tomatoes

Our 2025 Garden analysis: transplants

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In my last post, I talked about the winter sowing we did. A definite head start, with a short growing season like ours. Still, things needed to be started indoors, too.

We “lost” a lot of beds that would have been available for transplanting to winter sowing, which limited how much we could start indoors. We also had some re-arrangements in the house that meant I could no longer use the living room, and the aquarium greenhouses, to start seeds indoors.

I had to use our basement.

Not the old basement, which is actually pretty warm. The “new” basement, which has more space, but is pretty darn chilly!

Here are a series of videos I made of our seed starting sessions, beginning with the things that needed the most time.

For winter squash, we went with four types. Baked Potato, Mashed Potato, Sunshine and Arikara – all new varieties for us. The Arikara squash are a rare variety, so I particularly wanted to grow them for seed.

Next on the list where peppers.

This year, we went with a Sweetie Snack Mix with orange, red and yellow mini bell peppers for my family to snack on. We’re still in the “let’s find a variety we really like” stage, and trying new things.

Pre-germinating seeds has been another game changer for us. We’ve had years were we’ve planted and replanted things several times before getting germination. This way, only seeds that have already germinated get planted, for a much higher success rate.

This year, we also got a portable greenhouse, so we could start taking the transplants outdoors earlier – mostly because of space issues – and to make it easier to harden them off when the time came.

In the following video, it first shows the kitchen garden winter sown bed getting its own little greenhouse cover, and then the assembled portable greenhouse.

By the end of it, you could already see we were having issues, as the cover started to tear, even as we were putting it on!

The next seeds to pre-germinate were tomatoes.

This year, after going over our seeds with my daughters, we went with four varieties. The Black Beauty and Chocolate Cherry, we’ve grown successfully before, and the family enjoys them. New was the Sub Arctic Plenty. These are a super short season variety that we could technically start outdoors, since they are supposed to mature in less than two months, but they got started indoors, too. Last of all were the Spoon tomatoes. Those were mostly for me, as they’re the only tomato I can eat fresh without gagging (I’ve since learned this is a reaction to one of the chemicals in tomatoes, much like with people who find cilantro tastes likes soap). The seeds have gotten very expensive, so I want to grow these specifically for seed saving, too.

Something I somehow did not get pictures of were the melons I started. I started pre-germinating those at the same time I potted up the pre-germinated tomato seeds.

I used up some older seeds and started Kaho and Cream of Saskatchewan melon. I also started older Sarah’s Choice melon and new Green Flesh Honeydew seeds. Last of all, I started some older Zucca melon seeds as well.

The Zucca melon and the Kaho watermelons didn’t make it. None germinated. The others did, though, and I was able to pot them up.

Starting seeds indoors in the cold and dark basement was a real challenge. A challenge made more difficult, as one of my aquarium lights, which are grow lights, since they were for aquarium plants, too, needed replacement bulbs. They need a size that I simply could not find locally, so I had to order them online. I was able to get them from Veseys, which also had them at a very reasonable price.

Still, with heat mats, lights and even a heater, we were able to manage it.

It took a while for some of them, but the pre-germinated winter squash seeds all made it. In fact, most of the seeds did really well. It took quite a long time for the eggplant and peppers to germinate – those were direct sown rather than pre-germinated. The colder temperatures did seem to set them back a fair bit.

I was more than happy to be able to get them out of the basement and into the portable greenhouse as soon as possible!

We were still having cold nights, though. I had a thermometer in there for a while and, in the morning, it was just as cold in the greenhouse as outside. To try and combat this, I dug out an old, black garbage can – one of many we’ve been finding around the property! – and set it up to be a heat sink – covered to make sure no critters fell in! The idea being that water inside the black container would absorb heat during the day, then slowly release it during the night.

I can’t really say it worked that well. Partly because it turned out to have a leak and, after several days, it would need to be refilled.

During the day, it got insanely hot in the greenhouse and, other than tying the door flap open, there’s no way to release the heat.

Yeah, the heat was off the scale on the thermometer in there! It got so hot that, on many days, I had to move the trays and bins of transplants outside and into the shade, so they wouldn’t cook.

Like the chitted potatoes, but that will be covered in another analysis post.

In the picture with the transplants, you can see that I did buy some this year. I decided not to start any herbs indoors – I just didn’t have the space for them, and my results have been hit and miss over the years. In the picture, I got on each of lemon thyme, English thyme, oregano, Greek oregano, lemon balm and basil. Later on, I also picked up two transplants of sage.

Then there was the wind.

Even with the structure being secured at each corner, we had one wind storm that was bad enough to knock it half over!

The old garden hose was draped over the top of the greenhouse to reduce flapping in the wind, which was an issue well before this particular wind storm knocked it over. I later set the bags of manure strategically on shelves to add more weight and keep it from being blown over again.

Thankfully, most of the transplants survived.

Eventually, they were being taken outside of the greenhouse to harden off, not just to keep them from being cooked. They recovered very well.

The one thing that wasn’t doing well was the luffa. Of the four seeds, three pre-germinated but only two survived to be transplanted into pots to live in the greenhouse for the summer.

As you can see in the slide show above, one of those surviving luffa was super tiny.

The stove pellets are something I like to add as a gentle mulch. When wet, the pellets expand into sawdust and are less likely to squish or smother young seedlings. They also hold moisture quite well. I find they’re also good to mulch in hard to reach areas. I can reach under leaves or between plants and drop a handful of pellets where it would be more difficult to use grass clippings, leaves or straw.

In the end, I found myself with what were probably the best transplants yet. It was looking to be a great start for transplants this year! Aside from the sad luffa, they were all strong and healthy plants, by the time they were ready to go into the garden.

Once the ground was warm enough.

Which took a long time, this year.

Winter Squash

This first slideshow is of three types of winter squash that were planted in one bed. I set protective collars around them to help with the still-coldish nights, but also to protect them from rolling cats, slugs and other critters.

I later set up a soaker hose but, in the end, I found it easier to use the protective collars to water them. Protective collars went around all the transplants except the peppers and eggplant.

With the drought conditions we had this year, I found that the collars really helped. I could water into a collar until it was full, then move on to the next one. By the time I finished watering from one end of the bed to the other, the first collars were drained of their water, and I would do it again. Most of the summer, I would water a bed in this way three times, twice a day. By the third pass, the water would finally be draining slightly slower. It was more efficient to water this way, than to water empty, mulch covered soil around the plants.

The Arikara squash had three survivors, and they went into their own little bed in the East yard.

Last year, in this bed, I had finally successfully grown Crespo squash. The vines got so huge, they even spread into the cherry tree suckers nearby and started climbing them! The bed got amended as much as I could, and I had confident expectations that another variety of squash would do well here again.

The three squash were transplanted with a cover of mosquito netting to keep the cats out. The netting was a bit too small, though, and didn’t cover it very well. Still, it was enough to protect the bed until things were big enough. I didn’t want it covered for too long, so the squash could be pollinated by insects. Later on, I would direct sow corn among them.

Melons and Spoon Tomatoes

Last year, we had brought the logs to frame a low raised bed, but didn’t get a chance to finish it. I was able to do that this spring, and that’s the bed that got the melons and Spoon tomatoes.

First, the melons.

I found some metal posts at the dollar store and first used those to create a trellis for the melons. In past years, they turned out to be far to heavy for the plastic netting I’d used, so I figured something stronger was in order!

In planting the Spoon tomatoes, I put a pair of bamboo stakes in each protective collar. Later, I added cross pieces to make a trellis to secure the Spoon tomatoes to, as I knew they could get quite tall and leggy.

I also direct sowed beans beside the tomatoes, and will talk about those in another post.

More Tomatoes

The other three varieties of tomatoes all went into one of the East yard garden beds.

In the first picture, you can see just how much growth there was with the winter sown bed in the background. That greenery is almost all lettuce!

You can also see that the Chinese elm seeds have started to drop.

The attempt at solarizing didn’t work. It did warm up the soil, though, and the weeds were much easier to pull at that size.

In the end, I had 9 Sub Acrtic Plenty, 5 chocolate cherry and 4 Black Beauty tomatoes to transplant.

I added a large, plastic coated metal plant stake into each protective collar, then wove in bamboo stakes to great a strong trellis. I knew the chocolate cherry could get quite tall. When we grew Black Beauty before, they didn’t get as tall, but were so heavy with tomatoes, I had to add more structural support to their trellis, because they were pulling it over! I wanted to make sure these had a good, strong frame to hold their weight.

Sweetie Snack Mix peppers and Turkish Orange eggplant

Next, the peppers and eggplant went into the wattle weave bed in the old kitchen garden.

The Sweetie Snack Mix peppers all fit into the short side of the L shaped bed. The Turkish Orange eggplant were planted around the tiny fruited strawberry plants that were already starting to bloom!

In cleaning one of the beds, I found some sort of flower. I decided to transplant it in this bed, too. Later, I added a second, different, flower of some type I found. Once they bloom, maybe next year, we’ll know what they are!

The peppers and eggplant all got wire tomato cages for support. Those came in handy, later, for other reasons!

The Herb Bed

Finally, there were the herbs.

This tiny bed had been prepped in the fall, but was pretty over grown already. You can see the walking onions outside the bed are doing really well already, too!

The cats also like to sit on top of the mesh, so before anything else, I added supports to it, then added a bamboo stake that was given to us, weaving it through the top. It was meant to keep the top from sagging under the weight of cats, but has turned out to be a fantastic handle.

This little bed is the perfect size for a few herbs. It even had room for a couple more.

Spur of the moment, I got some discounted sage and tucked them in as well.

So, everything went in and was looking good, though things were getting pretty late by the end of it. We had plenty of hot days in May, but the nights were too cold for the transplants, and the soil didn’t get much chance to warm up. I recall we even got a frost well past our old average last frost date. The last of our garden didn’t get in until the end of June.

It did not bode well for how the summer would go.

How things grew

Drought.

Heat waves.

Smoke.

A triple whammy that affected everything. I’m amazed we got anything at all.

Winter Squash

The winter squash was hit particularly hard, and not just by weather and smoke.

Those strong, healthy winter squash in the main garden area started blooming very quickly, even while still small. Just male flowers, but that’s not unusual.

This, however, was a first.

All the winter squash in that bed were hit with these tiny insects. Thrips, I was told they are. They were really bad. In the end, they were dealt with using a spray bottle with dish detergent in it, after washing most of them off with a hose.

None of the winter squash did well. After the first flowers appeared, they just stagnated. It was ages before they started blooming again. Plants that should have gotten big enough to completely fill and cover their beds barely covered their protective collars.

It took even more time before any female flowers showed up, and I made sure to hand pollinate as many as I could find. Usually, I had to open up a spent male flower to be able to do it, though sometimes, not even that was to be had.

By then, it was so late in the season, we started having to worry about cold nights. Not quite frost, yet, but cold enough to set them back. I really wanted to give what few squash had finally started to develop, the best chance they could. Thankfully, we did have a long and mild fall, but not mild enough for the squash.

I found a way to cover the bed.

We added jugs full of water to act as heat since, too.

It seemed to work.

It wasn’t much, but what we had were surviving.

We got times when the days would be cold enough that I didn’t uncover them at all during the day.

After a pretty severe frost, I finally decided to open it up and see what survived.

None of the Sunshine squash made it, but we did have some Baked Potato and Mashed Potato squash to harvest, including one decently large Baked Potato squash. That one was pretty close to the size they are supposed to be. We had something to harvest to try out, at least.

Then there was the Arikara squash.

They, too, stalled and stagnated. The corn that was planted with them, however, did better than the corn in the larger bed, so we could rule out soil issues. The above photo was taken after I’d salvaged the trellis from the melons to make a fence to keep critters from eating the corn before we could.

As with the other winter squash, the Arikara squash seemed to do well, then stalled, then started to grow again, then stalled.

When it got late enough to harvest the corn and pull the stalks, they had started to grow again, so I left the fencing.

In the above picture, you can see frost damage on the leaves – and flowers! There were even female flowers developing!

It was too late by then, but they continued to surprise me by starting to show new leaves and buds even after the entire plants looked like they had been killed off by frost.

Melons and Spoon tomatoes

Then there were the melons and Spoon tomatoes.

I took these pictures of progress on covering the paths with wood chips, but you can see the melon and Spoon tomato bed in both images.

The melons just… didn’t. Some tried to bloom, but the vines seemed to die back a bit, possibly from transplant shock, and then that was it. They never got better, even if a few did try to bloom.

The melons were a total loss.

The Spoon tomatoes, however, were a surprise.

The first surprise is that they stayed short and bushy. Every time I’ve grown them in the past, they got quite tall for such a small plant, and needed support. That’s why I made the bamboo stake trellis for them that I did. The absolutely stagnated, like everything else.

And yet, they were incredibly productive! I couldn’t believe how many tiny tomatoes we got off of these! Granted, they are so small that it takes about 50 or more to equal one small slicer tomato, but it was enough.

Yes, I did collect some just for seeds.

We also lost a lot of tiny tomatoes into the bed while picking them. When the frosts were coming, my daughters pulled them all, then all three of us sat together, picking off only the reddest tomatoes to keep, and the rest went onto the compost heap. Of the next couple of weeks, even with the frosts, I saw all those tiny green tomatoes turning red!

Not only will we probably have self seeded Spoon tomatoes in that bed, but in the compost pile, too!

More tomatoes

Then there were the other tomatoes.

*sigh*

One of the things I had to do was put netting around the bed.

The cats kept going in and trying to use is as a litter box.

I also interplanted them with beans as nitrogen fixers and a living mulch. Plus, some self seeded carrots showed up.

As with so much else in the garden, they did not do well. Everything stagnated, and nothing grew to their full potential.

The Black Beauty tomatoes were already something that takes a long time to ripen, but when we grew them before, they got large and bushy and were loaded with tomatoes. This time, we had hardly any show up.

The Chocolate Cherry did better, but still nothing close to when we grew them before.

The Sub Arctic Plenty barely grew at all. They did produce a few tomatoes, though.

Very few. These are a bush type, but they should have gotten much bigger and bushier, and produce more.

Having said that, we did eventually get Chocolate Cherry and Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes to harvest. Just a bit, here and there.

In the end, we had to harvest the last of everything before a frost hit, bringing them in to ripen indoors.

In the above first picture, there’s the last of the ripe Spoon tomatoes, along with the unripe tomatoes, that we brought in for our last real harvest. This included dry radish seed pods and Super Sugar Snap peas for seed saving.

Sweetie Snack Mix peppers and Turkish Orange eggplant

Then there were the peppers.

The plants actually did pretty well, though they didn’t get as large and bushy as they should have. One thing I did that I believe helped was prune the ornamental crab apple tree of branches overhanging that bed – discovering a whole bunch of hidden dead branches in the process. It took a very long time, but they did start producing, and we even harvested a couple of mostly ripe peppers off the plants.

When the cold nights and frosts threatened, the wire tomato cages allowed us to cover them with old bed sheets we repurposed for the garden.

The pepper plants handled the cold surprisingly well, though. As with the tomatoes, most of these got harvested while still green, and brought in to ripen indoors before the hard frosts hit.

The Turkish Orange eggplant also stagnated and took a long time to start producing fruit, so it was very late in the season before we started seeing orange among the green.

Some did fully ripen on the plants, though!

It was so late in the season, I was collecting carrot seeds, too!

As with the peppers, the last of them were harvested green and brought in to ripen indoors. The plants themselves were not at all cold hardy. Yet, they surprised me. Even after I cut their stems at soil level to more easily harvest the unripe eggplant, I later found that they were sending up new growth!

Over time, as they ripened, we were able to use the peppers and even had enough to dehydrate a small bag’s worth.

As for the eggplant, we tried them out and they were okay tasting. Not particularly tasty, compared to other varieties, but that could have been because of the difficult growing year. One of my daughters, however, found that after eating them, with the skins on, her lips went numb. She’s never had this reaction to eggplant before. There’s something in this variety that she’s allergic to!

The Herbs

This was absolutely a success!

In the first picture, you can see the herb bed in the background, still green and producing, after several frosts, while the other beds are being winter sown. Everything except the basil, which got killed off with the first light frost. It was fantastic being able to pop into the garden and harvest a few herbs, any time we needed.

We were still harvesting as needed until it finally was time to mulch the bed for the winter. Even then, I mulched around the plants first, and we kept using them, before fully mulching them before the snow hit. The thyme, oregano, lemon balm and sage are all herbs that, in milder climates, are perennials. With proper mulching, these might actually survive the winter.

For a time, it did seem that they were stagnating, too, but there was a different solution for that. They weren’t getting enough light. We’d pruned the ornamental crab apple tree at that corner before, but much of it was grown back. After cutting way a major branch, the herbs, and even the winter sown kitchen greens bed, suddenly were getting so much more light!

I’m glad I bought the transplants, though, rather than trying to start them myself indoors. I don’t think I would have had as much success, otherwise.

Now we have one last transplant to talk about.

The luffa.

*sigh*

As with everything else, they stagnated. One grew a fair bit more – enough to actually climb up the greenhouse structure, and even bloom.

The other one also, eventually, started to grow, but these were both failures. They’ve grown better for us, out in the open garden beds, than in the greenhouse!

Final Thoughts

Starting seeds in the basement: we have no choice on this one. In fact, we are currently working on making space and figuring out how to bring the aquarium greenhouses into the basement, so we have have better control over temperature and light. The problem is, the big tank and the shelf it’s on are quite large, and we aren’t sure how we can get it around the bottom of the stairs without breaking anything! Also, one of my heat mats died, so we’ll need to get another.

Pre-germination: no change there. We will continue to pre-germinate as many seeds as possible

The portable greenhouse: I really loved having this, but we have a major issue. By the end of the season, the winds basically tore it apart. Plus, we’ve had a couple of cats jump up onto the roof, adding more holes. The cover is completely toast. The frame it still good, though, so we will probably look into getting better quality greenhouse cover material and basically make a new cover for it. Currently, it’s covered with a large heavy duty tarp and being used as another winter shelter for the cats. With no door flap, because that is gone.

Winter Squash: we will always be growing winter squash of some kind. This year’s failure had to do with things out of our control. I’d like to try this year’s varieties again, but another time. We’ve got other varieties to try in 2026 already. I’m still looking to grow the rare Arikara squash for their seeds, too.

Melons: same as with the squash. Growing conditions just killed them off this year. We have new melon seeds and new varieties, so we will be growing melons again.

Tomatoes: My daughters have suggested not to grow Spoon tomatoes again. Too many tiny tomatoes to pick. 😁 We have new varieties to try, including another tiny variety 😄, so next year we will likely have another three or four varieties again. Just not a lot of each.

Peppers: my daughters suggested that we just grow the Sweet Chocolate peppers we grew a couple of years ago, as they were enjoyed. I did pick up a different variety noted for having thick walls, so we might be doing two varieties of pepper next year.

Eggplant: with a daughter that has a reaction when eating the Turkish Orange eggplant, we won’t be growing those again. I did, however, get a white variety to try next year.

Herbs: total win, here. We plant to have many more herbs in the old kitchen garden, and we do have seeds to start indoors, but buying transplants is always a good option, too. Plus, with this particular little bed, we might even have our first perennial herbs – if the heavy mulch helps them survive the winter!

Luffa: Yes, I will be trying luffa again! I am determined to grow sponges. We’ve come so close in the past!

What we could really use is a polytunnel or a more permanent greenhouse.

All in good time!

As for this year’s transplants, they started out strong once they got out of the basement. It just was such a difficult year. We had modest successes, at least, but nothing that would feed us for any length of time! As my SIL once said, of their own garden: if we relied on our garden to feed us, we’d starve! One of our goals, however, is to grow and store enough produce for 4 adults from harvest to harvest. We can’t afford years like this too many times!

We were not the only ones that has such a bad gardening year, of course. Lots of people on my gardening groups really struggled.

Hopefully, next year will be better.

We will, however, be learning a lot from this year, to help make that happen!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: some final harvests, and we do still have a “hot house”!

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Today was definitely on the chilly side. Even overnight; apparently, we dropped to 3C/37F last night, which is colder than was forecast. I’m glad we got that plastic over the winter squash!

We’re supposed to drop to 4C/39F tonight, which means we can expect it to get colder. I never removed the plastic cover on the winter squash, though. We got rain last night, which means the squash didn’t get any natural watering, but I do have the soaker hose still set up with them. I rarely used it, as filling their collars with water several times was more efficient. Today, however, I lifted one corner of the cover, hooked up the hose, then covered it again, letting the soaker hose run for an hour.

We did reach our expected high of 12C/54F this afternoon, so the girls and I took advantage of it to get some final harvests done on some things.

I started off in the East garden beds, pulling most of the corn (I left some stalks just to have a bit of protection for the bush beans). There were very few cobs to harvest and, as you can see, they were very small. I did find some yellow bush beans to harvest, though, then later found a few of the Royal Burgundy in the main garden area.

The chocolate cherry had the most to pick green. There were a few Black Beauties and Sub Arctic Plenty to pick. These are now sitting near the window in the cat free zone (aka, the living room) to ripen.

I also picked as many dried super sugar snap pea pods as I could find, as well as the dried radish seed pods. The girls, meanwhile, pulled all the spoon tomatoes, then sat with the plants to pick up the ripest ones. That took long enough that I finished first, then joined them. We made sure to not have any little stems on them before adding them to the bowl. It’s a lot more difficult to get those off if they’re left for later! With the Spoon tomatoes, we did NOT harvest the green ones. They’re so tiny, it really wasn’t worth doing it. So those went into the compost with the vines.

I suspect we’re going to have another year of compost tomatoes next year, and that most of them will be Spoon tomatoes!

Later on, before covering the eggplant and peppers for the night, I harvested a couple of kohl rabi and Turkish Orange eggplant. I have no idea if the eggplant is right, but at this point, it’s unlikely the greener ones will finish ripening, even with protective covers. The plants were already drooping from last night’s cold, in spite of the cover and bottles of hot water to help keep them a bit warmer. I chose the two that looked the most orange, but the rest still have green on them. I don’t think eggplant is something you can pick and will ripen indoors, like tomatoes and peppers can.

The kohl rabi I picked are pretty small, and there are just a few left, but I wanted to snack on them. That bed is almost done.

While the day was chilly, it was quite warm in the portable greenhouse! We have kept the “door” rolled up for quite some time but, yesterday, my daughter unrolled it half way and pulled the zippers down.

The thermometer in there was reading over 30C/86F, late this afternoon!

I’d moved our succulents and coffee plant into there yesterday evening. I’m glad I remembered to, as they likely would not have survived the night, but they would be very happy with the heat they got today! I’m hoping to keep those outdoors as long as possible, as they seem to be doing much better than in our living room.

In the next photo, you can see our first male luffa flower starting to bloom. They fell off when I moved a leaf to get the picture, but there were ants climbing around the stem and base of the flower. Which means, pollinators are still getting into the greenhouse. I still plan to hand pollinate, should the opportunity arise.

My daughter and I were checking on it when we spotted our first female flower buds starting to form. No visible baby luffa yet, they were were too small, but we knew they were female flowers, and those form in singles, while the male flowers form in clusters.

As of now, we no longer have any tomatoes in the garden. There are still bush beans, which will probably be killed off by the cold tonight. I’m debating when to just pick the green peppers and bring them in. I’m really surprised by how well the summer squash is holding out. I don’t expect things like the pumpkins, melons, bush beans, the stalled pole beans or sunflowers to survive tonight’s cold, but you never know. Things like the remaining radish plants that still have greener pods on them, the root vegetables, kohl rabi, chard, and even the tiny onions we’ve got growing in the old kitchen garden, can handle frost. We harvested some herbs at the last minute but I haven’t covered that bed with anything. The basil probably won’t make it, but I think the other herds might. We shall see in the morning.

Meanwhile, I’m now going to find some suitable containers, set up something to watch, then start opening up those dried pods and collect their seeds!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: late starts, and our largest harvest yet.

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With all the extra stuff that needed to be done yesterday, I did finally get to water the garden yesterday evening. The poor Turkish Orange eggplant were drooping so badly!

This morning, I made sure to give it another watering, before things got too hot – we’re supposed to break past 30C/86F, and the humidex will make it feel even hotter! Before I did, though, I checked on things and got a harvest done.

I’ve been hemming and hawing for a while now about the corn. Being a short season corn, with only 65 days to maturity, they should have been ready to harvest a while ago but – like everything else – they were way behind. In the process of taking a closer look, I found something else.

Our very first female Arikara squash flower buds. There had been only male flowers until now, but now that we’ve got some females about to bloom, there isn’t a male flower to be seen!

*sigh*

Today is the last day of August. We’ve got one more hot day, and then things are going to cool right down, with overnight temperatures low enough that we’ll need to cover some things.

While watering, I also spotted new female flowers on the Mashed Potato and Baked Potato squash. I’ll have to check them again this evening and see if they opened up and can be hand pollinated.

Why I bother, I have no idea. They won’t have enough time to mature, and they are in beds we won’t be able to cover.

Ah, well. You never know. It’s not like weather forecasts don’t constantly change!

I came prepared to do some harvesting, including stainless steel container for the Spoon tomatoes.

I decided to go ahead and harvest some of the corn. Since the stalks had one cob each, I pulled the entire stalk on the ones that looked ready enough. Handily, the beds are right next to the compost pile.

While I was picking beans and corn, I had company.

Sir Robin was absolutely fascinated by the reflections inside the stainless steel bowl and was busy trying to catch whatever he was seeing.

Then he… well… did this!

It turns out, he’s a perfect fit. 😄

In the next picture, you can see I got a whole bunch of tiny corn cobs. This is not a large cob variety of corn, but they should have been bigger than this. A few little ones had so few developed kernels on them, they weren’t work keeping. So I just ate them. 😄

It was SO nice to finally pick a decent amount of beans! Finally!

The one Sub Arctic Plenty tomato looks like it should have been picked earlier. I think the heat got to it a bit. There was a decent amount of chocolate cherry tomatoes to pick this time.

The carrots are from the bed that was sown in the spring, rather than the ones sown in the fall. With the Atomic Red ones, it’s still somewhat of a thinning by harvesting situation. The Uzbek Golden carrots were planted using home made seed tape, so spacing was not an issue.

I’m always amazed by the Royal Burgundy bush beans. We have only three surviving plants, and one of those got chomped by a deer. Yet even that one had beans to harvest today! The plants are still really prolific, considering how small they are and how delayed their growth has been.

It wasn’t until later, when I was watering the summer squash, that I realized I missed a zucchini! Just one, though I found a couple that I was able to hand pollinate.

I’m quite happy with this harvest. Sure, we’ve had better in previous years. A harvest like this was something I had picked every couple of days throughout the summer but, for how things have gone this year, this is pretty amazing!

Also, it took forever to pick all those little Spoon tomatoes. Aside from the plants being stunted and short this year, it was pretty painful to pick them from the low raised bed. It did help that I could put a foot on the log wall when I needed to, to take some of the pressure off. In theory, I should be squatting to pick them, but I can’t squat with the condition of my knees, so I’m having to bend over, instead.

Thankfully, I got the harvesting and watering done before it got too hot. The watering got interrupted for a while as I spent some time with my brother, going over my mother’s car. It’s going to need a new battery, and that tire was almost flat again. My brother will take care of a few things on it, and we will take care of emptying it out and getting it detailed, and then it’s going to be sold.

As much as it would be good to have a second vehicle again, we just don’t have the budget to insure and fuel two vehicles anymore – and I would really use the space the car it taking up in the garage! That addition was made to be a work/storage space. My mother’s car is just small enough to fit in there, as long as the passenger side it close enough to the wall, so the driver’s side door can be opened wide enough to squeeze out. I would rather store things like the lawn mowers, snow blowers and wood chipper in there, so that the other side they are stored in can be a work shop again. When I was building the cat isolation shelter, I had to keep our vehicle parked outside for months, so that I had the space to build in.

All in good time. There is no hurry, but it would be nice if we could sell it before the winter.

Winter is on my mind a lot these days, even when we’ve got heat like today!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: cold damage, and a morning harvest

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Last night, a daughter and I covered three areas in the garden.

I rigged a cage of sorts around the summer squash large enough to fit around the large leaves. Our covers are old sheets, and one was large enough to cover the summer squash, though nowhere near large enough to reach the ground. Which was okay, as we weren’t expecting actual frost.

The peppers and eggplant in the wattle weave garden all have their own wire tomato cages, so we just needed to use some clothespins to keep the covers from blowing away. The way the peppers are laid out in the shorter end of the L shaped bed allowed them to be covered more than the eggplant, which are in a longer row. The cloth was just barely long enough to reach from end to end. As a result, the first and last eggplants had less coverage, with one of them being at a more exposed end of the bed.

You can see there is some cold damage to the leaves.

Depending on what app I checked, we dropped to either 6C/43F or 5C/41F last night. It’s hard to say so soon, but it looks like the winter squash, which we have no way to cover, managed okay. In fact, just this evening, I spotted two female flowers in the Mashed Potato squash that I hand pollinated. I’m not sure why I’m bothering, but at least they’ll have a chance!

Our overnight temperatures are supposed to warm up for the next while, so we shouldn’t need to cover them again for some time. In fact, some of our daytime highs are supposed to get downright hot. By the second week of September, however, the long range forecast has changed again, and we’re not looking at dipping below freezing, right around our old average frost date. The new 30 year averages have been released, which suggested our growing season has actually increased by quite a bit, but I’m not counting on that. Based on the previous average frost dates, we’ve got a 99 day growing season, and I think that’s still the more accurate one. That’s the thing with averages. All it takes is one or two unusual years to shift things quite a bit, even if they’re now showing a range of dates, rather than a single date.

This morning, I harvested some potatoes and a few other things for a supper I was planning on.

The potatoes are what I found under a couple of plants. For all that the plants struggled this year and there isn’t a lot, we do have some really nice potatoes! I grabbed a couple more kohl rabi (not too many of those left now!), some Swiss Chard, thyme, oregano, sage and lemon balm, as well as some walking onion bulbils.

All of this, plus some carrots I still had in the fridge, a Sub Arctic Plenty tomato the family hadn’t eaten yet, an entire bulb of fresh garlic (about 6 large cloves), some stewing beef and chunks of sausage, got used to make an Instant Pot one pot meal.

I do like being able to set up either the Instant Pot or the Crockpot and just leave it. Today, it meant I could get a nap in! We’re a real messed up household right now. My husband’s dealing with a broken tooth on top of his constant back pain. My younger daughter had a rough night and has been caning it today – yet she still just came back from picking the Spoon tomatoes for me! My older daughter has been walloped by her PCOS again. I’m still dealing with a wonky hip, plus my injured left arm is still causing issues, but it’s starting to look like I’m the most able bodied person in the household again!

I had thought I could use the riding mower and mow the lawn today. After all the rain we’ve had, it actually needs it again. When I went to bed last night, the forecast was for sun and a few clouds for the next week. This morning, that changed to a light rain, pretty much all day! They’re still saying we’ll be getting sun with some clouds for at least a week, but who knows what we’ll actually get. I’m certainly not going to complain about more rain, though. We still need it so badly!

It does make things hard to plan around, though. There are things I’d like to get some work done on before I start making my monthly stock up shopping trips to the city, plus my follow up medical appointment about my arm, and so on. Things that need to be done when it’s dry, or at least not raining. I have this constant sense of running out of time.

Ah, well. It is what it is, and there’s only so much we can do. Having all four of us struggling with physical limitations at the time time, though, was not something I had ever expected when we moved out here, though!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: some firsts in the harvest, and weird corn

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Just a quick garden post to start with today.

While doing my rounds and checking in the garden, I found this strange thing in the corn.

I’ve never seen anything like it before. I was looking at it with my daughter later on and we were wondering about those yellow things near the tassels. As I was handling it, that widened yellow section snapped right off. The inside was like a sponge. Very odd!

I wasn’t expecting to harvest anything this morning, but I did end up gathering a few things.

There was one ripe Sub Arctic Plenty tomato, plus I saw some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes through the greenery that I went ahead and grabbed. Turned out only one of them was really ripe, but the others will ripen indoors. I could only find a couple of yellow bush beans to harvest.

I went ahead and harvested the largest of the kohlrabi, which all turned out to be purple Vienna. I was smart this time and used the loppers to cut them free, rather than a knife. One of them looks like a giant pine cone or something! I suspect that one will be more woody in texture.

After harvesting the kohlrabi, I decided to weed out the invading mint by harvesting it, too. I’m not sure what I want to do with it yet. I might just make a big pot of fresh mint tea.

Good for the digestion.

We had another rather cold night last night, with the low dropping below 10C/50F. Today’s high is expected to reach only 18C/64F – which is the perfect temperature, to me! It would be good for the garden, too, if it weren’t for the lows.

Over the next few days, things will get warmer, and possibly even reaching above 30C/86F, with lows above 20C/68F. Which will hopefully give the garden a chance to make up for the occasional cold night.

Looking at the long range forecast into September, the lows in the first couple of weeks look like we might be getting frost around the expected average of September 10. If not frost, then some things will at least need to be covered for the night.

I am beginning to suspect we will not only not have the long, mild fall this year I was hoping for, but possibly an early winter. For the past week or so, I’ve started to see more garter snakes on the roads.

They would normally start returning to their dens in September, not August.

Well, if things done get a chance to fully mature this year, I hope to at least be able to do the planned winter sowing, just before the ground freezes, so we can get a head start on next year. If how things worked out this year is any example, this may be the best way to ensure reliable harvests from year to year. We’ll also need to really focus on the raised bed covers, as they get built, so that we can use them to extend our growing season as much as possible.

It’s definitely been a mixed bag with how things are in the garden this year! I’m rather looking forward to after it’s all done, and I start doing my annual garden analysis posts.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: updates, radish pods, temporary trellis, and volunteers!

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I figured I should get some pictures of the East yard garden beds, now that they’ve got some fresh stove pellet sawdust mulch on them.

The beans with the tomatoes are doing really well. At first, it seems that one of the seeds had not germinated, but it did eventually show up. That makes for a 100% germination rate of these old seeds.

Too bad a cat dug one of them up. *sigh*

In the foreground of the first photo, you can even see some of the self-seeded carrots coming up!

In the next image, you can see the second planting of beans coming up in between the corn. Of the first planting, there ended up being a total of three, maybe four, that came up, and only one of them came up strong and healthy. Considering these are the same seeds in the same bed, it’s hard to know why the first sowing failed so badly.

The last image is of the Arikara squash bed – and the corn in there is so much bigger than the ones in the other bed!

I really like using the stove pellets to mulch around seedlings. The pellets land around the small plants, rather than on top of them. Then, after being watered, the pellets expand and fall apart, with the sawdust creating a nice, fairly thing, but really light, mulch. So far, it seems to be working out with anything I’ve used them around. It helps that the 40 pound bags are so cheap, and a little goes a surprisingly long way!

Once my rounds were done, my older daughter came out to help me remove the netting around the trellis bed. We had an unfortunate surprise while pulling it out, though. I’ve seen frogs – even large ones – squeeze through the rather fine mesh but, unfortunately, a garter snake didn’t make it. My daughter found it stuck around and under the corner of the bed. It hadn’t been dead for long, but long enough that a big beetle was chewing on its head. We had to cut a section of the netting off, because we couldn’t get it loose from the netting.

As my daughter said, it’ll be good when we no longer need to use netting! At least not this netting. It’s always a concern that a kitten or a bird will get caught in it. I never thought a garter snake would get caught!

We were being eaten alive by mosquitoes while we got the net down, stretched it out, folded it in half length wise, then started rolling it up on a bamboo stake for storage. They were after my daughter a lot more than me for some reason, so once the netting was rolled up enough, I sent her inside while I finished. It’s now tied off and in the garden shed. I made sure it was resting higher up in the shed so, hopefully, no critters will get into it.

That done, I brought out some of the trellis netting we’ve used in previous years. This netting has 4′ square spaces, making it easy to reach through to weed or harvest.

I started off by weaving a bamboo stake through one edge of the netting, where there is a pair of lines about a half inch apart, instead of 4 inches. I tied one end to the vertical post at the corner, then stretched out the netting flat before tying it to the next post. Then I added the next bamboo stake, weaving it into the netting and joining it to the first stake, before tying it off to the next couple of vertical supports, then did it again.

The netting ended on the third stake, so I added another piece of it to a fourth stake before joining the stakes and matching the netting up. That left a lot of excess netting at the end, but I just bunched that up and secured it while trying off the stake to the vertical.

I had woven in a plastic coated metal stake at each end of the bed to keep the netting straight. After the horizontal stakes were in place, I pushed the netting down so any excess was at ground level. I then took the garden stakes there were already in place to hold the protective netting that was there before, and used them in the trellis netting. Each one got woven vertically through the netting, then I used them to tighten things up a bit before pushing them into the ground. Where the two nets overlapped happened to be where there was already a longer bamboo stake, so I used that to join the sections together at the same time. Once all the stakes were woven through and pushed in the ground, I used ground staples to secure the netting to the soil, catching in the excess, to make it all fairly stretched out and tight.

I recall from using the netting before that the weight of plants climbing it can cause issues, so I added another level of horizontal bamboo stakes along the middle. These got tied to the vertical garden stakes, rather than the posts for the permanent trellis. This way, the netting is at a slight angle for the beans to climb.

Then it was time to weed.

This bed hasn’t been weeding since the protective netting was placed all around it. A lot of the self seeded onions I transplanted into rows were no longer visible.

I started weeding along the trellis side. I probably should have done it before the trellis net was added, but the mesh is open enough to reach through easily. The problem was more my hat constantly getting tangled in it!

As I was working my way along the beans, I spotted a little volunteer tomato plant! I remember finding volunteer tomatoes in this bed last year, too. I’m not sure where the seeds came from!

When I found one, I left it, thinking it would be fine were it was. Then I found another.

And another.

So I thought I would come back later and transplant them once I weeded and could see a space for them.

Then I found another.

And another.

And several others!

As I was working my way down the onion side of the bed and kept finding more even tiny tomato plants, I started pulling them up with the weeds, then transplanting them wherever I had enough space between the onions or the pumpkins. Then, when I finished weeding the bed, I went around the beans side to dig up the ones I’d left there and transplanted them.

By the time I was done, I counted 14 volunteer tomatoes.

Or 15.

I actually counted 13, first, after all the weeding and transplanting was done. Then noticed one I’d missed, so I counted again and got 15. Then I counted again, as I was scattering stove pellets around the bed and counted 14. I counted again and kept getting 14, so I either keep missing one, or I double counted one before.

Of course, it’s also possible I missed some volunteers when I went back to find and transplant them. If so, they’ll be easier to see, soon enough!

The last photo was taken after I’d scattered the stove pellets, but I forgot to take one after it was watered and the pellets were all expanded and breaking up.

This bed now has Red Noodle beans and Hopi Black Dye sunflowers along one side. On the other is onions from last year, going to seed, plus a whole bunch of tiny self seeded onions that I transplanted after clearing and preparing this bed for the beans and sunflowers. Then there is the pumpkins, and now the volunteer tomatoes.

This bed is going to look really interesting, once everything has reached maturity!

Today, I remembered to take some pictures of the radish seed pods that I’ve been snacking on.

The first three pictures are all from the same plant. What a difference! Some pods have just one pea-sized seed “bubble”. Others are longer, looking like they have a couple of seeds developing in them. Then there was a branch that has seed pods of all shapes and sizes!

The last pictures is of a different variety of radish in the winter sown East yard garden bed, with distinctive red lines on them. The seed mix had four different varieties of radishes in it, and I don’t know which is which, though I’m guessing the yellow variety is the one plant I’m seeing with yellow flowers.

I’m really happy with how the winter sowing experiment worked. The last time I tried it, I did the mild jug version, and it failed completely. Now I know that sowing directly into the beds, then heavily mulching, is the way to go for a lot of things. There are a few things I will now plan ahead to winter sow, but not as a mix. Beets, carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, spinach, and radishes for their pods. Also, that one variety of lettuce I planted was insanely prolific, and good at self seeding! I’ll have to be careful when collecting seeds this fall! Oh, the tiny bok choy worked, as did the chard – when they’re not being overwhelmed by other plants! There are also tiny onions all over, but they’re so far behind, I don’t expect we’ll be getting any bulb unions this year. Which is okay. We have the ones that are going to seed, so we can start onions indoors, using our own seeds, in January or February. The turnips also worked out much better than any other time we’ve tried them, so I think we will run through the varieties again to see which ones we like best.

I get the feeling we’ll be doing a lot of direct sowing in the fall from now on! Just in a more organized way. Peas are something else that are supposed to be good for winter sowing – we just have to make sure the bed they’re planted in doesn’t get destroyed by cats, to find out!

Obviously, tomato seeds survive the winter just fine. What variety they are, I have no idea, but if we’re going to winter sow tomatoes deliberately, they’ll have to be a very short season variety, if we’re going to get anything from them. If the Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes turn out to be a variety the family likes, they would be an ideal candidate. Their growing season is so short, we could actually direst sow in the fall, then again in the late spring, to extend the harvest, if we wanted to.

We just need to be sure we actually enjoy eating them, first.

It’s taking us years to get things worked out, with a couple of major set backs along the way, but those set backs have actually helped us in our decision making for the future. Like now knowing that parts of our garden area are prone to flooding during wet years! Having beds raised even just a few inches has saved come of our plantings already.

I do look forward to when we can make the low raised bed higher, though. Working on the bed this morning, while much improved from working at ground level, was still pretty painful! Plus, the lower the bed, the shorter the reach. Even though these beds are 4′ wide on the outside, it was still hard for me to reach the middle of the bed. With the high raised bed, I can reach clear across, if I wanted to, without difficulty.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the morning’s work.

My next garden project will be finally working on the old kitchen garden bed that will get wattle woven walls, but I’m going to have to put another job higher on the priority list. When going through the trail cam files this morning, the gate cam had over 100 files – and this camera is set to just take single still shots. Most of those were from the poplars coming up on the other side of the fence, blowing in the wind. Which is not really a step back, since some of them, at least, are of a size that could probably be used in the wattle weaving!

Lots to do, and the weather is finally cool enough to get to it. I’m loving every minute of it!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: developing tomatoes and peas

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The garden and future food forest got a thorough watering this morning, and I spotted some future harvests, too!

The first image is of the Spoon tomatoes in the main garden area. I’ve been seeing tiny tomatoes developing for a while now. I had expected them to get much taller before forming tomatoes – when we’ve grown these before, they always got really tall and lanky. This year, they seem to be staying short and bushy. I’m not bothering with pruning side branches away, after seeing some videos about that from Gardening in Canada, so I was expecting them to be bushier. These are still indeterminate tomatoes, though, which are more of a vining type. Which is why I made sure they had a nice, sturdy trellis to climb. We’re just into July, though, so maybe they’ll still get taller. We’ll see.

In the second image, we have our first sugar snap peas developing. There are quite a few more flowers blooming now, too. Most definitely the biggest, strongest and healthiest peas we’ve ever grown, this year. I don’t know if it’s the location, this year’s weather, or what, but I’ll take it!

The final photo is my morning surprise. There are Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes forming! Yes, these are super short season tomatoes but, like the Spoon tomatoes, the plants haven’t really grown much since being transplanted. The plants are so short, the developing tomatoes are inside the protective collars!

The Chocolate Cherry and Black Beauty tomatoes are getting taller, at least, and getting to the point that I’ll need to start clipping them to their supports, soon. Those, we’ve grown before, and I am expecting them to get quite a bit taller – but then, I was expecting the Spoon tomatoes to get quite a bit taller, too! There were flowers blooming on all the tomato varieties when I transplanted them, but I remember that the Black Beauties took a very long time to ripen. The plants had loads of tomatoes, and I remember they tended to crack and split a lot, long before we had any ripe enough to pick.

It should be interesting to see if there is any difference in how quickly they ripen, this time around.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: transplanting tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, and creating supports

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I am very happy to say that, as of today, ALL the transplants are in! There is just the final direct sowing to do, now.

The first transplants to get in where the tomatoes, and they all fit into one garden bed.

This bed had already been prepped, then covered with plastic, except for one end, where there had been onions gone to seed. They did not survive another winter, though.

The plastic didn’t solarize the weeds to death, but at least it kept most of the elm seeds off! The challenge was to get the plastic off again, without dumping them all onto the soil.

For a bed that had already been weeded before the plastic was laid down, there were a LOT of weeds to clear out. As I worked around the bed, I suddenly realized that I was pulling out baby carrots! Last year, we had a couple of Uzbek Golden Carrots bolt and go to seed, so I left them to it, so I could collect the seeds in the fall. When I went to gather them, though, the seed heads were shriveled and messed up looking, and there were no seeds to collect.

Looks like one of them did have seeds, after all!

There was no way they could be transplanted or anything like that, so away they went.

Once the bed was clear of weeds and roots, I finished off our last bag of manure into it, and worked that into the soil.

Then it was time to figure out where the tomatoes would go.

I used the collars (I found an extra “stash” of the water bottles I make the collars from in the basement, so I had plenty for the tomatoes) to figure out the spacing. There were four Black Beauty, four Chocolate Cherry and nine Sub Arctic Plenty.

We’ve grown the Black Beauty and Chocolate Cherry before, so I know what to expect with those. They both get quite tall, while the Black Beauty became really heavy. They had trellis supports, and I ended up having to add supports to the supports, to keep the whole thing from tipping over in the wind!

With that in mind, I made sure that these were on the north side of the bed, so they wouldn’t shade out other plants. So I set out eight collars on that side, with a space in the middle.

If I remember correctly, the Sub Arctic Plenty are a bush type tomato, so I don’t expect them to get tall. I’m thinking they will be more like the Forme de Couer tomatoes we grew last year. Each tomato plant had a pair of bamboo stakes to support it, and I’d used twine around the plants to secure them. The plants got so heavy with tomatoes, the supports started falling over, and some of the bamboo stakes even broke from the weight.

With that in mind, I planted the Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes along the south side of the bed, where they would get the most sunlight.

As with everything else, this bed was dry, dry, dry, so it got repeated waterings at every stage. I’d taken the cover off the other bed and every time I watered the tomato bed, I gave the other bed a gentle watering, too.

Once the tomatoes were in, it was time to give them support. For the verticals, I used 6′ plastic coated metal stakes. I’m glad I got more of these! Every collar got one of these tucked against one side. I used up all the stakes from last year, and used a couple of the new ones, to make one for every tomato plant.

Once those were in place, I used bamboo stakes to weave through the verticals. I did three horizontal rows on each side, and more can be added later, if need be. I then added some sticks to connect the two sides. There’s just a couple at the ends of one level, and a couple more further in, at another level. We may not need any more than that. We’ll see how things progress over time.

I did not have any clean grass clippings left for mulch, so I made use of the stove pellets we use for cat litter. I scattered them around, and even inside, the collars before giving the whole thing one final watering, to get the pellets to break up into sawdust.

I think it worked out rather well, and should be able to hold the weight of the tomatoes we can expect from these varieties,

Once this was done and cleaned up, and I took a break for lunch, it was time to work in the old kitchen garden. I decided it was time to remove the cover and netting from the greens bed, so the first thing to do was roll up the two sheets of netting, then take the cover off.

The kittens are going to miss their little mosquito netting hammocks!

The greens bed was really dry, so I spent time time watering it from the rain barrel – the rain we had was almost enough to refill it – and weeding. The spinach is bolting and we’ve decided to let them go to seed. I also found a second tiny bok choi that is staring to bloom.

That done, the herb bed got a watering, too, and then I did the pruning and clearing I mentioned in my earlier post, before I could even start on the wattle weave bed.

I decided that the Sweetie Snack Mix mini bell peppers would go in the short part of the L shaped bed, and the eggplant in the long section, among the strawberries.

The short side of the bed didn’t need a lot of weeding, and I was careful to work around the garlic that got missed and started growing this year. The old mulch got pushed up against the wattle weave sides, and the hard packed soil was broken up and fluffified. It was surprisingly hard packed. So I added some of the remaining rehydrated coconut coir over the area and worked that into the soil.

I laid the transplants out, in their cups, to figure out the bed way to space them. After that, it was the usual routine of wetting everything down, then again and again, in between every stage of transplanting. When the peppers were finally planted, I made sure to press down around each one, to create a shallow “bowl” to collect water and drain it towards the plant. Then each pepper plant got its own wire tomato cage to grow up into.

That done, it was time to work on the other side. It was a bit more challenging, working around the strawberries and onion survivors that are there. There was no sign of any of the chamomile self seeding, and the thyme that almost survived the winter was long dead, so that gave a bit of extra space. The mulch was moved aside, the compacted soil broken up, and the last of the coconut coir worked into the soil.

The transplants in their cups were laid out to figure out the spacing, along with the mystery flower. I decided to plant that at the very end of the bed, where it could stay permanently. If it survives! The flower did get a plastic collar, more to keep the cats from rolling on it.

Once the eggplant were in, each with their shallow “bowl” around them, they got their wire tomato cages set in place, and they were done!

Almost.

The mulch I’d moved aside was mostly old wood chips. I didn’t want to push that back. I did, however, have some leaf mulch that had been pulled off and set along the inside of the L shape, by the double lilac. It was old and dry, so I was able to crush handfuls of it, and shake it out over the transplants, to give the soil a light protection. More mulch can be added as the plants get bigger.

I forgot to take an “after” picture when I was done, so I went back out later, and got a picture of the entire finished bed, which is the last image in the above slide show.

That done, I went on to water the new trees in the fruit forest area, and the walnuts in the outer year. Still no sign of anything emerging where the seeds are planted, but the year old sapling is starting to get some bigger leaves on it.

I headed outside shortly after 7am to go my morning rounds and start on the garden. By the time I was done and heading back inside, it was past 8am. Taking into account stopping for breakfast and lunch, I got about 10 hours in the garden today!

Which is great, because all the transplants are IN!!!

Tomorrow, my main goal of the day is to get the third low raised bed near the compost rind cleaned up and planted with short season corn and yellow beans. After that, I want to work on the permanent trellis bed where I want to plant red noodle beans. That will make sure the trellis gets finished off, because they’re going to need something to climb!

Last of all, I will be clearing the bed at the chain like fence, salvage what I can find, replant with what I can manage, then cover it up again. Somehow. I like the netting that’s over it, but it really need something better than the wire to support it. I’m not even sure I can salvage the ones that cats have bent up!

I’ll figure it out.

Just another day or two, and the garden will be officially in!

Almost there!

On a completely different note, while I was working outside, my daughter let me know that the shop I took our push mower to had called and left a message. As expected they can’t find the part that’s needed. It’s simply not available, anywhere.

I was expecting this and had been thinking about it. I’d told them not to worry if they couldn’t find it; I’d just come pick it up. However, it would just end up as more junk here. So when I called them back and talked about it, I suggested they could keep the mower and use it for parts. If I ever buy a push mower again, it won’t be that brand, so it would be of no use to me. They, however, might be able to scavenge it if some other poor soul has the same brand of mower and needs a part that’s hard to find. They happily accepted the offer. Win, win!

Thankfully, my brother has provided us with mowers we can use! I was going to take my mother’s old mower in, but my brother thinks he can fix it himself, so we don’t even need to bring that in.

Oh, my goodness. It’s past midnight as I finish this! I need to get my butt into bed!

Have a good night!

The Re-Farmer

Grubling update, and a near disaster

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Before I get into today’s stock up shopping post, I wanted to share an update on the grublings. Here are some video clips I took just a little while ago.

In the first video, we have the three kittens that don’t really leave the cat cage. The calico has, and has even figured out how to get out at the bottom, rather than climb out the “doorway”.

In the second video, we have Brussel’s black and white, who insists on climbing up the inside of the cat cage to clamber out the second level height doorway. This, even though he knows there is a kitten sized opening under it. He’s even used it. He just prefers to climb! He not clambers out as soon as we go into the sun room and wanders about. We really need to watch our step!

Oh, and he has a name, now. Oofus The Brave. 😄

The next video is of another brave baby that is constantly leaving the cat cage and wandering around. These two are also very much into eating solid food, which I’m sure is giving Brussel a break!

We haven’t seen the third foundling in a while. I have to assume the mama found a “nest” somewhere, and her baby has stayed with her. The other two seem content to stay with Brussel.

Last of all are Caramels other two little grublings. They seem so small compared to the others!!! I do wish we had a small door into the cat house in that back wall. That way, we could check on the babies, but also reach in to give them wet cat food. Right now, the only way into the cat house is by lifting the roof, and it’s definitely showing its age when we do that!

On another note, we had a near disaster with our transplants yesterday. Our first time using the portable greenhouse, and we almost lost and entire bin of tomato seedlings!

It’s possible the bin was knocked over by a cat – the door was tied open to keep it from getting too hot inside. It was also really windy, and that bin had been tucked into a corner on a top shelf. It’s possible the wind pushed the plastic enough to knock the bin right off.

My daughter helped me gather up the soil and repot the seedlings that had fallen out entirely. Some cups had very little damage. One seedling was completely buried in soil and it took some careful searching by my daughter to spot it. We lost a fair bit of the soil, as there was no way to scoop it all up out of the grass without getting too much debris, but I’ve got that bucket of reconstituted coconut fibre in there, and we were able to use that to top up the cups.

Once these were repotted, everything went back into the old kitchen for the night. Before I headed out this morning, the greenhouse has warmed up enough to move them back in. I even left the doorway partially unzipped so it wouldn’t get too hot. Happily, everything was fine when I got back! It was also warm enough that I opened the door all the way and tied it off. It’s nice enough today that we don’t need to move them back into the old kitchen for quite a while. I still don’t dare leave them in there overnight.

It’s too early to tell with the potted up seedlings, but the squash transplants show significant improvement after just a couple of days in the greenhouse. In the basement, when the true leaves started coming in, they were pale and almost on the yellow side. They needed better light. Looking at them today, there is no sign of yellowing in the leaves, and the plants are even looking more robust and slightly bigger! The luffa were really struggling, and we lost one of the three seedlings. A second one was just not growing, and still had only its seed leaves. Now that they are in the greenhouse, the one that had its first true leaves is showing definite signs of growth, and I think I’m even seeing the beginnings of true leaves showing up in the other one! The melons are going to do a lot better in there, too. Even the chitting potatoes hadn’t been showing any real growth while in the basement, and a few pieces simply shriveled up. Now, they’re starting to show some signs of growth, too. It would have been so much better if we could have put them into the greenhouse earlier! Ah, well. It’s our first time using it, and I’m happy with it so far!

Looking forward to calling an early night tonight, after the transplants are brought back inside. Doing the stock up shopping always wipes me right out. I’m glad I got it done, though. I’ll post about that, soon – after I have the supper my daughter has made for me!

She’s such a sweetie.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: tomato seeds potted up, melon seeds pre-germinating

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Okay, so working on that pipe is not going to happen today. Pain levels are on the upswing and I know if I try to work on it now, I’ll mess myself up for days.

So, instead, I worked on garden stuff!

The tomato seeds were all showing radicals, with some even starting to show seed leaves. It was time to get them into the seed starting mix.

The first image has the Black Beauty on the left, Spoon tomatoes on the right. Those Spoon tomatoes were really doing well! It’s hard to see, but all the Black Beauty seeds had radicals showing.

The next image has the Sub Arctic Plenty on the right. As a short season variety, it’s no surprise that they germinated so quickly. On the left are the Chocolate Cherry. I was a bit surprised that these were the slowest to germinate. I would have expected the Black Beauty to take the longest, considering they have the longest growing season needed.

I had to moisten more seed starter mix for this job, and I made sure to use hot water for that. By the time the cells were filled and the seeds were being transferred out of their trays, the damp mix was still warm. Warmer than the damp paper towels the seeds were on. Now they’re in the tray along with the Turkish Orange eggplant (there’s 6 visible seedlings there), the luffa (all three have finally emerged) and sweet bell pepper mix (no sign of any of those, yet). The bottom of the tray got warm water, too – I wanted to make sure those square peat pots had plenty of moisture to absorb, so they don’t try out the seed starting mix.

That done, I went through my next batch of seeds and decided to go for it with the melons. The White Scallop seeds were set aside for now, as they can wait until May to be done. I got the containers all prepped and labeled ahead of time, and even got some markers labeled for when it’s time to put them into seed starting mix.

For the watermelon, I used my older Cream of Saskatchewan and Kaho seeds. The Sarah’s Choice melon seeds are also older, but the Green Flesh Honeydew packet is new seeds.

Then there are the Zucca melons. Which are the giants. These seeds, which I made a point of scarifying by scraping their edges with a utility knife, are also older seeds, so I made a point of choosing the plumpest, most solid feeling seeds. Which could have been any of them, really. They were in quite good shape. I started 4 seeds. These are the ones that started out so well last year, only to be decimated by slugs, so any transplants we get out of these are going to require extra protection.

Four seeds each was what I was shooting for; we over did it with melons last year, and I want to cut back. With the Cream of Saskatchewan, there were only 5 seeds left in the pack, so I set them all out. With the Kaho watermelon, there were only 3 seeds left in the pack, so I guess that balances things out!

They all got covered with dampened paper towel, and are now set up on top of the aquarium light fixture. At this stage, they don’t really need light, but they do need warmth. I didn’t want to set up the other heat mat yet, and the light fixture is ever so slightly warm. Not as warm as a heat mat, but warm enough. Once they germinate and get transferred into trays, they’ll get a heat mat. It should be interesting to see how many germinate. Especially with the older seeds.

After this, the next things we might start indoors are some herbs and a few back-up White Scallop squash. Those can be started towards the end of April or beginning of May. I’m hoping we’ll be able to start using the portable greenhouse at around the same time. It really depends on those overnight temperatures inside the greenhouse, as we have no way to heat it. We won’t have the option to use the sun room this year, as the space is pretty much all set up for the cats now!

Ah, well. We’ll figure it out.

It felt good to be able to do some garden related stuff on such a dreary day.

The Re-Farmer