squash

Our 2023 garden: morning harvest, and how things are growing

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Well, this morning sure didn’t turn out as expected, but I’ll write about that in another post. For now, here are how things are going in the garden.

I picked a lot of beans yesterday, so there weren’t many that needed picking today. I found three Gold Ball turnips that looked ready to harvest – one of them has even started splitting! I also harvested the big G-Star patty pan. My daughters had spotted it when they were out earlier in the morning, were really excited to see how big it had gotten and were wondering what plans I had for it. I have no interest in letting it get big enough to go to seed, as everything in the squash patch will likely be cross pollinated. I could have let it go larger, but as long as its there, the plant isn’t producing more squash. So I’ve picked it, and will let my daughters decide what to do with it! 😄

I posted more photos on Instagram, from last night and this morning.

While checking the Indigo Blue tomatoes last night, one of them fell off in my hand! So I guess it’s ripe. 😄 It was also very cool to see that radishes are already germinating!

In the squash patch, there aren’t a lot of squash forming, but some of the ones that are, are getting big fast. Like the North Georgia Candy Roaster. The squash plants in the compost pile, however, are really amazing. The mystery squash – there are two of them so far – bear no similarity to any squash we’ve grown before. Whatever cross pollinating happened, I can’t even guess which they might be. We had so few squash winter squash last year, and even fewer that would have had viable seeds that ended up in the compost pile. As for the three biggest and roundest squash, they are getting patterns on them, and I can now tell that they are a hulless seed pumpkin.

A surprise this morning was with that volunteer All Blue potato. The resent storms had knocked it over, but it’s still blooming and looking very strong and healthy. The other potato volunteers don’t seem to be growing, but this one is doing very well. It is also growing “berries”! Potatoes do go to seed, but this is the first time I’ve had one do it. I am absolutely going to let this plant go through its entire life cycle and harvest the seeds. With potatoes, if you plant the tubers, you get the exact same potato. They’re basically clones of the original seed potato. With seeds, however, you will get new varieties. I have heard of a single potato variety that has seeds that grow true to the original. Otherwise, they are like apples, and every seed will grow a new variety.

Someone in one of our local gardening groups posted pictures of their potato plant doing the same thing. From the conversation there, I read that when the seeds get planted, it results in only one potato, but if you plant that one potato, it will produce more. I have no idea of it’s true, but I’m willing to experiment!

The last photo is of our largest Crespo squash. It’s no longer a smooth, perfectly round ball. The mature pumpkin is supposed to have a warty texture, and it should be interesting to see how that develops over time. Still hoping to get a long enough growing season for them to fully mature! I know we started them indoors really enough but these plants are really spindly compared to the first year we tried growing them.

Some things still seem to be touch and go, but overall, I’m happy with how the garden is doing this year.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: how things are looking

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I was able to harvest another handful of beans this morning, and hand pollinate a few more squash.

The garlic had been curing on the picnic table and last night I trimmed, cleaned, strung and hung them, keeping the different varieties apart. Several couldn’t be hung and I brought them in to be used right away. We have so little garlic this year! A little is better than none, though. We’ll leave them hanging in the market tend for a while longer before bringing them inside.

The chamomile in the wattle weave bed is blooming nicely!

I got a picture of the developing gourds from the drum gourd and zucca melon bed. That is most definitely a zucca melon, not a drum gourd. I most definitely got mixed up with the labels. Which means we have no drum gourds developing at all. Not even female flowers.

We do have a couple of Caveman’s Club gourds, though! Well. One, so far. I just hand pollinated another one last night. We’ll see if it takes.

The Purple Peruvian potatoes in their grow bags are looking absolutely lush! The Irish Cobbler are getting yellow and falling over, and the Red Thumb are getting into that stage, but the Purple Peruvian look like they’re going to be growing for quite a while longer.

Last of all was an unusual find, as I was checking the squash to see what might need pollinating. I found a double flower!

