Of the four types of winter squash we have this year, there is one type that I specifically want to save seeds for. That is the Arikara squash, which was listed as extremely rare.
That meant they needed to be planted well away from the other squash, to avoid cross pollination.
I decided to put them in the new little bed I successfully grew Crespo squash in, last year.
As you can see in the first image, we have been rather behind on clearing things lately! My daughter was able to do the main lawn mowing, but this area needs the weed trimmer.
So that was my first step. I cleared around all the beds and, since there are two more that need to be cleared for planting soon. One of them will have tomatoes in it. The other will have direct seeded corn and beans.
The small bed was fairly compacted, so it took a while to loosen the soil enough with the garden fork, just to be able to pull the weeds. That one little space, and I was pulling the usual crab grass, creeping Charlie, dandelions, white clover and thistle. There was also lambs quarter and a weed with leaves I keep mistaking for while strawberry, until they get bigger.
There was one surprise in there. I pulled up something with very distinctive spike leaves of a flower that look like a small version of the irises we have growing near the house. I set it aside by the transplants, with the roots in water, until I decide where to transplant it. I’m very curious as to what it is!
One the soil was clear of weeds and the clumps broken up, I added some manure and mixed that in thorough.
There are only three Arikara squash transplants, and I had considered planting something with them, like I did with the Crespo squash last year. In the end, I decided against it.
As we are expecting a dry year, the bed got a lot of watering. It was incredibly dry, so that took a while. Once the soil was damp more than just on to top, I set the transplants with collars around them, then created trenches around the collars, to collect as much water towards the roots as possible. The collars do a good job of holding the water and allowing it to slowly seep down.
I had a bin nearby, with grass clippings for mulch, from last year. It turned out to be exactly enough to thoroughly mulch the entire bed around the collars. Earlier, I had cut the sets of 3′ plastic coated metal plant stakes in half, and set one in each corner. I had pipe for hoops I intended to set in an X over the bed, but they are 5′ long, and that’s not long enough to reach from corner to corner. So I set the hoops at the ends.
I had a piece of mosquito netting to put over the hoops, but I didn’t want it to come in contact with the squash plants – and they’re already pretty big! So I joined the hoops with three 4′ plant stakes. The one in the middle hangs under the hoops, but I put the ones on the sides on top of the hoops, to keep the mesh off the leaves.
The netting was more than long enough, but not quite wide enough. The ends got rolled up in more plant stakes and pinned down with ground staples. I could just reach the top of the mulch on the sides, and those are secured with a couple more ground staples and rocks.
This covering is temporary. Once the transplants are well established and bigger, I’ll remove the cover. When they start blooming, I’ll be hand pollinating them as well as letting the insects do the job, just to be on the safe side!
By the time I finished here, it was 26C/79F, with the humidex putting it at 32C/90F. It was also coming up on noon, and my daughter was sweetheart and had lunch ready for me. She has been feeling quite sick today, and has spent much of the day in bed, yet she still made me both lunch and supper!
I am so grateful for that AC my brother set up for us in the living room. It was downright heavenly to take a break and cool down!
I still had a lot of work to do, though, so I was soon back out. By this time, I knew I wasn’t going to get all the transplants in, but I needed to at least get the rest of the winter squash done.
Yeah. That one turned out to be a big job, too. I did, however, have a bonus for the day!
It’s hard to be having a heat wave like we are now, and have to think about last frost dates before planting things! Our average last frost date was June 2, but this year it’s listed as a range from May 28-31.
On the one hand, I’ve been eyeballing the long range forecasts. They tend to change often, sometimes multiple times in a day, but we are no longer having predictions of overnight temperatures below freezing. So far, nothing lower than 5C/41F in the overnight lows expected in early June.
On the other hand, I’ve been eyeballing the dandelions. If you’ve been following Maritime Gardening, you may have heard his way of using the stages of dandelions to judge when to plant things. When the greens emerge, the soil is warm enough to plant cold hardy seeds like peas and spinach. When the flowers are blooming, the soil is warm enough to plant things that need a bit more warmth, but can still handle a night of frost, like brassicas. When the dandelions go to seed, the soil is warm enough to plant everything else.
Our dandelions have been blooming for a while, and lots are starting to go to seed.
So I should be able to direct sow or transplant pretty much everything right now, but I still want to be able to cover things if we do get a frost.
Since I didn’t want to render myself immobile again, today I decided to work on the tiny raised bed garden and transplant the herbs I bought a few weeks back.
This bed got prepped in the fall, so there wasn’t much it needed – other than finally reinforcing the cover that cats keep lying on!
I took the cover over to the garage, along with some leftover pieces of hula hoop, which is what is already being used in the cover, to add to it. I got one installed, but when I tried to set up the other, it kept snapping on me. Thankfully, I had a piece of pipe of some kind my brother had passed on to me, along with lumber, shelving and numerous other small items he knew I would find uses for. It was perfect for the job, and I still have some left over. There was also a short bamboo garden stake that I wove through the chicken wire across the top. That will both support the wire (and the weight of cats) and make it easier to carry the cover.
Then it was time to ready the soil. It had a grass clipping mulch that was set aside, then I used my little hand cultivator to loosen the soil so I could better remove the rhizomes. Unfortunately, I was also finding tree roots; this time, from the nearby ornamental crab apple. I think there’s actually a large root running under the bed, but if there is, it’s deep enough it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s the little capillary roots that can become an issue!
After a few years of amending this bed, the soil was really nice and fluffy, already. I did amend it more with the rehydrated coconut coir, plus some manure. The soil was insanely dry, so I made sure to give it a very thorough watering once the amendments were mixed in.
