t know.

We are slowly getting to the point where we will be able to save more and more of our own seed. I don’t expect to be 100% using our own seed, if only because I like to try new things, and we are still working out what varieties we like best in some things, but I do expect to be able to grow at least 90% of our garden from our own seed within a few years.

Just a little big closer to our goal of being as self sufficient as possible!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: evening harvest, with another first! Maybe two

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I hadn’t planned on harvesting anything while doing my evening rounds.

My garden had other plans!

I ended up using the bottom of my shirt to carry everything, because I didn’t have my usual giant colander that I use for harvesting and washing the produce.

My shirt got very loaded down!

Before I got to that point, I spotted these seed heads.

While shifting and preparing the low raised beds, I spotted a small plant I recognized as a flower that shows up in our main garden area. Rather than tossing it with the weeds, I decided to transplant it into the log framed bed, with the onions I’d been finding. I had no idea if it would survive a transplant.

Well, not only has it survived, it has thrived! It has become quite large and, while the flowers are not particularly large, the seed heads are amazing! Each one of those puffs in the photo are bigger than the palm of my hand.

I don’t want it to seed itself in the raised bed, so whenever the seed heads open like this, I gather the seeds and let them loose in an area just north of the beds. I figure at least some of them will manage to germinate, in the spring.

While checking on this bed, I also spotted one of the larger melons starting to look a bit yellow. I went to pick it up and it fell off its vine, so I included it in my harvest.

Since this from the Summer of Melons mix, I have no idea if this is a variety that turns yellow like this at maturity. I suspect not, to be honest. Still, we’ll crack it open and see what it’s like inside. So I’m not sure if this is a “first” for the melons or not.

You may notice something else different in the photo.

A bright red Cheyenne hot pepper! Red from stem to tip! There was another, next to it, that is about half red. We grew these previously, in grow bags, but they stayed green. When we had frost predictions, we tried to protect them, but were late covering them up one nice. The next morning, I harvested all the green peppers that weren’t frost damaged, and we set them up in the living room. They did turn red as as they dried, eventually, but they didn’t look very palatable. So I’m very happy to have some ripening while still on their plants!

I think I could have harvested several Dragonfly peppers. Some are quite large and so dark a purple, they look black. I will wait a bit, though. I think we’d end up with too many to use quickly, so I want to be prepared to dehydrate some of them, before I bring them in.

As for the cherry tomatoes, they got all mixed up while I was carrying them in my shirt. I honestly can’t tell the difference between the Chocolate cherry and the Black cherry! I’ll have to ask the family if they can tell the difference by taste.

I’m really quite happy with the harvests we’ve been getting. I had been so sure that we’d have almost nothing to harvest regularly this summer, except maybe tomatoes, since we have four varieties. Granted, this is the sort of harvesting we should have been getting in July and early August, not in September, but I’m just so happy to have anything at all!

If the temperatures stay mild enough, though, we should have a pretty awesome harvest of winter squash and melons! I’m quite looking forward to it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a lovely harvest!

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today, we were expected to reach a high of 28C/82F, so I wanted to make sure to give the garden a deep watering early in the morning, before things got hot. I’m glad we did, because we seem to have reached 30C/86F, with the humidex closer to 35C/95F!

I’m so glad I remembered to grab ice packs before I headed out today.

Anyhow…

After the garden was watered, I did some harvesting, and this is what I gathered.

There was a single patty pan ready to harvest. I mightily resisted picking the one Magda squash we have right now, but I decided to let it get bigger. There’s one zucchini that looks like it’s going to reach a harvestable size soon, too.

There was a nice handful of the Royal Burgundy bush beans (bottom right corner in the bin, as well as the longer Carminat pole beans. There was a single San Marzano tomato to pick, plus a whole two Chocolate Cherry tomatoes – the first of the season! I went ahead and harvested a few more Uzbek golden carrots as well. I think the next harvest will be the last of them, except for the ones gone to seed.

I always second guess myself when it comes to harvesting corn. I’ve heard it said, you can tell they’re ready when the silks are dried up, but I’ve harvested them at that stage and found immature cobs. It’s also suggested to tear through the husks to actually see the kernels, but if the cob isn’t ready, that leaves it with an opening where moisture and insects can get in.

This morning, I found one corn stalk broken at the cob, as if something tried to pull it down. Raccoons are notorious for cleaning out an entire corn patch at peak ripeness, but I don’t think a raccoon did this. I would expect more damage from a raccoon. Still, since the cob was above the broken stem, I shucked it and it was perfectly ripe.