Today is the last day of July, and our growing season is quickly running out. I have seen people in my local gardening groups who are even further north than we are, posting pictures of their much larger squash. I wish I knew how theirs are so much further ahead! Things are growing well this year, but I still can’t shake the feeling we are behind. So many squash plants still aren’t even producing female flowers yet.

Ah, well. We’ll get what we get, and every year is another year to improve our soil and growing conditions.

Oh, something I forgot to mention. Last winter, a neighbour who is moving had offered us a shed they needed to get rid of, that I was hoping to use as a chicken coop. Unfortunately, it didn’t handle the rest of the winter well, and they ended up scrapping it entirely. Now that the renter’s cows have been rotated out, I should grab the wagon along with some tools and see about getting that antique wagon chassis in the car graveyard. I still have hopes to build a mobile chicken coop on there.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: morning harvest, and the squash patch

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I got a harvest this morning!

Just a wee one, but big enough that I didn’t have room in my pocket for the patty pan. I’m going to have to start bringing out my harvest colander, just in case!

Also, it is SO much more comfortable to harvest bush beans in a high raised bed. Even in the low raised bed we grew some in last year, while much better than harvesting at ground level, it was still painful. The high raised bed is just awesome!

Not a bad first bean harvest, considering the plants got eaten by a deer. Especially the green beans. They’ve still got a lot more recovery, but I’m seeing so many developing pods in the process! I did pick some beans a couple of days ago; just a tiny handful, and not enough to call a “harvest”, really. Plus there have been a few early Romas ripening every few days or so. I picked one of the two larger G Star patty pans, leaving the other to get larger, while still more are developing.

While checking the garden, I found more blooming female squash flowers to hand pollinate. It looks like we’ve got a few squash that have pollinated successfully. Here are some of them.

In order of the photo slideshow above, we have:

Goldy yellow zucchini. I’m happy to see that large one developing, as there were no male flowers on the plant. I hand pollinated from a hulless pumpkin that was blooming, and it seems to have taken!

G Star patty pan. These are easily the most successful plants we have. I picked one of the larger squash, choosing the slightly misshapen on, leaving the other to get bigger. There are many more developing.

Georgia Candy Roaster. Another one that got hand pollinated from another variety.

Sunburst patty pans. The one surviving plant is looking strong and healthy now, and starting to bloom.

Pink Banana. The first, tiny female flower! I’ll have to keep an eye on it, to make sure it gets pollinated as soon as it opens.

Honeyboat Delicata. There’s still just the one, even though we have the most plants of these. It seems to be doing all right.

Red Kuri. We have a couple of these, one on each plant. Previously, we grew these on trellises. It should be interesting to see how they do, without climbing.

Endeavor zucchini. One sad green zucchini plant is finally looking stronger and healthier, and starting to produce female flowers.

There are others, but I didn’t take pictures of everything. The entire squash patch looks SO much better than last year. The slugs may have done a number on the summer squash, but now they seem to be leaving them alone.

July is almost gone, though. We’re really going to need a long, mild fall for the winter squash to reach full maturity.

I’ll have to remember to take photos, but I’m wondering if I’ve miss labelled the little patch with the African Drum gourds and Zucca melons. While transplanting, there were three labelled Drum gourd, three labelled Zucca melon, and three where I could no longer reach the label, so it could be one or the other. These got planted and replanted when starting the seeds.

Right now, we are seeing female flowers in the drum gourd row that I’ve been hand pollinating. As they get bigger and start dropping down, I’m seeing that they are developing a sort of hourglass shape.

Kinda like this shape, except tiny, and fuzzy.

That is an image of mature zucca melon, from the Baker Creek website.

This is the Baker Creek image for the African drum gourd. The developing gourds we have do not look like that.

