wild roses

Our 2021 garden: progress, and some mysteries

/ Re-Farmer / 19 Comments

Gosh, it was so lovely to do my rounds this morning! It has finally cooled down (for all the rain we had yesterday, it was still hot and very muggy!), and as I write this, it’s a lovely 17C/63F outside. There is the possibility of more rain, then things are expected to get hot and sunny again. I don’t know of we’ve had enough rain for the burn bans to relax a bit; it would be nice to be able to light our burn barrel, or use the fire pit.

We do still have a few plant babies in the sun room that will eventually get transplanted. This morning, I found a new gourd seedling.

A third Ozark Nest Egg gourd has appeared! We only planted 2 per pot, so we have plenty of seeds to try again next year – starting much earlier, and with a warmer set up!

With the Thai Bottle gourd, if this one seedling survives, we might at least be able to try them, as they are edible at 4-6 inches. There is no wait for them to reach full maturity. The other gourds, however, were planted for crafting purposes, and with them sprouting so late, they just won’t have the growing season for it.

Another reason I’d like to set up polytunnels and/or greenhouses. Extending our growing season would open up a lot of options for us.

I’m happy to see the grapes are leafing out nicely! They had a slow start (which I am beginning to think is normal for them), but once they do, they grow really fast! There are new vines this morning that were not there, yesterday.

The Peruvian Purple Fingerling potatoes are filling their grow bags faster than any of the other varieties. Gosh, they look so pretty! I love that hit of purple at the stems.

One of the nice things about the clean up I was able to do in the spruce grove this spring, is that I can now cut through it to get to the main garden, while doing my rounds. This morning, I found this lovely explosion.

The wild roses are blooming! The rains have been a huge boost for them. :-)

As we continue to clean up the spruce grove, everything in here will be cut back and cleaned up. Unlike the spirea, which we are trying to pull out by the roots as much as possible, the roses will just be trimmed to ground level. Once it’s all cleaned out, they should grow back better than ever. This area, however, will probably not get worked on this year. We’re focusing more on the south and west sides for now.

Checking the various garden beds, everything it looking really good and strong. We do have a couple of mysteries, though. One is in the yellow bush beans.

A while back, I noticed a few of the seedlings appeared to have had their heads chopped off. Remarkably, the stumps still seem to be growing!

I’m not sure what did this. Normally, I would have thought it was a deer, but if it was, I would have expected a whole swath of seedlings with their tops gone, like at the ends of the spinach beds. Not 2 here, 1 there, and 2 more in the other row.

Well, whatever it is, it seems to have stopped coming over, as there is no new damage, and nothing is showing up on the trail cam.

There is another mystery, though.

All the radish sprouts have disappeared.

There had been so many sprouts, before the corn started coming up, and now, nothing. Not a trace. Not a stem or leaf to show it was bit by a critter, or cut by an insect. There were only 2 rows with the daikon type radish, but the watermelon radish was interplanted in every row of the other two corn blocks. The corn is coming up nicely, but the radishes have simply disappeared.

It is so very strange!

I should also take back the “no new damage” statement, though this damage is no mystery. Nutmeg has taken to following me along when I do my rounds, wanting attention. While looking at the sunflower transplants, supported by their twine, he decided to rub against the twine, then drop to the ground and start rolling.

Right on a sunflower, breaking the stem.

*sigh*

It wasn’t completely broken off, and it’s been put back between the twine for support, but I doubt it will survive.

Destructive little boy!

As I continued checking the beds, I would stop to do a bit of weeding, and he’d be right in there, pushing at my hands for attention, walking, sitting and rolling on top of the plants! I kept having to move him off the beds, only for him to jump right back, as long as I kept trying to weed.

When the girls and I were just starting to head home from the city yesterday, my husband messaged us to let us know that a low flying airplane had just gone over the house. This morning, it happened again, though it wasn’t an airplane.

Instead, we had a low flying helicopter! Seeing helicopters flying around is not that odd (there is a small airport not that far away), but seeing one flying this low certainly is. I don’t usually see ones coloured like this, either. Usually, they’re black.

When I was done my rounds, I uncovered one of the spinach beds to do some weeding and thinning.

Yes, these are just the thinnings, and just from one side of one bed! They’re packed down a bit in that colander, too. The spinach is doing just fantastic, now that they’re not being eaten by deer. ;-) I was able to uncover the bed on my own, but with are makeshift covers we have right now, it takes 2 people to put the covers back again.

I supposed we’ll eventually get to the point when we’ll have more spinach that needs harvesting than we can eat right away, so I’ve been thinking of what to do with any excess. I know they can be frozen, but why ruin good spinach? ;-) I’ve decided to try dehydrating them, then making spinach powder. This would keep for a long time in a jar on the shelf, and be a handy ingredient to toss into soups, or pasta dough or something like that.

