I just got back in from taking comparison photos in the garden. It’s just past 7pm now, and we’re just barely starting to cool down. We most definitely broke 30C/86F today, though I don’t know by how much, or what the humidex was. As I write this, we’re down to 28C/82F, with the humidex putting us at 30C/86F – which I think is off by a few degrees! It certainly feels hotter than that out there to me!
But, everything is looking good in the garden. The morning watering is keeping everything from wilting away in the heat. The corn has reached pollination stage, but we don’t have much wind today, so I’ve been shaking them to pollinate the silks, and can see clouds of pollen coming off the tassels! I am so looking forward to trying this variety of corn. Such a short growing season isn’t worth much if we don’t like the corn! 😄 I see some potential problems with growing them in with the winter squash, though; some of the vines have started to climb the corn! The stalks will not be strong enough to hold that kind of weight!
I did not do any comparison photos of the developing melons, squash, etc., using my hand as perspective, yesterday. So we’ll be looking at two days growth from the photos I last posted.
This is our first Crespo squash! I hand pollinated it, and it took, so I put a brick under it to keep it from potentially getting a rotten spot on the grass. I would love to get even just one fully grown Crespo squash, but it’s the end of July, so chances of that are pretty low, unless September ends up another warm one without frost – which may be possible, this year.
Digging around in the leaves, I found at least one more Summer of Melons Blend melon developing. There are lots more female flowers and probably more developing melons hidden by the leaves, but these are the largest ones that I can find, so far.
In the pumpkins, where I’d put a board under two smaller ones, you can see that the smaller one is turning yellow and withering away. Pollination didn’t take on that one.
I’m really impressed by how many pumpkins we have from just these two vines!
Among the winter squash, I found one that looks like it took and put a board under it. I also got shots of a couple that may have taken, but they haven’t dropped their flowers yet, so I might be jumping the gun to include them here.
I’ve been looking through the Vesey’s squash selection to try and determine what the varieties are, but it looks like the seeds in their Wild Bunch Mix are not sold separately! At least not all of them.
This is the image from their website for this product. I recognize Red Kuri in the photo, which we’ve grown before and really like. The image includes a squash I know is called Turks Turban, which is one of the squash we’ve got developing, but that one isn’t sold separately.
Oh! I just realized I forgot to get a photo of one large one! Excuse me while I go back out and fix that…
I can’t believe I forgot one of our largest developing winter squash! It is completely covered by leaves, so getting to it, and getting a photo, is a challenge. I think I can see which it is in the product image, but I don’t see that one among the seeds they sell individually.
Well, once they are ripe, I’ll have to look around online to see if I can identify the other varieties. The main reason we got this mix was to see which ones we like the most, so we can buy just those in the future. Eventually, I want to get ourselves down to just a couple of varieties – three at most – that grow well here, and that we enjoy eating – so that we can save seeds. That’s sort of the goal for most of the things we are growing, really, including the Summer of Melons mix.
Anyhow. I’ll probably take these comparison photos every couple of days, even though some of them show visible growth just from one day to the next. Especially when they are smaller. I like being able to go through the photos later on and really see how much they’ve grown in such a short time!
Tomorrow morning, I’ll be doing the early watering again, before heading to the city for our Costco shop. It’s also local election day for our municipal council, so I’ll be sure to vote before heading to the city.
As an aside, I’ve been playing with the AI assistant function on WordPress. The “generate feedback” keeps telling me I need to break up my long paragraphs. So often, I’ve taken another look at my posts to see if my paragraphs are really that long. I don’t think they are, in the posts I’ve done this with, but the AI sure seems to think so! It also keeps telling me to use subheadings to break things up. I’m not that kind of blog! It suggests adding images, too, though a few times it does recognize that I’ve used Instagram to include images.
What’s really funny is using the AI to generate images based only on the content of the posts. The AI does not know what a vegetable garden looks like. Or strawberry beds. Or a grocery store! At least the cat and kitten images look not too bad. 😄😄 The post I wrote about the washing machine being somehow turned on by the cats and flooding our entry was probably the funniest. I wrote about draining the water with a hose extending through the door.
It decided we had a washing machine sitting outside the door, with decorative nic nacs on top. 😂😂
None of them have been useable for my posts, though. I haven’t tried to tell it what to make for an image manually since I tried to get it to create an image of a mosquito some time ago.
The AI doesn’t know what mosquitoes look like, either.
Too funny!
The Re-Farmer
[Ahahahaha!!! I just tried the feedback option for this post, and it suggested I use the AI to generate images for it. 😂😂😂]
With our garden not having the usual things that could be harvested throughout the growing season, the most we’ve had this year has been pretty small. The only real exception to that was the garlic scapes which, a much as there were and how much we enjoy them, is more of a flavouring than anything else. Aside from that, we’ve had handfuls of sugar snap peas, strawberries and raspberries. Much enjoyed, but not very substantial.
Today, I decided I wanted to cook with potatoes and carrots.
We don’t have any potatoes or carrots in the house at the moment.
A good excuse to see how the Red Thumb fingerling potatoes turned out! These are the ones we planted using potatoes from last year. They were small, even for fingerlings, and had been sprouting in the box they were hidden in (for some reason, the cats love playing with them!) for way too long. I shoved in as many as would fit in the leftover space, then dumped the rest in the compost heap. I honestly wasn’t sure they would grow.
Well, grow they did, and all of the, from the looks of it, unlike the Purple Caribe in the other 2/3rds of the bed.
The ones in the compost pile started growing later, are looking huge and are blooming right now. We’ll probably get more and bigger potatoes out of the compost pile than in the garden bed!
It’ll be a while before we can dig them up and confirm that, though.
I wanted just enough for tonight, so I only dug up a few at one end of the bed. There was a self seeded tomato in with them so, as soon as I had the space for it, I dug it out with a large amount of soil, so the roots would have virtually no disruption, then transplanted it at the very end of the bed. As I dug around for more potatoes, I built the soil around the stem a bit, then made the mound so that water would flow towards the stem rather than down the sides, where it would wash away the soil. I’ll put a mulch around it as soon as I have the materials to do it.
I ended up digging out three plants altogether, then went and harvested some carrots.
I had been wondering about the Uzbek Golden carrots. There’s lots of leaves, but there are no “shoulders” of carrots sticking out of the soil. Last year, they grew quite large, and we could see the carrot tops much earlier in the season.
All the carrots I pulled up were still quite small!
Which is okay for a day’s meal. Still, what I harvested was almost a quarter of the carrots we planted, since we never had the space to plant more.
That’s what we get for starting ALL the mixed variety packs for winter squash and melons, and having an almost 100% germination rate. Plus extra melons! Plus transplanting all those overwintered onions for their seeds.
After harvesting these, they got hosed down a few times to get the big dirt off. Since they are so fresh, they just need to be scrubbed clean and the carrots trimmed, before being cooked unpeeled. Otherwise, I would never have kept some of the really tiny potatoes and carrots.
I did harvest the one ripe Purple Dragonfly pepper last night, but I don’t eat peppers, so the girls get to enjoy that.
I haven’t quite decided what I’ll be making with the ingredients I have right now. It’s still too hot to cook, so it’ll wait for a while!
On another note, my daughter’s transfers went through today, so she was able to etransfer to her father so he could use his credit card to buy her new computer. We were willing to drive to the city to pick it up at the local location, but it turns out they only have one location with pick up, and it’s in Toronto! So it will be mailed to us, by express post. Which means my daughter should have her new computer by the end of the week. Canada Post tends to be pretty good for that, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually arrived by Wednesday. Which would be awesome. I’m amazed my daughter has been able to keep her computer running at all! I don’t know if she got any sleep at all today, as each step of getting the funds transferred until the purchase could finally be made took longer than usual. But, it’s finally done. She still needs to keep her old computer functioning until the new one arrives, plus the time to set up the software she uses, make sure it can connect with her drawing tablet (that probably needs to be replaced soon, too) and both monitors, get the drivers updated, etc. until she can finally use it for work.
Even so, it’s a huge weight off her shoulders, just having it purchased and on its way!
We aren’t expected to get as hot today as the last few days, but it’s still supposed to get right up there, so I went ahead and watered the garden again this morning. As I write this, we are at “only” 24C/75F, but feeling like 28C/82F. Over the next 5 days, we’re supposed to be back at or near 30C/86F.
Considering how many heat loving plants we ended up with in the garden this year (not really our original intention), this works out. Most of them also need a lot of water, too. Especially the squash and melons.
Last night, I went around and took photos, with my hand as reference, of the developing fruit. At least the larger ones that have clearly been successfully pollinated. There were a few I saw that are still at the sage where they might wither away and fall off the vine, so I didn’t bother taking photos of them. I will see if I can stick to taking photos in the evening, though maybe not every evening, so I can have a progression on how quickly they are growing in this heat.
First up, the Sumer of Melons Blend melons in the trellis bed.
The pumpkins are really something! There is one really big one, plus quite a few more developing on the two plants. If we were after growing the largest pumpkin we could, we’d prune all but the biggest one from each plant, but I’m not after growing a show stopper, so we will take what they give us. I even hand pollinated a couple more this morning. Last night, I noticed some were getting large enough that I put scrap boards under them, to protect them from getting rotten spots on the ground. There was even a pair of them so close together, I put a longer piece of board that they can both rest on, once their weight has them both lying on the ground.
I’m quite happy with the winter squash. I don’t know why I’ve become so obsessed with winter squash! There’s one really big one growing on the corner of the log frame. I’d put a piece of scrap board under it but, now that it’s getting bigger, it was starting to roll off the narrow board. After I took the photo, I found a wider piece to put under it, and tried to stabilize it so it wouldn’t roll off and break its own stem or vine. There’s a large green squash that had also been resting on a log, but I found it rolled into the bed. Thankfully, there was no damage to stem or vine, so I found a scrap board to put under it and stabilize it. I even put boards under some smaller ones, just to get ahead of the game.
We also have a single Purple Dragonfly pepper that has changed colour. This morning, it was even more fully purple. I suppose it’s ripe enough to harvest now, but with just one pepper, I’m not in any hurry. There are others developing among the other plants, but this one started forming much earlier. I might harvest it tonight or something.
While I was watering the squash and corn bed, pausing to hand pollinate more flowers and checking on the developing squash, I spotted a garter snake! I was so happy to see it! First one I’ve seen in the garden all year. It disappeared before I could try for a photo. Hopefully, it is busily eating all the slugs, and not any of the many, many frogs we have this year, which also eat the slugs.
They (the frogs, not the snakes) are absolutely everywhere, this year! I don’t remember ever seeing so many before. I love it! Most that we see are Wood frogs, though looking up our native frogs, it’s possible some are the Boreal Chorus frog.
This morning, I spotted this beautiful friend and was able to get a photo.
This is the gray tree frog, even though it’s green at the moment. They can change colour. Definitely one of my favourite local frogs! I love their round, round bellies. 😁 This one is sitting on a raspberry leaf.
It looks like our raspberries are starting to wind down for the season.
The last thing I reached to water this morning was the grape vines, and I found some damage. The weight of the vines has pulled down the wire mesh from the rebar that was holding it up. I was able to lift it part way back, but we’ll have to figure out a way to secure the mesh to the rebar more effectively so it will stay. The grape vines are definitely the biggest I’ve ever seen them get since we discovered them buried in the spirea!
I really want to transplant them into a better location, and onto more stable and permanent trellis. I’m picturing an arch over a bench would be awesome. I’d originally considered planting them against the chain link fence, so they can use the fence as a trellis, but we shall see. It will be a while before we get to them, so we have time to find a good spot for them and plan it out.
In other things, the kitties are doing okay. I was concerned when I didn’t see the one orange and white kitten anywhere, but as I was moving the hose to water the east garden beds, I spotted him on the tarp covered pile of boards, nursing on Caramel. I guess they still use their “nest” under there at times. I’m concerned about Button. He, and other kittens, are starting to get leaky eyes, but he’s so much smaller than the others it concerns me more on him.
Oh, that reminds me. It’s been a month since we tried to order the 4 pound bucket of lysine for a second time (the first one was lost and we got refunded, but it still showed up on Amazon as being on its way). There is no option to cancel the order for a refund by this point, but I’ve still requested a refund, since we never got it. Last information we got, it was hung up at the border. If it hasn’t arrived by now, it’s not going to. We ordered the stuff we got last time, which is very granular and doesn’t stick to the kibble was well as the fine powder that we can’t find anymore. I was hoping the 4lb bucket would be the fine powder, but even if it wasn’t, it would last us a good long time. We’ll see how that works. The next time I’m at the feed store to get their 40 pound bags of kibble, I need to remember to ask if they carry lysine, too.
As for Button, I’m seriously considering bringing him inside. If it weren’t for the fact that the mamas are still letting him nurse, and that’s the best for him right now, I probably would.
I did get an update from the Cat Lady about her son that’s in the hospital. He’s going to be there for a while longer. They’ve got a team of doctors working on him and trying to avoid surgery. Poor kid. So there’s no way they’re going to be picking up Button anytime soon. They’ve got too many other things to worry about right now!
On the home front, my daughter has been managing to keep her computer going enough to work on commissions – commissions that she needs to pay for a new machine! Usually, while working, she’s got Discord up, or a podcast playing in the background, etc. Right now, she has nothing extra running in the background as she works, is saving everything constantly, and is backing things up to her cloud storage AND a thumb drive every chance she gets. Once she’s done working, it gets shut off. No browsing or game playing with her online friends.
If all goes well, we’ll be able to get her computer ordered within the next few days, while the system she wants is still on sale. She’s ordering from Memory Express, and there’s a location in the city that’s easy for us to get to, so we could even drive in to pick it up, which might be faster than having it delivered.
Thankfully, she has really good customers, who are understanding if there is some sort of delay because her computer died!
We shall see how things work out over the next few days.
Meanwhile, I have my outside stuff and gardening to keep me busy and sane, and I am thankful for it!
We have a couple of hot peppers developing, just on one plant so far. I also spotted our first corn silks this morning!
I found some new female winter squash and a pumpkin blossoming and hand pollinated them. Today was the first time I found a female squash blossom in the squash bed with the corn, which got transplanted after the ones with the peas and beans. The area around the pumpkins and winter squash is getting hard to walk through to water, the vines are getting so big! I need to find a way to set up supports for the hose above ground at each bed, so it doesn’t get dragged on top of the vines. I really should have set up the soaker and sprinkler hoses around the beds before they got so big.
Quite a few things that were looking wimpy and behind are starting to perk up, too, like the last onion transplants and the melon bed. Most of the tomatoes are getting big and bushy. I have not been on top of the pruning this year and, at this point, don’t really intend to do much of that. I’ll take off some of the lower leaves, but the stalks that grow out of the leaf “elbows” just got away with me. I figured I may as well leave them, since they will produce fruit. The black cherry tomatoes are vining so tall, the double lilac bush with branches above them is actually helping to support them! That group will need extra support around them, though.
The tomatoes growing in the concrete blocks, both at the chain link fence and the retaining wall, are not getting bushy, though. They are starting to produce tomatoes, but the plants themselves are not as strong and bushy as the others.
I’m going to have to rethink what we grow in those blocks. Perennials like the mint and chives are doing great. We did successfully grow cucamelons in the retaining wall blocks, though their vines remained spindly. They did not do well at the chain link fence. Onions and shallots don’t seem to do well in them, either, which is odd considering how well the chives are doing.
So it looks like we should be looking at saving the blocks for things like perennial herbs. The old kitchen garden is meant to eventually be a combination herd garden and kitchen garden, for both annuals and perennials. Basically, mostly things that we’d want to harvest as needed throughout the summer. I want to see if we can grow things like rosemary (which would be an annual, in our short growing season), sage or savory, which we tend to use quite a lot. We know now that chamomile will self seed nicely. We’re not using the thyme we have right now, as we don’t have a lot of it, and I want to see if it will either self seed or survive the winter, if it gets mulched well enough. In the fall, I want to find someplace to transplant those “wild” strawberries out of the wattle weave bed to where we can just let them do their thing.
Ah, the fun thing about gardening. I’m always thinking years in advance!
We didn’t get too excessively hot – our high was 19C/66F – which made a huge difference. As I write this, we’re at 17C/63F, with a “feels like” of 15C/59F. That’s more my kind of weather!
Best of all, we had a break from the rain. We should have another break tomorrow, and then it’s supposed to rain for another two days.
Still, we got enough sunshine to dry some things out.
Today, I wanted to get some direct sowing done – finally!
I decided to plant chard where the spinach is done. That required first removing the netting I set up that turned out to not be long enough to go all the way around the bed. Once that was cleared and put away, I pulled the sad little remaining spinach plants – I wish I knew why they did so poorly! – and weeded the bed. We don’t have a lot of carrots, unfortunately. The cats would go in where there was no netting to keep them out, and use that corner of the bed as a litter box, digging up quite a few carrots in the process. I’d hope to plant more, but it’s too late in the season for carrots, now. Of the overwintered onions that had been transplanted at one end, there are three that survived the transplanting, and they are starting to go to seed!