If I accidentally mislabelled things, does that mean the other plants, which have no female flowers yet, are the drum gourds? Or are they all zucca, and no drums? The flowers and leaves for all the gourds we’ve grown look very similar. Even compared to the attempted apple and canteen gourds from last year. The plants on the chain link fence were the surviving first seed starts; one of each, and I know those were labelled correctly. They are blooming, but the vines are so long and skinny, and there are only male flowers, so there isn’t much to help identify there.

Curious!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: how does the garden grow?

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I had a couple of surprised while going my rounds this morning. The first were these…

Two more volunteer potatoes have popped up!

The one in the straw would be from the All Blue potatoes we planted there last year. The one by the log would be from the Bridget we planted last year.

I also found some ladies!

Plant ladies, that is.

I don’t know why Instagram doesn’t sort the pictures in the order I upload them. I also don’t know why some of the files end up corrupted. They look fine when I upload them, but after I hit publish, I’ll find one with issues. Ah, well.

In the above slideshow are:

Caveman’s Club gourd: There have been male flowers for a while, so if these female flower buds survive long enough to bloom, there should be male flowers around to pollinate them.

Montana Morado corn silk: Finally! The tassels have been up and many already dropping pollen, but this is the first – and, so far, only – corn silk that has shown up. I was really starting to wonder. The Tom Thumb popcorn has tassels, too, but also had silk show up not long after. With the purple corn, there’s a much larger gap in time between them!

Goldy Zucchini: This one little yellow zucchini has been here for a few days now. It doesn’t seem to be getting any bigger, but the other flower buds seem to be at the same stage. This is the only surviving yellow zucchini plant, and the slugs are just all over it, so it’s not thriving. There had been a second one that germinated in the same hill and was starting to develop its true leaves, but there’s very little left of it anymore. I don’t know why the slugs like this one plant so much!

Honeyboat Delicata: Finding a female flower in full bloom was a very nice surprise! Unfortunately, there are zero male flowers on any of the other Honeyboat Delicata. I ended up taking a male flower from another squash to pollinate it by hand. That should be good enough for the fruit to actually develop, but we won’t be able to save seeds from it, as they would be a hybrid. Mind you, maybe we want a Delicata/hulless pumpkin hybrid. 😄

It looks like we may actually get winter squash this year. Because they are all planted near each other, any squash we get will be cross pollinated. I’m hoping we will at least be able to have mature squash to taste, and see which ones we like the most. After that, we can focus on just growing one or two varieties we like, in such a way that we can save seed.

And finally, one more nice little surprise.

Our first beans are starting to form.

These are volunteers in the compost heap!

I have no idea what kind they are. There are no beans that we planted last year that could have ended up with viable seeds in the compost pile. Also, no beans that we planted last year had green beans with pink flowers.

I am very curious about what we will get out of these, and will probably leave at least one plant unharvested, so we can see what the dry seed looks like.

Oh, and one last little update. We had the Irish Cobbler and Red Thumb baby potatoes with supper last night, and both were delicious. I just love how the Red Thumb potatoes are pink, all the way through! We’ll be leaving the rest to harvest in the fall, but at least we know they are good, and worth growing again.

We’re past the middle of July and not having the sort of harvests we expected, had we been able to plant everything we intended to, but we will have something, at least. Looking back at garden pictures for this time last year, I can at least say we’re not “behind”. It just feels like we’re behind, because I’m seeing so many people in my Zone 3 gardening groups, posting pictures of their harvests and gardens. There are very few people in those groups that are as far north as we are, it seems.

We are definitely having good progress, though. It’s been a good growing year so far, with plenty of heat, sunshine and rain – but not too much of any of those! It’s been juuuust right.

For now! 😄

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: last seed starts!

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First, something pretty!

There are quite a few crocus buds popping up, and we’re also seeing lots of grape hyacinth greens emerging! Too early for the flower stalks to start forming, but the leaves come up in distinct little clusters that are easy to identify, compared to the grass and weeds that are in the same area. I’m looking forward to when the crocuses and hyacinths spread enough to start choking out the weeds and grass where they’ve been planted!

Last night, I started hydrating the seed trays with the Jiffy pellets, then headed into town this morning to pick up some more seed starting mix for the other tray.

There wasn’t any.

I tried a few places and found lots of potting mix, but no seed starting mix. I wasn’t willing to drive to another town, so I ended up getting more of the small trays with Jiffy Pellets in them. I did pick up a few bags of manure, though. Two of composted cow’s manure with peat, and two more of composted sheep’s manure with compost. These will be good for top dressing some of the beds, and for the trees we’ll be transplanting when they come in next week.

When I got home, I first had to start new trays hydrating, then I could work on the ones that were ready.

I had 5 trays, each with 12 pellets in them. I decided to do two different seeds in each tray, for a total of 20 new seed starts. Hopefully, we’ll have a nice, high germination rate, since each pellet got only one seed each.

These are what I chose for the first batch.

For melons, I’ve got the Sarah’s Choice, a new variety, Halona and Pixie, which we’ve successfully grown two years ago, and Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon, also new. Our attempt to grow melons last year was a complete failure, due to flooding. There are the two types of cucumber; Lemon, which we got as a freebie, and Eureka, a dual purpose variety for both fresh eating and canning. Then there are the winter squash: Pink Banana, North Georgia Candy Roaster, Honeyboat Delicata and Little Gem (Red Kuri). We tried the Candy Roaster last year, but they got drowned out. This will be our third year growing the Red Kuri squash, which survived last year because we planted them in a completely different location. I thought I’d ordered a new packet of those, but couldn’t find it. I ended up finishing off the few seeds in this older packet, then used seeds we’d saved ourselves from the first year we grew them.

I rearranged things a bit in the sun room to make room for these on the makeshift table. Later on, I’ll move the mini-greenhouse frame to the sun room to have more space for the trays.

As for the second batch, it will have:

The three varieties of hulless pumpkins, Kakai, Lady Godiva and Styrian, that we also grew last year. We’ve been slowly going through the ones we harvested last year – yes, we still have some! – but I lost track of two varieties that looked alike, so I haven’t been able to keep track of which seeds we like best. There is more winter squash: Red Warty Thing is new, while Boston Marrow and Winter Sweet were among those that got drowned out last year, though the Boston Marrow did start to recover somewhat. I’ve got more gourds, too. We started the Canteen gourd too early last year, and they were starting to bloom before we could transplant them, so they are being started later this year. Hopefully, they will actually get a chance to produce fruit this year. The Yakteen gourd transplants got killed off along with the melons, during our terrible, no-good growing year last year, and I hope to be able to actually try some this year. The Ozark Nest Egg and Apple gourds seemed to do well last year. We still have some Ozark Nest Egg gourds curing. The Apple gourds actually recovered rather well from the terrible conditions the squash were all hit with last year, and were producing quite a lot of gourds, but it was too late in the season by then. We were hit by frost before they could fully mature. I’m hoping we’ll have a better year this year.

I was tempted, but decided against growing the Tennessee Dancing gourd again this year. They are fun and do well, but we just have too many things going – and that’s not even considering what needs to be direct sown!

The new trays are being hydrated now. I’ve got another 5 going, though I have a spare available to hydrate, just in case. Hopefully, I’ll be able to plant into them tonight, and things can be moved into the sun room right away.

Once the last seeds are started, it’s back to working outside! I’ve still got the one last bed to work on in the old kitchen garden, then we need to build at least one trellis tunnel, with the raised beds that will be part of it, and prepare existing beds for planting, as well as grow bags for the potatoes, and containers for things like the lemongrass, some of the peppers and probably the eggplant as well.

Lots to do, and just a few weeks left to do them!

I’m so happy being able to get outside and get work done again!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: starting herbs and tomatoes, potting up and will it work?

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For a while outside, the wind picked up and I could see the snow coming down horizontally out the window! From what I’m hearing the roads are in terrible condition, and quite a few people posted online that they started to go somewhere, only to turn around immediately. Everyone is being told to stay home. A number of roads have been closed, particularly in the South. For our area, it looks like the worst of it has passed by, and things should be getting better from now on, though there is a second system on the radar that might make it as far as us later. Maybe.

A good day to be inside and doing garden stuff!

The first thing I needed to do was start some new seeds.

There were only three things that need to be started in the 6-8 week range; spearmint, oregano and the Roma tomatoes.

The oregano and spearmint seeds are so miniscule! We don’t need a lot of either, so there was more than enough for our needs. There weren’t a lot of seed in the tomato packet, so I actually counted them to work out how to use the tray. There turned out to be 67 seeds in the packet. Usually, for “pots” the size of these toilet paper rolls, I would plant two seeds per pot, but with so few seeds, only one got two seeds and the other 65 got a single seed each. Romas are a tomato I want to have a lot of, so we can do tomato paste and sauces again at the end of the year.

The herbs each gone one row in the tray. Here, the tray is on the heat mat, and it now has a dome over it, too.

This is the tray that had been on the heat mat. There are some cayenne, Dragonfly and Early Sensation peppers sprouting. And look at all those spoon tomatoes!

The strawberries and Classic eggplant got moved out entirely, and are now in the small aquarium greenhouse, still on the little bin to lift them closer to the light. The hardware cloth cover for the tank is no longer needed to keep the cats out, but it is still needed to hold the light fixture. We couple put the light back under the tank’s lid and use that, but this way, there is still plenty of air flow.

This done, I decided to do some potting up. First, I thinned by dividing the Crespo squash…

They are on the aluminum sheet in the photo. Of the two pots, one had all three seeds in it germinate, and they all have their own pot now. The second pot, I left for now. You can see a second seed did start to germinate, but it seems to have just stopped growing.

In the baking tray, you can see the Zucca melon, at the bottom right of the picture, are doing well! Those tendrils are reaching out to climb, and I’ve already had to unwrap the biggest one from the mini greenhouse frame. The drum gourds in the back are doing okay, but I think it’s just too cold for them to grow much right now.

I’d reseeded more Zuccz melon and drum gourd, but none have germinated yet. There was a drum gourd seedling that died after I’d put more seed in the empty pots, and I was considering adding more drum gourd seeds to it. Not anymore! That pot has now been “potted up” into the stronger, lighter coloured pot, and contains an experiment.

Last year, we had purchased seeds for Tulip trees and pawpaws. We had a single Tulip tree germinate, only to die soon after. Nothing else germinated. Their containers had been moved between the sun room and the shelf just outside the sun room. No surprise that cats would eventually knock them around, and that was it for any chance of germination. They were planted in a seed starting mix, which I ended up adding in to the big bowl I use to moisten the starting mix before putting it into pots to start new seeds. I ended up finding one of the pawpaw seeds that actually looked robust, so I stuck it into the available pot. Who knows? Maybe it’ll sprout!

Today, I had dumped our last bag of seed starting mix into the big bowl with what was left from before and was mixing water in with my hands when I found another pawpaw seed that looked like it was fresh out of the package we got them in. So I stuck that into the pot I’d put the first one in. The pot is damp, though, so it broke. I grabbed one of the new biodegradable pots I bought and the whole thing fit perfectly inside it. Cool! Now we have two pawpaw seeds to potentially sprout!

As I went back to mixing water into the seed starter mix, I found three more pawpaw seeds! None of them showed even the slighted bit of rot or damage!

They all went into the experiment pot.

I have no idea if they will germinate, but it would be awesome if they did!

Once the herbs and tomato seeds were planted and things were shifted around, I decided it was time to pot up the Black Beauty tomato seedlings. The germination rate for those was really high, and they were starting to get too big for the square potting cells they were in. I had a bag of potting soil ready for potting up, and went with Red Solo cups to transplant them up into.

I filled them about half way with soil, and buried the stems of the seedlings about half way when transplanting. As they get bigger, we can keep filling the cups with soil, allowing for more roots to develop along the stems. The baking tray holds 12 cups, while the bin can only hold 9, which left 5 more to go back into the tray they had been in before. The smaller Indigo Blue tomatoes don’t need potting up yet. Sadly, there are still only three Little Finger eggplants; the pots I reseeded show no signs of germination yet. Again, I think it might just be too cold by the window, even though the whole thing is over a heat vent.

Lower down, you can see the tray that has the first peppers we planted, in the red cups they were potted up into, next to the German thyme and lemon grass. The yellow plant pot below has one of the pots of German thyme transplanted into it, which we will be keeping indoors. In the blue mushroom tray is the luffa. We still have just one plant. The other 3 pots were reseeded, but still nothing.

And finally, here are the onions and shallots! It’s been a while since I showed how they were doing. I suppose we could give them hair cuts, but that may not be beneficial. Gardening in Canada did a video about it, and I trust what she says.

My daughter’s orchids got moved to the shelf beside the onions. I hope they do okay, there. They’re pretty far from the heat vent.

That is it for now! The next seeds we will need to start are the 4-6 week seeds, and I think I have only 1 or 2 things that needs to be started in that range. After that, it’s all stuff that needs 3-4 weeks before last frost date. There are a few seeds in that range that I plan to experiment with, starting some indoors and direct seeding others, to compare how they do.

Being able to work on gardening stuff while it’s snowing outside feels really good!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: starting a variety of seeds

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Today is another mild day – bright and sunny, with our high expected to reach -3C/27F, and we’re almost there as I right this. Unfortunately, we have insane winds today, and apparently for the next several days, too! My computers weather app is saying 32kmh/20mph winds, but to be honest, I think we’re getting higher than that. I’ve been eyeballing some of the trees in the spruce grove, wondering which one is coming down next, and I’ve already had to break trail through the main garden area to reclaim stuff that was being blown away. There was even a gust the blew the dining room door ajar! Not the storm door – that one stayed closed – but there was enough of a pressure change to force the inner door open. Thankfully, we have a bar latch on that door, too, so it couldn’t open very far.

Yes, the door was locked. We never use it except once in a rare while in the summer.

A daughter and I are going to be driving in this soon, as we head out to pick up some birthday pizza for her sister!

My main goal for today was to get some seeds going that need to be started much earlier. These were the ones that needed to be done.

I don’t have a “days to maturity” for the Crespo squash, which now seem to be gone from the Baker Creek website! Looks like I bought fresh seeds for this year, just in time. I still had 3 seeds left from last year, so I used those, plus three fresh ones, so there’s still some left for another year. We’ll see how the germination rate is.

I also chose only 6 Caveman’s Club gourd seeds. I took sandpaper to the large seeds to scarify them before setting them to soak. I had intended to start them soaking last night, but ended up on the phone with my brother and his wife for more than an hour, and it was quite late by the time I was done. It was worth it!

The other bowls are holding all the seeds from the packets, including both packets of Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes.

I had intended to use Jiffy pellets to start some of the seeds, thinking I had a full box of them, plus a partial box, from last year. I never found the full box, and the partial box had only one pellet in it, but I did have alternatives.

I was unable to find more of the larger biodegradable pots the last few times I’ve been shopping, so the 6 Crespo squash seeds were divided between my last two of those, while the smaller pots got two seeds each of the Caveman’s Club gourd.

These are my last two trays of biodegradable square cells. I decided to plant more of the Black Beauty tomatoes and give them a whole tray to themselves, while the Indigo Blue Chocolate and Little Finger Eggplant are in the second one. Each square cell has 4 seeds in it.

