weeding

Our 2026 Garden: critter rescue, and redoing a garden bed cover

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First, though, an update.

I have had no word back about the truck yet, which means they haven’t had a chance to look at it or do a diagnostic. I should try phoning directly, tomorrow.

Before I share about today, I wanted to share what I found last night. I am so glad I decided to enjoy the long daylight and walk around the yard before bed! This, of course, included checking the garden beds. In of them, I saw unexpected movement.

It was a garter snake.

Stuck in the excess black netting over the Daikon radish, turnip and red noodle bean bed.

I tried to get it loose with just my hands at first, but quickly realized that was not possible, to I ran… well.. hobbled…. to the house to get a utility knife. I then very carefully cut at the netting where it was tight against the snake’s body – and even its mouth! This netting is something even frogs can get through, but there is something about the garter snake bodies that get caught. The more they struggle to get loose, the worse they get caught. Last year, my daughter was helping me remove some of this netting from around the trellis bed and found a snake had been caught up in it, in a spot where it couldn’t be seen until we pulled the netting out. That one was already dead when we found it. This one was still alive, thankfully. Once I got its mouth and head free, it tried to curl up on itself as they are wont to do, but it had obviously been struggling for a while and didn’t have a lot of energy left.

Once I got it free, I set it aside in the greenery under where I stack the logs and boards we use in the garden. This morning, it was gone!

I am so glad I found it in time.

We really need to find different critter netting. This stuff is to keep the larger critters out while still letting the pollinators in, but I’m quite unhappy about how it catches on everything – including our much desired garter snakes!

So that was a happy start to the day.

We were expecting the insurance company assessor to come today at around 12:30. I did my morning rounds as usual, then had my breakfast before heading back out again at about 11 and do some work in the garden until she arrived. I started out by using the very full rain barrel to water the garden beds by the house and in the south and east yards.

I have been checking out the cabbage and kohlrabi beds, and they appear to be a total loss. The cabbage bed is full of self seeded radishes, which would be a good thing, except they are all bolting. The only thing doing well in that bed are the shallots and onions I transplanted while redoing the bed by the chain link fence. As for the kohlrabi, I can see a few seedlings here and there,, and they are quite eaten up. No sign of what did the eating. Normally, I’d say flea beetles, but there’s no sign of any. Those tend to show up later in the season, anyhow, after the canola fields are harvested.

After watering in front of the house, I moved to the main garden area to water there. That done, I was getting ready to set up the hose to fill the old rain barrel to water the food forest trees and bushes.

While I was watering everything else, I could hear a utility vehicle, and it was definitely coming closer, so I went to take a look. It was the wife of the couple that rents the rest of the property, checking the fence line. So I headed over to say hi. While she kept following the fence line, it gave me a chance to check on the walnuts.

*sigh*

The Manchurian Walnut, that had been doing so well, has been eaten by dear. So has at least one of the Black walnut, and it looks like the ash tree my mother gave us was also eaten.

I hadn’t gotten to making cages for them fast enough.

I still plan to do that; they should regrow their leaves again. It’ll set them back probably a year, though.

Around then, our renter was closer so we stopped to chat at the fence for a while. I told her where I had planted the basket willow, and how I’d set up the T posts and used a partially collapsed fence line to hopefully ensure their cows won’t trample them. She said they will be rotating the cows to this section very soon.

After a lovely conversation with her, I checked my phone because I’d heard some notifications while we were talking.

It was well past 12:30 when my brother messaged me, asking if the assessor had arrived. I told him no, and updated him about the renter and their cows. It was a little past 1 when my brother messaged me again. He just received a text from the assessor, saying she would be here shortly after 2.

Hmmm.

I went back to watering the food forest trees. When that was done, I moved on to the old kitchen garden.

The bed with the tiny bok choi, mixed beets, onions and parsnips needed weeding, and I decided I would remove the old mosquito netting, which is two lengths cobbled together, and replace it with the second sheet of new insect netting I picked up, one of which is currently protecting the cabbage transplants.

In the first image, I had removed the netting and done nothing else yet. While I was putting the mosquito netting pieces away, I heard some noise out by the barn and went to check it out. It was the renter; some stuff had blown around and she was moving them back onto their pile, so the cows wouldn’t step on it. We talked for a while again. The grass in this area is incredibly tall – tall enough to short out the electric fence, so she was going to have to come back with the weed trimmer. The fence posts in that section are getting really rotted. Part of the rental deal is that they are responsible for the fences, and she told me of what she would be telling her husband about the fences and what she sees that they need to do.

Then I went back to the garden.

That big green thing in the top right of the image?

That’s an invading rose stem! Likely from the pink rose bush at the end of the bed. In the wattle weave bed, it’s the white roses that invade.

While weeding the bed, I found the remains of some of the tiny bok choi, which you can see in the second image of the slideshow above. That little strip was almost the only ones I found at all.

There are beets and parsnips coming up, though. There was some self seeded spinach, but it was all bolting, so I weeded those out. The onions that got transplanted in the fall along the south side of the bed are looking nice and strong. You can see how the bed looked after clean up in the third image above.

Then I recovered the bed with the new insect netting. This stuff is much lighter and flexible, but it is still quite strong. It’ll hold the weight of cats using it as a hammock! I didn’t want to cut the netting to size, though, as it will be used differently in the future, so the excess length got rolled up at the end near the rose bush, and the excess width got pulled up over the top, then fastened in place with safety pins. There is a gab between the cover and the frame along the north side of the bed, so I used a board to hold the netting down and below the based of the cover.

By this time, it was past when the assessor was supposed to arrive, and I hadn’t had lunch yet. I went inside and the girls were cooking, so I went to sit and take a break.

Before I knew it, there was a knock at the door!

The assessor had arrived, but parked her car in front of the garage, out of view.

Now, as far as I knew, she was going to look at all the outbuildings.

Turns out, she needed to come into the house, too.

I warned her, the house is a disaster, and that we had 21 cats.

We did that part last.

We started out going to the garage, though she asked about the storage house along the way. She never took measurements of that, but did take pictures. Once at the garage, I told her about the ages of the different parts. She took her pictures and measurements. Then we moved on to the barn, though she did take pictures of one of the sheds beside it that is still used for storage. She checked out, photographed and measured the barn, then we headed to the pump shack. I explained to her the fence line marking where its rented out and where we are responsible for taking care of. While checking out the pump shack, she asked about the log building that used to be the chicken coop, and I told her that’s the last log building we have that is still salvageable; it needs a new roof, but the walls are still solid. So she took pictures of that, too. My brother’s caravan and trailers are not permanent, so she ignore those, but did check the warehouse, stuffed with my parent’s belongings.

Finally, we made our way back to the house, and I showed her where the septic tank is, where the well is, which part of the house was original log, and about what year it was built, and the additions.

Then she had to come inside.

*sigh*

We haven’t been able to do the spring cleaning of the sun room yet, because of the weather. Then there’s the old kitchen – I made sure to tell her that the old wood cook stove was broken and cannot be used. I’d already told her about the new roof, and that the chimney to the old wood burning furnace had been removed, so there’s just the chimney to the old kitchen.

Then she had to go through all the rooms in the house, which was downright embarrassing. Our house really is a disaster. Then we went into the basement, starting with the “new” part basement. Once in the old part, I made sure to tell her that we had a new well pump, and she checked out the other pumps, too. The blower fans are going continuously now, and I explained the the old basement was built before weeping tile was a thing, so it does get wet, but doesn’t flood.

I apologized for the disaster, and she basically said, between the cats and being on a farm, she knows how it can get.

Oh, and it turned out she’s allergic to cats!

After she was done, I followed her car out to close the gate behind her. By this time, I was getting pretty famished, so I headed in to finally have my lunch (it was well past 3 by then). We were running low on kibble for the inside cats which, for the price, would normally be a trip to Walmart. Chatting with the family, my older daughter ended up sending me funds and a list, so I ended up doing a bit of a grocery shopping trip. I checked out the garden centre after the shopping to see if they had any transplants worth picking up.

They did not.

So I headed home. If I hadn’t had frozen stuff in the car, and forgotten to bring insulated bags, I would have gone across the road to see the garden centre at the Canadian Tire, but everything would have just melted in the car while I did.

By then, it was late enough that my daughter took care of the outside cat feeding while I was gone. I will be heading out again after I finish this post to do my evening rounds and checks. It’s still nice and light out.

Hopefully, I won’t find another trapped garter snake, but I’ll bring my utility knife with me, just in case!

Tomorrow, I think I will re-work those failed beds and see what I can plant in there, that has a short enough season for it.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 Garden: updates, radish pods, temporary trellis, and volunteers!

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I figured I should get some pictures of the East yard garden beds, now that they’ve got some fresh stove pellet sawdust mulch on them.

The beans with the tomatoes are doing really well. At first, it seems that one of the seeds had not germinated, but it did eventually show up. That makes for a 100% germination rate of these old seeds.

Too bad a cat dug one of them up. *sigh*

In the foreground of the first photo, you can even see some of the self-seeded carrots coming up!

In the next image, you can see the second planting of beans coming up in between the corn. Of the first planting, there ended up being a total of three, maybe four, that came up, and only one of them came up strong and healthy. Considering these are the same seeds in the same bed, it’s hard to know why the first sowing failed so badly.

The last image is of the Arikara squash bed – and the corn in there is so much bigger than the ones in the other bed!

I really like using the stove pellets to mulch around seedlings. The pellets land around the small plants, rather than on top of them. Then, after being watered, the pellets expand and fall apart, with the sawdust creating a nice, fairly thing, but really light, mulch. So far, it seems to be working out with anything I’ve used them around. It helps that the 40 pound bags are so cheap, and a little goes a surprisingly long way!

Once my rounds were done, my older daughter came out to help me remove the netting around the trellis bed. We had an unfortunate surprise while pulling it out, though. I’ve seen frogs – even large ones – squeeze through the rather fine mesh but, unfortunately, a garter snake didn’t make it. My daughter found it stuck around and under the corner of the bed. It hadn’t been dead for long, but long enough that a big beetle was chewing on its head. We had to cut a section of the netting off, because we couldn’t get it loose from the netting.

As my daughter said, it’ll be good when we no longer need to use netting! At least not this netting. It’s always a concern that a kitten or a bird will get caught in it. I never thought a garter snake would get caught!

We were being eaten alive by mosquitoes while we got the net down, stretched it out, folded it in half length wise, then started rolling it up on a bamboo stake for storage. They were after my daughter a lot more than me for some reason, so once the netting was rolled up enough, I sent her inside while I finished. It’s now tied off and in the garden shed. I made sure it was resting higher up in the shed so, hopefully, no critters will get into it.

That done, I brought out some of the trellis netting we’ve used in previous years. This netting has 4′ square spaces, making it easy to reach through to weed or harvest.

I started off by weaving a bamboo stake through one edge of the netting, where there is a pair of lines about a half inch apart, instead of 4 inches. I tied one end to the vertical post at the corner, then stretched out the netting flat before tying it to the next post. Then I added the next bamboo stake, weaving it into the netting and joining it to the first stake, before tying it off to the next couple of vertical supports, then did it again.

The netting ended on the third stake, so I added another piece of it to a fourth stake before joining the stakes and matching the netting up. That left a lot of excess netting at the end, but I just bunched that up and secured it while trying off the stake to the vertical.

I had woven in a plastic coated metal stake at each end of the bed to keep the netting straight. After the horizontal stakes were in place, I pushed the netting down so any excess was at ground level. I then took the garden stakes there were already in place to hold the protective netting that was there before, and used them in the trellis netting. Each one got woven vertically through the netting, then I used them to tighten things up a bit before pushing them into the ground. Where the two nets overlapped happened to be where there was already a longer bamboo stake, so I used that to join the sections together at the same time. Once all the stakes were woven through and pushed in the ground, I used ground staples to secure the netting to the soil, catching in the excess, to make it all fairly stretched out and tight.

I recall from using the netting before that the weight of plants climbing it can cause issues, so I added another level of horizontal bamboo stakes along the middle. These got tied to the vertical garden stakes, rather than the posts for the permanent trellis. This way, the netting is at a slight angle for the beans to climb.

Then it was time to weed.

This bed hasn’t been weeding since the protective netting was placed all around it. A lot of the self seeded onions I transplanted into rows were no longer visible.

I started weeding along the trellis side. I probably should have done it before the trellis net was added, but the mesh is open enough to reach through easily. The problem was more my hat constantly getting tangled in it!

As I was working my way along the beans, I spotted a little volunteer tomato plant! I remember finding volunteer tomatoes in this bed last year, too. I’m not sure where the seeds came from!

When I found one, I left it, thinking it would be fine were it was. Then I found another.

And another.

So I thought I would come back later and transplant them once I weeded and could see a space for them.

Then I found another.

And another.

And several others!

As I was working my way down the onion side of the bed and kept finding more even tiny tomato plants, I started pulling them up with the weeds, then transplanting them wherever I had enough space between the onions or the pumpkins. Then, when I finished weeding the bed, I went around the beans side to dig up the ones I’d left there and transplanted them.

By the time I was done, I counted 14 volunteer tomatoes.

Or 15.

I actually counted 13, first, after all the weeding and transplanting was done. Then noticed one I’d missed, so I counted again and got 15. Then I counted again, as I was scattering stove pellets around the bed and counted 14. I counted again and kept getting 14, so I either keep missing one, or I double counted one before.

Of course, it’s also possible I missed some volunteers when I went back to find and transplant them. If so, they’ll be easier to see, soon enough!

The last photo was taken after I’d scattered the stove pellets, but I forgot to take one after it was watered and the pellets were all expanded and breaking up.

This bed now has Red Noodle beans and Hopi Black Dye sunflowers along one side. On the other is onions from last year, going to seed, plus a whole bunch of tiny self seeded onions that I transplanted after clearing and preparing this bed for the beans and sunflowers. Then there is the pumpkins, and now the volunteer tomatoes.

This bed is going to look really interesting, once everything has reached maturity!

Today, I remembered to take some pictures of the radish seed pods that I’ve been snacking on.

The first three pictures are all from the same plant. What a difference! Some pods have just one pea-sized seed “bubble”. Others are longer, looking like they have a couple of seeds developing in them. Then there was a branch that has seed pods of all shapes and sizes!

The last pictures is of a different variety of radish in the winter sown East yard garden bed, with distinctive red lines on them. The seed mix had four different varieties of radishes in it, and I don’t know which is which, though I’m guessing the yellow variety is the one plant I’m seeing with yellow flowers.

I’m really happy with how the winter sowing experiment worked. The last time I tried it, I did the mild jug version, and it failed completely. Now I know that sowing directly into the beds, then heavily mulching, is the way to go for a lot of things. There are a few things I will now plan ahead to winter sow, but not as a mix. Beets, carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, spinach, and radishes for their pods. Also, that one variety of lettuce I planted was insanely prolific, and good at self seeding! I’ll have to be careful when collecting seeds this fall! Oh, the tiny bok choy worked, as did the chard – when they’re not being overwhelmed by other plants! There are also tiny onions all over, but they’re so far behind, I don’t expect we’ll be getting any bulb unions this year. Which is okay. We have the ones that are going to seed, so we can start onions indoors, using our own seeds, in January or February. The turnips also worked out much better than any other time we’ve tried them, so I think we will run through the varieties again to see which ones we like best.

I get the feeling we’ll be doing a lot of direct sowing in the fall from now on! Just in a more organized way. Peas are something else that are supposed to be good for winter sowing – we just have to make sure the bed they’re planted in doesn’t get destroyed by cats, to find out!

Obviously, tomato seeds survive the winter just fine. What variety they are, I have no idea, but if we’re going to winter sow tomatoes deliberately, they’ll have to be a very short season variety, if we’re going to get anything from them. If the Sub Arctic Plenty tomatoes turn out to be a variety the family likes, they would be an ideal candidate. Their growing season is so short, we could actually direst sow in the fall, then again in the late spring, to extend the harvest, if we wanted to.

We just need to be sure we actually enjoy eating them, first.

It’s taking us years to get things worked out, with a couple of major set backs along the way, but those set backs have actually helped us in our decision making for the future. Like now knowing that parts of our garden area are prone to flooding during wet years! Having beds raised even just a few inches has saved come of our plantings already.

I do look forward to when we can make the low raised bed higher, though. Working on the bed this morning, while much improved from working at ground level, was still pretty painful! Plus, the lower the bed, the shorter the reach. Even though these beds are 4′ wide on the outside, it was still hard for me to reach the middle of the bed. With the high raised bed, I can reach clear across, if I wanted to, without difficulty.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the morning’s work.

My next garden project will be finally working on the old kitchen garden bed that will get wattle woven walls, but I’m going to have to put another job higher on the priority list. When going through the trail cam files this morning, the gate cam had over 100 files – and this camera is set to just take single still shots. Most of those were from the poplars coming up on the other side of the fence, blowing in the wind. Which is not really a step back, since some of them, at least, are of a size that could probably be used in the wattle weaving!

Lots to do, and the weather is finally cool enough to get to it. I’m loving every minute of it!

The Re-Farmer