I then set the pots in and moved them around until I figured out where the herbs would go. I’ve got English Thyme and Golden Yellow Thyme that are kitty corner from each other. The other corners have oregano and Greek oregano. In the middle, closer to the walking onions, is lemon balm, with the basil across from it. Once transplanted, they got another watering.
After they were transplanted, I carefully scattered the mulch around them, making sure it was under their leaves and stems.
Then it got another watering.
Last of all, the cover was set in place. No kitties will be rolling around on or digging these up!
The next area I plan to work on is the wattle weave bed. The tiny strawberries in there are blooming up a store right now, so I’m not going to transplant them until the fall. They don’t take up a lot of space. I think there is enough room to plant both the eggplants and peppers in this bed. We’ve grown both in there before, and they did surprisingly well, so that should work out.
We’re going into the city for our first stock up shopping trip tomorrow, though, so that won’t happen for a couple of days. The transplants are all looking really strong and healthy this year – even the ones that got dumped upside down when the wind knocked the greenhouse half over! If things work out, we should be able to get all the transplanting and direct sowing done over the next week or two. I’ll be quite happy when that is all finally done!
I have to keep telling myself. It’s still only May. With the weather we’ve been having, it feels like I’m behind on things, but I’m actually ahead!
When it comes to deciding what to plant each year, I like to pick at least one thing to grow for fun.
For the past few years, one of those things has been luffa.
While these are supposed to be edible in their young stages, what I’m after is the fully mature sponge stage – and the seeds that come with it! Which needs an insanely long growing season we don’t have, so they have to be started indoors quite early. Then they have to survive transplanting, and have a the hotter temperatures they prefer, and… and… and…
Not an easy thing to grow in our climate and short growing season, but the challenge is the fun of trying!
So far, we’ve had only one year where we almost had a sponge, but it was too underdeveloped when it got hit by our first frost.
This year, I’m planning something different. They will be grown in pots, in our portable greenhouse.
I set 4 older seeds to pre-germinate, got three seedlings, one of which died off. A second one just sort of stopped growing, and a third seemed to do all right. Especially once in the portable greenhouse.
Then we got that day of high winds that actually blew the greenhouse askew and knocked all bins of transplants to the ground.
Amazingly, not only did the big one survive, but the little one I though was going to die ended up finally sprouting true leaves!
With our overnight temperatures and the protection of the greenhouse, I decided it was safe to pot them up and set them to where they will spend the summer.
I had three pots with soil that needed refreshing, so the first thing I did was empty them into the wheelbarrow.
Next I added some cow manure and a decent amount of a rehydrated brick of coconut fibre, which you can see at the top of the pile in the wheelbarrow.
One of the trays of chitted potatoes had spilled much of its stove pellets that I was using to absorb moisture from the cut edges of the potatoes. A lot of those pellets ended up on one of the pots below, and I just left them, so that would add some sawdust to the mix as well.
The largest pot did not have any drainage holes, and I ended up making a nail hole a couple of inches from the top, so rainwater could drain out rather than drowning the lemongrass that was growing in it at the time. The bottom of that pot had a layer of grass clippings added, before the soil. When I dumped that pot out, I found the grass layer on the bottom was still there, and absolutely matted with roots. The roots were dead, of course. I pulled those out while I was mixing the soil amendments together as best I could, then watered the whole thing down.
I left that for the dry stuff, like the stove pellets and manure, to absorb the water, then scrubbed out all three pots.
I have only two luffa seedlings, so I decided to just refill the two matching pots. They have large drainage holes, and there are no trays for them, so I took the root/grass clipping mats I’d set aside and used those to line the bottom of the pots, so keep the soil from getting washed out the bottom.
I also prepared the spaced for them in the greenhouse. I expect these to climb the frame. I took the wire shelves off of the space directly above them, so they can be more easily accessed, and the vines can follow the frame without going through the wire shelves. As they get bigger, I can train the vines to grow where I want them to.
After refilling the clean pots, I set them in their spots, then did the transplanting. I made sure to well water the holes in the soil I made for the luffa, first. I find pre-watering the planting holes makes a big positive difference.
The fiber pot for the larger one had been damaged when the wind knocked things over, so it had been set into a Red Solo cup, to keep it from falling apart. That seemed to work quite well, and there were plenty of roots visible. I did remove the fiber pot, though. These are supposed to be the kind where you can bury them in the ground whole, so as not to disturb the roots, but I find they don’t actually break down very well. While the luffa roots grew through where the pot had cracked when it fell, there were no roots at all growing into the pot walls, even though I made sure to keep it well hydrated. The root ball held together, though, and was easy to just tuck into the pot. The smaller luffa didn’t have much of a root ball at all, but that’s to be expected.
The tray of failed chitted potatoes that did not fall over still had plenty of stove pellets. I’d been hanging on to those! The very hot and desiccated potatoes finally went to compost, and I scattered the stove pellets around the luffa, to act as a mulch. Then it all got a gentle watering. The stove pellets immediately start swelling up and breaking into sawdust, and do a great job of covering the soil surface.
With the wire shelves above the pots removed, that meant adjusting the bins of transplants a bit. Most are too tall – either the bins or the transplants – to go on the top shelves, without touching the plastic cover. Contact with the plastic could potentially burn them.
So that is finally done! The luffa will now spend the summer in their pots in the portable greenhouse. Hopefully, this means we’ll finally have some actual luff sponges to harvest in the fall!
I’m closely monitoring the forecast over the next while. In the 10 day forecast, we’ve got a few colder nights, and then it seems to warm up enough to potentially start transplanting things outside.
Then I see the long range forecast.
*sigh*
Apparently, around June 5 and 6, we’re supposed to get rain. Rain which is supposed to continue through the 7th, which is supposed to have an overnight low just above freezing – then on the 8th, the rain is supposed to turn to snow, and the overnight low is expected to be below freezing. Even once that has passed, it’ll be several more nights before things are warm enough for transplants.
Which means that for the things that need to be transplanted out sooner, we would have to find a way to cover them with frost protection.
It’s so warm and pleasant right now, it’s really hard to resist getting things planted! It is, however, still just past the middle of May. We’ve got nearly 2 more weeks before it can be considered safe to transplant things!
I admit I’m chomping at the bit! I guess it’s really a good thing I’ve had to do so much running around. While it keeps me from getting much done outside, it’s also keeping me from putting things out too early, too!
The first thing I had to do was use the weed trimmer to clear the area they were going into. It hasn’t been mowed all of last year – I got tired of breaking lawnmowers – so there was a lot of tall dead grass. Before I could use the weed trimmer, though, I had to use the loppers to cut out all the little poplars that were coming up.
Then come back to get the ones I missed.
The dead grass was so long, there was only so much our little electric weed trimmer could do, so I got it mostly done, then raked up all the dead grass and clippings, then used the weed trimmer again, then rakes again. I got quite a lot of dried grasses that could be used as mulch, later on.
I decided to plant the apple tree 6′ away from where the plum tree will be planted, with the gooseberry in between. Part of the area was where we’d grown squash previously, so there were layers of straw and mostly decomposed cardboard to rake up. That part should have been easy to work in, but there were so many poplar roots extending through there, it took a LOT longer than it should have! Then there was about three feet of sod that needed to be dug out to where the apply tree would go. More roots. Lots of rocks. It was insane.
After stopping for a lunch and pain killer break, I brought the saplings over, unwrapped and in a bucket of water. I’d made sure to add a wet paper towel to the plastic bag they were wrapped in so the roots wouldn’t dry out, but considering how long it’s been since we found these, I wanted to make sure they were good and hydrated before planting.
This area gets full sun in the summer, and any rain drains off quickly, so I also made sure the planting holes were filled with water first. The holes got shovel fulls of a mix of garden soil (from the pile we bought a few years ago), sheep manure, cattle manure, and some of the rehydrated coconut fibre brick. With how shallow the soil is before reaching rocks, gravel and clay, I tried to build up where they were planted a bit. Once they were in, I mulched with the grass I’d weed trimmed and raked up. To protect them from deer, I set up the dollar store tomato supports I’d picked up a while ago. Then, to keep the mulch from blowing away, while also trying to keep the weeds from growing back, I added a layer of cardboard weighted down with sticks that used to be part of our old pea and bean trellises. I set the old rain barrel up closer to the area. When we set up the hoses, I’ll keep it filled with water so we can water things with ambient temperature water rather than the cold hose.
Oh, before I forget… the apple variety is a Cortland apple, and it’s grated onto a Siberian Crabapple root stock. I made sure the graft was well above the soil line.
Along with the plum, we will be getting two cross pollinator haskap varieties. So we’ll need to dig holes for those, too. I haven’t quite decided where they will go, yet. I was thinking in front of the apple and plum trees, but they can grow 4-6 feet tall, with a 3-5 foot spread, while the gooseberry can grow 3-4 feet tall. I don’t want to shade out the gooseberry, so they will probably get planted in line with what I planted today.
The next job, however, will be to plant the walnut sapling, plus the 8 walnut seeds. These will be planted in the outer yard.
It’s going to be even harder to plant out there than it was to plant year!
In the long term, though, it’ll be worth it!
We’re planting a LOT more trees for the food forest this year than originally planned on. This will put us years ahead of “schedule”, so that’s a good thing. Ideally, we would have done this years ago, but there’s only so much we can do at a time!
Today’s weather was pleasant enough that I was able to work on the low raised bed that will, eventually, be a trellis bed.
This is the bed that had the Summer of Melons mix along one side, onions that we found in other beds and transplanted for their seeds, and a few bush beans, on the other side.
Where the melons were did not need much done. The melon transplants were mulched with layers of cardboard, tree bark and grass clippings. Not much got through there, so all I did was pull the vines loose and spread them out on top of the mulch.
Where the onions were planted, however, was a different issue. There was quite a bit of grass growing among them – both crab grass and lawn grass! – along with the usual dandelions and other weeds.
I decided I would pull up the onions so I could weed more thoroughly, then transplant them back again.
In the first photo, I’d already started pulling up/digging out the first onions I’d found. Along the way, I found some of the seed stalks, and those got set on top of the melon vines. I even found a couple of seed heads that got missed.
Interestingly, there were even fresh, new onions starting to grow! Onions sure are hardy!
Once I pulled all the onions I could find (of course, I found others I’d missed, later on), I sorted them between red and yellow bulbs. The red would have been the Red Wethersfield onions that seemed to die off entirely last year, only for us to find them starting to grow again, when we prepared the bed this spring! The yellow are probably Oneida onions, and I think there may even have been a couple of shallots in there, too.
The seeds we collected are all mixed together, which means we’ll be getting both red and yellow onions growing in the winter sown beds.
The south end of the bed was the worst for grass and weeds. That was also where I transplanted a flower that might be a salsify. I was very curious to see what the root was like, as salsify is supposed to have a long tap root that tastes a bit like seafood. We got seeds specifically for that, which we never got to planting, but the seed company images only showed the roots, not the flowers.