I made sure the soil was moist before planting the seeds, then once they were in the aquarium greenhouse, I spritzed their tops, then added water to the bottom of the tray. It’s awkward to get these long trays in, as there is a divider bar across the middle of the tank’s top. After this photo was taken, I put the covers and lights back, and plugged in the heat mat. The soil was feeling quite cold while I was working with it! “Room temperature” in our living room is definitely on the chill side.

It wasn’t until I settled down to write this post that I realized I didn’t need to put the covers back on the aquarium, since the cat barriers are now in place! Except when I came out this morning, I found Tissue sitting at the inside of the latched door, waiting to be let out. Yup. She managed to pull the bottom open and squeeze through! We’ve got it blocked in that corner for now, so hopefully, she won’t get in again.

As for the other seedlings, they’ve been moved to the shelves by the window. There’s a heat vent right there, so that will help, though now that I’m done with the new seeds, I’ll have to do some rearranging. The lights are too high, so we’ll have to find away to attach cords that will allow us to have them lower, and adjust the height as needed.

Hopefully, these will germinate within the next couple of weeks, because we’ve got another batch to start before the end of March, and they’re going to need that heat mat!

The Re-Farmer

New eyes

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Almost 2 years ago, I found this video from the 2014 National Heirloom Expo, showing 300 varieties of squash on display. At the time, while watching it, my thoughts were along the lines of, “wow! Look at all those cool squash!”

While trying to find information about specific squash varieties, I stumbled on the video again and found myself watching it with new eyes. Last summer, we tried growing so many different types of squash, and I had been researching so many others, I found myself surprised by how many I now recognized.

Right near the beginning, there was a display of pumpkins I recognised and, sure enough, they were Lady Godiva hulless pumpkins. I was rather happy to see that our own Lady Godivas that we harvested were pretty close in size to what is in the video. For all the set backs, they actually did reach, or come very close to, their full potential.

There were several displays of Boston Marrow, and ours didn’t come anywhere near their full potential! I knew they didn’t, but it was by a lot more than I thought.

The nest egg gourds in the display were just like ours, though! I’m going to have to break one open to collect seeds to start indoors.

I recognised others from varieties we tried to grow but failed completely, and got to see what they would have looked like, had 2022 been a good growing year. Still others I remember looking at in catalogs and websites, trying to decide whether or not to get their seeds. Of course, I found myself keeping an eye out for others we’d grown or tried to grow, but not all of them were there. It’s pretty amazing, how many varieties of squash there are!

I started watching the video while searching for information of growing Crespo squash and kulli corn. There is very little information about kulli corn out there. I’m still trying to figure out why ours never even started to develop cobs. From what I did find, it has a 100 day growing season. That’s cutting it close for us, but not by much, and I’d started them indoors to make up for it. I do want to try them again, but probably not this year.

As for the Crespo squash, all I’m finding is a few – very few! – seed sources, before the hits are just generic squash links. If I look at images, I find my own pictures from the first year we tried to grow them! Other pictures come up that are labelled Crespo squash, but they look completely different.

Well, hopefully as we try growing them again and write about them in this blog, it will be helpful to others, trying to find information!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: harvesting squash and corn

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Well, the last of the stuff that needed to come in before tonight is done – at least as much as possible. The girls and I put bottles with warm water under the eggplants in the grow bag (the only ones fruiting) and, since they were right there, with the sweet potatoes, too. The eggplant and one grow bag with sweet potato got covered, but the sheet wasn’t big enough to cover the other two grow bags. The apple gourd also got bottles of warm water placed beside them, but we could only cover two of the three plants, so we covered the two biggest ones. As I write this, we are down to 9C/48F, and it’s supposed to keep dropping until we reach 1C/34F at about 7am. Between 6 – 8 am tends to consistently be the coldest time of day.

