tom thumb dwarf peas

Our 2026 Garden: peas, gooseberries and volunteers

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Last night turned out to be a rough night for all of us. No one got much sleep at all. We couldn’t even blame the heat for it, as we had a decently cooler night.

In my case, when I finally fell asleep, I was down so hard, I never even heard a cat knock a display off a shelf, onto the floor. Ghosty, for some reason, has been determined to climb up onto the shelf, through or over the display shelf, to jump down the other side, rather than simply walk on the floor to get to the same spot. It’s an ongoing problem, and she only does it when I’m asleep! I discovered it when I had to get up to go to the washroom and had to pick everything up, just to be able to get to my door.

*sigh*

I was outside, feeding the outside cats and doing my morning rounds early enough that I could go back to bed for a few hours.

Well… I tried to, that is. Didn’t actually get much sleep, again. I didn’t put the display shelf back again, figuring it was just an invitation to disaster, which meant half a dozen cats all wanted to explore the now empty top of the shelf it rested on.

Loudly.

Eventually, I gave up and headed out to get the mail and pick up a few things, including a 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats. Later in the afternoon, my older daughter joined me and I found out her night was bad, too. She has her pre-op appointment booked next week, but she’s considering finding the doctor’s phone number to talk about increasing her meds again. The girls and I had plans to do a deep clean of several rooms today, but with how we’re all feeling, it’s going to have to happen piecemeal, over several days.

Towards the end of the afternoon, I headed out to do the evening cat feeding and rounds. I was coming about to go to the isolation shelter when I realized there was a cat inside, watching me.

It was Sweetie! She actually was willing to go into the isolation shelter again!

She took off when she saw me walking towards the shelter, but at least we know she’s coming closer for food, and willing to go into the space she spent so much time in, before going to the rescue.

I saw Slick this afternoon, too.

Slick is no longer pregnant. *sigh*

She’s lost two litters this year. It’ll take time before we know if this one survived.

No sign of the one kitten I spotted not long ago, still. Hopefully, it will start showing up at the furthest food bowls, and we can start working on socializing it, or at least getting it comfortable with coming to the house for food and shelter.

After the cat feeding, I watered the south garden beds from the rain barrel. We’re not expecting rain again for almost 2 weeks, and it’s supposed to get above 30C/86F on the weekend. After today, I’ll be making a point of trying to get outside early, before the heat hits, to water the garden. On the plus side, the water table is high enough that I don’t need to water any of the trees and berry bushes. It’s only the garden beds that drain and dry out quickly, even if there are still puddles in the lower areas.

In the old kitchen garden, I actually did a tiny harvest.

The Tom Thumb Dwarf peas had pods large enough to pick. Or should I say, thick enough. They are not at all large, just like the plants themselves!

We have some volunteers in the wattle weave bed.

Next to the peas are three self seeded tomatoes. They won’t have time to reach full maturity, but I’m leaving them be, anyhow.

In the next image of the above slide show, growing along the edge by the path along the wattle weave bed, there are a few self seeded chamomile, including one that has started blooming!

After the south beds were done, I watered the main garden area, too, though with a hose. One of these days, I’d like to set up a water tank so that the main garden area can be watered with ambient temperature water, rather than from a hose. By the time it’s done, the well water is so cold, it can shock the plants.

With that watering done, I went to check on the food forest trees and bushes, and spotted something that made me smile.

We have gooseberries!

They are unripe and still rock hard, but we have them!

Unfortunately, by the time I was finishing up, I was starting to have pain issues. It seems to kick in after I’ve done a fair bit of walking. It’s almost at the point where I’m wondering if I should go to the ER or something. My own doctor is away right now and we have a phone appointment booked for when she gets back, but if this keeps up, I might have to find an alternative. There are no urgent care clinics out here. We don’t even have any walk in clinics any closer than my doctor’s clinic, so the ER would be pretty much the only other option. If I did that, I would expect to spend many hours in the waiting room, since I would not be an “urgent” case. At least the diclofenac works, though it can take a while to kick in. When the pain hits, it doesn’t matter if I’m sitting, standing or lying down.

Oddly, while talking to my older daughter and describing where the pain it, it’s almost identical to the pain she is having! Hers is worse in other ways, given what the cause is for her.

Ah, well. Nothing much either of us can do about it right now. I don’t even have a diagnosis, and I won’t until I talk to my doctor. Even then, that would only be if the ultrasounds actually found something.

Still, I’m managing to at least get outside and get at least a few things done. I’m quite excited that we have our first gooseberries since getting planting that bush. It brings back memories. We had a gooseberry bush here when I was a kid and I used to love eating them fresh off the bush. In retrospect, I was eating them under ripe, but I loved that sour taste. I did taste one of the biggest gooseberries today. It was pretty nasty! 😄 They still have a ways to go before they are edible!

On my list of things to get done in the garden over the next while, along with loosening up the area near the corn bed and sowing tillage radishes, it’s getting time to uncover the corn and put a mulch down around them. Right now, there are a lot of weeds and I’ve been leaving them, since they are acting a bit like a living mulch right now. We’ll see what I manage to get done over the next while. If the yards dry out enough, I might be mowing, instead. That, at least, shouldn’t trigger the pain levels like walking does.

Being broken really sucks sometimes!

The Re-Farmer

Scapes, peas and a huge step

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Today was another day of off and on rain, though more off than on, thankfully. The last storm did a lot of damage in areas, including at least one tornado touching down at the edge of the city. We have much to be thankful for.

While doing my rounds this morning, I was able to harvest some more scapes. The largest one yet, which you can see in the first to images in the slide show below. There will be only one more small harvest after this, unless I find some I missed. The girls and I have already talked about dehydrating whatever we won’t use fresh, and my plan to grind the dehydrated pieced into powder, and that should get started soon.

While checking the old kitchen garden, I can’t help but be amused by the dwarf peas. They are incredibly tiny – I don’t know how big they are supposed to get, but I’m sure it’s supposed to be a lot bigger than these! – and yet they are producing pods! You can see some of them in the last image of the slide show above. The plants themselves are less than 6 inches high.

I’m glad I planted other peas, and am thinking of where I can succession sow more in the next little while. The Spring Blush peas are producing pods, too, and the super sugar snap peas I sowed not long ago are growing nicely. One more succession sowing would not go amiss.

Today is Canada Day, and it was a big deal for us for a change. It has been so long since all four of us went out together! It meant clearing out the back of the cab so we could put down the rear seats in the truck. I was able to put our emergency supplies in the box, along with the cane collection and other items, and secure it all on one side, so there would be room for my husband’s walker on the other.

We went to the cottage of my husband’s brother, in a little town on the lake. Talking to my SIL about how I don’t think we’d ever been there before, and she was pretty sure we did – though it would have been about 25 years ago! As an added bonus, their adult children were able to join us, as did my husband’s sister and her significant other. It has been so long!

We had a fantastic visit. Their cottage is very close to the lake, and the girls and I had a chance to walk to the pier, finding it had a set of steps to the shoreline.

The views from above the water level were gorgeous.

The area has a lot of large rocks set in place to reduce erosion, but there are a few tiny beaches in this area of the lake.

My BIL BBQd, though he had to check on the meat with an umbrella a few times when it started to pour rain. We had a great meal and great company, with lots of catching up to do. Thankfully, my husband thought to bring his “as needed” painkillers, though, as that’s the only reason we were able to stay for about 5 hours, plus driving time of about an hour in total. My husband usually can only manage about 2 hours, including driving time.

We had made sure to feed the cats before we left. When we got home and the girls helped get my husband inside, I stayed out to do my evening rounds. The outside cats were acting really hungry, even though some of the outside kibble dishes still had food in them. I topped up the empty ones, and they were still running around, like they were expecting more.

They were waiting for the cat soup I’ve been making with the freeze dried cat food and cat milk included with the hot water.

So I made some up for them. I’ve been making more than I had been, before, and pouring it around more food dishes besides the one in the isolation shelter.

No sign of Sweetie anywhere. I feel so sad for her! I hope she finds her way back, even if she does remain feral. She must be so scared.

The inside cats were also swarming around and I figured they wanted their wet cat food, too, even though they still had plenty of kibble. I decided to make them some cat soup with the freeze dried mix, too. They keep trying to dig into the boxes to get at the bags inside, so you’d think they’d be happy with that.

Nope.

They sniff at it. I sometimes see a cat taking a few licks, and that’s it.

If the cat soup is still there in the morning, I’ll just take the trays outside. The outside cats can’t get enough of the stuff. They’ll finish it off right away!

The inside cats are so spoiled that they can be fussy like that! 😄

Anyhow.

Tomorrow, it looks like we’ve got a rain free day. We should be able to get the corded electric chain saw out to clean up that big piece of maple tree that broke in the storm, It’s going to be cut to lengths for the fire pit. Maple is an excellent wood for cooking over. We’ll also need to go around the yard with the wagon or the wheelbarrow to pick up all the smaller branches that came down with the storms and high winds, before we can mow the lawns.

I’ve also got the first market day coming up soon, so I want to prepare for that, too. I wasn’t able to find the straight legged canopy/market tent, but we do have a splay legged one, so that’s what I’ll be using. I’ve also been crocheting small things to add to my inventory from when we used to do the markets every summer, back in the day. It should be interesting to see how the market goes. If it goes well, the large animal rescue will extend the market dates into August, too.

All in all, I’d say this is the best Canada Day we’ve had in a long time, simply because the entire family was able to get out, and my husband was able to see both is brother and sister again.

Being broken sucks, but when there are good days, we sure to appreciate them more for it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: peas, beans and summer squash

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Today was a combination of direct sowing and clean up in the garden. I’d gone out earlier to do finally clean up the cat mess in the dirt floor of the garage around my mother’s car, only to get rained on, which was fine. It meant I didn’t need to water, and we didn’t get the thunderstorms other areas were getting warnings for.

After the rains were done, I headed out again. First up was the newly reclaimed square raised bed.

I found I was able to lift the netting and secure it to itself with the ground staples to work under it. The netting was still a bit in the way, but nothing I couldn’t work around.

I set a collar in the middle of the bed, where I hope to transplant a winter squash at some point, but the beans went around the perimeter. I didn’t soak them first, so I made sure the furrow was thoroughly watered, and then watered some more. There weren’t a lot of seeds in the packet, having already used some in the high raised bed, but it’s a small bed so I ended up not using all of it.

Next, I decided to sow the super sugar snap peas I’d saved last year, in the remaining third of the chain link fence bed.

In the first image above, you can see how the elm seeds are germinating like crazy. I broke up the unplanted area, weeding out as many of the elm seedlings as I could, then gave a thorough watering before planting the peas. In this bed, there are two protective collars that were set up but never got anything planted in them, left for open space. The cold nights we’ve been having seems to have done in some of the melons and one of the winter squash, and none of the short season luffa have germinated, even with the protective collars. I’ll give it a bit more time before I decide if I will plant in those spaces again.

The next area to work on was the summer squash bed.

I had considered removing the protective collars but decided against it. I did move them off while weeding and thinning, but put them back again. I also ended up thinning by transplanting for the most part, shoving the thinned out seedlings in empty spaces in the wattle weave bed and in some of the retaining wall blocks that were empty.

Once the protective collars were all back in place, I grabbed straw and heavily mulched around them. Hopefully, it will be enough to keep the weeds from returning.

The next area to work on was the wattle weave bed. The netting I’d put over there originally had to be removed. At first, it would out fine, using the dollar store netting with channels to hold wire supports that I had replaced with my first hoop kit with fiberglass rods and plastic connectors. After a while, though, it got too low. The cats kept using it as a hammock, and the hoops were getting pushed lower and lower into the soil. I reset the hoops, setting the ends of the hoops inside the wattle weave. Unfortunately, the rods were thin enough that they slide through the wattle weave, flattening the netting over the peas and garlic. Cats lying on it would flatten them more. The netting also started lifting on the sides and cats would get under – then panic trying to get out. I found a substantial tear in the netting while I was removing it from the bed! It looks like we also lost a few pea plants, likely from cats simply lying on top of them.

After weeding the bed, I decided to use my remaining Pex pipe hoops, though I didn’t have enough of them for the space I wanted to cover, so one of the hoops is from what was used in the netting I’d removed.

These hoops are a lot higher, so there should be enough space for the dwarf peas and the garlic. I also had some used paracord available so I used that across the top of the hoops to keep things from sagging or shifting out of place. They’re mostly secured with zip ties, though some of the vertical posts in the wattle weave were too thick for the length of zip tied I had, and I ended up using wire twist ties, instead. With this netting and set up, I don’t think the cats will try to use it as a hammock anymore.

As for the hoop kit that was used here…

I will definitely not be buying this one again. Not only did the plastic connectors bend, but even some of the rod tips bent, too! I like the kit with the metal connectors and slightly longer rods better.

I got pretty much everything I wanted to get done today, since I don’t expect to get much done in the garden tomorrow, when we are planning to do combined birthday and Father’s day celebrating.

It’s past 9pm and still quite like out. I think I’ll head out for one more walkabout before heading to bed. A couple more days of this, and then the days will start getting shorter!

Good grief, this year is just flying by.

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