Yes, I ate it raw, and it was deliscious.

So I went ahead and picked more that I thought might also be ripe. Happily, when I shucked them at the compost pile, I found they were all ripe. I ended up putting them in the oven to roast along with something else, and they were absolutely fantastic!

Yukon Chief is definitely a variety worth growing again!

I have a different short season variety to try next year, so we’ll be able to compare, but with how super short the Yukon Chief’s growing season is, it already has an extra point going for it. Once we decide on a variety we like that grows well here, we will start saving seeds. By then, we should have more space to dedicate to growing corn, too.

It’s nice to finally be having some decent sized harvests this year! I honestly did not thing we would be getting any bush beans at all, so to have both bush and pole beans to harvest is just icing on the cake!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: first garlic, plus winter squash, melon and pumpkin progress

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

After I did as much as I could on the cat isolation shelter build, I finally got around to harvesting some of our garlic. In particular, I wanted to get the garlic that was sharing a bed with tomatoes. The tomatoes are getting so huge and bushy, the garlic was barely visible!

The challenge was to find them and dig them out without breaking any tomato plants!

Not all of the garlic planted there in the fall emerged, but I think I found all the ones that did. The soil was surprisingly compacted, and the head buried much deeper than I expected. I could actually hear the wood on the handle of my digging tool making cracking noises if I went to deep, trying to loosen the soil.

Unfortunately, when I got them all out, I discovered they were just crawling with black ants!

After trimming the stems, most of them got strung up and are now hanging in the garage. Normally, I would have hung them under the market tent, but that broke over the winter. Right now, the garage is the only place that’s out of the elements, but still has air circulation. Since I’m using it as a workshop right now, I can at least be sure they won’t be forgotten about!

Before I headed in for the evening, I finally went out and took progress photos of the winter squash, melons, pumpkins and gourds. It’s been quite a while. The last time I normally would have done it, I did our garden tour video, instead.

If you want to see how they looked earlier, you can visit these links.

July 28
July 30
August 1
August 3
August 5
August 8

It’s now the 14th, so there is quite a lot of difference since I last posted photos. We lost a few things, and some look like they will also be losses, but I also found more melons, including a couple I found just this evening, while taking the photos!

With that in mind, I will start with the melon beds. First, the east bed. There were so many, I had to divide the photos between two Instagram slideshows.

This Summer of Melons mix is really prolific – though with where we are in the growing season, it’s likely we’ll only be able to harvest the earliest varieties, whatever they are. The mid and late varieties are unlikely to have enough time left to fully mature.

Then there is the west bed of melons, which also had to be split up between two slideshows.

If you notice some blood on my finger in the last photo, I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes while trying to take these photos!

In the above slideshow, you can see the only two Cream of Saskatchewan watermelons we’ve got right now, and the older one is dying off. The plant has more female flower buds and is blooming like crazy, but it’s probably way too late. While I was giving my sister a tour of the garden, she was telling me things are late in her garden, too. She’s not growing melons or squash this year, but she says her tomatoes are way behind. She barely even has tomatoes forming right now! That wet, wet spring we had has really affected so many people’s gardens, all over the province.

Next, we have the pumpkins.

We now have one completely orange pumpkin, and two that are starting to change colour! I’m really impressed by how well the pumpkins are doing.

And look!

We even have a drum gourd that’s getting bigger!

There are other drum gourds on the vines, but it’s still too early to tell if they were well pollinated. There are lots of male flowers, but I haven’t been seeing the female flowers when they first bloom, so I haven’t been able to do any hand pollinating.

Next is the east winter squash bed. This one has the most squash developing on it.

It does look like we’ll be losing several of them, though. Those big yellow ones that are now turning orange are looking awesome!

The west bed has only a few squash left.

One of them looks like it’s going to die off, too. It’s getting more yellow instead of more green.

Last of all, I did remember to get pictures of the Crespo squash!

It looks like we’ve got two surviving squash developing. I’m seeing at least one more female flower bud, but it’s too early to know if it’ll be a survivor. Again, we’ll see if they have enough growing season left. These are supposed to get very large.

I’m kinda regretting not watering this morning, even though the forecast is now more sure about us getting rain overnight. Looking at the weather radar, the trajectory of the weather system has changed, so it no longer looks like it’s going to go right past us. Instead, it’s heading towards us – and looks like it’s going to split in half and maybe miss us on two sides, instead of one! Still, we’re supposed to be getting right starting tonight, and continuing through to mid afternoon tomorrow. We shall see what actually happens!

Anyhow… that’s the status of things right now. I’m quite happy with things so far. In all honestly, considering how many winter squash we planted, I would have expected more – I don’t think there are any hiding under the leaves anywhere that I haven’t spotted. It does seem like some plants have more than one squash developing, while others have none at all. In the future, when we have our permanent trellises built – trellises strong enough to hold winter squash like these! – it’ll be easier to see, one way or the other. The squash in this Wild Bunch Mix really want to climb, too!

I’m quite impressed by how many melons we’ve got developing! They have a trellis to climb in one bed, but seem to prefer to sprawl on the ground, instead.

As late as things are, I’m happy with the Crespo squash, too. Last year, we had four struggling plants that ended up being baked in the sun in there location, and only one small, immature squash to harvest. It still made good pie!

They are definitely doing better in the new bed I made for them this year.

Lots to keep in mind for when we plant any of these again, in the future! Every year is a learning experience, and I don’t expect that to ever stop. That’s part of what makes gardening so fun!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: squash and melon progress

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

I’ve got my days so mixed up right now!

I have been aiming to get photos of the developing squash, pumpkins and melons every couple of days, with my hand in the shot for perspective. I was sure I’d last done this a couple of days ago, but once the photos were loaded onto my desktop, and I started doing the Instagram slideshows, I realized the last ones I did were three days so.

Oh, well. Not a big deal!

One thing I did not bother with, this time, was take photos of the drum gourds. There’s been basically no change in those, which suggests to me they’ll probably just dry up and fall off.

Which has happened, and is happening, to some others.

Oh! I just realized I forgot about the Crespo squash again. The bed it’s in is in the East yard, and nowhere near the others. Out of sight, out of mind! I did check it today, and it doesn’t seem to have changed much, but there’s a reason I include my hand in the shots!

We might be seeing a slowdown in the garden for a bit, anyhow. The last couple of nights have actually been cold, and it rained for much of today. As I write this, we’re at 15C/59F, and our high was only 18C/64F. It’s going to start warming up again, starting tomorrow, and get fairly hot over the next week. Nothing like the heat we were dealing with before, but hot enough that the garden should recover from the recent chilly nights! Wind gusts have been a problem, though. A lot of the corn stalks were blown over, some flat to the ground. I added twine supports around the bed, but I don’t know just how badly damaged they were. I’ll find out for sure if the stalks start turning brown and drying up! We’re so close to being able to harvest corn, too.

Anyhow…

If you want to compare with previous photos, you can check out these posts. (Links will open in new tabs, so you don’t lose your place!)

July 28
July 30
August 1
August 3
August 5

Once again, we start with the Summer of Melons mix in the Easternmost bed, East facing side.

We actually lost one of the melons on this side, but I did include a new one that is getting big enough I’m pretty sure it’ll make it. There’s a few others that are getting bigger, but I’m still not sure about them, yet.

The West facing side doesn’t have as many melons growing on it… yet? I’ve been letting the vines sprawl among the onions on this side, and there may well be some I haven’t found under the leaves.

Next is the pumpkin and drum gourd bed – but no pictures of drum gourds this time.

The one pumpkin that I figured was dying off is now officially dead. I broke it off and could see it was starting to rot underneath.

I’m surprised by how quickly the oldest and largest pumpkin is turning orange!

Next is the winter squash interplanted with peas and beans.

Yes, one of those that looked like it was drying, finally broke off its stem. There’s one other that I think might be a loss, but we shall see.

The unfortunate thing was the large, round blue squash. It had a board under it, and was leaning against the log frame. When I found it, it had rolled onto its top and was sitting completely upside down. I went to flip it over, and the stem broke right off. I’m pretty sure it was already partially broken from when the squash rolled onto it.

We do seem to have another of the same variety in the other bed, though, so maybe we’ll still get one that fully matures before it’s harvested!

The squash with the corn was harder to check on.

Not only was I pushing back leaves to try and get clear photos of the developing squash, but I also had to carefully lift the corn stalks that had been blown over, on top of them!

Last of all is the second melon bed, East side first.

In the second photo, you can just see the yellow end of a smaller melon that has died off behind a larger one.

On the West facing side, the single Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon hasn’t even dropped its blossom yet. I’m not seeing any other female flowers developing.

The rest seem to be doing quite fine and getting bigger.

Looking at the long range forecast, it seems that August will continue to be comfortably hot, right into the beginning of September. We might get away with no frost until the end of September. One can hope! I’ll take very frost free day we can get.

While driving around today, though, I heard on the radio that we are coming into a La Nińa winter. Which, for our area, translates into a cold and rainy fall, and a bitterly cold winter.

Like we need another one of those.

We were spoiled by last winter’s mild El Nińo winter, that’s for sure!

Well, we shall see what we get. I just really, really want the cold to hold off long enough for all these melons, pumpkins and squash to fully mature, after having such a late start this spring!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: first fruit and recovery fruit

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

While checking on the winter and summer squash, I’m always on the lookout for any female flowers. I want to make sure to hand pollinate them, just to be on the safe side. Especially on a cooler, wet morning like today, when the pollinators aren’t really out much.

This morning, I found two winter squash blossoms to hand pollinate! There are so many male flowers blooming all the time, it’s quite the thing to find a lady in the mix.

I was both happy and frustrated to find one on the G-Star patty pan squash this morning.

There was one, big beautiful flower blooming, with a strong and healthy looking baby squash at the base.

The problem is, there isn’t a single male flower blooming. I could even see another little female flower bud developing, but no male flowers. The only other squash blossoms around are winter squash, and I don’t think using the would work!

Hmm… maybe I can find some male flowers from the green and yellow zucchini plants. They’ve have male flowers, but no female flowers. I think they might be similar enough for pollination to happen.

There are no plans to save seeds, so cross pollination isn’t the issue. I would just like for pollination to happen so the existing squash will actually develop, and not just turn yellow and fall off!

I had another cheerful find this morning.

A single Albion Everbearing strawberry, in the bed that was eaten by deer! The strawberry plants are slowly recovering and blooming, and we have out first strawberry since the destruction. I am really impressed with these strawberries!!

Other than this, there was another tiny harvest of shelling peas, and that’s it. The developing pole beans won’t be ready to harvest for a while, and the bush beans are just starting to open most of their flowers.

I also had to add some support to the Black Cherry tomatoes in the wattle weave bed. I’m doing next to no pruning, mostly because I can’t see into the foliage very well. I know myself well enough to realize I’m as likely to accidently break the main stem while trying to break off any suckers. The plants, including suckers, has gotten so tall, it’s well into the lilac branches above them.

Some of the suckers, however, can’t quite reach, because they’re falling sideways under their own weight. All they needed was for some jute twine to be run around the whole row, with the ends of the twine fastened to branches of the lilac at one end.

So far, we have only one San Marzano tomato ripening. All the other tomatoes have plenty of fruit growing, but everything is still very green.

My family will be very happy once those cherry tomatoes start to ripen!

Me; I’d just like to have some summer squash and beans to harvest!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: squash and melons growth progress – and another breakdown!

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Okay, this is getting ridiculous.

I was able to get some progress mowing the southeast yard. I was stopping and starting a lot to empty the bag. The area I was mowing is not infested with creeping Charlie, so the clippings went directly for mulch of the strawberry and asparagus bed, and around the sunchokes.

I’d gotten through maybe 2/3 of the southeast yard when I ran out of gas. As the engine sputtered and died, it backfired, which is the only thing I can think of that was out of the ordinary.

After filling the tank, I tried to start it, but it wouldn’t start.

I failed to start it several more times before I decided to let it cool down for a while. This has happened before and we were able to start it again after awhile.

As I waited, I puttered around with some other things around the yard, before trying again.

It still wouldn’t start.

Worse, as I was pulling the cord to start it, I could hear rattling noises.

I ended up putting it away in the garage and got the riding mower out. I decided it was worth a try to see if it would cut.

It wouldn’t start, either. The battery was dead again.

This battery was replaced just last year.

I put the charger on it, then puttered around the yard some more. Tried to start it again, but it hadn’t charged enough, so I went inside to have a meal.

The next time, it started fine, and I tried mowing.

I don’t know what’s going on with that thing. It will cut for a while, and then… not. As far as I can tell, everything is working the way it should. When it stops cutting, I can reverse it, then try and cut the stuff that was missed. Usually, it starts cutting again, but sometimes I have to reverse and try again a few times.

What makes it even more confusing is that when I got to the end of the strip, I would increase the speed to maximum and drive back to the other end, so that while cutting, the grass was always being expelled over grass that was already cut. I didn’t bother disengaging the mowing bed, and it was set lower than the push mower. While going around, and I could see the mower was actually cutting grass as I went over the grass cut with the push mower. However, once I was back at the taller grass and moving at the slowest speed, it would just for a short while, and then stop.

After a while, I just stopped. It was taking way too long and I was wasting too much gas.

So now we have a broken push mower, and a riding mower that doesn’t always cut. This is on top of three desktop computers in the household that had to be replaced, plus a laptop that is out of commission but will not be replaced. Which is also on top of having to replace the van, my mother’s car is making banging noises – and now has two flat tires, one of which has a broken bead at the rim and can’t be pumped up at all.

All of this is less than 12 months.

This has got to be the worse year for expensive things needing to be replaced or repaired – and things we can’t afford to replace or repair anymore!!

Well, I at least was able to end my time outside on a positive note. I did the semi-daily growth comparison photos of all the squash and melons.

This time, I remembered to get the Crespo squash.

I do see a couple of female flower buds near this one, but it will be a while before they bloom. This is on the side where two vines are growing. The third vine is growing between this new bed and the bed with the peppers and eggplant beside it. That one has shown no side of any female flowers, yet.

I did, however, find some tiny green Seychelle pole beans starting to develop on the trellis netting!

Next is the easternmost bed with the Summer of Melons blend of melons.

I had to split the Instagram slideshow photos into two batches. These is from the east facing side.

It looks like one of those is definitely going to be a loss.

Then there is the west facing side.

I found a new one!

There are quite a few more budding melons, but it’s too early to tell if they were successfully pollinated or not on those.

Next, the pumpkins!

There’s one that’s getting very yellow, and I expect it’s going to die off completely.

The largest and oldest pumpkin is starting to turn colour!

Next, I tried to get photos of the drum gourds.

The problem is, I can barely see my screen in the light, so I couldn’t tell if the camera was focusing properly or not.

I had actually finished taking all the photos and was going back through the beds when I spotted another drum gourd, so I got a picture of that one, too. For all I can tell, there are more of them hiding among the leaves!

Next is the winter squash bed with the peas and beans.

There’s one in there that looks like it might be a loss, too. The rest, however, are looking awesome!

Next are the winter squash interplanted with corn.

Having been transplanted later, these are behind the first bed, but still doing really well.

The second bed of melons had to have the photos split up in the Instagram slide shows, too.

There’s a new melon in there!

I found a new one on the other side, too. After I took the photos, I found a couple more pieces of scrap wood to put under them. As with the Summer of Melons mix bed, I can see quite a lot of developing melons that are still too small to be sure they are pollinated. There is certainly no shortage of pollinators, though, which bodes well for future productivity!

I was definitely feeling better by the time I was done going through the garden.

Now to figure out what to do about our broken lawn mowers.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: tiny harvest: first shelling peas!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Woo hoo!!!

This morning, we have our first tiny harvest of shelling peas!

It isn’t a lot, but the more they get picked, the more they will keep producing! These are the Dalvay variety of peas that we got several years ago, and still have lot of seeds left over.

There is nothing like peas fresh off the vine!

The purple Dragonfly peppers are ripening much earlier than any of the other varieties we’ve planted this year. All the others are still very green. Eventually, we will have brown Sweet Chocolates, orange and yellow Early Sunsation and Early summer, and Purple Beauty peppers in this bed, too.

We aren’t going to be particularly hot today, so the only watering I did this morning was to fill the reservoirs by the drum gourds and pumpkins. The biggest of the pumpkins is starting to turn orange! I’ll be taking the comparison photos for the series I’ve been doing this evening – and hopefully, I will remember to include the Crespo squash this time! I completely forgot, last time.

My goal for today is to finish mowing the inner yard. I’d intended to do some mowing yesterday, but never got that far. I’d picked up replacement hose connectors, as we have leaking front yard hoses. With one connection, both hoses had already had their connections replaced, and both were leaking. One of them had a 1/2 inch connector instead of a 3/4 inch connector. The clamp couldn’t quite tighten it enough. The other was the right size, but still leaking. So I replaced both.

That took a LOT longer than it should have. The old connectors had to be cut off, one of the new clamps was bent and wouldn’t loosen or tighten properly, I tried to use the old clamp only to have part of it disappear completely, so I had to figure out how to get the bent new one to work, etc. I used Teflon tape on them, too, as an extra precaution to prevent leaking. I think I ended up spending at least an hour fighting with it.

The front tap has three hoses connected, and one of them predates our living here. It’s still one of the best hoses we have, though! It was leaking, so I replaced the rubber washer.

Then I turned the hose back on and…

It’s all still leaking.

*sigh*

I do have the contractor’s grade hose that was gifted to us. It is going to be used to replace the hose in the back and set up a garden tap again. It’s going to be a while longer yet, before we can dig up the rest of the buried water pipe, and I won’t start that until I have the pipe I want to run the hose through to protect it, before burying it.

The problem is, the pipe I’m looking to get costs at least $27 – $35 for a 3″ x 10′ length. The 4″ pipe is easier to find, but more expensive – and I’d need four of them, plus angled connectors for each end. The idea is that, if the hose ever needs to be repaired or replaced, it can be easily pulled out of the pipe without having to dig the trench again. I might be able to find pipe in the diameter I want that’s a better price, but for that, I’d have to actually go into a store in the city that carries them in stock (I’m not finding anything in stock locally) and look at what they have. Their websites are not very helpful.

So if it’s going to be a while before I can even consider using that hose to set up a garden tap, I may as well use it now!

Meanwhile, this time of year is when things like hoses go on clearance, so I should be able to get more heavy duty hoses to replace all our cheapies. I’m getting really tired of having the world’s kinkiest hoses! Even the non-kink hoses I got a year or two ago are constantly kinking!

All in good time, I guess.

For now, though, I want to get the inner lawn mowed, so I can move the truck to the yard and use the garage as a workshop to build an outdoor cat isolation cage. We have some pretty feral ladies that need to be trapped and spayed, and there’s no way we can keep them indoors anywhere for the 2 weeks they need for recovery. Who knows. We might even get them to be more semi-feral than feral while they are in an isolation cage!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: we have beans, and a blushing tomato

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We are having a much more pleasant day today, temperature wise. In fact, our overnight low last night dipped down to 9C/48F! I actually had to turn my fans off. 😄 Right now, coming up on 6:30pm, we’re still at our high of 21C/70F, which has been sooooo enjoyable!

I did end up watering the garden this afternoon, though. This time with water soluble fertilizer. The NPK on this fertilizer was 18-18-21, rather than the acidifying, high nitrogen fertilizer I used before. With so many things developing their fruit, they need that higher potassium and less nitrogen.

While I was watering in the main garden area, I saw something that made me smile!

We have pole beans developing! So far, just one purple Carminat plant has them, but the others are blooming, so I’m hoping to expect more. The green Seychelle beans that were planted later, to fill the gabs where the Carminat failed to germinated, will likely be a couple of weeks behind.

While watering the San Marzano tomatoes in the retaining wall blocks, I saw our first tomato that’s starting to show a blush of red.

At this time last year, most things were farther along, and we were still harvesting bush beans, and even some summer squash and some decently sized carrots. Still, things are growing well, for all that they’re behind in the growing season. As long as that frost holds off, we should have a pretty decent harvest at the end of the season.

Plus, we should soon have beans, corn and shelling peas to harvest!

Well. As long as something else doesn’t get them first. Like a deer. At least we don’t have problems with groundhogs this year, and with all the yard cats, rodents and hares are not a problem at all!

The yard cats do earn their keep!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: melons, squash, pumpkin progress – and it’s crazy hot out there!

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

According to my weather app, we’re still at 31C/88F, which “feels like” 33C/91F

Well, this evening (it’s coming up on 6pm as I start this), I got photos of our thermometers.

The thermometer in the sun room was reading 39C/102F. This thermometer is against the west wall, about 3/4 of the way up to the ceiling. It does not get direct sunlight on it.

The thermometer outside my husband’s bedroom window was as high as the needle could go. If the numbers went that far, it would be about 60C/140F. This thermometer get blasted with the full sun for most of the day, in a mostly sheltered corner of the house. No shade and rarely any breeze.

The last thermometer is stored in the top of a cat shelter shelf. The shelf is in full sun, but the thermometer itself was in shade inside. It was reading 43C/109F. Of all the thermometers, I’d say that one is the most accurate to how it felt while walking around the garden beds.

Wow.

Honestly, I’ll take that over matching temperatures on the other side of freezing. Not that we see -60C/-76F, but we do see -40C/F at times, and that is far more deadly.

A couple of evenings ago, I took photos of our squash, pumpkins and melons, using my hand for perspective. Today, I did it again – but this time, I found more to take photos of! Since Instagram allows “only” up to 10 photos in a slideshow, I split the squash and melon photos up by beds.

Yes, I was able to find melons in the second bed this time! I had spotted one before, but today I moved the leaves around and found others.

First, there is our single Crespo squash.

I’ve spotted some tiny female flower buds, but so far, there is only one successfully germinated Crespo squash among the three vines.

Next up is the bed with just the Summer of Melons mix melons.

I dug around in the leaves and found some “new” ones, too. In one photo, there are two melons, but the leaves and vines prevented me from getting a photo of them both, individually, so one of them is only half in the frame.

They’re getting big enough that they are starting to look like distinctively different varieties, too.

The next bed is the pumpkins.

The smaller ones are getting noticeably not-small anymore!

The pumpkin vines are getting intertwined with the drum gourd vines. Those have many male flowers, but I have yet to find a female flower anywhere. It’s possible I can’t see any under all the leaves, but I think that’s unlikely. I’m wondering if they are getting enough water? These have a buried gallon water bottle buried next to their bases, so they get watered slowly and deeply, but a gallon of water might not be enough for something like this. I don’t know. It seems to be sufficient for the pumpkins, though!

The next bed is the winter squash interplanted with shelling peas and pole beans.

The biggest squash at the corner of the bed had a friend on its stem!

The next bed is the winter squash interplanted with corn.

Still not very many among these, but they were also transplanted a fair bit later than the first bed.

Finally, there is the second melon bed.

The first and largest one is among the few Summer of Melons mix transplants that were left over. The others, I’m not sure. They look like they are the same variety, but one was on the far side of the single surviving Cream of Saskatchewan water melon, which I know for sure are not from that mix. That would make them Sarah’s Choice melons. We grew those last year, but they were grown in a bed next to two other varieties and the vines were so mixed up, we lost track of which were which. The other melons in this bed would be the Pixie melons.

Oh, wow. I just linked those to where I bought them, and my goodness, the prices have sure gone up!!! Especially for the Pixies!

If you want to compare how fast these have been growing, you can check out the comparison posts I made on July 30 and July 28.

We may not have anything to harvest on a daily basis this year, but we sure to have a lot growing!

If the warmth keeps up, though, we might actually be able to have things to harvest. The bush beans first had to survive the slugs. Then they had to survive the deer. Amazingly, there are some that have recovered enough that they are starting to bloom! So Royal Burgundy bush beans are a possibility.

There aren’t a lot of pole beans, either, but they are also starting to bloom, so we might be able to harvest both the green Seychelles and the purple Carminate beans at some point. Which isn’t going to be easy, with all those winter squash vines growing around them! The shelling peas seem to be very prolific, with lots of flowers and developing pods, but it will probably be at least a couple more weeks before any of those can be harvested. The corn is also going to be a bit longer; they are sure releasing a LOT of pollen right now!

We also have green tomatoes developing, but nothing is even close to ripening, yet. Then there are the summer squash. I have no idea if we’ll get any green zucchini, Magda, Goldy zucchini or White Scallops, but I think we’ll definitely be getting some of the G-Star patty pans to harvest at some point. They’re not blooming yet, but there are buds starting to form, at least.

What a strange, strange gardening year. That rain we had in the spring really messed things up and set things back. We had Saskatoons blooming, but there are no berries – it was probably too wet for the pollinators. The cherry tree by the house isn’t going to have many berries, though there are some that are ripening. One chokecherry tree in the spruce grove is showing berries, but the one next to the main garden area has almost nothing on it. Even among the crab apples trees, there are a couple of trees where I’m not seeing any apples! These are the ones that have small apples the birds like to eat. The ones with apples that we like to eat do have apples on them, so the timing of blooms and pollinating seems to have been just right for those trees, but not the others.

We have plenty of pollinators, though. I don’t usually see them, but when I’m going through the garden, I can hear them buzzing. I will still hand pollinate the squash if I spot a female flower, but the melons have so many flowers that are so small, hidden among so many leaves, it’s all on the pollinators for those!

With the spring set backs, we can only pray to have a long and mild fall to make up for it!

As my SIL once told me some time ago; if we depended on our garden for food, we’d be starving! 😄

I’m working to change that, though! 😁😁

The Re-Farmer