short season gardening

Our 2026 Garden: preparing to direct sow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: the potatoes are in, next bed ready, and the heat has hit

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Ah, life on the Canadian prairies. One extreme to the other. A short while ago, we were still getting snow and overnight temperature at or below freezing.

Today, we reached a high of 25C/77F – I don’t know what the humidex was – and passed 20C/68F by about 8 or 9am.

I headed out a bit earlier than usual to do the outside cat stuff. Then I checked the garden shed. Sure enough, the raccoon and her babies were still there. I decided to very carefully and as quietly as possible, take out as many things I expect to need in the next while.

I heard a lot of loud chittering as I was taking things out, most sounding like they were coming from the littles. They seemed to be chittering more about trying to latch on than what I was doing. The mama barely moved. After I cleared away things that were on top of the wheeled garden chair they are under, I stuck my phone into gaps to get the first three pictures.

Those are such roly poly babies! There are at least three, possibly four.

The last photo is most of the stuff I removed.

That roll of netting is long enough to go completely around the trellis bed, so I am saving it for this, if we need to do it again, as it would be way too long for anything else.

After that, I headed in for breakfast, iced up a water bottle, then got started on the covered bed that I wanted to plant our potatoes in.

In the first picture, you can see how it’s been since the fall, minus the bricks waying it down – something has dug holes through the plastic.

As you can see in the next picture, the solarization didn’t really work, and it was more like a greenhouse. So the first job was to loosen the soil and weed it. Especially at the end where the excess was rolled up, which was packed with creeping Charlie.

That stuff is just nasty.

Once weeded, I got it all leveled out, while leaving the soil thermometer in place. That soil is quite warm!

By this point, I was really starting to struggle with the heat and had to go inside for a bit. After grabbing a light lunch, I headed back out with the potatoes. I have 5 pound bags each of Viking and Yukon this year. Not a lot for our useage needs, but that’s all we have the space for right now.

In the photo where the potatoes are laid out, ready to be buried, you can see a board across the middle. That’s to mark between the two different types of potatoes in the same bed.

Next, the bed had to be protected. I decided to use the long roll of mosquito netting this time, which isn’t very wide, so I used shorter stakes. These were salvaged from a broken market tent and are all from pieces broken in half. The broken ends got pushed down so the end with the screw holes were at the top.

I had to gather things next, so I set up a cheap dollar store sprinkler hose over the potato bed. Double duty: I could start watering the bed while doing something else, and it kept the cats off while I wasn’t there to keep them away.

One of the things I had to go was get the roll of netting which, as you can see in the next picture, Gouda was using to nap on!!

In the past, I have strung twine from support to support, along the sided and crossing the middle. I wanted something stronger than that. This bed is 18′ wide, and I have 6′ bamboo stakes, so I ended up attaching three along the top of each side to hold the mesh up. The stakes were spaced out just under 6′ apart, allowing for some overlap. I used the screw holes in the supports and wire from one of the hoop kits I got to hold them in place. I still had to put the stakes deeper into the soil so that the netting could be secured to the ground on each sides. The sides are secured with ground staples.

Yes, I took the sprinkler hose out. It was a pretty terrible hose – but then, you get what you pay for, and this did not cost very much! It was just there for the moment, anyhow.

After I took that last picture, I gave the bed a very through watering.

Then I went inside, because I was getting dangerously overheated. I kept myself hydrated, but was feeling very exhausted. It was around 2pm by then, and I decided to nap for a couple of hours. I would then continue when the temperatures were starting to drop.

I passed right out and slept for three hours.

During this time, the girls took care of things like the outside cat feeding and starting supper.

We are going to need to get the AC going in the living room, and the onion snail rolls have been sitting on top of it, so I decided it was time to take them outside. Onions are hardy and I’m not worried about them, plus I need to start transplanting them as soon as possible. They are meant to be planted in between other things, as we go. The frame for the portable greenhouse is sitting in the shade near the shrine, so I put them there. I’ll need to start moving some of the trays from the basement out there, too.

Then it was back to the main garden area, where this is one bed that didn’t get cleaned up last year I wanted to prepare.

As you can see in the first couple of photos, the creeping Charlie is a real problem.

I had put the soil thermometer in there earlier, and it was reading a couple of degrees cooler than the first bed. By the time I removed it, though, it was just as warm as the first bed I tested! Having that plastic over the bed didn’t seem to make much difference. So much for solarization!

This bed turned out to be so filled with tree roots, too. I pile the creeping Charlie aside, half filling the wheel barrow, so it could be disposed of further away. I’d burn it, if I could. Getting those out means losing a fair bit of soil, too. In the fourth photo, you can even see some of the finer tree roots on top. I pulled out as much as I could, but somewhere under there is a major root. I was hitting it every now and then with the garden fork, but couldn’t lift it up at all.

No root vegetables in this bed, for now!

Once it was cleared and prepared, I gave it a thorough watering. For all the rain we had, that soil was pretty dry. Then I covered it with the plastic that had been over the bed the potatoes are in, covering the holes with scrap boards.

The potato bed is going to be a problem. I kept having to chase the cats off the netting! It stretches enough and is low enough that their weight pulls it down to the ground. Ideally, there would be horizontal supports across the top, joining the vertical supports, but I don’t have anything the right length.

At least they won’t be using it as a litter box.

I’ll have to figure something out.

By this time, it was around 8pm and the temperatures were downright pleasant. We’re expected to drop to 8C/46F tonight, but after that our overnight temperatures are expected to be no lower than 10C/50F On Thursday and Friday, we’re supposed to break 30C/86F, and the overnight temperatures are expected to be close to 20C/68F. It’s supposed to cool down a bit in the second week of June, but that’s a relative statement by then!

For the next while, with the exception of days where I have to drive into the city or something like that, my pattern is going to change. I’ll be getting up earlier to work outside while it’s cooler, then be inside (and probably nap) at the heat of the day before going out again when the temperature starts to drop. With the heat, I’ll be watering things in the morning. Possibly in the evening, too.

I have a couple of beds to take care of in the east yard, plus prep the old kitchen garden bed along the retaining wall. In the beginning of June – after I’ve done all our city trips and vet trip – I should be able to start direct sowing. I’m really trying to focus on getting each bed covered in some way to protect them from the cats. The one area I won’t be able to do is where I intend to plant corn. That area is currently covered by a black tarp/landscape cloth/whatever it is, and has been for several years. Everything under it should be dead by now. I need to move that aside and prepare blocks to plant corn in and, possibly, interplant them with winter squash. That area will simply be too large to cover. I’ll have to figure something else out.

It’s going to be very busy in the garden for the next while!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: starting melons, winter squash, pumpkin and cucumbers, plus updates

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First, though, we got a few other things accomplished today.

Bug looks like she is doing quite well. She is eating with her usual enthusiasm and is moving like she’d never had surgery.

I did, however, make a confirmation.

We were pretty sure the mostly black cat in there was female, partly because the females have been so much harder to socialize. When talking to the rescue, I’d forgotten this one had been named Batman, and had told them this one and the black and white were unnamed. One of the rescue workers named this one Marta for the spay appointment.

Today, however, I was able to see dangly bits. She is a he.

Batman it is.

Unfortunately, part of the reason I could see dangly bits was because he seems to have diarrhea. His fur it all flattened along his back end. After what happened with Furriosa, I am bracing myself for getting bad news at the appointment. Granted, I still have no idea how we’re going to get them into carriers.

Meanwhile, poor Adam, having only recently lost a litter, is being chased by the boys already. It’s been raining all today and, when we were outing and abouting, I saw her trying to get a drink of water out of a puddle, followed closely by a tabby, her fur absolutely matted with mud.

Both she and Slick have not been showing up at much at feeding time, and when Adam does, she can’t stay long because the boys are too agressively after her.

*sigh*

One of the first goals of the day was to head into town to see my mother at the nursing home. My younger daughter came along to help me bring in my mother’s stuff I’d taken before her transfer. That allowed us to bring it all in, in one trip.

The last time I was here, it was to visit my aunt, and she was in a completely different part of the building. I must have looked pretty lost, because someone came right up to ask me who I was there to see! When we got to the right floor and started heading to the hallway, a guy gathering linens into a trolly saw me and told me he thought my mother was asleep.

We recognized each other from when my mother was still at the TCU! He works in both places. Most of the staff is rotates between various nursing homes and TCUs, but it was still quite funny to have someone who recognized me and knew who I was there to see, less than 24 hours after her transfer!

My mother woke when we came in and we put her stuff away where she directed us to. She has quite a nice room. Not as big as the single room she had at the hospital, but a decent size, and all to herself. She has a nice view of a park outside her window, and plenty of closet and storage space. My mother seems… not so much happier to be there, as relieved. There are still things to figure out as far as how things are done. My mother has gotten used to having her meals brought to her, for example, and here they encourage residents to come to the dining room to eat, if they physically can, to get them moving around as much as possible. There is a monthly calendar of events on her wall, and every day has three or for things going on, from sing alongs to physical activities, to church services and so on. They even have bingo, which my mother enjoys.

So we had a nice little visit before heading back out. Now that she is here, I can visit her more often, simply because I go to this town so much more often, and it’s closer than where she was before.

We are all so much happier with this place, not just my mother! It’s going to be so much better for her.

She was starting to have pain issues, as no one has applied Voltaren this morning, and she wans’t even sure if they had any (it’s not a prescription, so we have to supply it), so on the way out I talked to someone at the nursing station, asking if the doctor would consider getting my mother a prescription for the stuff that I have, which is the same active ingredient, but 5 times stronger, as Voltaren. She said they will bring it up with the doctor. With a prescription, we won’t have to keep track of her supply, and they’ll be able to order it in with her other medications.

Our next stop was the pharmacy to pick up the rest of my older daughter’s prescription, plus her sister and I found other things we needed to get for ourselves. My daughter hadn’t eaten yet and it was almost lunch time, so we stopped at the DQ for lunch, then got two more meals to go for my husband and her sister. A quick stop for gas, then a stop at the post office, where I was also able to pick up a 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats, then home.

After things were settled in and taken care of, my daughter and I headed back out and loaded my mother’s old mattress and box spring into the box of the truck. We FINALLY got them to the dump!

