tomatoes

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

Our 2025 Garden: pre-germinating tomatoes and monitoring temperatures

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So… this is me, taking a day of rest.

I started tomato seeds pre-germinating.

What I was really wanting to do what get the heater going in the basement for a while, and heaters aren’t supposed to be left unattended. I’m not one to just hand around watching videos on my phone, my hands are too messed up to do my usual things, like crochet, and my eyes are too messed up to read, so…

Tomatoes it is!

Towards the end of the video, I included pictures I took of the thermometer in the portable greenhouse today. I was really impressed!

While I was starting my morning rounds, it was about -6C/21F shortly after 8:30am outside. At that time of day, it is just starting to get out of the morning shade. The thermometer inside was about -2C/28F or so.

When I checked again before going inside, shortly before 9am, the outside temperature was much the same, but the thermometer had already warmed up 4 degrees to 2C/39F.

I came out in in the afternoon and, at roughly 1:15pm, it was about 27C/81F in there. By about 4:10pm, it had warmed up to about 38C/100F in there! At least, that’s what the thermometer read. It didn’t feel anywhere near that hot to me.

This would be a good place for a high/low thermometer!

On a completely different topic, I have potential good news.

I was able to get some photos and short video of Brussel and her babies that I sent to the cat lady, joking that if she sent them to her circle, maybe someone might be interested in adopting a kitten in 6 or 7 weeks.

Much to my shock, she responded almost right away, saying someone was interested in the little calico!

I won’t be holding my breath on that, considering how many times people have backed out at the last minute, but gosh, it would be awesome if the babies could be adopted out right away! There is some progress in socializing Brussel, too – I was actually able to sneak a pet as she was walking past me and she actually stopped and let me pet her more!

In other cat news, there’s potential good news about Button. The Cat Lady and her family have adopted him permanently and, while he started growing again and is at normal size now, after being treated for worms three times (!!!), he also became both blind and deaf. His eyes were permanently dilated. Well, they’ve taken him to a cat eye specialist, and they think it might be a hereditary type of glaucoma. He’s now getting treatment for it. She sent me a photo, and his pupils are almost normal again – you can see his electric blue irises again. It would be nice if he could regain at least some of his vision!

All in all, it’s been a very good day. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Analyzing our 2024 Garden: tomato and potato surprise

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For the next while, I’ll be going through my old posts and videos about our 2024 garden, looking at how things worked out, and use that information to decide what we will do in our 2025 garden.

As with so many other things in our garden this year, things did not go as planned or expected!

Tomatoes – how it started

This year, we were planning to cut down on how many tomatoes we were going to plant. I wanted a paste tomato for making sauces and, by request, we were going to have a few cherry type tomatoes for fresh eating. Two, maybe three, varieties.

For the cherry tomatoes, we had Chocolate Cherry and Black Cherry. For the paste tomato, I tried San Marzano this year, so see what the hype was all about.

Then we got free seeds with one of our orders, for Forme de Ceour tomatoes, a slicing tomato, so we had to try those!

Then there were the mystery compost ring tomatoes!

Oh, and a couple of mystery self seeded tomatoes. 😄

When starting them from seed indoors, I planted just a few seeds of of the cherry and slicing tomatoes, but a lot more of the paste tomatoes, with the expectation of processing and canning them.

The problem was, we had a very high germination rate, and I just can’t bear to toss away strong, healthy seedlings. Which means we ended up with considerably more transplants than intended.

And almost all of them survived transplanting!

How it went

Let’s start with

The Black Cherry tomatoes.

Those got transplanted into the wattle weave bed, along the back of the long side if the L shape. Each transplant had a protective collar round them, held in place with a pair of bamboo stakes that would later be used to support them as they grew.

The collars are something I will continue to do in the future. My husband goes through a lot of gallon jugs of distilled water for his CPAP humidifier, so we’ve got lots of them available. The tops and bottoms are removed, and they get placed over the transplant. This protects them from wind and, in the early parts of the season, from cold spring nights.

It also protected the transplants from rolling cats.

Bonus, the collars came it handy for spot watering. Fill the collars with water, and it slowly absorbed right at the base of the plants, rather than spreading across the garden bed.

The Black Cherry tomatoes – there were 7 of them – THRIVED!!! They got incredibly tall, growing up the stakes, then into the lilac branches above. They produced so many clusters of tomatoes, the branches couldn’t really hold the weight. We ended up having to find ways to add more support as they got bigger. It did take a long time for them to start ripening, though – again, due to our unfortunate spring weather.

The Forme de Ceour tomatoes

We ended up with 9 or 10 transplants. They went into the larger rectangular bed in the old kitchen garden, near the wattle weave bed, with the garlic down the middle, and Red Wethersfield onions interplanted with them.

They, too, absolutely thrived! I’m sure it helped that the sump pump hose was set to drain against the base of the bed, at the high end of the garden. With so much rain this spring, the pump was going off many times a day until well into late summer. Which means this bed got watered from below, frequently, and with our soil drainage, they would never had gotten over watered.

They were also quite prolific, and were among the first to start giving us ripe tomatoes, which my family assures me were quite delicious. They got so heavy with tomatoes that the weight actually broke some of the stakes supporting them!

The Chocolate Cherry tomatoes

There were 7 of these that got transplanted into the chimney block planters at the chain link fence, leaving one empty block for the Goldy zucchini to be planted in.

They grew pretty well, but did not thrive, like the others did. They produces lots of tomatoes, but they were slow to ripen, and few ripened at a time. I now think the chimney block planters themselves may be part of the problem.

The San Marzano tomatoes.

While we started the most of these from seed, an unfortunate falling tray accident did quite a bit of damage.

With the spring weather and inability to work on the main garden beds, I ended up planting the largest and strongest plants into the retaining wall chimney blocks. These blocks have mint in alternative blocks, with chives at one end, so they went into the open alternating blocks.

These did not do well. The plants never got particularly strong or healthy, and they produced few tomatoes.

When a bed was finally ready in the main garden area, the last transplants – the weakest ones – finally got into the ground.

They did fantastic. Even the one that was so spindly, I debated just tossing it rather than transplanting it, recovered and thrive!

I was never able to keep up with pruning these ones, so the side branches soon splayed out in all directions, so the point I was sure they had crushed most of the onions growing in between them. We ended up winding jute twine around the stems until we could lift them up and tie them off to their bamboo supports.

They did not, however start to ripen until very late, and when they did, we never got a lot of them. As a determinate variety, they should have all ripened pretty much at the same time, but they did not.

The Mystery Tomatoes

When harvesting potatoes from the bed along the other section of chain link fence, I uncovered a volunteer tomato. I ended up transplanting it to one end of the bed, so I could harvest the potatoes. It grew quite well, considering how late in the season it showed up. It produce large amounts of small tomatoes. Small enough that I don’t think they were survivors from when we planted a Mosaic Mix of cherry and grape tomatoes, but too big to be the Spoon tomatoes we’ve grown there in another year.

None of them ripened before frost.

Then there were the compost ring tomatoes!

These were from the seeds we dumped into the compost after processing last year’s harvest. The plants got massive. Eventually, I could see some that I could recognize as most likely from the Indigo Blue we grew last year. Others were clearly Roma VF.

But then there were the round ones. We never grew red tomatoes like that. I have no idea where they came from!

How it Ended

So.

Many.

Tomatoes.

With first frost approaching, my daughter and I harvested all the green tomatoes in one evening, along with the last of the winter squash.

Two of those bins are almost all San Marzano. One has Forme de Ceour on the bottom. Two are all the cherry tomatoes, plus a few Forme de Ceour as well – and the last of the patty pans, which you can see beside the cat.

The real surprise was the compost ring.

The plants were so strong and dense, I had to cut them away to reach the tomatoes – and there were so many tomatoes hidden under the foliage! The foliage was so dense, the tomatoes were actually looking blanched.

This bin is just from the compost ring. In one corner, you can see the dark Indigo Blues (most likely). The rest would be the Roma VV.

Those round tomatoes, though, with one looking quite red. I have no idea what they are. We never grew tomatoes like this. We haven’t even bought tomatoes like this in the store!

It’s been months since they were harvested, and we still have a box with ripening tomatoes in it, in the kitchen.

My tomato Conclusion

This was a successful year for most of the tomatoes. As with everything else, they were about a month behind, but most were very prolific.

I don’t know that we’ll be growing tomatoes next year, though.

I don’t eat fresh tomatoes. They make me gag. I can eat them after they’ve been processes, as long as they are a sauce or a paste. My family likes fresh tomatoes.

They are getting sick of tomatoes! 😄

When we weren’t able to process them fast enough, we put whole tomatoes into the freezer to be processed later.

We still have some from last year.

The problem is, they end up buried in the freezer and we don’t get to them.

Hopefully, this winter, we can make a project of processing them, if only to free up space in the freezer!

If we do grow any tomatoes next year, they will likely be another cherry type tomato, and not many of them. Or, we will get more volunteers!

The Potatoes

We bought two new varieties of tomatoes for this year. We got a couple of 3 pound bags of German Butterball, a later season variety, and Purple Caribe, and earlier season variety.

We ended up planting a third variety.

But first, we had to amend soil, to try and increase the acidity.

Once the soil was amended, there were only enough Purple Caribe to plant in 2/3rds of the bed. We still had some Red Thumb fingerlings from last year left – they were looking pretty wizened and sprouty by then! I planted the largest, healthiest looking ones, and the rest went into the compost ring.

It was a while before we were able to plant the German Butterball variety, in one of the low raised beds in the East yard.

How it went

With the Purple Caribe not well at all. About half of them never grew. We had a few plants that we could harvest, leaving two late bloomers to grow as long as possible. There were very few potatoes to harvest.

They were good potatoes, though.

The Red Thumb did much better, which was a real surprise. We got a decent harvest out of them, considering how few were planted.

The German Butterballs were left in the ground for as long as I felt we could get away with. I’m quite happy with the harvest I got out of them, too. We didn’t plant enough to keep for the winter, but we do still have some left now. We’re saving the last of them to have with our Christmas dinner.

Potato Conclusion and thoughts for next year

We are still in the “finding what kind we like” phase with potatoes. I would definitely be okay recommending the German Butterball potatoes. I wish I knew what happened with the Purple Caribe potatoes. This is the second time we’ve tried to grow a caribe type. The first time, the area we planted in got flooded. We had flooding this spring, but where the Purple Caribe failed would not have been affected by it. The Red Thumb fingerlings were a pleasant surprise. These are good potatoes and, clearly, do well when kept and used as a see potato. The only problem is, as a fingerling potato, they are harder to clean and peel for cooking, and just take so much longer to prepare because of that. So while they are good, I think we will move away from fingerling types completely.

Next year, I do want to grow potatoes again. I have just not decided on a variety yet, and am not even sure where I would grow them at this point.

All in all, though, I would consider the potatoes as successful this year, and am happy with what we got.

The Re-Farmer

First try with the Crespo squash!

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It has taken us four years to get to this point!

Four years of trying to grow Crespo squash before finally getting a real harvest out of it.

There were four harvestable squash out of the three vines, though the first one to develop sort of stagnated early on, stayed dark green and never got very big. In the photo above, you can see it in the front row, third from the left.

The largest squash with the damage visible is the big Crespo squash we wanted to make sure to cook first. However, with losing our hot water and having to constantly heat water for washing anything, we didn’t get to it until now.

It was remarkably easy to cut into! I expected to have a harder time of it.

The colour is not only quite a deep orangey-yellow, it actually stained my hands a bit, by the time I finished scooping out the insides and removing the seeds. Which suggests to me that this squash has quite a bit of beta carotene in it.

I cut it into quarters, then cut out the stem, which you can see in the next image, before putting it in the oven. Aside from adding a bit of water to the bottom of the pan, nothing else was done to it. I want to be able to give it a taste without any seasonings, first.

In the last image, you can see the seeds, washed and draining. There were very few seeds that got rejected. I supposed we could roast some for eating, but I don’t actually have any interest in doing that. Later, these seeds will be laid out on a parchment paper lined tray to dry out.

I set the oven for 350F for about an hour before stabbing the pieces with a fork, then adding another 45 minutes. As I write this, they are soft and appear to be cooked through. I’ve shut off the oven and left them in there, just in case there were some undercooked parts I couldn’t reach.

Today, I was actually planning to get some stuff done outside but, while it is warmer than yesterday, it has turned out to be a rainy day.

Sort of.

It’s been raining off and on since last night. It’s supposed to start raining for real at about 7pm and continue raining through to about 10am tomorrow morning. Since some of what I hoped to get done today involved power tools, I decided to postpone it!

There is a bit of concern about the winter sown garden beds. When the seeds were sown, the beds were completely dry and did not get any watering. It’s cool enough that it’s unlikely they will germinate, but if they get wet and don’t germinate, the seeds may rot. If they get wet and do germinate, they may freeze. The heavy leaf mulch, however, should protect them from both possibilities.

I hope.

So today I’m focusing on indoor stuff, but still garden related. We had a box of San Marzano tomatoes in the living room that were fully ripe. Those are now soaking in vinegar water. Later on, I’ll remove the tops and tails, and get them in the crock pot for the night to make tomato sauce. There might be room enough to use some of the whole tomatoes we have in the freezer right now.

Once the oven is free, we have lots of peppers that have ripened and are starting to dehydrate in the living room. Those will get set onto trays to dehydrate fully and faster in the oven. Except, maybe, the hot peppers. There are so many of them. We might instead string them up and hang them above a heat vent, instead.

There was also a large colander in the old kitchen, full of tomatoes that were further along in ripening. Every now and then, I go through the bins and pull out the ones that are blushing and set them in the colander until it’s full. I went through those, setting more San Marzano, and a few mystery compost tomatoes, into a bin for the living room to continue ripening. The cherry tomatoes went into a small colander for general use and snacking in the kitchen. These are the Chocolate and Black Cherry tomatoes in there, a lot of which still need more time to ripen, plus a couple of little red tomatoes from the mystery plant that self seeded among the Red Thumb potatoes. When we harvested the tomatoes before our first frost, that plant had many small tomatoes on it, all still very green. I’m glad to see that they are actually ripening now. Judging from the colour and the size, I am guessing it is from the Mosaic Medley mix we grew in that bed a few years ago. That was a mix of cherry and grape tomatoes. These are so small, though, and with how the clusters were formed, I’m tempted to think they might be Spoon tomatoes. They’re big for Spoon tomatoes, but as something that has self seeded, it’s possible they reached a size they might not reach when grown as transplants.

Well, whatever they are, they are a tomato, and my family likes tomatoes, whatever the variety!

Aside from all of this, I hope to take advantage of today being an indoor day and start editing a couple of videos, including the October garden tour video using footage I recorded on Nov. 1. 😄

But first, lunch – and maybe a taste of that Crespo squash!

The Re-Farmer

Processing

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Well, we may not have had many yellow peppers in the garden, but now that they are ripening in the living room, we have a LOT of yellow peppers!

I neglected to take any photos, though, so here is a WordPress AI generated version…

I specifically told the AI generator “long slices”, but it gave me rounds, instead. 😄

There are two types of yellow peppers in the short season collection we got. Yellow and orangey-yellow. Once I had them under the kitchen like while washing them, I could finally tell the difference!

I prepped and sliced enough yellow peppers, plus I think one or two orangey-yellow ones, to fill a gallon size freezer bag.

The remaining orangey-yellow ones were starting to dehydrate all on their own, so I sliced those ones super thin and set them to dehydrate in the oven. That got me three 9×13 baking pans, which required a bit of creativity to fit on the two oven racks. I’ve got a tray meant to cook vegetables on the BBQ, so the bottom is perforated, to use as a spacer between two pans on top of each other.

There were other purple and Sweet Chocolate peppers that could have been processed, but I left those for later and got almost all the tomatoes that are in the living room. A few ended up in the compost, as they were over ripe. The rest got washed, then topped and tailed. I was able to fill one gallon size freezer bag with San Marzano, plus some Roma VF (I assume) compost pile tomatoes. Another gallon bag got a mix of the Forme de Coure and what are probably all Black Cherry tomatoes. There might be some Chocolate Cherry tomatoes mixed in there. Once off the vines, I can’t tell them apart.

The bags all went into the small freezer for now. The chest freezer has bins and boxes of ripening tomatoes covering it right now. I go through them regularly and pull out the ones that are ripening the fastest, and move them into my harvesting colander. Once that’s full, they get transferred to the living room to continue ripening.

Eventually, we will be able to combine the contents of bins so that there’s fewer of them, and have easier access to the chest freezer. Moving a bin or two is not an issue. Moving five bins, a box and a colander to get into the freezer it something else entirely!

All in all, that’s a pretty good haul to quickly process, considering these are all things that were harvested early, before they got hit with frost. There are many more tomatoes ripening, including the ones from the compost pile that look like Indigo Blue Chocolate, though I suppose some might be Black Beauties, from last year’s garden. The basin of unripe hot peppers in the living room is looking more and more red. There are still a lot of green sweet peppers, some of which I can tell are the purple Dragonfly peppers, with a very few Purple Beauty left, and others are the brown Sweet Chocolate peppers. The remaining ones, I expect to turn yellow or orangey-yellow.

So we will have plenty more vegetables to process for the winter over the next while.

Tomorrow we are supposed to reach a high of 19C/66F and, more importantly, we are NOT expected to have high winds again. Since there is nothing more we can do in the bathroom until the sealant has finished curing, that means I should be able to finally get outside and clean up in the garden, and prepare beds for fall planting. It’s time to get garlic planted – we will be using our own garlic from this year’s harvest – and I want to try fall sowing seeds that will hopefully survive our winter and give us an early start in next year’s garden. At this point, looking at the monthly forecast, it seems we will be in for a relatively mild winter. I certainly hope so. We’re supposed to have a La Nińa winter this year which, for our region, usually results in bitterly cold temperatures.

I could really do without that.

While I can no longer tolerate heat like I used to, I find I am absolutely dreading the cold of winter more and more, every year. Especially this year, as we have not been able to slowly stock up quite as much as we have in the past, on the assumption that we will get snowed in or whatever, for weeks or even months again. Everything is so much more expensive now, it’s getting harder and harder to get any extras at all.

So the more we can process from our garden and put up for the winter, the better!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a surprise harvest! Plus updates

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Okay, so the garden is pretty much done.

The red onions have been left, since they can handle the cold nights, and still aren’t quite ready for picking. With various distractions related to our plumbing issues, the potatoes still need to be harvested. The sunchokes are still green and growing, so they won’t be harvested for a while. Mostly, the beds are ready for winter clean up – once we can get to them!

What I wasn’t expecting was this.

That’s right. I harvested tomatoes this morning!

When my daughter harvested this bed, she left behind the really tiny tomatoes, or the damaged ones. However, as more of the foliage died back, I could see some green tomatoes that looked fine, and seemed to have gotten missed. The foliage in this bed was so dense, that’s no surprise. I basically ignored them, though, figuring they were frost damaged by then.

This morning I could see they had continued to ripen! Hidden in the middle like that, it seems they got protected from our first frost and following cold nights, too.

So I picked them and added them to the bins and boxes of green tomatoes in the old kitchen to ripen.

We have quite a few things slowly ripening. Yesterday, my older daughter grabbed all the ripe hot peppers, cleaned and prepped them, then set them in the oven to dehydrate. Eventually, they will be made into a powder.

Now… my older daughter is pretty much the only one that can eat these. My husband used to love spicy food, but the medications he’s on have really messed with his ability to taste or tolerate foods. My younger daughter can handle a bit of heat, but not as much. My, I can’t tolerate spicy food at all.

So she has taken over preparing the hot peppers as they ripen and, once dehydrated and powdered, she will have enough to last a very long time! We won’t need to grow hot peppers for some years. 😁

Now, these are hot peppers, but not exceptionally hot peppers. They’re not the kind where you need to wear gloves or anything.

Normally.

It turns out that, after processing about a dozen remarkably large hot peppers, that becomes a problem.

Not right away, though. My daughter had no issues at all while working on them. She was careful about washing her hands before touching things, too.

Then she made herself a sandwich.

The pepper oils from her hands – even after being washed – got onto her sandwich, and it was so spicy, it started to burn her mouth. She ended up having to drink straight cream to reduce the pain!

Then her fingers started to burn.

It happened slowly, over several hours, but eventually she could barely even use one hand.

She sprung for take out for supper, so I went into town to pick up the food. By the time I got back and she regaled me on what had happened, I could see the tips of all her fingers were bright red!

Lesson learned. Even mildly hot peppers can become a problem, if you’re processing enough of them at once!

Gloves needed!

Meanwhile, even her lungs were starting to burn!

These were being dehydrated in the oven. We had the kitchen window open and the fan running. The house smelled amazing, but we still had to stay out of the kitchen as much as possible, so as not to breathe too many of the hot pepper fumes. Even the cats were staying out of the kitchen!

Speaking of cats, they added another distraction. My younger daughter tried to go to bed early, only to discover a cat with a messy butt made a mess on her bed. She had to wash all her bedding.

We had been working to clear my husband’s bedroom, and started doing his laundry, too, so that was already set up (yes, we are still running the hose out the window for the washing machine to drain into the yard). The girls were going to start the laundry and my younger daughter was going to use her sister’s bed for the night.

Which is when they discovered more mess in the middled of her sheets, from a cat or cats that squirmed its way under her covers.

So they were both up all night, doing load after load of laundry. Some things needed to be washed twice, just because of their size. They didn’t get to bed until past 6am.

We’ll be more laundry today, too. My husband has set up his CPAP in my bedroom so he could sleep with me.

Sleeping in the same bed as my husband! Imagine that. 😄

That will give us a chance to strip his hospital bed and wash things like his pillows and body pillows, along with the extra blankets he puts under his sheets. The mattress for the hospital bed has a sort of thick vinyl instead of fabric, so it’s easier to clean. Unfortunately, it doesn’t breath, and causes my husband to sweat. The extra layers under the sheets help prevent that.

I did finally find an XL twin fitted sheet on Amazon for his mattress, which is several inches longer than a standard twin mattress. We’ve confirmed the new sheet fits properly, so we’ll need to get a few more. For now, though, he has only one fitted sheet that actually fits the mattress on his hospital bed.

We’ve been working most of yesterday on clearing his room so we can access the corner behind the plumbing for the tub. This is where we will be cutting an access panel, but it’s still covered by the wardrobe. My husband doesn’t really use the wardrobe, and the girls have said they’ll take it upstairs – but they will need to move out their little bar fridge for the space. They don’t use that much anymore, so we were already talking about moving it to my room. I’ll have to find space for that, though.

Once we get that figured out, we can start moving things around but, for now, we still have one more corner of husband’s room to clear and clean, where has his own tiny fridge to store his injections. This will give us the opportunity to defrost and clean it, too, then move it to where it will be more easily accessible.

The bonus of moving the girls’ fridge out from upstairs, to make room for the wardrobe, is that it frees up a grounded outlet.

That means they can get an air conditioner and actually be able to plug it in! The upstairs gets so insanely hot in the summer, they really need one up there.

That will not happen for a while, though, since my daughter will be paying for what we end up needing to get the bathroom walls repaired.

So all of this rearranging and cleaning and figuring things out is happening at the same time – all because the hot water tap in the tub broke.

There is nothing we can do in the bathroom itself right now. The fan it still running to dry the rotted aspenite. My brother will be looking at it when he comes out on Friday evening (today is Wednesday).

We will have to pull out the tub to be able to find and cut away all the rot, and I’m not even sure how that will be done. It does seem like the tub is in two parts; the tub itself, resting on top of a flat panel that hides the underside of the tub.

Well, we’ll find out when the time comes.

Until then, we’ll just take advantage of the disaster and do the clearing, cleaning and rearranging we need to do, anyways.

On the one hand, I’m glad this has happened now, and not in the middle of winter.

On the other, this keeps me from getting outside stuff done, and from finishing the cat isolation shelter!

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some of that done today, since there’s only so much I can do in my husband’s bedroom before I need my daughters to help out. It’s so close to being finished, too!

Ah, well. It is was it is.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer