vegetable gardening

First!

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Among the things we chose to plant for our first garden since moving out here were Yukon Gem potatoes. My view when it comes to planting potatoes is, since they are so inexpensive and easy to find in the grocery stores, we’ll choose a variety that are not available unless we plant them ourselves. Yukon Gem are a yellow flesh variety that is supposed to be more resistant to disease, and are good for both fresh eating and storage.

We only got 6 pounds for our first try, so we’re not expecting to have any to store. At least not for long! :-D

The biggest thing we did differently, though, was to use the Ruth Stout method. When my mother had her garden in this location, she had my dad or my brothers to plow it for her, every year. She had a working tiller (we’ve got 4 or 5 lying about, and none work), and 5 kids to help pick rocks.

While the area did get plowed before we moved here, no one’s been picking rocks for ages, and the plow job was a bad one. So what we’ve got to work with is rock hard soil, full of rocks, and very little equipment. The traditional method of growing and hilling potatoes was simply not manageable.

Among my recommended posts is a Canadian gardener who tried the Ruth Stout method in his own garden. He sowed his potatoes on top of hard, grassy ground, covered them with a thick layer of hay for mulch, and at the end of the season, he had lots of potatoes, and the ground beneath was greatly improved.

I figured it was worth a try!

We didn’t have hay, so I used straw from the bale we got last fall. What we don’t use to cover our septic tank gets used for mulch, and we still have plenty left this year. Mulch was already a big part of our plans to improve and amend the soil.

Well, the potato plants seem to struggle through the mulch, and never got really bushy. They did bloom, however, and at one point I dug around under the mulch to see if I could get some baby potatoes to try.

Even though this was after a rainfall, and the straw was damp, the ground beneath was bone dry. The only potato I could find was the mushy seed potato.

So… I was beginning to think this was a write off. I don’t know if it was because I used straw instead of hay, but it seems like the straw absorbed all the moisture, and it never made it to the soil.

While going through the garden over the past few days, I’ve been watching the potatoes. Some of them have already died back completely.

This morning, I decided to dig up the 3 potato plants that had died back on one end of a potato bed.

After moving the straw, there wasn’t much to see.

That is the seed potato, and no sign of any others. Only after digging, did I find one tiny potato under this plant.

It wasn’t a complete loss, though.

A few others were visible once the straw was moved, and they were looking pretty good.

Time to carefully dig around with the potato fork and see what I could find.

The first thing I noticed was how different the soil was. Even with plenty of rocks to dig around, the soil itself was much, much softer. I even found worms, as well as a single slug. :-D

So even if we don’t get a lot of potatoes out of here, we will have at least improved the soil!

How many potatoes did I find?

Here they are! Our first potatoes!

I’d say these were from 3 plants but, really, they’re from 2 plants. You can just see the itty, bitty potato that I found by the seed potato of the third one.

Of all the larger potatoes, one had a hole in it from a bug. The rest were solid.

I’m rather pleased! After what I found earlier, I was really wasn’t expecting to find much of anything.

Now to think about how to cook them for supper this evening. :-) I’ll likely make them very plain, so we can get a sense of how this variety tastes, compared to what we usually have.

I’m really looking forward to them!!

The Re-Farmer

Cucamelons: first taste!

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After looking up and confirming when to start harvesting cucamelons, I went ahead and picked the largest ones.

The fruit doesn’t grow larger than 1 or 2 inches, and we read that if they are left too long, they get really seedy. Which makes sense.

Aren’t they adorable?

There was just enough for 2 each, so the girls and I tried them last night, while I left the last two in the little bowl on the table for my husband to try in the morning.

One of them disappeared.

Either we’re going to step on a cucamelon at some point, or a cat ate it. :-D

So… how did they taste?

Like cucumber, really. :-D The skin to flesh ratio is higher, so you do have more of that slightly bitter flavour of the skin, but just enough to make them distinct. They have a nice crunch, too.

From what we read, picking the fruit makes them more productive, and they will produce for a long time. I look forward to having more of them to gather, soon!

I think these are definitely keepers for future gardening. Apparently, in colder climates with shorter growing seasons like ours, you can even dig up the roots in the fall for spring transplanting, and have earlier production.

Might be worth a try.

The Re-Farmer

Feeling the heat, and fun stuff

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So, I think this is a sign…

For the first time since we cleaned and refilled this barometer, it has overflowed!

As I write this, it’s already 28C/82F and we’ve got weather alerts for heat and thunderstorms. Looking at the weather radar, it looks like we might actually get some rain. That would be nice!

At least the winds have died down for now.

My morning rounds, meanwhile, have been full of smiles.

Well, okay. I wasn’t exactly smiling when I was trying to wrestle kittens back into the basement, but once that was done, it got fun. :-D

Unfortunately, Keith and Fenrir in particular do not like the kittens, and they’re a bit too small to defend themselves if they get nasty. Big Rig ran right up to Susan and booped noses with her, leaving Susan looking astonished and confused! :-D

Temperatures were still on the pleasant side of hot while I did my rounds outside. The dwarf lilac is starting to explode.

The scent in our yard is amazing!

The carrot and beet beds seem to be doing all right.

We’re doing a fairly limited amount of weeding right now, as we don’t want to be pulling up too many seedlings. Whatever cat that decided to use a carrot bed as a litter box has done quite enough of that already.

The kohl rabi, on the other hand, may be a write off. Some things, I can tell are weeds, but others, I’m not so sure. A surprising amount of clover is showing up.

We’ll see how it works out over time!

My favourite pollinators!

The white roses were filled with a constant drone of insects buzzing around, but it’s the bumbles that have a special place in my heart. What beautiful creatures!

Also, I had very affectionate company. He just loved it when I carried him around like a baby! LOL

Once inside, I checked the trail cam files. I love it when doing that leaves me smiling. :-)

I got to see this deer from two angles! :-)

I notice there is a time difference on the cameras. I’ll have to figure out which one is off and fix that.

As for the new camera location, I really would rather it be a bit further back and higher, but it will have to do for now.

The Re-Farmer

I started, and I couldn’t stop! Evening round up

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Today was a wonderfully productive day.

Also, I’m really going to pay for it tomorrow. But I don’t care. It was worth it!

The first order of the day, after dropping my daughter off at work and picking up prescription refills for my husband, was the transplanting. I combined the 3 bags of soil mix, plus a bunch of peat, together with water in the kiddie pool (that thing is coming in really handy!), then left it to give the peat a chance to absorb water.

It had warmed up enough by then to uncover the squash. Unfortunately, there was some frost damage.

We might lose a few, but I think most will recover.

I decided not to put the new transplants near the previous ones. My initial thought was to have the two beds near each other, with a walking path in between, but I decided to put the new ones at the opposite side of the area we mulched last year. That left a wide open space in the middle.

I was able to measure, and mark with flags, where the transplants would go before I headed back into town to meet my daughter for lunch. Before coming home, I broke down and picked up something I’d spotted at the pharmacy this morning, but hadn’t picked up. A Pulse Oximeter. My husband has severe obstructive sleep apnea (on top of everything else), so being able to measure his blood oxygen levels at home is a good thing. I’d looked for them about a month ago, but none were in stock. When I saw them this morning, there were two. I wasn’t sure I could justify the cost in the budget, but figured if I didn’t get it today, who knew when I’d find one again.

Of the two that I’d seen in the morning, the less expensive one was already gone.

We now have a pretty high end Pulse Oximeter. :-D

Once back at home, I added the wet soil mixture to the flagged spots, then transplanted the squash. I ended up with another 18 plants in.

There are still some left that are not ready to transplant, and it is looking like most of them are the gourds! Whatever is left will go in one long row along the north side of the area we mulched last year.

I mulched the new transplants with straw, and remembered that I still had those pumpkin seeds my mother gave me. Three little packets.

And there was this wide open space between the squash beds…

I used some of the wet soil mixture to create three mounds and planted several seeds in each. It is really late in the season to be planting pumpkins from seed, but we’ll see how they do!

The pumpkin mounds got mulch around them, too. :-)

That done, I had time to uncover the other garden bed (no sign of frost damage there! :-) ) before heading back into town. I left early, so I could stop at the grocery store and refill a couple of our big water bottles.

While there was no line up outside the store, but by the time I was ready to go to the checkout, the line up was all the way to the other end of the store, and heading up the freezer aisle! After searching for and finding the end of the line, a guy carrying one item came by and ended up behind me. Thankfully, the line was moving rather quickly, but he and I ended up chatting with each other.

The topics ranged all over, but after a while it got closer to home as he talked about what he did. He ended up asking where in town I lived, and I told him I didn’t live in town, but in our little hamlet.

He got a very interested look on his face, and asked where I lived there. I told him, more or less, where the farm is.

It turned out he knows my family. He went to school, and was friends with, my late brother!

Well, that got us talking to each other like we’d know each other for years! :-D

Then I found out that he is a scrap dealer, and also hauls junk.

Yes!!!!

When we were done in the store, I followed him over to his truck so he could give me one of his fliers. He says it’s not worth trying to get rid of scrap metal right now; nobody is buying. That is a longer term thing for us, though. In the shorter term, I now have someone I can call to get the junk pile hauled away! Someone with a family connection, too.

That was awesome!

After picking up my daughter, it was back outside for me. I wanted to get a path mowed to the barn. We are expecting my brother to come over tomorrow and work on the trailer frame. Knowing him, he will be loading his truck with everything but the kitchen sink – and the only reason he doesn’t pack a kitchen sink is because, while all the useful tools may have disappeared from this place, we have plenty of kitchen sinks all over.

Also, bathroom sinks.

And laundry sinks.

I guess they go with the toilet collection. :-D

The grass in front of the barn is incredibly dense. The riding mower struggles to get through it, and the clippings left behind make it even harder. Now that I can collect clippings with the push mower, that’s what I was using today.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I really enjoy mowing. Whether it’s a push mower or a riding mower, I just love it. It’s almost a meditative thing, and I get a great sense of satisfaction from it. It was one of my favourite chores when I was a teen, and one my parents never needed to ask me to do.

Once I started mowing, I just couldn’t seem to stop. I kept trying to see how much further I could go, beyond the limited areas I could do with the riding mower. Since it will be easier to move the trailer out the back door of the barn, bring it around the barn and pull it through the “gate” on the side, I wanted to make sure that area was clear. Then, I decided to see how much further I could go along the fence. On the other side, I decided to clear a path to the shed.

By the time I was done, I’d reached the collapsing log building near the old chicken coop, was working my way along the fence to the hay yard, and was even starting to go down the driveway.

Every loop I did, I stopped the mower to empty the clippings. I’m not finished, but when I could no longer pull the cord hard enough to start the mower after emptying the bag, I figured that was enough for the day! :-D

I am so loving how it is looking.

I’m going to pay for this tomorrow. Big time.

It was so worth it!

Also, I now have a lovely, huge pile of grass clippings to help build up our garden beds!

It’s the little things that make me happy. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Frost warning

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I’m happy to say, that a day of rest seems to be just what the doctor ordered. In fact, I felt so good, and it looked so beautiful outside, I decided to see if there was something I could get started on today.

Because I’m an idiot like that.

The beautiful looking day lied! :-D It was still cold and windy out there! Those lilacs are looking gorgeous, though.

When I went to check the forecast, though, I found a weather alert. We’re supposed to get frost tonight.

I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t get those transplants done!

The girls and I headed out to make sure everything was covered.

The squash bed was a challenge. I didn’t have very many of the plastic containers I was keeping to use as cloches for exactly this purpose. We did, however, still have the five gallon size water bottles from when I did a complete water change of the fish tank (which, I am happy to say, shows no signs of turning cloudy or that mass of algae growing back; it was definitely our well water that was the problem!). I cut a bunch of them in half, and we got all the squashes covered!

I don’t know that the bricks balancing on the necks of bottles will do much good, but it’s worth a try, to make sure the cloches don’t get blown away.

The girls covered the new garden bed with plastic, as well.

The plastic row covers are sandwiched between pairs of boards, so the sprouts won’t get flattened too much.

We didn’t bother doing anything with the potato beds, since the straw mulch will insulate them just fine.

Based on the long range forecast, this should be the last frost of the year. We’re going to start getting hot again, tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here are some more smiles for you! :-)

The girls went to visit with the kittens for a bit, but only Big Rig stayed still long enough for a decent photo. :-D

As David does so well with the kittens, the girls let him come down, too.

He seems entranced by his tiny doppelganger!

:-D

The Re-Farmer

Gardening progress

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We’re having another wild and windy day! Still, stuff needs to get planted. I made a quick trip into town and my errands included stopping at the hardware store. Their garden centre was open, so I checked it out.

I couldn’t resist.

I bought some muskmelon transplants. Muskmelon is a type of cantaloupe that I remember we grew here when I was a kid. I absolutely loved them. I only got 2 plants, and we shall see how they do.

In preparation for today, my daughter and I made a bunch of markers to label our plantings.

We made one for each variety of seeds or transplants we have, plus an extra. The cucamelon don’t need one, since they are going to be completely separate from everything else.

We… won’t need to use all of them anymore.

I’ve been hardening off our seedlings. Because of the high winds, I’ve been leaving the trays inside the mini-greenhouse with the flap completely open – that way, they’d get some wind, but still be protected from the worst of it. I also put the mini-greenhouse in front of the old basement window, where it is more sheltered from the wind, and still gets full sun. When I brought home the new melon transplants, I tucked them into an empty shelf in the mini-greenhouse.

When it was time to start planting in the garden, I came out and found this.

My initial thought was that the wind had done this, but now that I think about it, I have changed my mind. If there were a wind enough to knock those trays – and their shelves – down, the whole thing would have been blown over.

I am now thinking a cat decided to go exploring.

Unfortunately, the squash seedlings are now all mixed up. The gourds still haven’t emerged, so at least we can guess that if there is no seedling, it’s a gourd, but there were still some other squash that hadn’t germinated.

I think the few fennel seeds that germinated and promptly bolted are a lost cause. :-(

Most disappointing.

Still, I’ll transplant what I can, tomorrow. One of the seed packets I got was a “surprise” mix. Now, they’re all going to be a surprise! :-D

This is where we focused on today.

Even though this area is turning out to be pretty well sheltered from the wind, there is still enough to really dry out the soil. I watered it earlier in the day, then watered it again before planting.

I also re-arranged the pieces of wood to make different sized beds, taking into account that I now have kohl rabi seeds and muskmelon transplants.

This is how it looks after the girls and I finished.

We still have seeds from the 3 varieties of beets, and kohl rabi left.

One of the things I’ve been doing is keeping the large plastic containers from some treats we sometimes get at Costco; cheese balls and pork rinds. I took two old cheese ball containers, drilled holes all around the sides near the bottom, then cut off the tops. I have a wood burning kit that includes a knife, and I used that to cut the tops off. Much better than hacking away at it with a utility knife or scissors! :-D These are now being used as cloches for the melons, which are surrounded by a mulch of straw. The cloches are tipped a bit sideways right now, but I will put them down for the night, when I do my evening rounds. In the morning, I will tip them over again.

Before the melons grow much bigger, I plan to add a trellis of some kind for them to climb.

Once the seedlings emerge, we’ll remove the plastic and the boards. The seeds were planted with square foot gardening in mind, and after the boards are removed, I will most likely add straw in between the beds for foot paths. An odd problem to have here, is that the soil is so soft, we sink when we walk on it. Our usual problem is the opposite. :-D

Here’s a bit more about square foot gardening.

When we do get do building raised beds, they will be quite a bit taller than the ones made in the video, for accessibility requirements. For those, we plan to use materials to fill the beds that turn out to have a name. Hugelkultur.

Or maybe more like this…

Basically, we’ll use whatever we’ve got to fill the bases, then topping with a soil mix. It might be a few years before we reach this point, though.

There is still one section of the new garden plot with nothing planted, and that may just stay empty. Tonight, I’ll be prepping the area in the old garden, where we will be planting our squashes, so we can start transplanting tomorrow. Then we’ll focus on the sunflowers next. Depending on how things go, we might plant some of our leftover seeds from the beets and kohl rabi, elsewhere. There is still the old kitchen garden area available, so we’ll see how things turn out.

The Re-Farmer

Garden progress

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This morning, when checking the soaking carrot seeds, I FINALLY spotted some roots!

For those who are new to following this blog (welcome!), this video shows the technique I am trying.

The first thing I needed to do was make the conrstarch gel. I noticed in the comments that people found the ratio in the video made too thick a gel, so I used 2tsp cornstarch to 1 cup of water. I made more than I needed, since I figured if it worked well for the carrots, I would use it for other things with very small seeds.

It took a while to cook the mixture down to gel state, and I think if I do it again, I would increase the cornstarch a little bit more.

Once the gel was cooked and cooling down, we started getting the new garden bed ready.

I had already raked the soil to even it out, and we gave it a thorough soaking. Then I added a bit of peat to each section and raked it out evenly. After the above photo was taken, it was given another thorough watering.

The gel took a while to cool down so, in between getting things ready outside, I put some of the gel into slide lock bags to cool down after. Then put them in the fridge, and finally putting them in the freezer. They didn’t have to get cold, but they at least had to be cool enough not to harm the seeds.

I prepped 4 bags. One for each variety of carrots, plus one for the parsley.

The instructions for the parsley said to let the seeds soak for a half hour, so that was done while I worked on the carrots. I used a measuring cup to hold the bag of gel up.

Also, the cats somehow managed to knock one of the dishes of carrot seeds upside down. :-( It was the deep purple variety. I was able to salvage most of the seeds, but there was a fair bit of seed loss, too. :-(

Once the seeds were added, I squeezed out as much air as I could, then smooshed the package around to evenly distribute the seeds in the gel.

When it came time to plant the seeds, a corner was snipped off, to make like an icing bag, and the seeds were squeezed into the prepared soil in short rows. By the time that was all ready, the parsley had soaked long enough and those were planted, too.

I’m using a combination of techniques, and one of them is based on square foot gardening. Rather than long rows, they’re being planted in squares. I’ve got the carrots planted in alternating sections, and the parsley is in the middle of the group of three.

I found a roll of plastic in the basement (I think it’s for roofing), so we used some of that to cover and protect the seeds. Those will be removed as soon as sprouts can be seen.

The squares seem very close together, but there really is a fair bit of space in between the plantings.

Also, my daughter is a sweetheart.

She trimmed some branches and made labels for me. :-)

The way things are looking, and using the square foot gardening method, we might be able to plant more here than originally planned. The three varieties of beets will go here, plus I ended up buying some kohl rabi. I don’t know if we’ll have much success with the fennel transplants; there really isn’t much improvement there. What few have sprouted can fit here. The parsley and fennel was originally going to be planted in the old kitchen garden, but I think we’ll continue to build up the soil in there and save that for next year.

Today turned out to be surprisingly hot, so we didn’t stay out for too long. We were forecast to hit 22C (71F) this afternoon, but we ended up reading 26C (78F). We will continue planting tomorrow. I think it is safe for us to start planting things that are supposed to wait until after the frost date. Looking at the long range forecast, we seem to have passed that point early.

Which reminds me. I was hoping to use the fire pit and burn barrel in the next while, so I checked the municipal website to see what the burn bad status was at. We are now on a total burn ban, which means no fire pits or burn barrels, either. That sure didn’t take long! And we still have standing water in the ditches and ponds. Ah, well.

The next few days are going to be very busy ones, as we get more things out into the gardens! I’m looking forward to using that soil auger to prep where we will be planting our giant sunflowers. :-) My mother also gave us some pumpkin seeds that were being given away for free at her local grocery store. They had tiny little envelopes, each with 3 seeds in them, and I had grabbed one, not realizing my mother had already included 2 packets in with a bag of stuff she’d prepared for me to take home. I don’t know what variety they are, but my mom tells me her town has annual pumpkin growing contests, so these might be a giant variety.

I think we’ll just plant them and see what we get! :-D

It should be interesting to see how our first year of gardening since we moved here will turn out. :-)

The Re-Farmer

New garden plot, ready! (video)

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This morning, I was able to finish prepping the new garden plot!

Woo hoo! It’s done!

Well… okay. Maybe not. But it’s almost there.

At this point, there are two things that need to be done to the area. One is a thorough watering before planting. The other is to adjust the acidity. Hopefully. According to the meter, the soil has a pH of 7.5. This plot will have beets and carrots in it, and the packages say they should be in soil with a pH of 6.5

From what I’ve been reading, I could increase the acidity several ways. One it to add compost or wood chip mulch. Which is interesting, because the whole reason the soil here is so soft is because it basically is compost. This area had firewood on wooden pallets, with whatever organic material (leaves, needles and grass, I would figure) was under the pallets. Which means it should be more acidic than alkaline.

Another thing that can be done is to add sphagnum peat moss. We would have to buy that, because there isn’t much left of the bale we got last year.

Other suggestions are for additives we would have to hunt down and buy, and that’s just not going to happen right now.

There was even a suggestion to water the area with highly diluted vinegar, but that tends to be a short term solution.

I might just have to go with what we’ve got.

The seeds we have that are supposed to be planted as soon as the ground can be worked are parsley and carrots. They should already be in the ground right now. :-( The parsley was to be planted in a different area. As for the carrots and beets, I have 3 varieties of each, and I’ve plotted out 6 rows. They are cross marked, making a grid of 6 x 5 squares, as I was thinking of working in square foot (ish) plots rather than single rows. For the carrots, and any other really small seeds, I plan to use this method of planting.

Then I have to find a way to cover them, to protect them until they sprout. I could lay a board over them, but if I can find some, I think I would prefer to cover them with semi-transparent plastic row covers.

We shall see when the times comes.

For now, I think it’s time to go soak some carrot seeds!

The Re-Farmer