I’ll have to get some photos later, but our chives have started to bloom, and I’ve started using them to make chive blossom vinegar. I picked up a bottle of white wine vinegar, and we’re just adding the cleaned blossoms straight into the bottle, after removing a small amount of vinegar to make space. It will get strained after 2 weeks in a cool, dark place, though we might keep adding more blossoms over the next few days, as the chives finish their blooming. We’ll count it as 2 weeks from when the last of them are in the bottle. :-)

*sigh* This post has been taking MUCH longer to finish that it should have. Our internet is crappy at the best of times, but whenever we get rains or winds (not even over us, but anywhere to the south of us), we start having troubles connecting. Getting images to load is the worst. It’s taken me half an hour to get the above image to load, and as I’m writing this, it STILL won’t load! Once I get the bloody thing to work, and hopefully get this post published, it’s time to get off the computer before I go completely bonkers!!

The Re-Farmer

Gotta be quick!

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Taking advantage of a break to quickly post!

My attempts at getting kitten pictures has been a failure today. Those little buggers move fast! :-D

So do flowers, actually. At least with the winds we had when I was doing my rounds this morning!

These delicate little wildflowers have burst into bloom now. It’s interesting how there always seems to be some wildflower blooming, one after the others.

These wild roses are almost completely engulfed by the spirea!

One of our goals is to pull up most, if not all, of the spirea from here. The junk pile, in general, needs to be cleared so we can get access to it and start cleaning it up. I’m hoping the wood pile that makes up the bulk of it will still have some salvageable wood in there. One of the things I want to build is a box to put our garbage bags into, so the animals can’t tear them apart.

I noticed in the area around the stone cross, which had been full of spirea, now has what looks like flowers coming up. If they are what I think they are, they won’t bloom for a while yet, but I’m seeing them pop up all over, in areas that have been cleared up. Especially where I’ve also been able to finally mow. It seems once the grass (or, in this area, the spirea) was no longer the dominant plant, all sorts of greenery is now able to grow. When I get to mowing in the maple grove, there are some paths I plan to deliberately leave alone, just to see what is there.

After my morning rounds, I got back outside as quick as I could, to finish mowing around the old garden area.

I was almost done when I ran out of gas, so I took a quick rest and hydration break. The Potato Beetle came over for cuddles. I’m rather surprised, considering how covered in bug spray I was!

I’m happy to say, I managed to finish the old garden area, including the section I hadn’t been able to get to at all, yet. After this, I can start going into the maple grove.

But not today.

For the last half hour or so of mowing, there was a whole lot of thundering happening, so I was really happy to get that last bit finished before putting away the mower.

Since then, we have had a quick storm pass by, with a heavy downpour. We also lost internet for a while, and then we momentarily lost power. Just enough to cause the computers to restart, and the security camera to reset its position.

I love power bars.

Looking at the weather radar, we seem to be in the path of several small but severe thunderstorms for the rest of the day.

Which means it’s time to quickly get caught up, then shut down the computer, in case we lose power again. No doubt, once the winds pick up again, we’ll lose internet again.

It’s going to be an interesting day!

The Re-Farmer

Going wild

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Wild with wild flowers, that is!

And… other things.

While doing my rounds this morning, I got to enjoy some lovely wildflowers.

I’m counting the cranberries as wild, since they are self-sown. ;-)

There is a path of flowers running along the south fence that my mother sowed many years ago and have been taking care of themselves, ever since. They’re doing much better, now that we’ve cleared that fence line as much as we have. The white flower in the first photo is the first of these to bloom; there are several more of them budding, and lots of buds on another type with purple flowers that look like they will be blooming, soon.

I don’t know what that tiny purple flower growing in the moss is. The flower looks like a miniature bearded iris!

The wild roses are blooming nicely, but on one of them – just one – I found this.

I’m used to seeing caterpillars eating the plants. Not beetles!

My daughters reminded me to check out the patch of nettles growing near the barn door into the hay yard, to see some caterpillars they found.

A few of the nettles are covered with these caterpillars. They’re not the canker worms I expected, and am more used to seeing around here, like these ones. I’ve just been looking them up and my memory was correct; cankerworms have a preference for trees, like maple and elm. They can also be incredibly destructive. About every 10 years or so, their populations explode and cause a lot of problems. In between those explosions, we don’t see them all that much at all.

These guys, from what I can find, may be the caterpillars for any of three different butterflies. None of the photos I’ve been able to find are helping much to identify them properly, but they could be Red Admiral, Tortoiseshell or Peacock butterfly caterpillars.

So… these are good things to have.

I hope!

Also, it’s not a good idea to walk through a nettle patch while wearing shorts. Especially after getting clawed up by kittens.

We are, however, supposed to get really hot today. As I write this, we’ve already reached 28C, with a “real feel” of 33C. (82F/91F). Thunderstorms are on the way, though from the weather radar, it looks like they’ll miss us. The system seems to be getting pushed up from the south a lot more than I usually see, and it looks like the storms are going to hit to the north of us. Other provinces have already been hit with severe storms, with golf ball sized hail and flash flooding. It’s been really crazy to see videos people have posted online. I don’t expect to be getting any of that here, though the high winds did bring down another, somewhat larger dead branch this morning. Nothing near any buildings, thankfully.

We shall see how things work out!

The Re-Farmer

The crazy and the calm

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Heading down to visit the kitties was certainly a wild and crazy ride, this morning!

The kittens were waiting for me.

First, I had to shoo away the cats from the door in the entryway. Then, when I opened it, Beep Beep was ready to rush through, which would have been fine, except Leyendecker dashed through, too. Turmeric was at the top of the stairs, too. She was just a bit more hesitant about actually going through, so I was able to keep her at bay.

Leyendecker managed to get through the door three times before I could finally close it. Meanwhile, Beep Beep had run back down, with David and Two Face making a dash for it, too. By this time, all of the kittens were on the stairs, and with the door closed, they decided my feet and legs were fair game.

They continued to attack my feet, jump up my legs, and try and eat my shoelaces, as I very, VERY carefully made my way around.

Once I started taking care of the food and water, they started to get distracted by other things, thankfully.

Not one stayed still long enough to get a decent picture! :-D

I was eventually able to get all the adult cats upstairs, which meant I could give the kittens some wet cat food, and they’d actually get some!

By the time I was done, I was more than ready for the relative calm of doing my rounds outside.

I just had to deal with hordes of mosquitoes. Which was an improvement. !!

Checking the garden plots, it looks like more cat damage to the one plot of carrots. We won’t be getting a lot of rainbow carrots this time around. :-(

The grape vine I accidentally clipped is starting to look at bit droopy, higher up, but the lower leaves still seem quite strong and healthy. Fingers crossed that it will survive.

While walking around the spruce grove, switching out the memory cards on the trail cams, has been interesting. I didn’t do a lot of clean up here, yet. Mostly, I just focused on clearing the fence itself.

The improved like has resulted in all kinds of things popping up.

These are Saskatoon berries, and there are SO MANY little tiny bushes growing, all over the place.

I will be keeping an eye on these new ones. When I was cleaning up, a lot of the larger ones were not looking very healthy. The drought certainly didn’t help. We do plan to buy Saskatoon bushes at some point, and plan out where to put them, but if these are strong and healthy, we might end up also transplanting some of these to better locations.

I had cut back the wild roses along with all the other undergrowth, quite a bit as we cleaned things up. I know they will grow back, so I’m not too worried about them. After we’ve cleaned things out, the wild roses and the dogwood are the two things I want to encourage as undergrowth in some areas.

Even with what little clearing we’ve done so far, we’re already getting more wildflowers.

There are a few of these Lily of the Valley, scattered about, in between another one with sprays of white, star-like blossoms. My attempt at getting a photo failed, though.

The goal for the spruce grove is to open it up, get rid of the dead trees, plant some new spruces to replace some of them, have paths we can walk through, with grass or moss, areas of wild roses and dogwood, and lots of wildflowers. Here and there, I’m planning to put various types of seating around. Not boards nailed to logs, like I’ve been finding all over! Those don’t do well, over time.

But first, it needs to be cleaned out, and that’s going to involve a lot of hard physical labour!

And chainsaws. Definitely chainsaws. There are some pretty big trees that need to be cleared out of there.

I probably won’t be back at that today, though. It’s cooler, if not any less humid, and still insane with mosquitoes, but my husband is encouraging me to take a day off, and give my wrist more time to recover. The problem is, it feels pretty good. Right up until I start using it. I shouldn’t need two hands to pick up a glass to take a drink. :-/ His concern is that I’ll just keep re-injuring it. He has a point. We are both notorious for that sort of thing. I just hate wasting the time. :-(

We shall see how it goes.

The Re-Farmer

Which one is next?

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I managed a bit of work in the yard, during a break in the high winds we’ve been having for the past while.

There were so many tiny branches and twigs fallen from the Chinese elm in front of the house, I needed to use a rake to pick them up.

I also found this.

Continue reading →

Good Morning!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It was lovely doing my rounds with morning, and I just wanted to share some of my flowering finds. :-)

One of my mother’s fancy lilacs is now blooming. Last year, while cleaning up this flower bed, I took out a maple tree that was growing in the middle of it!

At its base, where I had pruned and cleared quite a bit, there is now massive new growth of this lilac.

Swallowtails love lilacs, we’ve noticed. :-) I wasn’t able to get a picture of one this morning, though.

The first couple of my mother’s poppies opened this morning. This one is near the lilac bush in the above picture. The large leaves you see to the left is a small cherry tree. Small enough that I hope to transplant it to a better location, by next year.

Another poppy that opened up this morning is under the bird bath.

We’re going to have lots of these blooming, this year!

I tried making my way through an area of the spruce grove this morning, but there were too many fallen trees and undergrowth blocking my way. The wild roses scattered throughout, however, were blooming enthusiastically in the mess. It should be interesting to see how they do after the area is cleaned up, and they have more light and space. :-)

This is one of the plants I’ve been seeing growing all over the places where I had pruned branches and cleared away deadwood. This one is near the south fence of the spruce grove, where I’d managed to do some clearing before the snow fell, last year. This is the first of the flowers I’m seeing from this plant. I don’t know the name of it, but we’re going to have quite a lot of these, all over the place! :-)

I also did a bit of patriotic decorating today.

Canada Day will be here soon, so I set up four sturdy little flags that we have, on the East fence line, facing the road.

Kinda wishing I had more! I love how they look. :-)

The Re-Farmer