vegetable gardening

Our 2024 Garden: first garlic, plus winter squash, melon and pumpkin progress

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After I did as much as I could on the cat isolation shelter build, I finally got around to harvesting some of our garlic. In particular, I wanted to get the garlic that was sharing a bed with tomatoes. The tomatoes are getting so huge and bushy, the garlic was barely visible!

The challenge was to find them and dig them out without breaking any tomato plants!

Not all of the garlic planted there in the fall emerged, but I think I found all the ones that did. The soil was surprisingly compacted, and the head buried much deeper than I expected. I could actually hear the wood on the handle of my digging tool making cracking noises if I went to deep, trying to loosen the soil.

Unfortunately, when I got them all out, I discovered they were just crawling with black ants!

After trimming the stems, most of them got strung up and are now hanging in the garage. Normally, I would have hung them under the market tent, but that broke over the winter. Right now, the garage is the only place that’s out of the elements, but still has air circulation. Since I’m using it as a workshop right now, I can at least be sure they won’t be forgotten about!

Before I headed in for the evening, I finally went out and took progress photos of the winter squash, melons, pumpkins and gourds. It’s been quite a while. The last time I normally would have done it, I did our garden tour video, instead.

If you want to see how they looked earlier, you can visit these links.

July 28
July 30
August 1
August 3
August 5
August 8

It’s now the 14th, so there is quite a lot of difference since I last posted photos. We lost a few things, and some look like they will also be losses, but I also found more melons, including a couple I found just this evening, while taking the photos!

With that in mind, I will start with the melon beds. First, the east bed. There were so many, I had to divide the photos between two Instagram slideshows.

This Summer of Melons mix is really prolific – though with where we are in the growing season, it’s likely we’ll only be able to harvest the earliest varieties, whatever they are. The mid and late varieties are unlikely to have enough time left to fully mature.

Then there is the west bed of melons, which also had to be split up between two slideshows.

If you notice some blood on my finger in the last photo, I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes while trying to take these photos!

In the above slideshow, you can see the only two Cream of Saskatchewan watermelons we’ve got right now, and the older one is dying off. The plant has more female flower buds and is blooming like crazy, but it’s probably way too late. While I was giving my sister a tour of the garden, she was telling me things are late in her garden, too. She’s not growing melons or squash this year, but she says her tomatoes are way behind. She barely even has tomatoes forming right now! That wet, wet spring we had has really affected so many people’s gardens, all over the province.

Next, we have the pumpkins.

We now have one completely orange pumpkin, and two that are starting to change colour! I’m really impressed by how well the pumpkins are doing.

And look!

We even have a drum gourd that’s getting bigger!

There are other drum gourds on the vines, but it’s still too early to tell if they were well pollinated. There are lots of male flowers, but I haven’t been seeing the female flowers when they first bloom, so I haven’t been able to do any hand pollinating.

Next is the east winter squash bed. This one has the most squash developing on it.

It does look like we’ll be losing several of them, though. Those big yellow ones that are now turning orange are looking awesome!

The west bed has only a few squash left.

One of them looks like it’s going to die off, too. It’s getting more yellow instead of more green.

Last of all, I did remember to get pictures of the Crespo squash!

It looks like we’ve got two surviving squash developing. I’m seeing at least one more female flower bud, but it’s too early to know if it’ll be a survivor. Again, we’ll see if they have enough growing season left. These are supposed to get very large.

I’m kinda regretting not watering this morning, even though the forecast is now more sure about us getting rain overnight. Looking at the weather radar, the trajectory of the weather system has changed, so it no longer looks like it’s going to go right past us. Instead, it’s heading towards us – and looks like it’s going to split in half and maybe miss us on two sides, instead of one! Still, we’re supposed to be getting right starting tonight, and continuing through to mid afternoon tomorrow. We shall see what actually happens!

Anyhow… that’s the status of things right now. I’m quite happy with things so far. In all honestly, considering how many winter squash we planted, I would have expected more – I don’t think there are any hiding under the leaves anywhere that I haven’t spotted. It does seem like some plants have more than one squash developing, while others have none at all. In the future, when we have our permanent trellises built – trellises strong enough to hold winter squash like these! – it’ll be easier to see, one way or the other. The squash in this Wild Bunch Mix really want to climb, too!

I’m quite impressed by how many melons we’ve got developing! They have a trellis to climb in one bed, but seem to prefer to sprawl on the ground, instead.

As late as things are, I’m happy with the Crespo squash, too. Last year, we had four struggling plants that ended up being baked in the sun in there location, and only one small, immature squash to harvest. It still made good pie!

They are definitely doing better in the new bed I made for them this year.

Lots to keep in mind for when we plant any of these again, in the future! Every year is a learning experience, and I don’t expect that to ever stop. That’s part of what makes gardening so fun!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: little harvest, with first corn

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We’ve got ourselves another hot day today. Our high was supposed to be 26C/79F today, but I’m pretty sure we passed that. I can’t say for sure, since I was mowing the lawn at the time.

I’m so thankful that my brother loaned us his smaller riding mower!! I actually got the driveway done!

Well… the edges of it, anyhow. We’ll need his tractor and mower attachment to get the rest.

Whatever the temperature actually turned out to be, the thermometer in the sun room was reading 32C/90F when I was done, which would have been after things started to cool down!

With the heat coming back for the next while, I made sure to give the garden a good watering this morning, then went over it to gather a bit of a harvest.

I wasn’t sure about the corn, so I harvested the ones that looked like they might be ripe – a whole three of them. 😄 After shucking them, I found two of them were still immature. Ah, well.

There were a few more Carminat beans and Dalvay peas ready to pick, and then I decided to see how the Uzbek Golden Carrots were doing. I ended up harvesting the rest of the row I’d started on earlier, except for a couple that looked really small. The other row has the carrots going to seed in it, and I’m going to let them. Carrot seeds don’t last very long, so fresh seed would be good, even though I still have lots. I ended up using some of the peas, beans and carrots in my breakfast, along with one of the cobs of corn I cooked separately and left for other family members to try. My younger daughter doesn’t like to eat corn on the cob because it gets in her teeth, so having just two left works out.

The G Star pattypan squash has squash large enough to harvest – just a couple – but I’m leaving them to get bigger. Another of the 4 plants was blooming this morning, with both male and female flowers, so I made sure to hand pollinate. I also found a new female flower on the Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon to hand pollinate. As for the winter squash, I went through them and took out the squash that were clearly starting to shrivel up. There do seem to be some new Turks Turban squash forming, though, which is neat. We seem to be getting the most of those ones – potentially. It all depends on if the weather holds, and we’re already reaching the middle of August! There’s basically just 3 weeks or so left in our growing season, based on our average last frost date. Not a lot of time for winter squash to grow!

Ah, well. We do what we can, right?

For now, I’m just happy with the little harvests we are managing to get this year.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: harvest – first beans and tomato!

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I just got back from my evening rounds, and was able to bring in a little bit of a harvest!

We have our first beans of the year! The purple Carminat and the green Seychelle pole beans. The one San Marzano tomato I’ve been keeping an eye on was looking ripe, and when I touched it, it fell off the vine on its own. I was even able to grab a small handful of Dalvay shelling peas.

I honestly didn’t think we’d get beans this year, with how much they’ve struggled.

I’m so happy!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: squash and melons growth progress – and another breakdown!

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Okay, this is getting ridiculous.

I was able to get some progress mowing the southeast yard. I was stopping and starting a lot to empty the bag. The area I was mowing is not infested with creeping Charlie, so the clippings went directly for mulch of the strawberry and asparagus bed, and around the sunchokes.

I’d gotten through maybe 2/3 of the southeast yard when I ran out of gas. As the engine sputtered and died, it backfired, which is the only thing I can think of that was out of the ordinary.

After filling the tank, I tried to start it, but it wouldn’t start.

I failed to start it several more times before I decided to let it cool down for a while. This has happened before and we were able to start it again after awhile.

As I waited, I puttered around with some other things around the yard, before trying again.

It still wouldn’t start.

Worse, as I was pulling the cord to start it, I could hear rattling noises.

I ended up putting it away in the garage and got the riding mower out. I decided it was worth a try to see if it would cut.

It wouldn’t start, either. The battery was dead again.

This battery was replaced just last year.

I put the charger on it, then puttered around the yard some more. Tried to start it again, but it hadn’t charged enough, so I went inside to have a meal.

The next time, it started fine, and I tried mowing.

I don’t know what’s going on with that thing. It will cut for a while, and then… not. As far as I can tell, everything is working the way it should. When it stops cutting, I can reverse it, then try and cut the stuff that was missed. Usually, it starts cutting again, but sometimes I have to reverse and try again a few times.

What makes it even more confusing is that when I got to the end of the strip, I would increase the speed to maximum and drive back to the other end, so that while cutting, the grass was always being expelled over grass that was already cut. I didn’t bother disengaging the mowing bed, and it was set lower than the push mower. While going around, and I could see the mower was actually cutting grass as I went over the grass cut with the push mower. However, once I was back at the taller grass and moving at the slowest speed, it would just for a short while, and then stop.

After a while, I just stopped. It was taking way too long and I was wasting too much gas.

So now we have a broken push mower, and a riding mower that doesn’t always cut. This is on top of three desktop computers in the household that had to be replaced, plus a laptop that is out of commission but will not be replaced. Which is also on top of having to replace the van, my mother’s car is making banging noises – and now has two flat tires, one of which has a broken bead at the rim and can’t be pumped up at all.

All of this is less than 12 months.

This has got to be the worse year for expensive things needing to be replaced or repaired – and things we can’t afford to replace or repair anymore!!

Well, I at least was able to end my time outside on a positive note. I did the semi-daily growth comparison photos of all the squash and melons.

This time, I remembered to get the Crespo squash.

I do see a couple of female flower buds near this one, but it will be a while before they bloom. This is on the side where two vines are growing. The third vine is growing between this new bed and the bed with the peppers and eggplant beside it. That one has shown no side of any female flowers, yet.

I did, however, find some tiny green Seychelle pole beans starting to develop on the trellis netting!

Next is the easternmost bed with the Summer of Melons blend of melons.

I had to split the Instagram slideshow photos into two batches. These is from the east facing side.

It looks like one of those is definitely going to be a loss.

Then there is the west facing side.

I found a new one!

There are quite a few more budding melons, but it’s too early to tell if they were successfully pollinated or not on those.

Next, the pumpkins!

There’s one that’s getting very yellow, and I expect it’s going to die off completely.

The largest and oldest pumpkin is starting to turn colour!

Next, I tried to get photos of the drum gourds.

The problem is, I can barely see my screen in the light, so I couldn’t tell if the camera was focusing properly or not.

I had actually finished taking all the photos and was going back through the beds when I spotted another drum gourd, so I got a picture of that one, too. For all I can tell, there are more of them hiding among the leaves!

Next is the winter squash bed with the peas and beans.

There’s one in there that looks like it might be a loss, too. The rest, however, are looking awesome!

Next are the winter squash interplanted with corn.

Having been transplanted later, these are behind the first bed, but still doing really well.

The second bed of melons had to have the photos split up in the Instagram slide shows, too.

There’s a new melon in there!

I found a new one on the other side, too. After I took the photos, I found a couple more pieces of scrap wood to put under them. As with the Summer of Melons mix bed, I can see quite a lot of developing melons that are still too small to be sure they are pollinated. There is certainly no shortage of pollinators, though, which bodes well for future productivity!

I was definitely feeling better by the time I was done going through the garden.

Now to figure out what to do about our broken lawn mowers.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: tiny harvest: first shelling peas!

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Woo hoo!!!

This morning, we have our first tiny harvest of shelling peas!

It isn’t a lot, but the more they get picked, the more they will keep producing! These are the Dalvay variety of peas that we got several years ago, and still have lot of seeds left over.

There is nothing like peas fresh off the vine!

The purple Dragonfly peppers are ripening much earlier than any of the other varieties we’ve planted this year. All the others are still very green. Eventually, we will have brown Sweet Chocolates, orange and yellow Early Sunsation and Early summer, and Purple Beauty peppers in this bed, too.

We aren’t going to be particularly hot today, so the only watering I did this morning was to fill the reservoirs by the drum gourds and pumpkins. The biggest of the pumpkins is starting to turn orange! I’ll be taking the comparison photos for the series I’ve been doing this evening – and hopefully, I will remember to include the Crespo squash this time! I completely forgot, last time.

My goal for today is to finish mowing the inner yard. I’d intended to do some mowing yesterday, but never got that far. I’d picked up replacement hose connectors, as we have leaking front yard hoses. With one connection, both hoses had already had their connections replaced, and both were leaking. One of them had a 1/2 inch connector instead of a 3/4 inch connector. The clamp couldn’t quite tighten it enough. The other was the right size, but still leaking. So I replaced both.

That took a LOT longer than it should have. The old connectors had to be cut off, one of the new clamps was bent and wouldn’t loosen or tighten properly, I tried to use the old clamp only to have part of it disappear completely, so I had to figure out how to get the bent new one to work, etc. I used Teflon tape on them, too, as an extra precaution to prevent leaking. I think I ended up spending at least an hour fighting with it.

The front tap has three hoses connected, and one of them predates our living here. It’s still one of the best hoses we have, though! It was leaking, so I replaced the rubber washer.

Then I turned the hose back on and…

It’s all still leaking.

*sigh*

I do have the contractor’s grade hose that was gifted to us. It is going to be used to replace the hose in the back and set up a garden tap again. It’s going to be a while longer yet, before we can dig up the rest of the buried water pipe, and I won’t start that until I have the pipe I want to run the hose through to protect it, before burying it.

The problem is, the pipe I’m looking to get costs at least $27 – $35 for a 3″ x 10′ length. The 4″ pipe is easier to find, but more expensive – and I’d need four of them, plus angled connectors for each end. The idea is that, if the hose ever needs to be repaired or replaced, it can be easily pulled out of the pipe without having to dig the trench again. I might be able to find pipe in the diameter I want that’s a better price, but for that, I’d have to actually go into a store in the city that carries them in stock (I’m not finding anything in stock locally) and look at what they have. Their websites are not very helpful.

So if it’s going to be a while before I can even consider using that hose to set up a garden tap, I may as well use it now!

Meanwhile, this time of year is when things like hoses go on clearance, so I should be able to get more heavy duty hoses to replace all our cheapies. I’m getting really tired of having the world’s kinkiest hoses! Even the non-kink hoses I got a year or two ago are constantly kinking!

All in good time, I guess.

For now, though, I want to get the inner lawn mowed, so I can move the truck to the yard and use the garage as a workshop to build an outdoor cat isolation cage. We have some pretty feral ladies that need to be trapped and spayed, and there’s no way we can keep them indoors anywhere for the 2 weeks they need for recovery. Who knows. We might even get them to be more semi-feral than feral while they are in an isolation cage!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: we have beans, and a blushing tomato

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We are having a much more pleasant day today, temperature wise. In fact, our overnight low last night dipped down to 9C/48F! I actually had to turn my fans off. 😄 Right now, coming up on 6:30pm, we’re still at our high of 21C/70F, which has been sooooo enjoyable!

I did end up watering the garden this afternoon, though. This time with water soluble fertilizer. The NPK on this fertilizer was 18-18-21, rather than the acidifying, high nitrogen fertilizer I used before. With so many things developing their fruit, they need that higher potassium and less nitrogen.

While I was watering in the main garden area, I saw something that made me smile!

We have pole beans developing! So far, just one purple Carminat plant has them, but the others are blooming, so I’m hoping to expect more. The green Seychelle beans that were planted later, to fill the gabs where the Carminat failed to germinated, will likely be a couple of weeks behind.

While watering the San Marzano tomatoes in the retaining wall blocks, I saw our first tomato that’s starting to show a blush of red.

At this time last year, most things were farther along, and we were still harvesting bush beans, and even some summer squash and some decently sized carrots. Still, things are growing well, for all that they’re behind in the growing season. As long as that frost holds off, we should have a pretty decent harvest at the end of the season.

Plus, we should soon have beans, corn and shelling peas to harvest!

Well. As long as something else doesn’t get them first. Like a deer. At least we don’t have problems with groundhogs this year, and with all the yard cats, rodents and hares are not a problem at all!

The yard cats do earn their keep!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: a little big of everything!

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With the photos I took of the garden for my mother today, I realized that I haven’t really been doing general photos to share here. I’ve been doing that in the garden tour videos. So this is basically a photo tour of the garden today, and how things are doing.

First, the south garden beds.

The Goldy zucchini is blooming now! I didn’t get photo of the summer squash in pots, but the green zucchini is also blooming, though it’s not looking very healthy at all. The Magda squash is not blooming, but the plants are looking healthier. Go figure!

I set the images on Instagram to include the whole image, not just a cropped square, but for some reason, it didn’t take. So the image with the chocolate cherry tomatoes at the chain link fence is cut off, and you can’t see the potatoes in the background.

The kohlrabi seedlings are getting nice and big! I’m quite excited by them. Every time I’ve tried to grow them in the spring, they’ve failed entirely. This time, I actually have seedlings! They are protected from the deer by the netting but, unfortunately, the cats like to go under it and lie right where the kohlrabi are! So some of them are squished.

I didn’t bother taking a photo of the sad asparagus bed, or the sunchokes. The sunchokes, at least, are doing well, and are very tall.

The late potatoes are really huge and starting to show signs of dying back. The sugar snap peas are still growing and producing, which is a bit of a surprise. Early peas are usually done by now. The carrots seem unchanged, but the chard seedlings are definitely getting bigger, though in some spots, they seem to have not germinated at all.

The eggplants are growing bigger and blooming a lot right now; adding the grass clippings on top of the paper and cardboard mulch seems to be just what the doctor ordered! Even the hot peppers seems to be getting a boost from it, with more flowers, though I can’t see if there are more peppers forming.

The Crespo squash is really sprawling out! Cut off in the image is the single squash that’s growing, though I’m starting to see more female flowers again. Way too late in the season, though, for anything to come of them, unless we have a really long and mild fall.

I had to split up the photos of the main garden area into two Instagram batches.

The melons in the future trellis tunnel bed are doing quite well! I keep finding more and more hidden melons as I try to train more vines up the netting. This afternoon, I found even more, and have been putting bricks under the ones touching the ground to protect them. Even the surviving bush beans are looking really good. The onions gone to seed are getting so tall, they’re starting to fall over!

The pumpkins are also doing great and – much to my excitement! – when I was going through the vines this afternoon, I actually spotted some baby drum gourds! I never even saw female flowers, as they were hidden in the leaves! They are still at that stage where they might simply shrivel up and drop off but, hopefully, the pollination stuck.

There are quite a lot of peppers developing, hidden among the leaves. Only the dark Purple Dragonfly peppers seem to be getting ripe, though. The others are still very, very green.

Last night’s rain seems to have given the winter squash a huge boost; they just exploded in flowers this morning! All male flowers, but that’s okay. As I was going through them this afternoon, I kept finding more and more developing squash! I’ve been putting bricks or scrap pieces of boards under them as I find any that look like they’ve been successfully pollinated.

The shelling peas are not getting very tall, but they sure are getting lots of flowers and pods developing! This is really late for peas, but they were also planted late, and I’m impressed with how well they’ve survived the heat. I think the shade from all those squash leaves definitely helped!

There may not be a lot of pole beans, but they sure are getting tall! They are also starting to bloom, so I hope will will have something to harvest, soon.

The corn in the other winter squash bed is also doing very well. A few have fallen over in the wind, but I’ve been able to use the dollar store row cover hoops we aren’t using anymore to support them. Those are turning out to be quite handy, and I think I’ll be picking up more of them when I have the chance.

Finding a tiny tree frog on the biggest winter squash just made my morning! I love frogs! We have SO many of them this year, too!

The second melon bed is also doing fabulous. The watermelon is even starting to finally bloom. I found so many melons in there that were hidden among the leaves! I have been putting bricks, scrap pieces of wood, and even flat rocks under any that I find that look large enough to not dry up and fall off. I’m seeing many, many more tiny melons among the vines, but most of those will probably fall of, We shall see!

The San Marzano tomatoes in the main garden area are looking amazing. These are the ones that were the last to be transplanted, and the weakest, most damaged seedlings. Yet now, they have these thick, strong stems that don’t even really need the support posts! I think there’s lots of tomatoes on there, but it’s hard to see through the leaves. I haven’t been pruning them or anything, so we’ll see how that works out. The onions around them are doing well, too.

The shallots in the other bed aren’t doing as well – I think they’ve been rolled on by cats. The G-Star pattypan plants are getting so huge! The White Scallops are growing, but still quite small. The yellow bulb onions are going okay, except for one corner where it looks like something rolled right over them.

Then there is the strawberry bed. The deer eaten plants are recovering – and even starting to bloom! They might actually produce more berries this year! What an amazingly hardy variety! I’ll have to get more of them, that’s for sure.

Then there’s the Old Kitchen garden.

The San Marzano tomatoes in the retaining wall blocks are producing fruit and growing, but nothing at all like the ones in the main garden area. The mint is doing well and I later harvested a large amount of it. Enough to make some jelly or a syrup, I think.

None of the garlic is ready to be harvested, still. This is quite late for garlic! The Forme de Coure tomatoes are thriving, as are the Black Cherries. What a difference between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes! Those cherry tomatoes are getting so tall, they’re starting to get higher than the lilac they are climbing through! The little strawberries we grew from seed also seemed to love the rain we had last night, and are just full of ripe berries. Even the luffa are getting noticeably bigger, though still nowhere near producing flowers. Ah, well.

So that is how the garden looked today. I wish I could say my mother was happy to see the pictures, but the closest she could come to a complement was to say how she hoped I’d be giving her some winter squash later on. 😄

Which I was planning to, even though when I did that before – at her request – she looked confused and told me she didn’t know what to do with it. She never grew winter squash. Just zucchini. Ah, well. We’ll figure something out for her!

As for me, I’m pretty happy with how things are looking right now!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: melons, squash, pumpkin progress – and it’s crazy hot out there!

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According to my weather app, we’re still at 31C/88F, which “feels like” 33C/91F

Well, this evening (it’s coming up on 6pm as I start this), I got photos of our thermometers.

The thermometer in the sun room was reading 39C/102F. This thermometer is against the west wall, about 3/4 of the way up to the ceiling. It does not get direct sunlight on it.

The thermometer outside my husband’s bedroom window was as high as the needle could go. If the numbers went that far, it would be about 60C/140F. This thermometer get blasted with the full sun for most of the day, in a mostly sheltered corner of the house. No shade and rarely any breeze.

The last thermometer is stored in the top of a cat shelter shelf. The shelf is in full sun, but the thermometer itself was in shade inside. It was reading 43C/109F. Of all the thermometers, I’d say that one is the most accurate to how it felt while walking around the garden beds.

Wow.

Honestly, I’ll take that over matching temperatures on the other side of freezing. Not that we see -60C/-76F, but we do see -40C/F at times, and that is far more deadly.

A couple of evenings ago, I took photos of our squash, pumpkins and melons, using my hand for perspective. Today, I did it again – but this time, I found more to take photos of! Since Instagram allows “only” up to 10 photos in a slideshow, I split the squash and melon photos up by beds.

Yes, I was able to find melons in the second bed this time! I had spotted one before, but today I moved the leaves around and found others.

First, there is our single Crespo squash.

I’ve spotted some tiny female flower buds, but so far, there is only one successfully germinated Crespo squash among the three vines.

Next up is the bed with just the Summer of Melons mix melons.

I dug around in the leaves and found some “new” ones, too. In one photo, there are two melons, but the leaves and vines prevented me from getting a photo of them both, individually, so one of them is only half in the frame.

They’re getting big enough that they are starting to look like distinctively different varieties, too.

The next bed is the pumpkins.

The smaller ones are getting noticeably not-small anymore!

The pumpkin vines are getting intertwined with the drum gourd vines. Those have many male flowers, but I have yet to find a female flower anywhere. It’s possible I can’t see any under all the leaves, but I think that’s unlikely. I’m wondering if they are getting enough water? These have a buried gallon water bottle buried next to their bases, so they get watered slowly and deeply, but a gallon of water might not be enough for something like this. I don’t know. It seems to be sufficient for the pumpkins, though!

The next bed is the winter squash interplanted with shelling peas and pole beans.

The biggest squash at the corner of the bed had a friend on its stem!

The next bed is the winter squash interplanted with corn.

Still not very many among these, but they were also transplanted a fair bit later than the first bed.

Finally, there is the second melon bed.

The first and largest one is among the few Summer of Melons mix transplants that were left over. The others, I’m not sure. They look like they are the same variety, but one was on the far side of the single surviving Cream of Saskatchewan water melon, which I know for sure are not from that mix. That would make them Sarah’s Choice melons. We grew those last year, but they were grown in a bed next to two other varieties and the vines were so mixed up, we lost track of which were which. The other melons in this bed would be the Pixie melons.

Oh, wow. I just linked those to where I bought them, and my goodness, the prices have sure gone up!!! Especially for the Pixies!

If you want to compare how fast these have been growing, you can check out the comparison posts I made on July 30 and July 28.

We may not have anything to harvest on a daily basis this year, but we sure to have a lot growing!

If the warmth keeps up, though, we might actually be able to have things to harvest. The bush beans first had to survive the slugs. Then they had to survive the deer. Amazingly, there are some that have recovered enough that they are starting to bloom! So Royal Burgundy bush beans are a possibility.

There aren’t a lot of pole beans, either, but they are also starting to bloom, so we might be able to harvest both the green Seychelles and the purple Carminate beans at some point. Which isn’t going to be easy, with all those winter squash vines growing around them! The shelling peas seem to be very prolific, with lots of flowers and developing pods, but it will probably be at least a couple more weeks before any of those can be harvested. The corn is also going to be a bit longer; they are sure releasing a LOT of pollen right now!

We also have green tomatoes developing, but nothing is even close to ripening, yet. Then there are the summer squash. I have no idea if we’ll get any green zucchini, Magda, Goldy zucchini or White Scallops, but I think we’ll definitely be getting some of the G-Star patty pans to harvest at some point. They’re not blooming yet, but there are buds starting to form, at least.

What a strange, strange gardening year. That rain we had in the spring really messed things up and set things back. We had Saskatoons blooming, but there are no berries – it was probably too wet for the pollinators. The cherry tree by the house isn’t going to have many berries, though there are some that are ripening. One chokecherry tree in the spruce grove is showing berries, but the one next to the main garden area has almost nothing on it. Even among the crab apples trees, there are a couple of trees where I’m not seeing any apples! These are the ones that have small apples the birds like to eat. The ones with apples that we like to eat do have apples on them, so the timing of blooms and pollinating seems to have been just right for those trees, but not the others.

We have plenty of pollinators, though. I don’t usually see them, but when I’m going through the garden, I can hear them buzzing. I will still hand pollinate the squash if I spot a female flower, but the melons have so many flowers that are so small, hidden among so many leaves, it’s all on the pollinators for those!

With the spring set backs, we can only pray to have a long and mild fall to make up for it!

As my SIL once told me some time ago; if we depended on our garden for food, we’d be starving! 😄

I’m working to change that, though! 😁😁

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: winter squash, melons, pumpkins – and our first Crespo squash!

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I just got back in from taking comparison photos in the garden. It’s just past 7pm now, and we’re just barely starting to cool down. We most definitely broke 30C/86F today, though I don’t know by how much, or what the humidex was. As I write this, we’re down to 28C/82F, with the humidex putting us at 30C/86F – which I think is off by a few degrees! It certainly feels hotter than that out there to me!

But, everything is looking good in the garden. The morning watering is keeping everything from wilting away in the heat. The corn has reached pollination stage, but we don’t have much wind today, so I’ve been shaking them to pollinate the silks, and can see clouds of pollen coming off the tassels! I am so looking forward to trying this variety of corn. Such a short growing season isn’t worth much if we don’t like the corn! 😄 I see some potential problems with growing them in with the winter squash, though; some of the vines have started to climb the corn! The stalks will not be strong enough to hold that kind of weight!

I did not do any comparison photos of the developing melons, squash, etc., using my hand as perspective, yesterday. So we’ll be looking at two days growth from the photos I last posted.

Except for this one!

This is our first Crespo squash! I hand pollinated it, and it took, so I put a brick under it to keep it from potentially getting a rotten spot on the grass. I would love to get even just one fully grown Crespo squash, but it’s the end of July, so chances of that are pretty low, unless September ends up another warm one without frost – which may be possible, this year.

Digging around in the leaves, I found at least one more Summer of Melons Blend melon developing. There are lots more female flowers and probably more developing melons hidden by the leaves, but these are the largest ones that I can find, so far.

In the pumpkins, where I’d put a board under two smaller ones, you can see that the smaller one is turning yellow and withering away. Pollination didn’t take on that one.

I’m really impressed by how many pumpkins we have from just these two vines!

Among the winter squash, I found one that looks like it took and put a board under it. I also got shots of a couple that may have taken, but they haven’t dropped their flowers yet, so I might be jumping the gun to include them here.

I’ve been looking through the Vesey’s squash selection to try and determine what the varieties are, but it looks like the seeds in their Wild Bunch Mix are not sold separately! At least not all of them.

This is the image from their website for this product. I recognize Red Kuri in the photo, which we’ve grown before and really like. The image includes a squash I know is called Turks Turban, which is one of the squash we’ve got developing, but that one isn’t sold separately.

Oh! I just realized I forgot to get a photo of one large one! Excuse me while I go back out and fix that…

Done…

I can’t believe I forgot one of our largest developing winter squash! It is completely covered by leaves, so getting to it, and getting a photo, is a challenge. I think I can see which it is in the product image, but I don’t see that one among the seeds they sell individually.

Well, once they are ripe, I’ll have to look around online to see if I can identify the other varieties. The main reason we got this mix was to see which ones we like the most, so we can buy just those in the future. Eventually, I want to get ourselves down to just a couple of varieties – three at most – that grow well here, and that we enjoy eating – so that we can save seeds. That’s sort of the goal for most of the things we are growing, really, including the Summer of Melons mix.

Anyhow. I’ll probably take these comparison photos every couple of days, even though some of them show visible growth just from one day to the next. Especially when they are smaller. I like being able to go through the photos later on and really see how much they’ve grown in such a short time!

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be doing the early watering again, before heading to the city for our Costco shop. It’s also local election day for our municipal council, so I’ll be sure to vote before heading to the city.

As an aside, I’ve been playing with the AI assistant function on WordPress. The “generate feedback” keeps telling me I need to break up my long paragraphs. So often, I’ve taken another look at my posts to see if my paragraphs are really that long. I don’t think they are, in the posts I’ve done this with, but the AI sure seems to think so! It also keeps telling me to use subheadings to break things up. I’m not that kind of blog! It suggests adding images, too, though a few times it does recognize that I’ve used Instagram to include images.

What’s really funny is using the AI to generate images based only on the content of the posts. The AI does not know what a vegetable garden looks like. Or strawberry beds. Or a grocery store! At least the cat and kitten images look not too bad. 😄😄 The post I wrote about the washing machine being somehow turned on by the cats and flooding our entry was probably the funniest. I wrote about draining the water with a hose extending through the door.

It decided we had a washing machine sitting outside the door, with decorative nic nacs on top. 😂😂

None of them have been useable for my posts, though. I haven’t tried to tell it what to make for an image manually since I tried to get it to create an image of a mosquito some time ago.

The AI doesn’t know what mosquitoes look like, either.

Too funny!

The Re-Farmer

[Ahahahaha!!! I just tried the feedback option for this post, and it suggested I use the AI to generate images for it. 😂😂😂]

Our 2024 Garden: first substantial harvest! Well, almost. Plus, good news

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With our garden not having the usual things that could be harvested throughout the growing season, the most we’ve had this year has been pretty small. The only real exception to that was the garlic scapes which, a much as there were and how much we enjoy them, is more of a flavouring than anything else. Aside from that, we’ve had handfuls of sugar snap peas, strawberries and raspberries. Much enjoyed, but not very substantial.

Today, I decided I wanted to cook with potatoes and carrots.

We don’t have any potatoes or carrots in the house at the moment.

A good excuse to see how the Red Thumb fingerling potatoes turned out! These are the ones we planted using potatoes from last year. They were small, even for fingerlings, and had been sprouting in the box they were hidden in (for some reason, the cats love playing with them!) for way too long. I shoved in as many as would fit in the leftover space, then dumped the rest in the compost heap. I honestly wasn’t sure they would grow.

Well, grow they did, and all of the, from the looks of it, unlike the Purple Caribe in the other 2/3rds of the bed.

The ones in the compost pile started growing later, are looking huge and are blooming right now. We’ll probably get more and bigger potatoes out of the compost pile than in the garden bed!

It’ll be a while before we can dig them up and confirm that, though.

I wanted just enough for tonight, so I only dug up a few at one end of the bed. There was a self seeded tomato in with them so, as soon as I had the space for it, I dug it out with a large amount of soil, so the roots would have virtually no disruption, then transplanted it at the very end of the bed. As I dug around for more potatoes, I built the soil around the stem a bit, then made the mound so that water would flow towards the stem rather than down the sides, where it would wash away the soil. I’ll put a mulch around it as soon as I have the materials to do it.

I ended up digging out three plants altogether, then went and harvested some carrots.

I had been wondering about the Uzbek Golden carrots. There’s lots of leaves, but there are no “shoulders” of carrots sticking out of the soil. Last year, they grew quite large, and we could see the carrot tops much earlier in the season.

Well, I found out why.

All the carrots I pulled up were still quite small!

Which is okay for a day’s meal. Still, what I harvested was almost a quarter of the carrots we planted, since we never had the space to plant more.

That’s what we get for starting ALL the mixed variety packs for winter squash and melons, and having an almost 100% germination rate. Plus extra melons! Plus transplanting all those overwintered onions for their seeds.

After harvesting these, they got hosed down a few times to get the big dirt off. Since they are so fresh, they just need to be scrubbed clean and the carrots trimmed, before being cooked unpeeled. Otherwise, I would never have kept some of the really tiny potatoes and carrots.

I did harvest the one ripe Purple Dragonfly pepper last night, but I don’t eat peppers, so the girls get to enjoy that.

I haven’t quite decided what I’ll be making with the ingredients I have right now. It’s still too hot to cook, so it’ll wait for a while!

On another note, my daughter’s transfers went through today, so she was able to etransfer to her father so he could use his credit card to buy her new computer. We were willing to drive to the city to pick it up at the local location, but it turns out they only have one location with pick up, and it’s in Toronto! So it will be mailed to us, by express post. Which means my daughter should have her new computer by the end of the week. Canada Post tends to be pretty good for that, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually arrived by Wednesday. Which would be awesome. I’m amazed my daughter has been able to keep her computer running at all! I don’t know if she got any sleep at all today, as each step of getting the funds transferred until the purchase could finally be made took longer than usual. But, it’s finally done. She still needs to keep her old computer functioning until the new one arrives, plus the time to set up the software she uses, make sure it can connect with her drawing tablet (that probably needs to be replaced soon, too) and both monitors, get the drivers updated, etc. until she can finally use it for work.

Even so, it’s a huge weight off her shoulders, just having it purchased and on its way!

I’d say today has been a pretty good day!

The Re-Farmer