After yesterday’s trip to the ER, my daughters have been absolutely brutal about me not doing anything.
Which was probably a good idea. I have been feeling really good today, which means I probably would have overdone it, if they hadn’t!
My younger daughter has been focusing on the outside stuff and taking over in the garden. She’s been doing the morning cat feeding and this morning she did a deep watering of the garden beds – something that probably won’t be needed tomorrow, as there are thunderstorms in the forecast. Then she went out again to dig up all of the potatoes. Which turned out to be a harder job than it should have been. She couldn’t find where I’d left the garden fork, which still needed to have its broken handle replaced, so she was using a spade. When I came out to see how she was, she’d stopped for a break in the shade, having brought my walker out to use.
She found that thing so handy, she’s now considering buying one for herself!
When I found out about the lack of garden fork, I got the new handle I bought, a screwdriver and the garden fork over. Unfortunately, the Canadian Tire handle turns out to be smaller than the handle on the fork, so she wasn’t able to get it all the way on. We’ll need to reduce the circumference of the handle by a small amount – small enough that just some sand paper would do the job – to get it all the way on. So she had to finish using the spade.
Most of the Yukon Gold got rinsed off with a hose then brought inside. The first photo above is after her sister used some of it for supper. The second image is the last of the Yukon Gold with all of the Viking potatoes, curing on the screen.
I’m not too concerned about curing them fully. There aren’t a lot of them and they will likely be finished off rather quickly, much like the cabbage harvested earlier are being used up now.
In the future, we would need to plant a LOT more to have enough to last us the winter and, hopefully, have seed potatoes for the next year.
My daughter removed the garlic from the screen to make room for the potatoes, and then she trimmed the roots and dirt off the garlic, getting them ready to bring indoors.
We’ll be sure to selected the ones with the largest cloves to plant in October. We will have plenty to choose from. We’ve got the largest garlic we’ve grown yet, this year!
I joined my daughter again shortly before she finished with the garlic, so we were able to walk around a bit. I did harvest some bush beans planted around the Arikara squash, while she looked for any ripe Orange Currant tomatoes. Later on, I also harvested the one Prolific Long Neck squash that was large enough to make it worth picking.
While walking around, I couldn’t help but notice this.
The tree removal company has not been able to come out with their stump grinder, with the rain we had last week. From the looks of it, we’ll be getting thunderstorms and severe weather through Monday and Tuesday.
Which means the elm has had time to start trying to grow back already.
Elm is very difficult to get rid of, which is one of the reasons why my brother is willing to pay for stump grinding.
So the girls have been wonderful about getting things done that I would normally be working on, which is appreciated. Even feeling as good as I did, and as lovely it was to walk around the yard to get some fresh air and sunshine. it wasn’t all that long before I started feeling warning signs that I needed to get back inside to sit down. I still managed to get a few easy things done, though I had to sneak that in after my daughter went inside with the garlic. 😄
Today was much cooler, with possible rain, so I didn’t need to water the garden today. I did get a harvest, though. This time, from the opposite end of the row.
These are the Viking potatoes. Not as many as when I harvested from the south end of the bed, but there was a definite reason for that. SO many elm roots under just the two plants at the end of the bed I dug under! Very frustrating.
In the next image is the complete harvest. More tri-colour bush beans, a few little carrots (they don’t seem to be getting any bigger; the soil is probably too compact again) and a couple of stalks from the walking onions. I broke off most of the bulbils and laid them down where I want to keep the walking onions growing, otherwise, they’d take over in the grass beyond the garden. The “stalks” are so big, I only grabbed two of them, which was more than enough for the day’s use.
I checked out one of the corn cobs that had dried out silks. It was on the outer edge, and I found it was very poorly pollinated. Very few developing kernels. I did try to shake the pollen down and make sure the stalks along the outside were dusted, to sort of imitate the wind, but I guess it didn’t work very well. I really should have had that second block I’d intended to plant but was never able to, right next to it. That would have improved things. Ah, well. We should still have something!
I then headed out for most of the day, which I’ll cover in another post, and the girls will be doing something with what I picked. I look forward to seeing what they come up with!
Ah, life on the Canadian prairies. One extreme to the other. A short while ago, we were still getting snow and overnight temperature at or below freezing.
Today, we reached a high of 25C/77F – I don’t know what the humidex was – and passed 20C/68F by about 8 or 9am.
I headed out a bit earlier than usual to do the outside cat stuff. Then I checked the garden shed. Sure enough, the raccoon and her babies were still there. I decided to very carefully and as quietly as possible, take out as many things I expect to need in the next while.
I heard a lot of loud chittering as I was taking things out, most sounding like they were coming from the littles. They seemed to be chittering more about trying to latch on than what I was doing. The mama barely moved. After I cleared away things that were on top of the wheeled garden chair they are under, I stuck my phone into gaps to get the first three pictures.
Those are such roly poly babies! There are at least three, possibly four.
The last photo is most of the stuff I removed.
That roll of netting is long enough to go completely around the trellis bed, so I am saving it for this, if we need to do it again, as it would be way too long for anything else.
After that, I headed in for breakfast, iced up a water bottle, then got started on the covered bed that I wanted to plant our potatoes in.
In the first picture, you can see how it’s been since the fall, minus the bricks waying it down – something has dug holes through the plastic.
As you can see in the next picture, the solarization didn’t really work, and it was more like a greenhouse. So the first job was to loosen the soil and weed it. Especially at the end where the excess was rolled up, which was packed with creeping Charlie.
That stuff is just nasty.
Once weeded, I got it all leveled out, while leaving the soil thermometer in place. That soil is quite warm!
By this point, I was really starting to struggle with the heat and had to go inside for a bit. After grabbing a light lunch, I headed back out with the potatoes. I have 5 pound bags each of Viking and Yukon this year. Not a lot for our useage needs, but that’s all we have the space for right now.
In the photo where the potatoes are laid out, ready to be buried, you can see a board across the middle. That’s to mark between the two different types of potatoes in the same bed.
Next, the bed had to be protected. I decided to use the long roll of mosquito netting this time, which isn’t very wide, so I used shorter stakes. These were salvaged from a broken market tent and are all from pieces broken in half. The broken ends got pushed down so the end with the screw holes were at the top.
I had to gather things next, so I set up a cheap dollar store sprinkler hose over the potato bed. Double duty: I could start watering the bed while doing something else, and it kept the cats off while I wasn’t there to keep them away.
One of the things I had to go was get the roll of netting which, as you can see in the next picture, Gouda was using to nap on!!
In the past, I have strung twine from support to support, along the sided and crossing the middle. I wanted something stronger than that. This bed is 18′ wide, and I have 6′ bamboo stakes, so I ended up attaching three along the top of each side to hold the mesh up. The stakes were spaced out just under 6′ apart, allowing for some overlap. I used the screw holes in the supports and wire from one of the hoop kits I got to hold them in place. I still had to put the stakes deeper into the soil so that the netting could be secured to the ground on each sides. The sides are secured with ground staples.
Yes, I took the sprinkler hose out. It was a pretty terrible hose – but then, you get what you pay for, and this did not cost very much! It was just there for the moment, anyhow.
After I took that last picture, I gave the bed a very through watering.
Then I went inside, because I was getting dangerously overheated. I kept myself hydrated, but was feeling very exhausted. It was around 2pm by then, and I decided to nap for a couple of hours. I would then continue when the temperatures were starting to drop.
I passed right out and slept for three hours.
During this time, the girls took care of things like the outside cat feeding and starting supper.
We are going to need to get the AC going in the living room, and the onion snail rolls have been sitting on top of it, so I decided it was time to take them outside. Onions are hardy and I’m not worried about them, plus I need to start transplanting them as soon as possible. They are meant to be planted in between other things, as we go. The frame for the portable greenhouse is sitting in the shade near the shrine, so I put them there. I’ll need to start moving some of the trays from the basement out there, too.
Then it was back to the main garden area, where this is one bed that didn’t get cleaned up last year I wanted to prepare.
As you can see in the first couple of photos, the creeping Charlie is a real problem.
I had put the soil thermometer in there earlier, and it was reading a couple of degrees cooler than the first bed. By the time I removed it, though, it was just as warm as the first bed I tested! Having that plastic over the bed didn’t seem to make much difference. So much for solarization!
This bed turned out to be so filled with tree roots, too. I pile the creeping Charlie aside, half filling the wheel barrow, so it could be disposed of further away. I’d burn it, if I could. Getting those out means losing a fair bit of soil, too. In the fourth photo, you can even see some of the finer tree roots on top. I pulled out as much as I could, but somewhere under there is a major root. I was hitting it every now and then with the garden fork, but couldn’t lift it up at all.
No root vegetables in this bed, for now!
Once it was cleared and prepared, I gave it a thorough watering. For all the rain we had, that soil was pretty dry. Then I covered it with the plastic that had been over the bed the potatoes are in, covering the holes with scrap boards.
The potato bed is going to be a problem. I kept having to chase the cats off the netting! It stretches enough and is low enough that their weight pulls it down to the ground. Ideally, there would be horizontal supports across the top, joining the vertical supports, but I don’t have anything the right length.
At least they won’t be using it as a litter box.
I’ll have to figure something out.
By this time, it was around 8pm and the temperatures were downright pleasant. We’re expected to drop to 8C/46F tonight, but after that our overnight temperatures are expected to be no lower than 10C/50F On Thursday and Friday, we’re supposed to break 30C/86F, and the overnight temperatures are expected to be close to 20C/68F. It’s supposed to cool down a bit in the second week of June, but that’s a relative statement by then!
For the next while, with the exception of days where I have to drive into the city or something like that, my pattern is going to change. I’ll be getting up earlier to work outside while it’s cooler, then be inside (and probably nap) at the heat of the day before going out again when the temperature starts to drop. With the heat, I’ll be watering things in the morning. Possibly in the evening, too.
I have a couple of beds to take care of in the east yard, plus prep the old kitchen garden bed along the retaining wall. In the beginning of June – after I’ve done all our city trips and vet trip – I should be able to start direct sowing. I’m really trying to focus on getting each bed covered in some way to protect them from the cats. The one area I won’t be able to do is where I intend to plant corn. That area is currently covered by a black tarp/landscape cloth/whatever it is, and has been for several years. Everything under it should be dead by now. I need to move that aside and prepare blocks to plant corn in and, possibly, interplant them with winter squash. That area will simply be too large to cover. I’ll have to figure something else out.
It’s going to be very busy in the garden for the next while!
The Re-Farmer 