transplants

Just some stuff. :-)

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

I wanted to share some photos from this morning’s rounds, but first, some photos from last night.

May I introduce you to, The Three Croissants.

Nicco, Beep Beep and Susan, all nestled together! Can they get any cuter? :-D

While putting things away for the evening, I noticed my mother’s lilies had started to bloom. Thye practically glow in the evening light!

If all goes to plan, we will be dividing these up this fall, and transplanting some in a new bed where the potatoes in their grow bags are now.

We had quite the crowd of hungry kitties this morning! Ghost Baby showed up not long after.

I expect the mamas will start bringing their babies over for food some time soon. I wish I knew where they were. I’d leave food out nearby for them, if I could. I’ve spotted mamas going by carrying various rodents, though, so the mamas are obviously taking care of that, themselves. It just makes less work for them if we can supplement with kibble! That, and there’s a better chance of the kittens getting used to humans.

Of course, I had to check the newest transplants. We got another heavy rain last night, that lasted for a couple of hours. They seem to have handled it quite well. I took this photo from the gourd end of the row. In the foreground are the 4 Ozark Nest Egg gourds (you can just barely see one of them, it’s so tiny!). By the fence post is the Thai Bottle gourd. You can’t see it in the photo, but hidden under one of the leaves is a second sprout!

This is what’s left of our straw! I’d taken so much from the bottom, where it was breaking down the most, that the whole thing finally just fell over. We should have enough to mulch the summer squash, and hopefully have some to add to the transplants at the squash tunnel, but I doubt there will be much left by then. I’ll have to contact the renter to see about getting another bale. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get hay next time. I’m deliberately asking for older bales that aren’t good for feed anymore, since it will be used only for mulching, but when I asked about it last time, they had none, as they spread them on their crop fields and plow them under to amend the soil.

Today, we’re looking at a high of 27C/81F, though we are already at 25C/77F as I write this, so I would not be surprised if we get hotter. The next couple of days should be just a degree or two cooler, then we’re looking at possible thunderstorms again. Hopefully, we’ll have the squash tunnel and pea trellises finished before then! We’ll see how things work out. One of my daughters has been feeling quite ill lately, and I’m pretty sure it’s the heat. :-( Summer is their least favorite time of the year!

There is one other down side to this time of year that I was really noticing this morning. The horseflies are out in full force! I had a buzzing crowd of them, dive bombing my head, from the moment I stepped outside to the moment I stepped back into the house – and even then, it was only because I dashed in and closed the door fast enough. Having them bounce off my head is annoying enough (at least they weren’t biting!), but they were even getting caught up in my hair bun. They already seem to be unusually bad this year.

Ah, well. That’s life in the sticks! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: transplants surviving the downpour

/ Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

I gotta say, I am so glad we got those transplants in, yesterday! I’m also glad we’re just getting rain today, and not the severe storms that other parts of our province is getting. Not that far south, either. The motion sensor on the garage security camera gets triggered by lightning. While checking the files, I could track the storm, over the span of a couple of hours, as it swept past us. None of the late night lightning was quite as dramatic is this one.

It was at about 6am when I woke to hear the rain coming down, hard. Of course I was concerned about our new transplants, and checked on them as soon as I could do my morning rounds.

Happily, none of the summer squash appeared damaged. In fact, a couple that were still looking droopy yesterday evening were looking tall and strong. Without a mulch to protect them, though, we’re going to have to add more soil to the mounds before adding the straw.

Even the littlest melon transplants at the squash tunnel were looking quite strong.

In checking these, I realized I made a goof in posting about them, yesterday. I’d said the two types of gourds were planted opposite each other at the far end of the tunnel. I completely forgot that, at the last moment, I changed my mind. Both types of gourds are on one side, with both types of winter squash, opposite them.

It was the corn I was most concerned about, and not just because of the downpour. I’m happy to say that none of them are looking at all drooping or stressed from root disruption. Some did look a bit tipsy from the pounding rain, though! We’ll see how they look, after a few days.

I’m thinking of leaving the little flags for a while. They flutter quite a bit, and might help dissuade deer from approaching.

These Crespo squash were planted a little while ago, and I’m just including them because I’m so happy at how strong looking they are. Even the little one has gotten noticeably bigger and stronger. A lot of things are. The bush beans are looking so fantastic, so quickly! The peas are getting tall enough that we’ll have to start training them up their trellises soon. The carrot sprouts are getting big enough that we can be more vigorous in weeding around them, and not be as concerned about accidentally pulling them up. The two spinach beds we were able to cover over first are looking downright succulent. The third one looks like it had been nibbled on more than I thought, but even so, it’s doing pretty darn good, too.

We don’t seem to have any purple kale coming up; they were pretty much the first things we planted outdoors, and should have come up long ago. The purple kohlrabi planted between the onions and shallots also doesn’t seem to be coming up, either. The onions are doing all right, though I have no idea how big they should be by now. The garlic, meanwhile, is growing like gangbusters.

We’d seen strawberry spinach seedlings earlier, but it seems only a few are still growing, though with those, just a couple of plants would be sufficient. It’s hard to tell them from the weed seedlings, though. The poppies are in a similar situation. I see a few seedlings that might be poppies, but it’s hard to tell with the weeds. That’s one down side of buying garden soil by the dump truck load. It may be a premium mix, but it’s also from a giant pile outdoors, so of course, it came with weeds. At least most of it is a local weed I well recognize, having pulled many of them from my mother’s garden when I was a child! :-D

The lettuces are a mixed bag. Some seem to finally be doing all right, while others seem to have just died off. We need to do a successive sowing of those, anyhow. The seed packets, which were in a Ziploc bag, ended up upside down and some of them spilled, so future sowing is going to be a mix of seeds! Which I don’t mind at all. :-) The beets meanwhile, are doing quite well, in all the beds. Even with the cats walking across them, and sometimes lying on them! The tomatoes are also looking really good, including the itty bitty transplants. Even the potatoes are coming up in all of the grow bags, now, and looking very healthy.

After doing my morning rounds, the girls and I made our trip to the city. We even used my mother’s car, partly to give it a good run on the highway, but also because it has air conditioning that works. ;-) I was very happy for those new tires when we found ourselves driving through some very solid rain. It was definitely coming down harder, the further south we went.

For now, we have a break from the rain, but we will likely get more again, before the system finally passes. I think everyone around here is breathing a sigh of relief. We needed this rain so much! And our

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: order in, and digging trenches!

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

Our Veseys order arrived in the mail a day early!! We are so thrilled!

One of the boxes was the Purple Passion Asparagus (6 crowns), and Black Form Iris.

The other box was our Illinois Everbearing Mulberry.

It even has leaf buds!!

We still need to take down a whole lot of dead trees in the area we want to plant this, and we’re thinking that for this year, we’ll plant it in one of the grow bags we made for the potatoes, then maybe keep it in the sun room over the winter. Either that, or find another place for what will become a fairly large tree that needs full sun, and zone 4 protection to survive in a zone 3.

The asparagus, at least, are decided on. While the girls did the evening watering, I started on trenching.

We’ve been keeping this space near the Strawberry Spinach bed covered with cardboard and regularly soaking it. The grass below was dying off quite nicely, and the ground was good and soft to dig in.

Well. Except for the big roots.

And all the rocks.

After the girls finished the watering and uncovering the sprouted beds, they came over to give me a hand. Most of the roots we could cut out with the loppers.

As with the other beds, this is going to be built up, so all I really wanted to do was take off the sod and get rid of the bigger roots and rocks.

Except for that really big root running across the trench, near the middle. Once we realized how big it was, we just left it.

One of my daughters took on stacking the rocks.

In a nice little display! :-D

There were too many to balance on the stump, so she stacked the rest nearby.

All these rocks, just from removing the top 3 or 4 inches. We could have pulled out many more!

Tomorrow, we start bringing in the new garden soil and plant the asparagus. The sod that was removed will be laid upside down along the sides to stabilize it. When we’re done, it should match the Strawberry Spinach bed in depth.

In two years, we should be harvesting our first purple asparagus! Before then, I expect to get more for planting elsewhere. My husband doesn’t care for asparagus, but the girls and I all like them, so that is reason enough to plant more than just these ones. :-)

Since none of what came in today will be planted until tomorrow, they are all sitting in the cool of the old kitchen.

I need to think about that mulberry. This is what it says on the Veseys page about planting them.

Planting:

Unless you have heavy clay soil, there isn’t much to do in terms of soil preparation. You can add amendments such as compost or peat moss to the soil and/or a layer of mulch over the root area after planting will help retain moisture, especially during the first year. While it may be tempting to add fertilizer or manure to your freshly dug hole before planting your new tree, PLEASE resist! Fertilizer or manure in close contact with the root system could chemically burn the roots and potentially kill the tree.

Mulberry trees can grow quite large, up to 15-20 feet tall. Avoid planting near walkways and driveways as the fruit will drop and create stains. Mulberries are self-fertile and require full sunlight. 

https://www.veseys.com/ca/illinois-everbearing-mulberry-37812.html

Our new garden soil has three types of manure and compost in it, but it is thoroughly broken down. Would it still be too much to plant it in? That’s what we would be using in a grow bag, if we did it that way for the first year. Maybe it would be better to just find a different spot and plant it permanently. I can think of a good area that would work; the only downside is that it would be more difficult to get water to it.

Whatever we decide to do, it’ll have to be done quickly!

The Re-Farmer