From the muddy paw prints on them, the cats are going to miss them. 😄

My brother and SIL had come out while we were in town, working on their caravan, so we popped over to get caught up with them for a bit – not going in because our boots were muddy, so we didn’t stay long. My mother had asked for a radio and my brother had one for her, so he gave it to me, since we’ll probably be seeing her before they get a chance to.

Our visit done, we headed inside for the next thing on my to do list.

Starting the last of our seeds for transplants.

These are the things that get started about 3 weeks before last frost date. Technically, we are less than that, but the way the weather has been, I don’t expect to get most things transplanted until probably the middle of June, though things like the onions can handle going in now.

With such a short time for these seeds, I decided to use my new hex cell planting tray. This has 6 rows of 12 cells, so they are pretty small.

I decided that I would start 12 different things, and see how it goes!

The first thing we had to do was make space and move the full spectrum LED light fixtures aside, then set up a heat mat. While my daughter filled the cells with pre-moistened seed starting mix, I went through my seed packets to decide on what to start.

I decided not to try and start any summer squash and will direct sow those.

I went with four types of melons (we have seeds for quite a few more); Canary Yellow, Tigger, Sweet Siberian Watermelon and Hale’s Best Jumbo cantaloupe. In winter squash, I chose Golden Hubbard, Black Futsu, Butterneck squash and Gill’s Golden Pippin. I also decided to try the Arikara squash again, because it’s a rare variety I want to save seeds from. I also chose the Cinderalla pumpkin (Rouge vif D’Estempes). Last of all are two types of cucumber; lemon and Eureka. These are older seeds, but I have a request for cucumbers this year. I have another variety we got as free seeds that I almost chose as well, but we’re not big cucumber eaters and two varieties will be more than enough.

After the initial filling of the tray with seed starting mix, my daughter was a sweetheart and cut up a sour cream container for me, to make more plant markers, because I was down to two blanks.

She cuts much neater, straighter markers than I do!

While she was working on that, I wrote the names and details for each packet on the markers. She finished before I did, and I have a nice stack of extra markers now.

The initial filling of the planting cells all got gently pressed down, leaving enough space for the planting depths of these larger seeds. My daughter started with the winter squash seeds, gently scarifying them first. Once I was done with the labels, I started at the other end of the tray with the cucumbers, then melons.

So we now have 12 rows with six cells planted, each. Hopefully, we’ll get a decent germination rate. I’m rather concerned about that, as it all seems so cold down there, and I don’t know that the heat mats are enough to make up for it. Half the time, they don’t even seem to be on. I realize that’s part of the temperature control, but it still feels wrong.

I ended up moving a couple of snail rolls around, putting two of them with the last batch of seed starts.

The orange current tomatoes are not looking very healthy, so I thought they might do better back on a heat mat, with less taller transplants overshadowing them. I also moved the roll with both the tarragon and summer savory. I’m actually amazing they are both surviving! They were in rough shape before going into the snail roll.

In the next picture, you can see the rest of the snail rolls. Things are getting way too big and need to be transplanted. I can’t pot them up any more at this point. No space.

Things are supposed to get quite a bit warmer – and drier – over the next while. There are even 30C/86F days in the forecast! Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to 6C/43F, but after that we’re supposed to get overnight temperatures above 10C/50, with lots of sunshine. That should finally warm the soil up. Even in the first half of June, where we’re expecting overnight temperatures to drop, they’re still expected to be above 6C/43F, which is where it needs to stay above consistently for the soil to have a chance to warm up and stay warm.

We shall see.

That done, I was able to head outside and get other work done, but that will be in my next post.

See you there!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: protecting and preparing garden beds

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We dropped to -3C/27F last night but, from now on, our days are supposed to be hot, and our overnight temperatures are expected to drop no lower than 7C/45F for the next while, though in the first 10 days of June, we’re supposed to have overnight temperatures barely above freezing.

I just realized. Today is the 20th. My day to do a garden tour video. It was still light out, so I quickly did that. I hope the videos turn out all right, because I won’t be able to try again until tomorrow evening!

With the next few days finally being hotter, my priority was to take off the plastic on the two raised beds and replace them with netting, so any seedlings under there won’t bake.

The first one to do was the smaller bed in the old kitchen garden, with the beets, bok choi, onions that will probably go to seed and the last minute addition of parsnips where the transplanted onions didn’t make it.

This time, I took the mosquito netting from the chain link fence above the blocks with transplanted strawberries. I knew this one was shorter than one of the lengths I have been using previously. It had been rolled up and secured with ground staples for quite a long time, so I took the time to unroll it and get rid of any accumulated leaves before dragging it part way into the old kitchen garden.

That netting is irrisistable to the cats.

Especially to my escapee, Bug.

The netting had been cut into narrower lengths from the original, the first year we used them, which meant this piece was the perfect length – but not quite wide enough to cover the raised bed cover. This cover is quite a bit higher than all the others, to accommodate for taller plants, but it means quite a lot more width is needed to completely cover it.

After removing the vinyl covering the frame, I made sure to give the bed a thorough watering from the rain barrel. I’ve left the soaker house, but laundry was started in the house, so I didn’t want to use the hose. Especially now that we know for sure that the pressure tank needs replacing. Thankfully, I had a nice full rain barrel, so everything got a thorough watering.

It was windy, so I had a bit of a struggle to get the first section of netting on and secured enough to overlap with the next section of netting I had ready. I was able to use garden clips, clothes pins and the one safety pin my daughter could find, to keep them together and close off the ends. The cats like to use this cover like a hammock, so it needs to be really secure. Hopefully, it’ll hold.

Before I started on this, I remembered to grab the soil thermometer from the basement and set it in the short side of the L shaped wattle weave bed.

The second picture shows the reading just before I went inside at the end of the day. The soil there is about 7C/45F. Tomorrow I will set it in other beds and see what they are at, too. Higher raised beds like this one should be warmer than lower ones, but this section of the wattle weave bed also gets a bit more shade than the lower raised beds in the main garden area.

Once this bed was done, it was time to move to the main garden area, and I brought along the hoop kits.

The first picture is of the new kit, which did end up coming with garden gloves. The weirdest feeling stretchy things we’ve ever tried on. 😄

The second picture compares both sets. The new kit’s rods are a half inch longer and a touch thicker, so the clips and connectors will not be interchangeable.

I haven’t even tried on the gloves that came with the first kit. It’s highly unlikely they will fit my hands.

Even the wire that came with the kits are different.

I was definitely looking forward to seeing how those gaskets would work with the ground staples.

Once in the main garden area, I double checked to make sure the roll of netting I had brought out a while ago was long enough for the 18′ bed, plus the height of the hoops, and it was. When it came time to deal with the poly and setting on the netting, though, it was a two person job, and my younger daughter came out to help.

This is how the bed looked, after I’d reworked the poly to make sure rain no longer pooled where the rolled up boards weighted the sides down, so no more worms would get stuck. Once we got the ends unsecured and the boards freed, we carefully shifted the poly over, then walked it to an open area and laid it out flat, using some of the boards to keep it from blowing away. Then I got my daughter to help me lay the netting over the hoops and secure it just enough that it wouldn’t fall off or blow away, before going back to the poly. It took both of us to fold it in half a few times, and then I rolled it up around the board the netting had been rolled around, and set it aside.

At that point, I no longer needed a second set of hands and continued on my own.

The netting didn’t have a lot of extra length but, even folded in half, there was quite a bit of extra width. I don’t want to cut it, in case we need to use it for something higher in the future.

I spent the next while making the netting fairly snug with clips before securing the ends and adding more clips to hold it in place. Then I tested out the new ground staples and gaskets.

I rather like them, though this bed had some issues. You can see them in place in the second image, where it’s holding rather well. On the other side of the bed, however, they pulled up very easily. The problem is the leaf mulch along the edges inside the bed. They add too much bulk for the staples to push through, and they tend to just pop up again. Later on, though, the mulch will be removed. Most if it, anyhow. Down the centre of the bed, I plan to plant pole beans. Along the outside, I will be transplanting some onions. The pole beans will need a trellis, so the netting and hoops will need to be removed completely. Hopefully, interplanting with onions will keep the deer from eating it all, after the protective netting is gone!

In the next image, you can see a little turnip seedling. There are quite a few radish seedings in the other row. It doesn’t look like any re-sowing will be needed at all.

The last image is the completed bed, seedlings no longer at risk of being cooked under the poly, and protected from cats.

Which led me to the next area. The high raised bed.

This bed had been prepared in the fall but, of course, it was catted. They love to roll around in the dirt.

It needed a bit of weeding, plus I grabbed a bucket of the compost my brother brought for me. After using the hand cultivator to loosen the soil and pull the weeds, I incorporated the compost into the top couple of inches.

For this bed, I used the new hoop kit. One of the big differences is the metal connectors, while the other kit has plastic connectors. I have a bit of concern that the metal ones might rust.

In both beds, I made hoops 4 rods long, which means there is a connector right in the middle. You can see the metal connector in the next image. The image after that, you can see a plastic connector from the other bed I’d just finished. It’s a bit hard to tell at that angle, but the plastic connector is slightly bent. In fact, all down the row, the plastic connectors are bent enough to make it look like the hoops almost have a point in the middle. So… definitely a point for the kit with the metal connectors, and a point against the kit with the plastic connectors.

Before adding the netting, I needed to add a length of twine across the top to keep things in place. The problem was, how to secure the twin at the ends? With the lower raised beds, I use a ground staple to tack them down. That is not an option with this bed.

Bonus towards having a raised bed made of logs.

I found some short lengths of broken bamboo stakes and jammed one between logs at each end. That gave me something to secure the ends of the twin to.

They also came in handy, to hold the netting in place while I set it out. This netting gets stuck on EVERYTHING. I could at least take advantage of that to keep it in place at the ends, while getting the things set up and snug. Ground staples are holding it in place on the sides, and I was able to use the twine to secure the gathered ends, which you can see in the last two pictures.

I had enough energy left to do one more section.

I’d already cleaned up the section at the north end of the high raised bed, where we grew flowers last year. I even tried direct sowing some nasturtiums, in the off chance they’d grow.

They did not.

I failed to protect the bed.

So… Some more clean up, and then more hoops, twine and netting.

The netting that had been over this area last year was now on the high raised bed, so I needed to find another short piece. I took a quick look in the garden shed, disturbing a raccoon sleeping on the wheeled garden chair seat. It woke up and groggily moved away. The only netting in there, though, was a huge piece that we’d set around the entire trellis bed last year. So I let the raccoon be and looked elsewhere. I found a piece that was the perfect length and used that.

This time, I tried something different to secure the sides of the netting. I had a couple of full size bamboo stakes handy, and I rolled them up in the netting, then used ground staples. The bamboo isn’t long enough to reach end to end, but it’s long enough to make the netting more secure than the staples alone.

Now I don’t have to worry about the cats rolling all over the bed and messing in it. I’ve got cosmos and nasturtiums that will be transplanted into here as soon as the temperatures allow.

By this time, I was starting to hurt pretty bad, so that was my limit for the day. Hopefully, I’ll get more ready tomorrow. Specifically, I hope to get the potatoes planted in one of the beds that is already prepped and still under plastic. I’d hoped they would be solarized somewhat but, from what I can see along the sides, it’s more like a greenhouse, even though the plastic is flat against the ground. I can see dandelions blooming in places, under the plastic!

Tomorrow, I need to get my husband to the lab for some blood work (he wasn’t up to it, today), then I plan to visit my mother, since I’ll be taking cats to the vet on Friday. With our longer days, I should still be able to get more garden beds ready in the evenings. I also checked on the stakes for the chain link fence garden bed and they’re feeling nice and dry under the sun, so I hope to get points on those and that bed finally ready and covered, before the Chinese elm seeds start to fall!

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: more direct sowing, cuteness and an update

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First, let’s start with the cuteness!

Today has been a chilly day, with the possibility of rain – rain that has held off until just now, as I can finally see drops hitting my window. When I was done outside and coming in through the sun room, I spotted this cuddle puddle. Havarti, Gouda, Flopsy and Curtis, all crammed into one cat bed!

I didn’t get outside to start anything until mid afternoon. I had expected to be going into the city today, to bring my daughter home from the hospital. They weren’t sure of a discharge time, but said they’d know by 11am. Then they suggested my daughter stay one more day. She said no. 11am came and went. At one point, talking to my husband, I suggested they were delaying letter her know until it got too late for us to drive in.

Sure enough, well past 1pm, we were informed my daughter was staying another day.

She has been chatting pretty continuously with her sister, and they have a theory. While talking how she would continue treatment at home, she said she preferred oral medication – not because she had issues with injections, but because she would have to travel to get them, and we tend to get snowed in, in the winter. It seems they didn’t quite get it and she had to explain that there are times when we literally cannot get out of our driveway, and that we are in the boonies. She now thinks they believe we are far more isolated than we are, so they want to keep her at the hospital as long as possible. They’re not too off base. We’re not in a fly in community or anything, but getting places is simply impossible at times, so having to do something like travel to the city for injections when she can get meds delivered, or get 3 months worth of meds at a time, the choice is easy.

Whatever the reason, they’re not saying she will be coming home tomorrow.

Again.

So there is that.

Since we were no longer going into the city, I decided to head outside and do as much as I could before the predicted rain. Thankfully, the rain held off.

I started by working in the garlic bed.

In the first picture, the protective netting has been moved to the top of the hoops. Once it was secured, I checked the rows and did actually find some little sprouts, trying to grow. More chard sprouts than spinach. Which turned out to be a good thing, because I didn’t have a lot of the yellow chard seeds left. I used my bamboo stake to make furrows between the sprouts I could see, then sowed the seeds. I ended up grabbing a different variety of spinach than I’d originally planted, but that’s okay.

Frustratingly, as I was sowing the seeds, I had two cats show up among the garlic, checking out what I was doing!!

Once done and well watered and I was setting the netting back, I made a point of giving the ground staples a bit of a twist before pinning it down, so make sure it was extra snug, lengthwise. The cats can’t get under the netting, but they can still jump on top, and I wanted to make sure there wasn’t any slack. Which is in the last picture, but with black netting over dark soil, you really can’t tell.

So that’s two more things resown.

Next was the rainbow carrots.

I removed the protective boards and took a close look. There wasn’t a single carrot sprout, anywhere. Other things were trying to grow under the boards, but no carrots.

The number of seeds left in the pack was not as much as I expected. I suddenly can’t remember if I bought more or not. No matter. I still managed to fill the row, though a few spots might be a bit sparse. The seeds did not want to fall evenly, and it didn’t help that the wind was picking up!

After a solid watering, the boards were set back, and that was it for resowing the winter sown seeds that didn’t make it, or only partially made it.

The pea seedlings are looking surprisingly good, considering they did die off, but are recovering. I’m going to have to find a way to cover this bed with netting to protect them for the first while, or the deer will eat them all.

The first image above are the peas. The second one was taken through the 6mm poly over the bed sown with white turnips and daikon radish. The image is of daikon radish sprouts. Most of the plastic is covered with condensation inside, but there were a few slightly cleared spots, and I could see sprouts in both rows.

Once that was done, and the rain hadn’t started yet, I had time to sit down and continue debarking the deadwood that will go on the bottom of the new wall in the chain link fence garden bed. For lengths we cut last fall, they were remarkably viable. Not sprouting new leaves, like the maple suckers I’d gathered last year, but they’d definately start growing if they have long enough contact with the soil under the wall they will be part of.

I didn’t finish all of them, but got most done before it started to get too cold and I headed inside. Hopefully, I will have a chance to work on that again, soon, and finally continue working on that garden bed! At least I got a bit of progress. Every little big helps.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: direct sowing four beds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

Medical update and Our 2026 Garden: more seeds are in

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then I drove right past the clinic.

I did that last time!

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

One of the higher prices ones, though.

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

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

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

As for the rest…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every little bit helps.

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

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

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

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

Furriosa and Bug have gone into heat.

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

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

Anyhow. I digress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: new sprooots!

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Not the ones I expected, though.

When checking on the new seed snail rolls last night, I saw a surprising number of chicory has sprouted. Those are in the first image of the slide show above.

This morning, I spotted some French double marigold. You can see one in the second picture. The others were seeds, pushed through the vermiculite, green seed leaves not yet exposed, behind part of the packing foam holding the roll together.

I would have expected either the chamomile or the kohlrabi to have emerged first, for some reason. I’ve never grown caraway before, so I am not sure what to expect from that roll.

Over the next week, I plan to start the 3-4 week seeds. I’ll be doing a few winter and summer squash in a seed tray, rather than snail rolls, just because of their size. Large seeds would need more seed starting mix or potting soil, and the more that’s added to the snail rolls, the harder it is to roll them up and the more gets lost from both the top and the bottom.

I’ve been out for most of today. It has been cooler, and it’s tried to rain off and on all day, so I decided not to water the pre-sown beds with the hose today. Last night, I spotted some turnip seeds under the polytunnel, but it looks like all the daikon radish that had already sprouted when I took the mulch off have died off. I wish I had enough to cover all the beds with plastic, because I don’t think the kohlrabi or purple savoy cabbage survived the cold May we’ve had this year. The garlic is doing okay, but I see no signs of the chard or spinach in between. The purple blush peas in the first trellis bed also seem to be gone, and I see no sign of carrots germinating under their protective boards. I never saw any of the dwarf peas sprouted when I removed the mulch and covered that section of the bed with mesh to protect it from cats. The protection seems to be working, but still no sign of peas. Peas are the one thing that should have been able to handle the cold spells.

Well, I’ve ordered replacement seeds for some things, and have more seeds left over with others, so I can try again when the soil warms up enough.

I need to remember to bring out the new soil thermometer I got and set it in various beds to see how cold things still are.

Until then, I need to finish off the bed at the chain link fence, then move on to the few others that weren’t done in the fall.

It’s been a much colder May this year, but there’s still time to see if the winter sowing survived the spring or not.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: starting more seeds and “potting up”

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I finally got the next batch of seeds started, as well as doing some “potting up” with the seed snail rolls.

But first, the cuteness.

Not in the photo is Adam, who very enthusiastically took pets. No sign of Slick today, anywhere.

My goal for today was to start the 4-6 weeks before last frost date seeds. After going through them, I decided on some herbs, caraway, chicory and chamomile, some French Double Dwarf marigolds, some Early White Vienna kohlrabi I picked up, just in case the winter down bed doesn’t make it, and Bi-Colour Pear gourds.

I pre-moistened a bag of seed starting mix with hot water and had the heater going. That basement is way too cold for this, but it’s our only option this year. The six new seed snails got their own metal tray. The Bi-colour Pear gourds have fairly small seeds, so I went ahead and did a snail roll; for the squash, etc. with larger seeds, I will go back to using the planting trays.

All the rolls got topped with vermiculite after the seeds were sown and covered with soil, except the chamomile. Those seeds are so tiny, they got covered with vermiculate only.

Speaking of which…

My brother and SIL came out today to take care of some things and I was able to see them shortly before they left. They were out by the barn as we were talking and the pile with trees growing out of it came up. The trees are self seeded and need to go, as does the pile. I’d been told it was some sort of insulation under there.

My brother informed me that no, it is vermiculite.

We’re talking a truck load, and it’s been sitting there for at least 20 years. It used to be covered in taps and plastic, and I can still see some shreds of that, but over the years a thick layer of moss has grown over it, dead branches had been tossed on top and, along with the self seeded maples, there are a bunch of self seeded raspberry bushes growing on one side.

When my brother gets his old tractor with the front end loader going, he will help me move that pile out. It’s in the way, and I don’t want trees growing in this location; they would eventually block access to the barn. Now that I know it’s vermiculite in that pile, I might actually be able to use it in the garden!

If it’s still good. It’s not exactly “clean” anymore. Some patches got exposed and they’re looking pretty… moldy? We’ll see when the time comes.

Anyhow…

Once the new seeds were planted, the tray was set aside, and I removed the tray with the celery snail rolls in it so I could reach it. I got another metal tray out for the next rolls.

I got rid of the dead luffa entirely. Poor thing.

I decided to “pot up” the Russian Tarragon and Summer Savory seedlings into one snail roll. The tarragon looks pretty good, but I don’t think the summer savory is going to make it. We’ll see.

For this is part, I used what I had left in my bucket of sifted potting soil, which was still damp from when we used it last. The bucket had been sitting on the concrete floor, and the damp potting soil was COLD. I’m really hoping that doesn’t cause too much shock for the seedlings. I used it to “pot up” the four varieties of tomatoes by unrolling them, adding the potting soil, then rolling them back up again. I also potted up… I think it was the Crackerjack marigolds, but I’m suddenly drawing a blank on that.

The rest did not get potted up, partly because I was almost out of potting soil. The potted up rolls are thicker now, so everything is now on three trays, with the two big rolls of celery in a tray to themselves now. The celery is really big! They are a short season variety, and I probably started them too early for this specific variety.

Once the three trays were set back up on the shelf under the shop light, I returned the plant lights on one side, then set up the heat mat on the work table, in front of the shelf, where the second plant lights can reach. At least the new seed rolls will be a bit warm on the mat.

So that is finally done.

I didn’t try to get much done outside today; I’m very tired and hurting. It was a warmer day – our high is 18C/64F – though we also had high winds. We even got a smattering of rain.

Unfortunately, we’re dropping down to a low of 2C/36F overnight, and that’s our high for tomorrow. Over the next few days, the highs and lows were be just over or just under freezing. Even when we start warming up by next weekend, those overnight lows are going to stay around the freezing mark. We aren’t expected to get warmer until the third week of May, and the long range forecast shows us still expecting lows below freezing at the beginning of June.

Right around our old last frost day, which is what I’m going by, rather than the updated average.

Tomorrow, I finally have my doctor’s appointment – the one I had to cancel twice because of the truck issues. I won’t be losing much by being out, though, as it’s supposed to be not only cold, but very windy, too. Over the next while, I’ll need to focus on cleaning up and preparing a few more garden beds, including the one at the chain link fence that is going to be redone completely again.

I have a strong suspicion our winter sown beds aren’t going to make it this year. There were a few things where seedlings had already emerged when I removed the mulch, but I can’t see them anymore. Not even in the bed I was able to cover with the 6mm plastic. I hope I’m wrong, but these are all things I can direct sow before the last frost date. I’ve even reordered a few things, so I can replant the same varieties in the same places, if they don’t work out. The soil surface is all so dry – and yes, I’ve been watering what I could. I’ve now got hoses set up at both the front and back taps, though I need to make sure the water is shut off at the house and the hoses are empty, so there’s nothing to freeze in them overnight.

Hopefully, even though it’s going to be pretty chilly for the next few days, I’ll be able to get some progress on the garden beds that need preparing.

Meanwhile, we’ll see what the doctor has to say tomorrow about the issues I’ve been having.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: snow crocus blooming, and spring clean up progress

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Today was a fair bit warmer than yesterday and sunny, making up somewhat for the wind. After losing a day of work in the yard and garden yesterday, it was a perfect day to catch up. I managed to get a lot more done than I expected. The pre-sown and fall transplanted beds are now cleaned up. I even got some direct sowing done!

The warmth and sunshine brought out some lovely colour, too.

The snow crocus buds have been showing for a few days now, and today they finally bloomed.

While working, I took some video and some photos, but forgot to get before and after photos of all the areas I worked on. I might put together a series of short videos on the progress, rather than one long one, later on. For now, I don’t even want to think about it. I’m just too tired.

So, this is what I can show you now.

Whoops! How did that get there? 😂🤣 The cats are really loving that sunny pile of straw I put under the mock orange bush.

The first area I worked on is the trellis bed in progress. (click through to see the “after” photo in the next series of images)

This bed has a row of rainbow carrots down the middle, a variety of pea with a pink blush making a partial row near the trellis posts, and the other side and ends with onions meant for seed and deer deterrent – I hope.

I started with the carrots, since they were the hardest to reach. I think I might have seen a sprout or two, or maybe it was weed seedlings. I’m not sure. Once the mulch was off the row (the straw removed completely, the leave mulch below pushed aside), I covered it with boards to keep it damp. I’ll check it every morning and remove the boards when I see carrot seedlings.

Uncovering the peas was a pleasant surprise. There were quite a lot of seedlings!

I did the onions last and found quite a few, but also quite a few gabs. I might transplant some of my bunching onions that I started indoors to fill those, if nothing shows up.

Next, I uncovered where the flower bed was last year.

This took more than expected. I’d tossed the mulch on top of the Cosmos stems and meant to leave the root balls to compost in the soil. In the end, I had to dig it up a lot more because of a combination of creeping Charlie and elm tree roots.

*sigh*

When I collected seed from the memorial asters planted in the same bed, I did allow some seeds to drop, to see if they would survive and grow this year. I really hope some show up, because I still can’t find the packet I’d put the collected seeds into. Another packet is missing, too, but it’s the memorial asters that I really wanted to keep going. I’m quite unhappy that they’ve gone missing. There is only one area they could be, and there’s just no sign of them.

In the end, I did plant some collected nasturtium seeds at the sunny end, lightly covering that area with straw to hopefully discourage cats.

The next area I worked on was the asparagus and strawberry area.

I wasn’t going to uncover where the asparagus was planted, as they can grow through a mulch like this. There were only a few of the green asparagus (at the far end of the photo) that survived last year, but it’s entirely possible some of the purple asparagus might show up. Maybe. Who knows.

What I focused on was uncovering the Albion Everbearing strawberries I’d found and transplanted last year. As I found and uncovered surviving plants, I made sure to return some straw around them to keep the ground moist and the weeds at bay.

Next was the spot I’d found the surviving strawberry plants. I had done nothing in that bed last year; I just was never able to tend it. This year, I plan to grow the giant pod poppy variety I got seeds for this year.

The first thing I did was move the 4′ x 4′ wood frame out, setting it with the one near the compost pile that’s the same size. I plan to put them together to make that bed a touch deeper.

This bed took a lot more work. Which I did expect. I worked a fair bit outside where the frame had been, because there was so much creeping Charlie trying to work its way into the bed. There were, of course, plenty of crab grass rhizomes to clean up. Unfortunately, there was also quite a lot of tree roots in it, too. I couldn’t do much about them, as they were coming up from deeper than I was able to dig down to.

After this bed was done, I took a sustenance break, then came back with the poppy seeds, as well as the nasturtium seeds I planted in the other bed.

This bed had already started to dry out, and poppy seeds need to stay pretty much on the surface, so I filled a watering can and watered it first.

I look forward to when we can hook the hoses up again! It still gets too cold overnight right now.

There were fewer seeds in the packet than I expected, so they weren’t scattered as evenly as I would have liked. Then I used a rake to spread things evenly and just barely cover the seeds. This bed now needs to have some cold nights, including nights below freezing, for the seeds to germinate. The daytime highs for the next while are supposed to be similar today, or cooler, with a mix of sun and clouds. I’ll have to make sure to keep watering this bed, so the seeds don’t dry out and get baked.

The main garden area was now done. I just had a few more mulches to move, but I neglected to take still shots. I really should have for one of them!

The fenced off area with the tulips, apple tree and saffron crocuses were next, as well as the retaining wall blocks. Around the apple tree, I just moved the straw a bit further from the stem, where the weight of snow had pushed it closer to.

Then I uncovered the saffron crocuses and was wildly surprised. There were so many crocus leaves! They were surprisingly long and mostly blanched yellow from trying to grow through the mulch, with some of them having actual green in their leaves. I was very impressed by how many I saw. Last spring, I uncovered them and found a few, but they sort of disappeared among the weeds as the season progressed, and I thought they’d died off – until I found some spent and frost damaged blooms, way later than was expected!

Next, I took the straw off the retaining wall, taking it over to the tulip patch. I lightly scattered the straw over the tulips, though the wind made that a challenge. Later on, I took extra straw from over the septic tank and made an extra thick later in placed I was 100% sure had no tulips planted.

The retaining wall blocks have mint, chives, and tiny strawberry plants I’d transplanted from the wattle weave bed. Under the straw mulch was a leaf mulch that I removed carefully. There were a few green strawberry leaves, but it may be that most of them didn’t survive the winter. I also didn’t see any green in the mint, but that might show up later. The chives, of course, were coming up just fine as I cleared away the dead matter from last year. Chives survive anything! 😄

Last of all, I went to the chimney blocks along the chain link fence. Those got the last of the tiny strawberry transplants. The straw on those was set as mulch around the nearby black currant bush, which I think might be old enough to produce berries this year. It’s doing really well for something that started out as a little stick in a jug of water my mother snagged from a bush at the apartment building she used to live at and gave to me. These strawberries also had a leaf mulch under the straw, and that was used to mulch under the white lilacs on the other side of the path, to try and keep down the grass and weeds in there.

Once again, it seems like a mix of strawberries that survived and didn’t survive. For both areas, it will be a while before we know for sure what survived or not.

All in all, I am very happy with the progress and how the pre-sown beds look so far.

After this, there are other beds to prepare, but I think what I will need to do is get those boxes of chicken coop parts and assemble it, first. We’ll be getting chicks near the end of May and will set up a brooder in the house for their first 4-6 weeks, but I still want the coop assembled as soon as possible, and the ground is now dry enough.

That done, I have several beds that need to be cleaned up, plus two that need some building up of walls. The bed against the chain link fence will be a priority. It will be a bit narrower and a bit deeper when I am done, and I want to make sure it can be covered and protected from both the elm tree seeds that will drop in their billions, and the cats. The kittens got under the row netting I used last time and completely flattened anything that I’d pre-sown in that bed, except some Jebousek lettuce and a few sad onions that had survived the previous winter. I’ve already got some materials for the deadwood walls I plan to make, but I know I will need a lot more to finish the job. It’s always surprising just how much material is needed to make a wall! I’m not even going to try doing wattle weave; the materials we have are just too bent up and inflexible for that. We do have an order of basket will that will probably be shipped out in may. It will be a few years, but we will eventually be able have willow switched that will work much better than the poplar and maple suckers we’ve been using. Even the willow we do have is a different variety and, while it works better, the willow switches are not as straight as the basket willow will be.

But first, the chicken coop!

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer