My morning rounds were shorter today. I did not water all the garden beds this time. I’ve been keeping a close eye on the weather radar, and we might actually get rain!
Yesterday evening, I grated a whole lot of soap to scatter around in the old kitchen garden. It either worked, or we didn’t get any critters visiting last night.
This morning, I raided our spice cupboard. The newly planted beds of radishes, chard, kale and kohlrabi have now been treated with a hot spices, and when I ran out of that, I started scattering black pepper, including the perimeter of the corn and sunflower blocks. I checked everything carefully, and there were no new nibbles among the corn and sunflowers, that I could see.
Before heading back inside, I was able to gather some summer squash.
It’s been a while since our first harvest of 2 green zucchini and a Magda squash. This morning, we’ve got 5 green zucchini (3 of them from one plant!), 1 Magda squash, and our very first Sunburst squash!
Later, I was able to grab a few garlic scapes, too. We still have a few left to grow more before we gather them.
These will be on today’s menu, for sure! :-D
Once settled inside, I checked the trail cam files and saw this on the garden cam.
I was not expecting the deer to cross through from that side! And there’s no way we can rope things off on that side, without it causing access issue to other beds.
At least he didn’t stop for a snack along the way.
I did put black pepper across the open side of the garden beds, and down some of the bigger paths between blocks. I hope this will convince the deer to go around the garden, instead of through it!
Thinking ahead with the girls, I remembered that the Whiffletree catalog has a wildlife tree package. We’ve been talking about planting things away from the house to feed the deer, so they’ll have less reason to go for our gardens. We don’t want to get rid of the critters. We just want them to stay out of our gardens! I went looking through the catalog and found an item I’d highlighted but forgot about. They also have a Wildlife Plot seed package. There are enough seeds to cover 2000 sq ft with things like turnips, forage kale and other tasty plants. If we get a package like that and plant it in the outer yard, that could do a fine job of keeping the deer – and the groundhogs – out of our garden beds.
I hope to order the seed package this fall, so we can use it next spring. :-)
I am so thankful that things cooled down overnight. The garden beds were watered thoroughly last night, and didn’t need to be done again this morning. It was all I could do to drag myself outside this morning. The past week or two has started to catch up to me, and the pain levels are getting pretty high.
While doing my rounds, I noticed one of the Ozark Nest egg gourds has reached a new stage of growth! :-)
Flower buds and tendrils have appeared. :-) The others aren’t quite there, yet. :-)
While the Spoon tomatoes had started to show fruit for a while, we now have tomatoes developing on the Mosaic Medley tomatoes. It should be interesting to see what kinds of cherry and grapes were included in the mix. :-)
This morning, I decided to go ahead and pick the biggest of the summer squash that we have right now.
Our first squashes of the summer! Two green zucchini and a Magda squash.
And a Nutmeg photo bomb. :-D
The littler bugger would NOT let me get a picture without him!
I noticed something interesting on one of the Crespo squash this morning.
All along the vine of the bigger one, these white shoots have appeared. Some are almost an inch long. There is nothing like this on any of the other squashes and gourds. I have no idea what they are.
If anyone knows what these are, I’d love to hear it!! My best guess is that, if these were on soil instead of over straw, they would root the vine to the ground.
Before heading indoors after finishing my rounds, I grabbed the twine and worked on filling in the gaps between the wire mesh of the squash tunnel.
I didn’t add twine all the way to the top. I figured, if we need to, we can add more later. Once done, a moved a few plants over to where they now have support to climb.
Quite a few plants are already starting to support themselves as they climb higher. Even some of the winter squash. A few of them did need to have a bit of twine looped around to lead them towards the trellis, rather than the path.
It should be interested to see how well the squash tunnel holds out, once things start climbing higher. This is not the strongest or most stable of structures, but I think it should hold.
Now that it’s no longer dangerously hot outside, I have quite a lot to catch up on. I’ll be seeing what I can scavenge out of the barn, too. That will still wait a little while, though. I have my court date this Friday for the restraining order against our vandal, but our province it still locked down. There was a slight easing of restrictions, so there’s a possibility the court rooms will be open, but while the rest of the world has moved on, our provincial dictators just don’t want to let go, no matter how many lives and businesses are destroyed for an illusion of safety.
Our vandal has been laying low, but we did happen to cross paths recently, as I was coming home from errands in town. I had to drive around him, walking on the road to our driveway, while turning off the main road. I never saw him on the trail cam files when I checked the next morning, so at least I know he didn’t try going into our driveway again. I did call my mother to remind her to check the call display before answering her phone. He was with someone else, and I’d smiled at her as I drove past, to show appreciation for them moving aside for me, and I was still smiling when I passed our vandal. He just stared at me, which is a change from his usual response of turning his back to me as I drive by. I think, because I was driving my mother’s car at the time, he didn’t realize who I was until then. Anyhow, from some of the messages he’s left on my mother’s answering machine in the past, if I smile while driving by, it’s because I’m laughing at him because I got the farm (I still don’t know why he thinks my mother gave me the property). Seeing me sometimes triggers him, and if he got drunk again, there was a good possibility that he would start calling my mother again, so I wanted to warn her.
Well, I think I’ve taken up enough time while writing this, and will try calling the court office again. I’d called earlier and left a message, but that last time I did that, they didn’t call back until the next day, so I’ll try again.
I am really tired of this whole mess. It should have been done with, one way or the other, more than 6 months ago.
With the heat we’ve been having, and a heat wave hitting us starting today, it’s been hard on a lot of the garden. Not everything, though. The squash and gourds are just loving it! As long as we can keep up with the watering, of course.
It was while watering the summer squash last night that I spotted the first bebby.
Yay!!!!!
I got this next photo this morning.
Several plants have little green bebby squashes growing. We have two types of green zucchini, and it looks like we have both starting. So far, no yellow zucchini and no pattypans. When my daughter transplanted these, she forgot to keep track of the different types, so they are all mixed up. It’ll be a surprise, every time we see new ones!
I noticed that some of the summer squash had gotten to the point where they could use support, so I gently tied a few of them to their stakes this morning.
When it got dark enough last night, I did make sure to head back into the garden to test the new motion sensor light. It has an on/off switch, but without being charged yet, and too much light, there was no way to know if it was actually going to work. It did at least get enough time in the sun to charge before dark.
It was indeed on, and working!
But was it doing its job?
I don’t know. I just checked the garden cam and saw a single deer go by in a couple of files. The first one stopped and snuffled at the edge of the corn block, but did not nibble anything. Then it kept going, walking right through a bean bed! The second deer didn’t stop to snuffle anything, but also walked right through the bean bed.
*sigh*
If either of them triggered the light, it was after the camera stopped its 15 second recording.
Unless we happen to be looking out a window when something triggers the camera, we just won’t know.
I might shift the garden cam’s stand a bit, to cover that area.
Meanwhile…
Check out those potatoes!!!
They are just loving these grow bags.
When we did these bags, the idea was to keep filling the bags as the potatoes grew, to have more potatoes in the bag. However, it turns out that potatoes, like tomatoes, come in “determinate” and “indeterminate” types.
Determinate types grow their tubers all in one layer. They need to be hilled to protect the tubers from the sun, but there is no benefit to keep hilling them higher and higher in a tower or grow bag.
Indeterminate types, on the other hand, will keep producing tubers up their stems if they get buried. So adding more soil or mulch and increasing the height will increase the yield.
Which meant I needed to figure out which we had. Seeing how tall the Norland potatoes are, I thought they might be indeterminate, but nope.
All of these types are determinate. Adding more to the bags will not mean more potatoes, and will not help the plants themselves. Hilling them as we already have is enough.
Well, that saves us a bit of work.
Also…
They are starting to develop flower buds!
Both types of fingerling potatoes have plenty of buds on them. One plant of the Norland potatoes has buds. So far, nothing on the Yukon Gem. Which is good. The fingerlings were chosen for their shorter growing season, and short term storage and eating, while the Norland and Yukon Gem are both types that mature later and can be stored longer. Not that I expect we’ll have enough to last us the winter, but we’ll at least be able to have them for a while after harvesting.
This year’s garden seems to be one of extremes: things are either doing really, really well, or not at all! :-D
After yesterday being such a crappy day, I’m happy to say that today was much improved!
This morning, I found several bright bits of sunshine in the garden.
Several of our summer squash blossoms are now fully open! There are just male flowers right now, so it’s still too early to expect baby squash, but it’s still very exciting to see!
The summer squash was not the only thing in bloom.
Some irises in the flower garden outside the living room window started blooming today. These have been here for as long as I can remember, coming back year after year, decade after decade. They may well have originally been planted here before I was even born.
We got the trip to the smaller city that I meant to do yesterday. One of our stops was to Canadian Tire, where I was finally able to find the air filter I needed for the push mower. After double checking exactly what I was looking for, I realized that the last couple of times we’d looked for a filter, this type wasn’t in stock at all, so I was happy to find one.
We also made a stop at the nearby Walmart. We ran out of kibble this morning, and had a few other things we needed to pick up. Thankfully, we were able to get everything on the list, and still stayed under budget – something we couldn’t have done if we’d had to buy in town.
One of the other things we needed to get was more gas for the lawnmowers, so pretty much as soon as we got home, I changed the air filter on the push mower, and was finally able to finish most of the mowing.
I had started to move along the driveway with the riding mower, a couple of days ago, but there was no way I could use the riding mower to do the area in front of the barn. This is the first time this area has been mowed this year, and it was tall enough to make hay! I’ll go back with a rake and the wagon to pick up clippings for mulch. There was no way I was going to use the bag. I’d have needed to stop to empty it so often, I would never have been able to finish it all in one evening. As it is, there is still another area that needs to be done, but it’s not used at much. At least now, we don’t have to wade through knee high grass to get to the barn and shed!
I also finally got to cut the main garden area, that is too rough to use the riding mower on. Frankly, found myself thinking I maybe should have used the weed trimmer over all of it, but at the highest setting, the push mower was able to do the job.
I had done most of this area with the riding mower; the strip along the right was done with the push mower; you can tell by the darker green, because I had the mower set so much higher. This strip had been plowed, so there are still furrows. If I wanted to get the rest, among those trees, I’d have to use the weed trimmer.
It’s just a guess, but I’m pretty sure where I was standing to take the photo is where the telephone lines are buried. A thing to keep in mind when we plant the trees we are planning on.
This photo was taken from the same spot, facing the other way.
Not much left of that pile of garden soil!
Part of this section was also plowed. You can see the gate in the back, where the tractor and plow would have entered. The plow was dropped starting along the trees on the right. Why there, I have no idea. There hasn’t been garden there since I was a babe. My parents did try gardening here, when they first moved the garden closer to the house (it used to be way out by the car graveyard, when my parents first moved out here). As I child, I remember when the area that has the trees right, now, was a cabbage patch. The area the dirt pile is on now was no longer being used by then. I remember asking my mother why they stopped using this section, and she told me it was too rocky.
Considering how many rocks are everywhere else, that’s saying a lot! :-D
Anyhow, I still wonder why the plowing was starting that far back, but then, my sister thinks the person who did it was drunk at the time, so who knows? The furrows mean it’s another area for the push mower, though the section to the right is flat enough for the riding mower.
I was even able to do some mowing among the trees, to open up some of the paths. The plants at the bottom of the dead spruce tree in the left foreground bloom beautifully, so I’m making sure to leave them be. I’ll have to do the rest of the area around the trees with the weed trimmer.
Mid term goal is to plant low growing ground covers that we can walk on in the paths, while in between the trees will be a combination of ground cover and flowers, with one exception. The morel mushroom spawn my husband got for me for Christmas will be “planted” under one of the elms in the maple grove. He also got giant puffball spawn for me, too, but they like to grow among grass, not under any particular type of tree. I still haven’t quite decided what area I want to inoculate with those, yet. Just somewhere we won’t be going over with the mower.
That is not the only thing I have to figure out where to put. We also have these.
These are the Jiffy pellets we planted the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers in, some 2 months ago. The one that had sprouted got transplanted into the old kitchen garden. When a second one suddenly sprouted, almost a week later, I transplanted it a short distance away.
That made me curious enough to look at the rest of the pellets. I haven’t been watering the tray they were in, but when I lifted some of them up, I saw roots! No sprouts, just roots.
So I moved them all onto one of the baking sheets we got to hold the Solo cups we were using to start seeds, and added water.
Almost overnight, more started to sprout.
Currently, there are 7 new sprouts!
Why did it take these so long to sprout? Especially when the ones that were direct sown, in far less ideal conditions, sprouted so quickly??
And what will we do with them? At this point, I don’t think there’s enough growing season for them to fully mature, but now that they’re finally germinating, I don’t want to just toss them. Also, there’s no more room for sunflowers in the old kitchen garden, and the space they would have gone into in the garden got the Mongolian Giants transplanted into it, since these hadn’t sprouted at all at the time, and we thought they were a lost cause.
I think we will transplant them near the Dorinny corn. That wicked frost we had in late May didn’t seem to affect the corn sprouts at the time, but then they disappeared. They are supposed to be a Canadian frost-hardy hybrid, but that was an unusually cold night. While they looked unharmed the next morning, I guess it took a couple of days for the damage to become visible. However, the other corn seeds that hadn’t geminated yet came up soon after, so we will still have Dorinny corn, but it also means we have entire rows in the block with only one or two corn plants in them. I figure, we can make use of the empty space and transplant these sunflowers into them. Sure, they may not reach full maturity, but at least they’ll have a chance. Who knows. We might have a long and mild fall.
Then there are these.
These are the pink celery that should have been started indoors much earlier. They’ll eventually go into a container (or two?), so we can keep them outdoors for most of the growing season, then try using the sun room as a green house to extend their growing season though late fall.
Assuming they survive being transplanted. We’ll see.
All in all, it’s been a really good day. I finally got things done that kept getting delayed, I got to see the kittens, we had a fabulous supper of butter chicken one daughter made while I was mowing, and there’s panna cotta setting in the fridge, made by my other daughter. And tomorrow, we will be celebrating Father’s Day and my younger daughter’s birthday, early, with a pizza night. :-)
The kind where things start going wrong from the start, and nothing goes to plan.
Today was one of those days.
Thankfully, it ended on a more positive note.
Things started very early, with hearing noises from the basement and discovering Saffron had somehow found her way into the old part basement, discovering another cat had gotten into a plant pot and scattered dirt everywhere in the living room, to my daughter trying to vacuum the carpet and our vacuum cleaner suddenly starting to smoke and no longer creating a vacuum. I was planning to head to the smaller city to get a new air filter for the push mower, but my sleep had been interrupted so much, I felt too tired to be safe to drive. I figured I’d get a nap in, and go later. Of course, that got interrupted a few times, too, with scam phone calls about credit cards we don’t have, cats getting into the old basement again (my daughter found where they were getting through and blocked it), and so on. When I finally got up – which was disorienting, because it was still morning – my daughters convinced me to save making the trip for another day. I must have looked a sight for them to do that!
So basically, it was a pretty wasted day. I got nothing useful accomplished until evening, when it cooled down enough to do the evening watering. It was so windy today, the sawhorse the garden cam is attached to was knocked over, and I had to do some repair work on one of the stakes and lines over a row of sunflowers that had blown apart.
Also, the sound of wind going through the wire mesh on the squash tunnel is very musical!
I was quite happy to see a few of the summer squash are starting to bloom.
When I was finishing up watering at the front of the house, and was moving the hose out of the way, I heard an odd noise coming from the kibble house. I was behind it, so I couldn’t see, but figured there was a skunk inside. So I carefully walked around it and…
… it was empty.
But I was still hearing that noise.
So I ducked to look under the kibble house, where there is still a sheet of rigid insulation on the ground. There I saw a little black critter, and the noise was claws making warning scratches on the insulation. It was one of the baby skunks, all by itself!
It ended up dashing under the cat’s house. On seeing there was no food at all left in the kibble house, I topped things up a bit, then went to sit on the stairs to the storage house, where I had a view of the back of the kibble house and cat shelter. Sure enough, after a while, I saw the little guy come out, then make a run for the storage house. I did get a short video, but apparently, I can’t upload anything right now, or I’d include it here! As I walked away from the storage house, I just caught sight of the skunk family, ducking under the chain link fence and out of the yard. I’m glad the little one was reunited with its family!
So I guess that was a cute end to an otherwise miserable day.
For now, I’m hoping to get some decent – uninterrupted – sleep, so I can make the trip I was supposed to do today.
It was a hot and windy day today, and my younger daughter and I ended up making a quick run into town, but we did get some decent progress in the garden.
My older daughter braved the hottest part of the day and added more soil to the 15 summer squash mounds.
I waited until it was cooler.
I added a stake near each plant. The stakes are some of the smaller poplars we cleared our of the spruce grove, trimmed to about 3-4 feet in length. In the foreground of the photo, there is a metal bar stuck in the ground. It has a point at one end. I can’t remember at the moment, where we found it, but it was a happy find! I used it, and a mallet, to make holes in the ground. Then the stakes, skinny end down, were pushed in as far as I could, beyond what I managed with the steel bar, then the soil carefully stomped down to secure it. As close to the plants as they were, that meant mostly just on one side. Once those were in, the area was mulched with straw. The idea is to secure the stems of the squash to the stakes, as they grow, and pruning the bottom leaves, little by little. We shall see how that works!
Also, I really need to get this area mowed, before the next rains come!
I had found some trellis netting, so my daughter finished the last sections of pea trellis with that, along with adding soil to the summer squash. The peas are getting tall enough to start climbing! The peas I planted later, to fill the gaps left by those that did not germinate, are sprouting, too. I’m really looking forward to having fresh peas! I can’t remember the last time I had fresh-from-the-garden peas.
If you look to the left of the photo, you can see what is a problem in this area: all those tree seedlings! They are spreading through root systems, like quack grass. Usually, I would have mowed over them by now, but we’re going to have to cut them back by hand this year.
My younger daughter, meanwhile, went all out and thinned all three spinach beds.
Yes, this was taken after the beds were thinned!
The furthest one, under the netting, is the one that got the most deer damage, but parts of it are doing well. You can see at the end of the closer beds, the smaller spinach at the ends the deer got at.
With the spinach she gathered, I currently have two trays drying in the oven, and made myself a huge spinach salad for supper. The reason we went into town was to get ingredients to make spinach dips. Both cold and baked versions. :-) I’m really looking forward to that!
This last one is just to show how well the potatoes have been doing! At this rate, some of them are going to need topping up, soon! I’m very excited to see how productive these will be at the end of their season.
With today’s progress, my goal for tomorrow is to get working on that squash tunnel. The luffa needs something to climb! :-D
We’re taking a break from our push to get the squash and corn transplanted today. Lots has been done, with lots more to do, but we just had to stop for a while.
My daughters didn’t take any photos of what they were doing, so I just have “after” pictures to show.
This is the summer squash. We have only 15 transplants; quite a few did not germinate, but we do have some of all 4 varieties. There’s an extra hill. Later on, straw will be added around the hills for mulch, and I will be adding stakes near the transplants, to train them to grow vertically. This is supposed to help prevent fungal infections or rot from touching the soil, increase air circulation, make it easier for pollinators to get to the flowers, increase yield and make it easier to harvest. The bottom leaves are supposed to be pruned away, and it will also be easier to water them at the roots.
At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. We shall see!
Next, they started building the beds at the squash tunnel. Priority for planting here are the luffa and dancing gourds and the winter squash. Oh, and the little pumpkins. We have quite a lot of melons to transplant, too, but if there is no room here, there is a lot more space where the sunflowers were planted last year.
What they were working on those, I worked on the new corn block.
I had turned about 2/3rds of it last night, so I didn’t expect it to take too long to finish.
Then I hit something, right near the end. Of course, I was hitting rocks the whole time, but usually I could just move the fork a few inches and keep going. Not this time!
I ended up using a space to dig around the rock. I dug up a few other rocks, but part of it seems to continue below where the soil is still undisturbed.
I used water pressure to clear the stone and try and see how much further it went, but that wasn’t much. My younger daughter decided to give it a try, and ended up bending the fork, trying to move the rock!
So… it will stay. :-D
The next step was to take out as many roots, rocks and start leveling things off.
That stick coming out of the ground in the background is a tree root. I have to grab something to cut it with!
For this part, I had a garden claw with a long handle we found in the basement when we were cleaning it out. What a back saver! You can see, all around in the grass, where the roots, crab grass and weeds were tossed. Rocks got tossed under trees, so they wouldn’t be “found” with the lawn mower. Of course, it’s not possible to get all the roots out, but I got most of them.
Finally, I could go over it with the thatching rake, which picked up a few more roots that I missed, as well as some rocks, and leveled it off a bit. I chose not to bury the big rock again, as it was so close to the surface. I’d rather see it and know it’s there, than forget about it and plant something on top by mistake.
One thing about this area; it has the deepest top soil of any part of the old garden, yet! I didn’t reach gravel until I started digging deeper to try and get around the big rock, and while I found other chunks of rock, I just barely reached the gravel layer. This is the soil my mother is talking about, when she talks about how great the soil used to be. Except for the rocks. She didn’t remember the rocks! :-D
The next step was to mark out for planting. I counted the corn plants this morning, and there are 65, plus a couple of bitty ones that probably shouldn’t be transplanted, but I likely will, anyways. I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough space, but with rows 2 feet apart, and the transplants 1 foot apart in each row, I will have enough space.
While the soil may appear good, all the soil tests I did showed a lack of nutrients, so it will still be amended. I used the flags to lay down grass clippings. I lay them out in rows, but I don’t mind them spilling over into the paths in between, to help keep the weeds down.
After this photo was taken, I used a watering can and rainwater to wet down the grass clippings, since the hose and sprinkler were needed at the other end of the garden.
Then we headed inside. We reached 30C/86F while we were out there! So we will take a few hours indoors and let things start to cool down before we continue.
We have predictions for rain tonight, and possible severe thunderstorms by tomorrow afternoon. They might even hit us. :-/ If it does look like we will get a severe storm, we have things we can use to cover the squash to protect them, though the corn would be on its own. It is, however, in a more sheltered area of the old garden. We shall see.
We might still hit our goal to get all the transplants done here by this evening! After that, we have transplants for the south yards, but they are not as urgent and can wait a bit longer.
As for me, I’m seriously thinking of joining all the cats on my bed for a short nap. I’m so tired, I have been falling asleep while writing this!
I’m going to be hurting so much by the time all this done, but it’ll be worth it!
Wow. It’s coming up on 10pm as I start this, and this is the first time I’ve had to sit down for most of the day!
Today was our monthly shop, so after doing my rounds, my younger daughter and I headed out to the city. We were going to do our usual shop when I remembered I wanted to pick up some wood pellets to try as a litter replacement, so we added a stop at Canadian Tire, first.
Canadian Tire is a dangerous place for me to be, on payday! ;-)
While we were there, I got my daughter to choose a paint colour so we can finally paint the kibble house. We’ll be able to paint the cat house, too. This is the colour she chose.
She actually chose two colours, then asked me which one I preferred, and I chose the darker one. “Citrusy”, I think it’s called. The girls have declared we don’t have enough colour around the farm, and they would like to change that.
It’s going to be colourful, all right! :-D The kibble house is going to be really bright!
One of the other things we picked up was a new axe. We’ve found a whole collection of them, mostly in the old basement, but the girls have examined every one, and they’re all in terrible shape. I suppose we could fix them, but we’d much rather have something new and higher quality. After we paid for our stuff and were heading for the van, my daughter suddenly asked, “where’s the axe?”
Yup. We’d forgotten it at the cash desk!
So off my daughter went with the receipt to get it. It was so hilarious to see her coming out again, long flowing hair, skirt swirling in the wind, and an axe over her shoulder. A woman happened to be getting out of her vehicle beside us and called out, “walk proud, and carry a big axe!” Too funny!
With our rather meager success with onion seeds, when I saw some onion sets at Canadian Tire, I did pick some up.
When we got home and I quickly checked my email, I found a shipping notification from Vesey’s. The onion sets we ordered from them have shipped, with an expected arrival of May 7. Those are a red variety, so between the two, we’ll have a couple hundred onion sets to plant, on top of the surviving seedlings. We shall see how they compare! I’d rather grow onions from seeds, if only because there are so many more choices in varieties, but I’m not too fussy about it! We use a lot of onions, so I’ll take whatever will grow.
After all the shopping was put way and we had supper, the girls and I then worked on planting the squash seeds. That required taking everything out of the big tank to make room for the new starts, so the tomatoes, luffa and the last onion seeds I started have all been moved to the sun room.
All of the onions have been moved to the new shelf we got for our transplants.
This photo was taken somewhere around 9pm. I love how bright it still is outside! It was an overcast and rainy day today, so not a lot of light, but the sun room was still quite warm.
Not warm enough for the new seedlings, though. I had to get creative.
I rigged up the light we’ve been using to keep the small tank warm, so it hangs from the support bar holding the top points of the mini greenhouse in place. It has a full spectrum bulb in it, so they’ll get both good light and warmth from above, as well has warmth from below, where the ceramic heater bulb is set up. We still need to use that at night.
The small tank now has all the remaining gourds that have not sprouted yet. Without the light fixture that was helping to keep the tank warm, I added a couple of bottles filled with hot water help maintain the temperature.
We changed the level of the base in the big tank, so the cups would be closer to the lights. One of the fixtures does give off warmth, but the other does not, so I added bottles of hot water to this tank, too.
This tank now has the one cup with the Tennessee Dancing Gourds, and one cup with a single tomato seedling in it that isn’t doing well, but we just can’t bring ourselves to get rid of. Everything else is summer and winter squash. We planted fewer of the winter squash, pumpkin and zucchini, and lots of the melons and pattypan squash.
We are really looking forward to lots of summer squash in particular! The pattypans are our favourite vegetable, and we really miss being able to pick a bunch of summer squash every morning, for that day’s meals. :-)
We now have a couple of weeks or so before we start the last of our seeds; the Montana Morado corn, cucamelons, and half of our sunflowers. The corn will be in toilet paper tubes, so they’ll be in their own bin to keep the tubes supported. By then, we should be able to use the sun room exclusively, instead of the aquarium greenhouses. The gourds might even have germinated by then! ;-)
The next few days are going to be odd ones. Our days are going to warm up again, but check out those expected lows…
Tomorrow, we’re supposed to have a fairly decent 7C/45F, but then drop to -4C/25F with flurries overnight! Then, two days later, we’re supposed to reach a high of 19C/66F, only to drop to 4C/39F overnight. Then Sunday’s overnight low is back below freezing again! At least the long range forecast shows no lows below freezing after that, but… well, we do have a frost date of June 2, so there’s a good chance will dip below freezing a few times more. I just wish it wouldn’t lurch back and forth like that! Still, those daytime temperatures will give us plenty of opportunity to get garden beds prepped, and the early planting started. We have lots of work to do outside, and will need to take advantage of every good day we get!
The Re-Farmer 