Speaking of seed, I had both Bright Lights (a rainbow variety) and Fordhook Giant seeds. The cats had gotten into them and chew through the packages, so now they’re all mixed up in the a Ziplock baggie. These are not new seeds, so it will be interesting to see how well they germinate.
Once the planting and weeding was done, I grabbed one of the new nets I picked up at a dollar store and set it up around the bed. I added a couple more support posts around the perimeter. These are salvaged from the frame of a canopy tent a tree fell on, so they all have screw holes in them. Very handy to string line through, to hold the netting in place and keep it from just sliding down the supports! The netting is wide enough that it can reach the trellis netting in the middle, as well as to the ground outside the raised bed. I didn’t bother fastening the netting to the middle, since it’s mostly to keep the cats out. Once the netting was in place, it got some ground staples to hold it down, since it kept wanting to creep back up!
That done, it was time to go to the main garden area, and the last bed that got shifted over. The empty space between the shallots and the yellow bulb onions needed something in it!
The white patty pan and Magda squash that was planted in pots in front of the house did not germinate, so I replanted them there. I also grabbed the G-star pattypan seeds, and planted all three varieties between the onions and the shallots. I used broken bamboo stakes to mark were I’d planted pairs of seeds. I hadn’t pre-soaked them or scarified them, so I made sure they got a deep watering. Then I raked up some of grass clippings and used it to mulch around where the seeds were planted. Then I dampened the mulch, too!
I completely forgot that I wanted to replant the Seychelle pole beans by the Crespo squash. I can do that tomorrow. It’s really late for pole beans, but I’m going to take the chance.
Aside from that, the garden is now finally all in! There are no other beds to plant things in. That will be our next focus: build more beds for next year! Especially the trellis beds. Plus, of course, harvesting more dead spruces to frame all the beds.
Once that was done, I tended to the tomatoes in the old kitchen garden. I didn’t bother taking pictures, since it’s hard to see. They’re starting to get big and bush, and starting to flop. So I grabbed some jute twine and wove it around the pairs of bamboo stakes at each tomato plant, and the tomato stems in between. That was more finnicky work than I expected! The leaves are so dense the jute twine is mostly hidden, but it’s doing its job, and holding the vines up between the support stakes.
I also took some video of the raised beds that got shifted over. I’m planning to do a progress video. I was going to do it tonight, but I’m falling asleep at my keyboard, so I think I’ll call it a night, and work on it tomorrow.
All in all, it turned out to be a decently productive day! Not bad for it starting out as such a bad pain day, this morning. Not bad at all!
The Dalvay peas seemed to just explode overnight, and almost the entire row is filled with pea shoots. The Yukon Chief corn has also seen quite a growth spurt.
The beans don’t seem to be doing well this year. I could explain that away for the older seeds, but the purple bush beans were fresh seeds, and there’s just one bean that has sprouted! Hopefully, more will appear in the next while, but if they don’t, some of them will get a second sowing or, if I’m out of a particular seed, something else will be sowed in place.
My main goal for this morning was to get those tomatoes and as many onions as I could, transplanted, and I’m happy to day that has been accomplished!
The first thing was to break up the clumps of soil that were hilled into the new bed location and pull out as many roots and weeds (and rocks) as I could. This bed was in so much better shape than the previous one, it didn’t take very long at all. From there, it was using the thatching rake to even out the hill of soil between the boards – the north send, where the bed was extended, had to have more soil spread into it – and level the top for planting. Of course, more weeds, roots and rocks were removed at the same time.
Then I brought the transplants over. There were seven San Marzano tomatoes left, including one that wasn’t looking very good at all. I also happened to have exactly seven bamboo stakes left, to use as their supports, which was nice. I pre-dug holes for them down the middle of the bed, as evenly spaced as I could eyeball it, then used the jet setting on the hose to fill each hole with water, and basically drill the water deeper into the holes. I want those roots to have water below them to encourage them to grow deep.
I removed the transplants from their cells into the bottom drain tray to make it easier to carry them around. That last tomato that looked the most beat up, though, didn’t come out with its soil, but broke off, instead. I could still see some roots on the stem, though, so I kept it. I just transplanted that one at the north end of the bed, closest to the trees. I don’t really expect it to make it, nor do I expect that end of the bed to do as well as the rest, because of those !%$@# elms.
The tray still had vermiculite topped soil in it from the tomatoes that didn’t survive, so I dumped all that into the drain tray, then put a bit of it around each of the tomato plants. I didn’t bury the stems deep – they didn’t need it – but I did plant them deep, so each one is in a bit of a hollow, so water will flow towards the roots and seep into the soil there, instead of flowing down the sides of the bed.
Once the tomatoes were in, I made a narrow trench all around the perimeter of the bed, except the north end, which doesn’t quite quite a much soil, still, so it’s basically a long U shaped trench. That got watered with the hose on the jet setting, too.
For the onions, I chose the tray with the yellow bulb onions. I keep forgetting the name of the variety. It’s a good thing I record all this here in the blog! They are Frontier onions, noted for strong necks, consistent size and disease resistance. They are supposed to mature 100 days from transplant, which means I’m really late in getting these in the ground. Hopefully, we’ll have a mild fall, and the frost will hold off until October.
The tray I used for the onions was a vegetable party tray, divided into 4 spaces around the perimeter, and a shallow circle in the middle where a dipping sauce was kept. I am really liking this design. After giving the tray a thorough soak, to make it easier to separate the onions, I could just grab on section of onions and carry it with me as I went around the bed, pulling out and spacing the onions in the trench. I was able to finish off one section, plus another dozen or so transplants from another.
Once those were planted, I make more shallow trenched between each tomato plant and repeated the process. I was able to fit three or four transplants between each tomato, with enough space to fit five in one area. In hindsight, I probably could have planted the ones around the perimeter closer together, but what’s done is done. I wasn’t able to fit even half the tray of onions in!
The last thing to do was give the transplants a gentle watering, to settle the soil around their roots. It actually started to rain while I was doing this, but so little, I barely got wet.
When I looked at the forecast last night, it was saying we could expect rain for a couple of hours, starting at about 7 this evening. It is now saying the rain will start at about 5pm, and continuing until 1am! Today is Saturday, and the forecast says we will not have more rain again until late Wednesday night.
We shall see.
Now that the tomatoes are in (yay!!), there are the rest of the yellow onions to transplant, a few remaining shallots, and the Orange Butterfly Flower. I was going to try direct sowing some of that, but it just didn’t happen. I still don’t know where I want to plant them, since it has to be in a permanent location. I want it to be near the main garden area, but where I think would be best for them is going to see a lot of traffic and commotion as we build the frames for the beds.
The main thing, though, is the tomatoes are in. This bed will need to have mulch added around the sides, to keep the soil from being eroded, until we can get it properly framed.
This leaves one more bed to shift over. Like this one, the last one shouldn’t take very long, comparatively speaking. It’s more a matter of working around the heat of the day. From the looks of it, the entire bed could be filled with the remaining onion and shallot transplants. I might even have some left over.
Today, however, we’ve already reached our high of 21C/70F. It’s not even noon yet, which means we could still get hotter over the afternoon. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 22C/72F, and then we’ll get our hottest day on Monday, with an expected high of 27C/81F. After that, it should cool down a bit, but still remain in the 20’s for a while. Hopefully, we’ll have enough dry days to get the lawn mowed, and maybe even cut/process more logs to frame the beds. I might just go ahead and scythe in the outer yard a bit, tomorrow, so the hay can dry for a bit before being gathered and used as mulch. Grass clippings are great, but when green, wet clippings are dumped in a pile, the inside of the pile gets astonishingly hot. Then it gets all slimy, while the exposed grass on top dries out. Once the insides gets slimy, it’s not much use as a mulch and we just leave it to compost.
Meanwhile, it turns out we need to make another trip to Walmart. We’re almost out of kibble, and first disability check doesn’t come in until the middle of next week, when we do our first stock up shopping trip. The Cat Lady has said she’ll acquire some cat food donations for us, but they’re going to be in the US for a couple of weeks, so I don’t expect that anytime soon. They’re packing their bags now.
Well, time for me to get changed and head out to get kibble!
I don’t know why Instagram now cuts the sides off my photos, even though I select the wide image function.
I got about half way through the bed, sifting the soil, when I stopped for a break that ended up taking longer than I intended. Which is okay. It gave the soil I needed to move time to dry out a bit. Sifting damp soil is a lot harder and heavier. I’m amazed my home made soil sifter is still surviving the abuse!
By the time I was done fighting with my garden tour video and getting it uploaded, it was quite a bit later before I could get back at it. Thankfully, today has been cooler, with a pleasant breeze. I was greatly appreciating that!
The last bit of soil that needed to be worked on was the worst. This was the section full of creeping Charlie, and I was digging up and tossing large clumps of it. In the end, by the time I finished sifting the last of the soil from the old bed location, there wasn’t enough left to finish the new bed location. I ended up “stealing” soil from the last bed that will be worked on.
By then, it started to rain, but it was just a gentle shower, so I kept at it. Once the bed was done, I brought over the melons. I’d already gone through them and sorted them by type. I kept the Zucca melons aside, since they get huge. I’m thinking of using the kiddie pool as a raised bed, just for them, and setting it somewhere where they can spread.
There were a total of 16 melons to transplant, and I decided to dedicate the entire bed to them. I don’t know that we’ll be able to trellis them, since they will need stronger trellises than what we’re setting up for the beans and peas. If we end up not being able to add trellises, they should have room to spread on the ground and into the paths, if need be.
So this bed now has two rows of eight melons in it. As with the other squash and melons, I planted them slightly below grade and made hills of soil around them, so water would flow towards the plants rather than run down the sides of the bed and take the soil with it. The rain had pretty much stopped by the time that was done, so they got a good watering, too.
The bed still needs a mulch added to it, but it’s getting late, so that will be done tomorrow, when I will also started working on the next bed. That one needs to be shifted a lot, too, but it’s not as weedy and isn’t infested with creeping Charlie like this one was, so it should go somewhat faster. The hard part will be breaking the sod in the new location – and I don’t have anymore carboard that can be put over it, before shifting the soil on top.
This bed is where the last of the San Marzano tomatoes will finally be planted. There aren’t a lot of those left to transplant, so there will be room for other things.
Hmm… I should probably set up the kiddie pool and fill it with soil for the Zucca melons, first. They need to be transplanted more urgently than the tomatoes. That means sifting several loads of soil from the pile in the outer yard.
Once the transplants are in, I hope to be able to do some direct sowing, still. It’s getting really late for that. Our first frost date is September 10, so we’ve basically got July and August for things to grow, since if I plant things within the next 7-10 days, they will take the rest of June just to germinate.
What we don’t have a lot of is stuff that can be harvested throughout the summer. I’ve got three types of beans planted, and the very first Seychelle bean was sprouting this morning. The sugar snap peas are going to be awhile before there’s anything to harvest from them. The spinach is doing so poorly, I’m thinking of taking them out completely, and planting some chard or something, instead. I think it’s getting too late to plant more carrots, but I’ll check the information on my packages to be sure.
What I will likely do is direct sow more summer squash, since right now we just have some in pots. They haven’t germinated yet. Since summer squash gets harvested while still quite small, planting them in late June should be okay. As long as I can keep the slugs away! I haven’t actually seen slugs yet, so hopefully, we won’t have a bag year of them, like we did last year.
We shall see how things work out! Hopefully, we’ll even get weather that will allow us to harvest more dead spruces and build the frames around these beds, and maybe even continue the trellis beds, by fall.
Much work to be done.
It’s a good thing I love this kind of work! Even if I do have to pain killer up for it.
Speaking of which… time to do that, before this broken old body starts to seize up! 😄😄
The first thing to do was mark off the centre of the bed, then space out the 7 “Wild Bunch Mix” winter squash transplants I had left. As with the others, I transplanted them by first digging the holes, filling them all with water, then planting the squash slightly below grade, to keep any water from running off.
That left fairly decent sized gaps between each plant, but was it enough for the corn I had? Or did I have enough corn seeds for the space? I had only one package of Yukon Chief corn. From the Heritage Harvest website…
Introduced in 1958 by Arvo Kallio of the University of Alaska, Agricultural Experiment Station. Yukon Chief is one of the earliest Sweet Corn varieties available maturing at just 55 days! The yellow cobs average 5” in length and the plants grow about 4’ tall. Highly recommended for cool, short season areas! (55 days to maturity) (50 seeds)
(image belongs to Heritage Harvest Seed)
Fifty five days to maturity is amazing!
But 50 seeds to a package?
I took them out and counted them. I counted about 80 seeds!
I say “about” 80, because some of them were really small and probably shouldn’t be planted, but they would be, anyhow. 😄
I decided to pre-soak them for a little while, and misted the other beds while I waited. The other beds didn’t really need a watering, but a misting would be good in this heat. I’m happy to say the melons that looks so wimpy, yesterday, have already perked up. They might all actually survive! The mosquito netting over part of the row was drooping a bit, so I adjusted the hoops in the middle, then used the weights on the sides to pull the netting tighter. The netting is there to protect the transplants from heavy rain, and won’t be there for long.
I decided to mark out three small trenches between each winter squash, then used the jet setting on the hose to drive water deeply into each trench. As with the squash, I wanted to plant the corn seeds below grade. To start, I set out four of the largest corn seeds in each trench then, at the end, divided the smallest seeds wherever there seemed to be a bit more space. Yes, this is closer than is recommended for corn to be planted, but I don’t expect a 100% germination rate, and some will likely be thinned out, later. The main thing is, they are clustered together so the wind should pollinate them more easily.
Once that was figured out, I just pushed the seeds down to planting depth, then watered the entire bed, to settle the soil around the seeds and the squash roots.
Last of all, I grabbed the wheelbarrow and brought over some grass clippings to mulch the sides of the soil mound, and closer in around each squash plant. Aside from the usual benefits of a mulch, this will help keep the sides of the soil mound from eroding down.
This bed is now finished! The boards can now be removed and used to mark out the next bed I’ll be working on.
Which is going to be a huge shift. The bed is not only far to one side of where it needs to be, but it’s at an angle. The north end of the bed is completely in where the new path will be, while the south end is about 3/4 in where the path will be. Shifting this bed is pretty much building a whole new bed from the ground up.
*sigh*
It will be worth it, in the end, but my goodness, getting these beds into their permanent positions is a huge job. The rain and the heat certainly aren’t helping any!
But, we have one more bed done and planted. Progress has been made! Once everything is planted, then we can shift over to harvesting more dead trees to frame the beds.
Looking at the forecast, we aren’t expecting rain until maybe Saturday night (it’s Thursday, as I write this), which means we might even be able to get more lawn mowed!
Ugh. Our temperature is now 21C/70F, with the humidex at 26F/79F.
In other things, before heading into the house, I checked the garden shed. This time, without knocking, first. I startled Broccoli and her kittens. She and the black and white ran off to the back of the shed, but the calico didn’t. I was able to pick her up and cuddle her. They haven’t been using the cat bed, so I checked it out and found a mess in it. I was able to clean it up and set it back, though, as well as straightening out the self heating matt and the felt grow bags they are using as a nest. The calico wasn’t happy with me but, after a while, she did seem to be okay with the cuddles! I was just happy to see her. I’d seen Broccoli and the black and white kitten outside, earlier, but didn’t see the calico. With yard cats, that could mean a lot of things!
Now, if we could just convince her to bring them to the sun room, too!
I didn’t get all the stuff on my list done, but my goal was to get most of it, and I managed that!
I had intended to start earlier in the day, but ended up unable to sleep for some reason, until about 5 or 6, when I got an hour or so of actual sleep. Not very good sleep, though, as I had several cats draped over me, and I really, really needed to pee! 😄😄
By the time I got out, it was coming up on 9am and starting to get warm already. The first job I did was work on the trellis bed, which needed a serious weeding before anything more could be done in it.
We are starting these beds out at two logs high, and they will most definitely be made higher, over time. It didn’t take me long to realize I needed to use the scooter, to make the weeding less painful. This is the first time it’s been used since last year, to all the tires needed to be pumped up.
This bed has the onions transplanted out of the bed that now has winter squash in it, as well as a few I found in the other bed that was shifted over, but has not been planted in yet. These onions are doing very well! As these had over wintered, they should go to seed this year, which would be awesome.
All along one side, where a permanent trellis will be built in, I wanted to fit as many of the Summer of Melons Blend transplants as possible. This bed is a little messed up as, on what will be the trellis side, the bottom log is bowed inwards. This works out to ensure the vertical trellis supports will be even with each other, but it means that we loose several inches of planting area. With that in mind, I used a couple of stakes to mark the ends of where the row of melons would be, then used another stake to mark a line from one to the other, far enough in for the melon roots to have space.
We had some packages delivered yesterday, so I had some packing paper and cardboard that I could lay down between the markers.
The next part was the most difficult. Getting the transplants out of the large celled trays and so I could space them out between the markers.
With other things I grew in the large celled trays, I didn’t have too much trouble getting them out. Their roots held things together enough that, usually, I could loosen them by squeezing the cells a bit, then pull the whole thing out by the plant stem.
Not with these melons!
Their stems and roots are way too fragile. Plus, as I tried to push the soil and root cluster out, the soil (seed starting mix, actually) would start to break apart. With some, I had to use a narrow trowel to scoop it out. When it got to that point, there was no way that the roots could not be disturbed quite a bit!
Interruption! I ended up going into town. My husband needed something, but I also ended up getting Dairy Queen to bring home. I was too tired and sore to cook, my younger daughter is caning it and can’t stand long enough to cook, and my older daughter became ill during the night and still feels unwell! I headed out just in time; the rain hit while I was on my way home. I was just getting in the driveway when the radio started blaring an emergency alert. Parts of our province was under a tornado watch, and the weather office was tracking some. Not anywhere near us, though. We’ve got a bit of a break in the rain as I write this, then start up again at around midnight, and keep raining for about 6 hours!
Now… where was I? Ah, yes…
So getting those melons out of the tray was not a good thing for those roots! I would not be surprised if we loose some of them.
Because we will be training the melons up a trellis, I was able to space them closer to each other, getting 17 transplants laid out. That leaves another 4 transplants in this Summer of Melons Blend that still need to be transplanted.
Once I figured out where they were going, I cut through the packing paper and cardboard and found the line I’d marked out earlier, to dig the planting holes. Once the holes were all watered and the melons transplanted, I made use of the bark I’d taken off the logs for the bed the winter squash is in, to weigh down the paper and cardboard mulch, so it won’t blow away. Then everything got another thorough watering.
That left a section on the other side of the bed to plant in. I decided to put bush beans there, and planted the Royal Burgundy seeds. It’s not a large space, so there were seeds left over that we might plant somewhere else. Grass clippings were added on either side of the row for mulch.
That bed is now done!
The next thing on my list that I decided to do was to work on the bed with the winter squash. I used a stake to mark out a little trench to plant in, on either side of the winter squash and their grass mulches. Since the bed’s frame is not going to be complete for a little while, yet, I needed to make sure they weren’t too close to the edge of the soil mound. On one side, closer to the high raised bed, I planted the Dalvay shelling peas. We have quite a lot of seeds. I spaced them 4-5 inches apart, and had lots left over. After pushing the seeds into the soil, I made sure to cover them in such a way that there is a soil “wall” on the outside, and there is still a bit of a trench for the water to collect in before being absorbed.
I did the same on the other side, with the Carminat purple pole beans. I didn’t have as many of those left, so they were planted more like 6-7 inches apart. When I finished the row and still had a few seeds left, I went looking for spaces that looked a bit wider and added them there. We no longer have any Carminate pole bean seeds left!
The seeds planted and watered, I grabbed a bundle of bamboo poles and set up 5 to each side. After the beans and peas have germinated, we will add netting to the bamboo poles for the peas and beans to climb.
This bed is now done. At least, when it comes to planting!
After that, I took a hydration and sustenance break. While I was doing that, my younger daughter headed outside to try and get some lawn mowed. Even after waiting until noon, that grass was still so wet! That’s not even taking into account the low areas where standing water collects. There were whole sections she had to just go around and leave alone.
It may be making things hard to mow, but the gardens sure love it! All the stuff we planted previously is doing really well.
When I got back outside to continue working in the garden, though, the poor melons were looking pretty limp! Aside from the obvious transplant shock, we were reading our high of the day. I ended up misting them a bit to help relieve them from some of that heat!
I decided the next thing that needed to be done was to get the drum gourds and pumpkins planted. They are the largest transplants, and needed to get into the ground faster.
In the space in line with the high raised bed, we’d made a pile of grass clipping mulch. Most of it was used throughout the garden last year, but there was still some grass clippings and shredded paper mulch left. I raked what was left aside, clearing a rectangle about the same length and the high raised bed. Eventually, the high raised bed will either had a matching bed near it, with a space between them, or we’ll just add a new bed attached to the current high raised bed. I haven’t decided, yet.
With a garden bed planned for the area already, I figured it would be a good place to build squash mounds, which can be incorporated into whatever bed we end up building there.
I just had to sift some more soil from the pile in the outer yard.
I made three mounds of soil. Each of them got a gallon water bottle with its bottom cut and no caps, placed upside down in the middle. They got filled with water to slowly drain.
I had two pots with the pumpkins from the free seeds we got at the grocery store by my mother’s place. They have grown so much!
I also had two pots of drum gourds, but each pot had two very strong and healthy plants in it. What a difference from last year, when I ended up replanting them, several times, and ended up with none!
As expected, when I took them out of the pots, there was no separating them. Their roots were just too entwined. So I kept them together, but after planting them, I gently teased the stems away from each other. As they grow, I want to train them to run in opposite directions.
Once they were all in, the grass clipping mulch that had been raked aside was drawn up and around each mound.
And I was done for the day!
Well. Almost.
My daughter had done as much mowing as she could and gone inside. I sent a message asking for a hand with my next task, only to see her come hobbling along with her cane! She was in a world of hurt. 😢
With the possibility of thunderstorms tonight, I’d set up the support hoops for the row “greenhouse” I’d picked up at a dollar store to try. The set came with a plastic cover, but I wanted rain to get through. I just didn’t want the little transplants to be battered with rain!
So I brought out a roll of mosquito netting to put over the hoops. Unfortunately, the netting wasn’t long enough to cover the entire row of melons. We ended up moving the hoops a bit closer together, and set it up over the end where the transplants seemed to be needing the most protection. Once the netting was over the hoops, we used bricks, boards, branches – anything we could find, to weigh the edges down.
By the time that was done, it was just too hot to keep going. Still on my list was to plant onions or shallots in the high raised bed, around the peppers. There’s also that second shifted bed that needs to be prepped for planting.
We still have 4 Summer of Melons Blend transplants, but we also have another 15 pots with melons we actually know the names of Plus, there is still 7 winter squash to transplant, and a few tomatoes. Anything else would be direct sown.
If all goes well, tomorrow my priority is to get the shifted bed prepped for planting. I have decided to get the last winter squash transplanted. There will be more space between them compared to the other bed, which I plan to take advantage of. I have a variety of sweet corn that is only 55 days to maturity, so I will plan small groups of them in between each winter squash.
Once those are in, the next three beds need to be weeded and shifted over. We’ve got plenty of melons that will need to be transplanted, including a couple of Zucca melon. I will find a way to give them their own hills to grow on, since their fruit can reach 60 pounds in size. The rest of the melons will be need trellises to grow on – and I’m starting to run out of takes!
We also have the last, sad little San Marzano tomatoes to plant, and last of all, all the onions and shallots will get tucked away, in between other things.
Once all the transplants are in, I went to direct sow more summer squash. I also want to plant more carrots – it’s probably late for those, but I’ll try , anyhow. I’ve got yellow and green bush bean seeds, too, if there’s room for them.
I’m actually starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel!
I just have to make sure not to push myself too much, though, so I don’t have to take more days “off” to recover!
I headed out nice and early this morning, while things were still nice and cool, to do some transplanting. I actually have some time to write this before I need to go to my mother’s, too!
The first priority was to get as many of the winter squash as I could fit into the bed that was prepared last night.
I brought all the transplants over, so I could pick and choose among them. The largest plants, and the ones in pots that were starting to fall apart, were the priority. I set a couple of markers to help me keep track while making the centre line.
The lower the bed, the further the reach, though. I had to use another plant stake to reach the middle and mark a line in the centre. Then I took the two biggest plants and set them at the ends, about a foot or more away from the short logs, then another bigger one in the middle. Once those were in place, it was easy to eyeball how far apart to set the others. I was able to set out 9 pots, roughly 1 1/2 feet apart.
Once I knew where they were going to go, I dug holes large enough for the pots, then filled each one with water. The one thing I did NOT do was amend the soil with sulfur granules. If I’d remembered, a good time to do it would have been last night, when I was using the garden fork and the rake. I was working by hand this morning, and just didn’t have the reach to work anything into the top 6 inches in the middle.
These winter squash are all in the biodegradable pots, which don’t really degrade very well unless they get – and stay – really wet. So when I planted the squash, I broke off the bottom of the pots, then worked a split up a side, before putting them into the ground. Once in the ground, I set them a bit lower, then made a sort of dam around them. This way, when they are being watered, the water will pool in the lower area and get absorbed into the ground there, rather than run off to the side somewhere.
Later, a mulch will be added around each transplant. I’m still planning to put beans and peas on the sides, and more mulch will be added after that. All while still making sure to stay clear of the sides, since the logs will be adjusted as they are permanently set in place and attached to each other.
That done, it was time to move to the high raised bed.
It had a light grass clipping mulch on it, and some weeds that needed to be cleared away. I am SO loving that cheap little hand cultivator I got at Walmart. It really makes loosening the soil and getting those weeds out much easier. I can even use it with my wonky left arm. Not for long, mind you, but enough to give my right arm a bit of a break.
What a difference with a high raised bed, though! I worked around both sides but, if I wanted to, I could actually reach all the way across the bed, without too much difficulty!
Once the soil was loosened and weeded, I used the back of the thatching rake (which I think is actually called a landscape rake, these days), to level and move the soil. For this bed, I built some of the soil up against the edges and packed it down a bit. Again, this is to control the flow of water. I want the water to flow towards the middle of the bed, not down the side walls. That done, I loosened the soil in the middle some more. This time, I did work sulfur granules into the soil.
Then I rigged the hose up to spray over the bed and give it a super deep watering while I put the remaining winter squash transplants back with the others (there’s 7 left, plus one that doesn’t look like it’ll make it) and go through the peppers.
I brought over a tray with the three early varieties of peppers that we have. There turned out to be three of two varieties, and four of another. I set them out in groups apart from each other, but there was so much room in between them, I decided to get the other bin of peppers. There were only pots with Purple Beauty in them. One had two seedlings, and I pulled the weaker one. The other three pots had Sweet Chocolate peppers in them. Two had pairs of seedlings and, again, I pulled the weaker ones.
So the high raised bed now has all peppers in them. Later on, I plan to plant onion transplanted around them. For now, however, they are protected by one of the raised bed covers. It won’t stop the cats from getting in, but it will deter the deer!
Then, because I can’t just toss away seedlings, even if they were thinned out, I found space in the wattle weave garden to transplant the two Sweet Chocolate and one Purple Beauty seedlings.
So that is done for now!
Hopefully, we’ll get more in this evening, when I’m back from my mother’s, and after things cool down again. It’s 17C/63F as I write this, with the humidex putting it at 21C/70F. Our high of the day is supposed to be 21C/70F
At the very least, I want to get mulch around the new transplants. We’re supposed to get rain starting around 10-11pm until 7am, so I’d like to protect them as much as possible, since we don’t have the protective plastic rings around these ones.
The Re-Farmer 