While I was harvesting earlier, I went ahead and grabbed a bunch of the Latte sweet corn, too. I don’t think they are quite at their peak, but I think they’re about as good as we’re going to get. There are still cobs on the stalks that were pretty small, so I left them be.

With the summer squash, I grabbed all the little – but not too little – patty pans, and the last of the zucchini.

In the above photo, the six pumpkins across the top are the Baby Pam pumpkins. The others are all hulless seed pumpkins. On the far left are four Styrian, in the middle are six Lady Godiva, and on the right are two Kakai. Tucked in with the patty pans are two Boston Marrow. There are so many little Boston Marrow squash forming, but they are just too small and have no chance of ripening after being picked. I’m not even sure Boston Marrow does continue to ripen after being picked!

The pumpkins are now all set up in the sun room. We cleared a shelf in the window, and all but one of them fit in there. The last one joined the onions on the screen. I think it should still get enough light there.

The hulless seed pumpkins are grown just for their seed, not their flesh. The flesh is probably edible, but there would be less of it than for an eating pumpkin. I will give them time before we crack any open to see what the seeds are like. At least we do have the one tiny, fully ripe kakai pumpkin harvested earlier that we could try any time we feel like it.

We planted so many different winter squash, and it was such a horrible year, I’m thankful we have as much as we do. Hopefully, next year, we will have better growing conditions. I made the mistake of calling my mother before I started this post, and talking about our garden. I mentioned that our beets did not do well this year. She started lecturing me on how to grow beets, and how they need to have the soil loosened around them, etc. I told her I knew how to grow beets (this is not our first year growing them!); they just didn’t do well this year. We didn’t even get greens worth eating. My mother then launched into how she always had such big beets, and always had such a wonderful garden (this after she’d mentioned to be before, that some years things just didn’t work) and how she only grew the “basics” and everything was just so wonderful – and the reason my beets failed was because I don’t garden like she did, and that I shouldn’t be gardening “from a book”. Whatever that means. I reminded her that I tested the soil and it is depleted. We don’t have good soil here anymore. She got sarcastic about that, and basically made it like my not having a perfect garden like she did was because I’m not doing things her way. As she got increasingly cruel about it, I called her out on it. I told her that just because she can’t understand something like soil science – which she doesn’t need to – that didn’t make it okay for her to be cruel to me over something she knows nothing about. Nor would I put up with being treated like that. I even asked her, why couldn’t she try being kind for a change? Maybe say something like “I’m sorry to hear you’re having problems”, instead of basically saying “I’m better than you.” She went dead silent, so I changed the subject, and the rest of the conversation went okay. Then she cut the call short because she saw the time, and her program on TV was started, so she had to go.

My mother is pretty open on what her priorities are. 😕

Ah, well. It is what it is. I’m just so thankful she is no longer our “landlord”, and that my brother now owns the property. There was a point, before the title was transferred, that we briefly but seriously considered moving out because of her.

Funny how something as ordinary as gardening can bring out the worst in her, though.

The weird thing is, when I spoke to my brother after he’d visited her to talk about the roofing estimates, apparently my mother had lots of positive things to say about how well we’re taking care of things here.

I guess that doesn’t include the garden! 😄

Well, I guess I should go see what I can do about that corn! 😊

The Re-Farmer

Mutants!

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I just got back from meeting someone who, unlike us, has lots of squash this year and was willing to share…

… her mutants!

She didn’t even plant them. They came up on their own!

Two of them are a type of zucchini, in their winter squash stage. The other stripy ones are squash and pumpkins that cross pollinated. Yes, I know pumpkins are a type of squash, but they get their own category. 😁 I was told that 2 of them that have the darkest green are ready to eat now.

I was also gifted a big bag of spinach and beet greens! Our beets are doing so poorly this year, the greens were unusable, and our fall spinach are still trying to come up.

It should be interesting to see how these taste!

Now… how would one prepare a mutant squash? She said to just use them like pumpkins. So…

… pie?

The Re-Farmer