Well, whatever this flower was – and it may well be a different variety of salsify – it didn’t have the long tap root at all. In fact, it had very shallow roots.
Curious.
I used a hand cultivator to weed most of the bed, stopping before I got to the end where I’d piled up the onion bulbs. Then I got out the garden fork and worked over things again, finding plenty more roots to pull out, while loosening the soil. All the grass clipping mulch was added to the melon vines on the other side.
When I got close to the other end, I paused to plant all the red bulbs, starting at the south end, in a double row. Some of the bulbs had divided into twos or threes, and those got split up for planting. These reached to about the middle of the bed.
Next, I moved the yellow bulbs aside, cleared the grass clipping mulch off the corner, and finished weeding and loosening the soil.
I uncovered a frog!
The poor thing was trying to hibernate in the soil. It barely moved when I so rudely uncovered it, and then just stayed there. I worked the soil at the end of the bed some more, dug a shallow hole for the frog where I knew I would not be planting the onions, then very gently set the frog in place and covered it with loosely with soil again.
Once the north end of the bed was ready, the yellow bulbs got planted in another double row, working my way to the middle – and there was just enough to reach the other onions! I marked the divide with a piece of broken bamboo stake.
This is way more seed onions than we will ever need, but that’s okay. These are being planted as protectors. Next spring, we might interplant around them; maybe with some greens or bush beans, or something like that. Whatever we plant, the onions should help protect them from the deer.
Once the onions were all transplanted, I raked up some leaves to mulch them for the winter, then raked the path around the bed clear. It’s not a priority for this fall, but eventually the path will be covered with cardboard, then a layer of wood chips.
Once that was done, I went into the overgrown area nearby to find the poplars I’d debarked to be used as vertical supports for the trellis and set them across the bed. They’re not the straightest, and need to have their branch nubs cut away, but … it’ll be rustic. Yeah. That’s it! Rustic. 😄
I’ve got eight of them that are debarked. They were to be lined up in pairs along two raised beds for the future trellis tunnel, but the other bed has yet to be constructed. If I use four on this bed, that means one at each end, two along the side, and they’ll all be six feet apart.
I think that might be too far apart.
If I add one more, that would have the posts at about four and a half feet apart. I think that will work out better. It’ll be easier to find straight (ish) horizontal cross pieces for that length, and the whole thing should be stronger This is expected to someday hold the weight of things like winter squash, so I don’t want to skimp on sturdiness.
Getting those up is not the priority right now, though. Before I work on that, I want to finish assembling the log frame around the low raised bed we put together this spring, and get that weeded. With the peas and beans on trellised on each side of that bed, I wasn’t able to weed around the winter squash, so it got very overgrown!
The next priority is clearing away the fallen spruce tree and the crab apple tree it fell on. That will require the chainsaw, though, which means waiting for a dry day. From the current forecast, that looks like the next two days, and then we get rain again for another two days. After that, I think it’ll just be too cold.
Which means the next two days is probably the last chance we’ll get to do some of the outside stuff. That will include moving the giant hose my brother lent us to use to divert the septic away from the house, if we had needed to, into the barn and covering the septic tank for the winter. I was still hoping to hose off the insulated tarp again, but it’s still damp. It would have been good if we could hang it on the clothes line, but it’s just too big and too heavy for that. Ah, well. It’ll still do the job. Technically, the tank doesn’t actually need to be covered, given how deep it’s buried, but I’d rather be safe than sorry! We’ve had another septic problems without potentially adding more.
At least now we don’t have to worry about the leak at the expeller anymore! My brother has also expressed great relief that it is finally done.
We’re managing to get quite a few things done this year, that will make next year easier!
Including planting one more garden bed with seed onions. 😊😊
I was very happy for a pleasant breeze to cool me down while I was working. I got the last of the bed turned and weeded, the boards laid out to mark where the log frame will go, and the soil evened out and leveled off as best I could.
Since I was wanting to finish off the onions and shallots, I decided to work in a grid instead of rows. I marked off 5 rows lengthwise first,, about 3 or 4 inches apart, then made cross rows, also every 3 or 4 inches apart.
Once the lines were marked out, I used the jet setting on the hose to drive water into all the marked lines. It makes it messier to transplant into, but it evens out the soil and gives deeper moisture for the roots to reach for.
After that, I just laid out the transplants where the lines crossed, starting with the yellow bulb onions at one end. I got to about half way down the bed, maybe a little more, before I finished them. Then I planted the shallots at the opposite end. Last of all, I used the grass clipping mulch I’d removed earlier today, to scatter a light mulch around the transplants.
I was very happy to see that this left me an open space where something can be direct sown. I’ll go through my seeds to see what I’ve got that will mature in less than 2 months, since we basically just have July and August left for a growing season.
This is really late for onion transplants. My intention had been to interplant them with other things, but that doesn’t really work out with the winter squash and melons, since those will get bigger and overshadow the onions. At least I got some in with the tomatoes.
We shall see if the weather holds long enough for all these onions to fully mature!
I’m now going to let my self breathe for a bit. I have some direct sowing to do, including where the spinach was planted, and that’s about it. After a break, I’ll get back to working on the trellis beds. Hopefully, we’ll dry out a bit and the winds will die down, and we’ll be able to harvest more logs for the raised bed frames. The forecast of rain to start this evening and continue for about 4 hours has changed. Now it’s saying we’ll get some rain for about an hour, around 10pm. On Friday, though (today is Tuesday), they’re still saying rain all day, starting about 5am Friday morning, through to 1am on Saturday morning. Aside from the brief rain we’re supposed to get tonight, though, we’re not supposed to get any rain at all until Friday.
I might actually be able to do some mowing! How exciting!
The Dalvay peas seemed to just explode overnight, and almost the entire row is filled with pea shoots. The Yukon Chief corn has also seen quite a growth spurt.
The beans don’t seem to be doing well this year. I could explain that away for the older seeds, but the purple bush beans were fresh seeds, and there’s just one bean that has sprouted! Hopefully, more will appear in the next while, but if they don’t, some of them will get a second sowing or, if I’m out of a particular seed, something else will be sowed in place.
My main goal for this morning was to get those tomatoes and as many onions as I could, transplanted, and I’m happy to day that has been accomplished!
The first thing was to break up the clumps of soil that were hilled into the new bed location and pull out as many roots and weeds (and rocks) as I could. This bed was in so much better shape than the previous one, it didn’t take very long at all. From there, it was using the thatching rake to even out the hill of soil between the boards – the north send, where the bed was extended, had to have more soil spread into it – and level the top for planting. Of course, more weeds, roots and rocks were removed at the same time.
Then I brought the transplants over. There were seven San Marzano tomatoes left, including one that wasn’t looking very good at all. I also happened to have exactly seven bamboo stakes left, to use as their supports, which was nice. I pre-dug holes for them down the middle of the bed, as evenly spaced as I could eyeball it, then used the jet setting on the hose to fill each hole with water, and basically drill the water deeper into the holes. I want those roots to have water below them to encourage them to grow deep.
I removed the transplants from their cells into the bottom drain tray to make it easier to carry them around. That last tomato that looked the most beat up, though, didn’t come out with its soil, but broke off, instead. I could still see some roots on the stem, though, so I kept it. I just transplanted that one at the north end of the bed, closest to the trees. I don’t really expect it to make it, nor do I expect that end of the bed to do as well as the rest, because of those !%$@# elms.
The tray still had vermiculite topped soil in it from the tomatoes that didn’t survive, so I dumped all that into the drain tray, then put a bit of it around each of the tomato plants. I didn’t bury the stems deep – they didn’t need it – but I did plant them deep, so each one is in a bit of a hollow, so water will flow towards the roots and seep into the soil there, instead of flowing down the sides of the bed.
Once the tomatoes were in, I made a narrow trench all around the perimeter of the bed, except the north end, which doesn’t quite quite a much soil, still, so it’s basically a long U shaped trench. That got watered with the hose on the jet setting, too.
For the onions, I chose the tray with the yellow bulb onions. I keep forgetting the name of the variety. It’s a good thing I record all this here in the blog! They are Frontier onions, noted for strong necks, consistent size and disease resistance. They are supposed to mature 100 days from transplant, which means I’m really late in getting these in the ground. Hopefully, we’ll have a mild fall, and the frost will hold off until October.
The tray I used for the onions was a vegetable party tray, divided into 4 spaces around the perimeter, and a shallow circle in the middle where a dipping sauce was kept. I am really liking this design. After giving the tray a thorough soak, to make it easier to separate the onions, I could just grab on section of onions and carry it with me as I went around the bed, pulling out and spacing the onions in the trench. I was able to finish off one section, plus another dozen or so transplants from another.
Once those were planted, I make more shallow trenched between each tomato plant and repeated the process. I was able to fit three or four transplants between each tomato, with enough space to fit five in one area. In hindsight, I probably could have planted the ones around the perimeter closer together, but what’s done is done. I wasn’t able to fit even half the tray of onions in!
The last thing to do was give the transplants a gentle watering, to settle the soil around their roots. It actually started to rain while I was doing this, but so little, I barely got wet.
When I looked at the forecast last night, it was saying we could expect rain for a couple of hours, starting at about 7 this evening. It is now saying the rain will start at about 5pm, and continuing until 1am! Today is Saturday, and the forecast says we will not have more rain again until late Wednesday night.
We shall see.
Now that the tomatoes are in (yay!!), there are the rest of the yellow onions to transplant, a few remaining shallots, and the Orange Butterfly Flower. I was going to try direct sowing some of that, but it just didn’t happen. I still don’t know where I want to plant them, since it has to be in a permanent location. I want it to be near the main garden area, but where I think would be best for them is going to see a lot of traffic and commotion as we build the frames for the beds.
The main thing, though, is the tomatoes are in. This bed will need to have mulch added around the sides, to keep the soil from being eroded, until we can get it properly framed.
This leaves one more bed to shift over. Like this one, the last one shouldn’t take very long, comparatively speaking. It’s more a matter of working around the heat of the day. From the looks of it, the entire bed could be filled with the remaining onion and shallot transplants. I might even have some left over.
Today, however, we’ve already reached our high of 21C/70F. It’s not even noon yet, which means we could still get hotter over the afternoon. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 22C/72F, and then we’ll get our hottest day on Monday, with an expected high of 27C/81F. After that, it should cool down a bit, but still remain in the 20’s for a while. Hopefully, we’ll have enough dry days to get the lawn mowed, and maybe even cut/process more logs to frame the beds. I might just go ahead and scythe in the outer yard a bit, tomorrow, so the hay can dry for a bit before being gathered and used as mulch. Grass clippings are great, but when green, wet clippings are dumped in a pile, the inside of the pile gets astonishingly hot. Then it gets all slimy, while the exposed grass on top dries out. Once the insides gets slimy, it’s not much use as a mulch and we just leave it to compost.
Meanwhile, it turns out we need to make another trip to Walmart. We’re almost out of kibble, and first disability check doesn’t come in until the middle of next week, when we do our first stock up shopping trip. The Cat Lady has said she’ll acquire some cat food donations for us, but they’re going to be in the US for a couple of weeks, so I don’t expect that anytime soon. They’re packing their bags now.
Well, time for me to get changed and head out to get kibble!
I got a late start to the day, unfortunately. I just didn’t get to sleep until sometime past 3am.
What got me going was nothing pleasant, though. The septic pump was running and not shutting off again. I checked the filter, and it was running dry, so I shut it off. After priming the filter and turning it back on again, it just drained the filter and kept running dry.
We’ve got an old garden hose with a missing male coupling set up in the basement, just for times like this. It’s hooked up to the cold water tap that the washing machine used to be hooked up to, before the laundry set up got moved upstairs. Every now and then, I run it through the drain in the floor, towards the septic tank. There is a bottleneck it always hits, roughly under the basement wall. It takes some wiggling and shifting before the end of the hose can get through what opening is left. Usually, from there, it’s clear to the tank. Lately, though, it’s been hitting another barrier. This morning, I wasn’t able to get through it with the hose. When testing out the septic pump, though, it was working as normal again, so I left it.
I’ll get back to that, later!
Once outside (and after playing with any kittens that would let me!), I started on transplanting shallots with the peppers in the high raised bed. I kept forgetting to do that, and I didn’t want it to be forgotten again!
I considered doing the yellow onions, instead – none of those have been transplanted, yet! – but decided against it. They will form larger bulbs than the shallots, and I figured they would do better with more space than the shallots need.
One thing about the cover being sized to fit the box beds in the east yard: the frame is narrower, but longer, than the high raised bed. Which means there’s contact with the logs in only 4 small spots. This meant I didn’t have to worry about squishing any of the transplants when I put it back on. This cover has fencing wire on it, and a larger mesh. I am hoping that, as the peppers get taller, they can grow into the fencing wire arch, which will support them, while their growing habit should still leave enough light and air for the shallots to grow.
We’ll see if this actually works out!
With those done, the next priority was getting the Zucca melon in, and for that, I had to set up the kiddie pool as a garden bed.
We used it to grow melons last year, so it already has drainage holes in the bottom. I added a fairly thick layer of grass clippings on the bottom. This should act as a bit of a sponge to hold water, before it finally drains out, as it breaks down.
For the soil, I “stole” several wheelbarrow loads from the last bed that needs to be shifted over. The alternative was to push my way through the overgrown grass to the pile of garden soil in the outer yard with the wheel barrow, and sifting each load.
The soil in this bed just needs weeding, not sifting, and most of the weeds had deep tap roots. Aside from the tree roots and a bit of crab grass, it didn’t take long to weed the soil after it was loosened with a garden fork, then shoveling it into the wheelbarrow, where I could get any other weeds and roots I might have missed.
I had to remind myself not to fill the wheelbarrow as much as usual. The soil is still quite moist, making it a lot heavier than usual. All that meant was that it took three loads instead of two, to fill the kiddie pool deep enough.
Finally, the zucca melon could be planted! These can grow melons up to 60 pounds in weight. If they actually grow this year, they should need take up a lot of space! Last year, they were in the bed where the bare root strawberries went last year. The plants never thrived, and what melons began to from, started to rot and die before getting more than 6 or 8 inches long. After prepping the bed for the strawberries, I now know that bed was being choked out by elm roots, too. This won’t happen with the kiddie pool as a raised bed. Last year, the pool was set up and the end of one of the beds I’ve been working on, quite close to the elms and maple. When I cleaned it up in the fall, there were no tree roots in it at all, unlike the fabric grow bags! So hopefully, this year, the Zucca melon will actually have a chance to grow and thrive!
Once that was done, it was time to go inside for lunch. As I was eating, I realized I was hearing the septic pump … and it wasn’t shutting off!
So I hid my food from the cats and headed for the basement. After priming the filter a few times, and it would still run dry, I tried pushing the hose through the floor drain again.
It did not work out very well at all.
First, I couldn’t get past the nearer bottleneck. After much fighting, I finally got it through the opening, but then it hit the second bottle neck, and that was it. It would not go past and into the tank.
Unfortunately, to do this, I was absolutely killing my left arm. Yes, I’m mostly ambidextrous, but if I need to do anything that requires a higher level of control or strength, I use my left arm. It was absolutely brutal on my damaged elbow.
I finally gave up, left septic pump off, and headed back upstairs. The fact that I hadn’t finished eating and was still very hungry did not help!
After cleaning myself up and finishing lunch, I went back at it, this time with a daughter. I still couldn’t get the hose through at the floor drain, and neither could my daughter. We ended up getting the tool kit so we could open the access pipe, instead. Normally, these can just be opened with a special screw cap – bronze, in our case – but that is fused in place. The entire top needs to be removed, and that’s held in place with screw clamps around strip of rubber and… some kind of finely corrugated metal that I think is aluminum.
So we got that pulled off and tried again with running the hose through. It worked much better, this time! We got through the first bottleneck fairly easily, and it was only a bit more effort to get through the second bottleneck. Finally, we were able to push the hose all the way into the tank!
At which point I went outside and opened the lid to take a look.
Do you know that it’s very hard to see anything when looking into a dark tank in bright sunshine? Meanwhile, I was being totally paranoid and holding my glasses against my face every time I tried to lean over and see. Finally, a cloud passed over the sun, and I could see!
But what did I see?
Well, I could eventually figure out where the float was. There’s a lot of gunk floating at the top, but I could see a couple of spot with flowing water in them – that would be water from the weeping tile, since no one in the household was using water at the time. I got my daughter to try wiggling the hose around, but I still couldn’t see it. It was somewhere under the gunk.
What I think is happening is, as the pump runs and the liquid level drops, the float is probably getting hung on something. Something that running the hose through manages to knock loose, finally allowing the float to drop and trigger the pump to stop running.
As I closed up the tank and went back inside, my daughter kept working with the hose. She could actually feel when she managed to knock something out of the way. I turned the water on, and she kept at it for a while. The septic pump turned on while she was doing this, and we could see water flowing through the filter, so this was now running as normal.
After she was done with that, I took over and ran the hose in the floor drain, towards the weeping tile under the new part basement floor. We know the weeping tile in the north corner is somehow messed up. Plus, we get tree roots growing through. We could see the water turn silty while I pushed the hose, with the water running, as far as it could go.
Once that was done, I decided to not bother tightening the cap on the access pipe again, since we will likely be running a hose through there, instead of the floor drain, regularly. So my daughter put away the tools and headed out while I closed things up and hung the hose back up where we store it. There’s quite a bit of water on the floor, with all the rain we’ve been having, the floor is damp or flooded in places, even with all the fans and blowers running.
Our electric bill is going to be brutal. With the equal payment plan, I won’t be surprised of the monthly payments don’t jump quite a bit, and not just because they’re increasing the price per kw, either.
That all took way longer than it should have, and I was very frustrated.
My husband, meanwhile, helped the only way he could… and I’m torn about it.
He used his Amazon credit card to buy me a commercial level drain auger, so we won’t be fighting with a hose. I don’t know that it will clear the nearer bottleneck, though. I fear that is the cast iron pipe collapsing, and that running an auger through would damage it more. That would really mess us up, since repairing that would probably require breaking through the concrete floor in the basement, and excavating between the basement wall and the septic tank outside, to replace it.
*sigh*
I don’t even want to think of it.
That done, and the water flowing through properly again, I needed to destress.
For me, that means manual labour! Yay!
I headed back outside (topped of the cat food for the evening, played with a kitten…) and to the garden.
We had reached the hottest part of the day by then, and I realized I’d forgotten about the melon bed. We have a few small piles of straw mulch from last year that I raided.
The Zucca got watered after transplanting, of course, but after the mulch was laid down, I gave that a good soaking, too. I had considered putting a jug in the middle for watering, like with the pumpkins and drum gourds, but using the kiddie pool as a raised bed, with the grass clipping base, makes that unnecessary. It will take a while for water to drain, so the Zucca roots should find all the water they need before it finished draining.
I soaked down the mulch on the other beds, too.
Last of all, I started working on shifting the next low raised bed. That meant breaking new ground where the bed will be shifted over, and turning the sod, first.
I didn’t get very far. It was just too hot!
So I’ve left it for now.
My current plan is to try going to bed early, and hopefully actually falling asleep, so that I can get an early start tomorrow. This bed should go much faster than the last one, as it’s nowhere near as weed filled. I want to get at least a few hours in, in the morning. It’s supposed to get a lot hotter than today, in the afternoon. Which makes it a good time for us to do our combined birthday/father’s day pizza night, courtesy of my older daughter.
Based on the current forecasts, we’re supposed to get hotter every day until Monday (it’s Wednesday, today), but not get any rain until Saturday evening. After Monday, it will cool down a little, with no other rain in the 10 day forecast.
We shall see.
We’re in the final stretch to get things in the ground! For transplants, it’s just those last few San Marzano tomatoes, the yellow onions and a few shallots, and the Orange Butterfly Flower. Those have to go somewhere where they can be treated as a perennial, and I’m not sure where that will be just yet!
For all the garden plans we made over the winter, we’re basically flying by the seat of our pants right now.
I don’t know why Instagram now cuts the sides off my photos, even though I select the wide image function.
I got about half way through the bed, sifting the soil, when I stopped for a break that ended up taking longer than I intended. Which is okay. It gave the soil I needed to move time to dry out a bit. Sifting damp soil is a lot harder and heavier. I’m amazed my home made soil sifter is still surviving the abuse!
By the time I was done fighting with my garden tour video and getting it uploaded, it was quite a bit later before I could get back at it. Thankfully, today has been cooler, with a pleasant breeze. I was greatly appreciating that!
The last bit of soil that needed to be worked on was the worst. This was the section full of creeping Charlie, and I was digging up and tossing large clumps of it. In the end, by the time I finished sifting the last of the soil from the old bed location, there wasn’t enough left to finish the new bed location. I ended up “stealing” soil from the last bed that will be worked on.
By then, it started to rain, but it was just a gentle shower, so I kept at it. Once the bed was done, I brought over the melons. I’d already gone through them and sorted them by type. I kept the Zucca melons aside, since they get huge. I’m thinking of using the kiddie pool as a raised bed, just for them, and setting it somewhere where they can spread.
There were a total of 16 melons to transplant, and I decided to dedicate the entire bed to them. I don’t know that we’ll be able to trellis them, since they will need stronger trellises than what we’re setting up for the beans and peas. If we end up not being able to add trellises, they should have room to spread on the ground and into the paths, if need be.
So this bed now has two rows of eight melons in it. As with the other squash and melons, I planted them slightly below grade and made hills of soil around them, so water would flow towards the plants rather than run down the sides of the bed and take the soil with it. The rain had pretty much stopped by the time that was done, so they got a good watering, too.
The bed still needs a mulch added to it, but it’s getting late, so that will be done tomorrow, when I will also started working on the next bed. That one needs to be shifted a lot, too, but it’s not as weedy and isn’t infested with creeping Charlie like this one was, so it should go somewhat faster. The hard part will be breaking the sod in the new location – and I don’t have anymore carboard that can be put over it, before shifting the soil on top.
This bed is where the last of the San Marzano tomatoes will finally be planted. There aren’t a lot of those left to transplant, so there will be room for other things.
Hmm… I should probably set up the kiddie pool and fill it with soil for the Zucca melons, first. They need to be transplanted more urgently than the tomatoes. That means sifting several loads of soil from the pile in the outer yard.
Once the transplants are in, I hope to be able to do some direct sowing, still. It’s getting really late for that. Our first frost date is September 10, so we’ve basically got July and August for things to grow, since if I plant things within the next 7-10 days, they will take the rest of June just to germinate.
What we don’t have a lot of is stuff that can be harvested throughout the summer. I’ve got three types of beans planted, and the very first Seychelle bean was sprouting this morning. The sugar snap peas are going to be awhile before there’s anything to harvest from them. The spinach is doing so poorly, I’m thinking of taking them out completely, and planting some chard or something, instead. I think it’s getting too late to plant more carrots, but I’ll check the information on my packages to be sure.
What I will likely do is direct sow more summer squash, since right now we just have some in pots. They haven’t germinated yet. Since summer squash gets harvested while still quite small, planting them in late June should be okay. As long as I can keep the slugs away! I haven’t actually seen slugs yet, so hopefully, we won’t have a bag year of them, like we did last year.
We shall see how things work out! Hopefully, we’ll even get weather that will allow us to harvest more dead spruces and build the frames around these beds, and maybe even continue the trellis beds, by fall.
Much work to be done.
It’s a good thing I love this kind of work! Even if I do have to pain killer up for it.
Speaking of which… time to do that, before this broken old body starts to seize up! 😄😄
The first thing to do was mark off the centre of the bed, then space out the 7 “Wild Bunch Mix” winter squash transplants I had left. As with the others, I transplanted them by first digging the holes, filling them all with water, then planting the squash slightly below grade, to keep any water from running off.
That left fairly decent sized gaps between each plant, but was it enough for the corn I had? Or did I have enough corn seeds for the space? I had only one package of Yukon Chief corn. From the Heritage Harvest website…
Introduced in 1958 by Arvo Kallio of the University of Alaska, Agricultural Experiment Station. Yukon Chief is one of the earliest Sweet Corn varieties available maturing at just 55 days! The yellow cobs average 5” in length and the plants grow about 4’ tall. Highly recommended for cool, short season areas! (55 days to maturity) (50 seeds)
(image belongs to Heritage Harvest Seed)
Fifty five days to maturity is amazing!
But 50 seeds to a package?
I took them out and counted them. I counted about 80 seeds!
I say “about” 80, because some of them were really small and probably shouldn’t be planted, but they would be, anyhow. 😄
I decided to pre-soak them for a little while, and misted the other beds while I waited. The other beds didn’t really need a watering, but a misting would be good in this heat. I’m happy to say the melons that looks so wimpy, yesterday, have already perked up. They might all actually survive! The mosquito netting over part of the row was drooping a bit, so I adjusted the hoops in the middle, then used the weights on the sides to pull the netting tighter. The netting is there to protect the transplants from heavy rain, and won’t be there for long.
I decided to mark out three small trenches between each winter squash, then used the jet setting on the hose to drive water deeply into each trench. As with the squash, I wanted to plant the corn seeds below grade. To start, I set out four of the largest corn seeds in each trench then, at the end, divided the smallest seeds wherever there seemed to be a bit more space. Yes, this is closer than is recommended for corn to be planted, but I don’t expect a 100% germination rate, and some will likely be thinned out, later. The main thing is, they are clustered together so the wind should pollinate them more easily.
Once that was figured out, I just pushed the seeds down to planting depth, then watered the entire bed, to settle the soil around the seeds and the squash roots.
Last of all, I grabbed the wheelbarrow and brought over some grass clippings to mulch the sides of the soil mound, and closer in around each squash plant. Aside from the usual benefits of a mulch, this will help keep the sides of the soil mound from eroding down.
This bed is now finished! The boards can now be removed and used to mark out the next bed I’ll be working on.
Which is going to be a huge shift. The bed is not only far to one side of where it needs to be, but it’s at an angle. The north end of the bed is completely in where the new path will be, while the south end is about 3/4 in where the path will be. Shifting this bed is pretty much building a whole new bed from the ground up.
*sigh*
It will be worth it, in the end, but my goodness, getting these beds into their permanent positions is a huge job. The rain and the heat certainly aren’t helping any!
But, we have one more bed done and planted. Progress has been made! Once everything is planted, then we can shift over to harvesting more dead trees to frame the beds.
Looking at the forecast, we aren’t expecting rain until maybe Saturday night (it’s Thursday, as I write this), which means we might even be able to get more lawn mowed!
Ugh. Our temperature is now 21C/70F, with the humidex at 26F/79F.
In other things, before heading into the house, I checked the garden shed. This time, without knocking, first. I startled Broccoli and her kittens. She and the black and white ran off to the back of the shed, but the calico didn’t. I was able to pick her up and cuddle her. They haven’t been using the cat bed, so I checked it out and found a mess in it. I was able to clean it up and set it back, though, as well as straightening out the self heating matt and the felt grow bags they are using as a nest. The calico wasn’t happy with me but, after a while, she did seem to be okay with the cuddles! I was just happy to see her. I’d seen Broccoli and the black and white kitten outside, earlier, but didn’t see the calico. With yard cats, that could mean a lot of things!
Now, if we could just convince her to bring them to the sun room, too!
The Re-Farmer 