winter sowing

Analysing our 2022 garden: the things that never happened (updated)

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Okay, it’s that time! I’ll be working on a serious of posts, going over how our 2022 garden went, what worked, what didn’t, and what didn’t even happen at all. This is help give us an idea of what we want to do in the future, what we don’t want to do in the future, and what changes need to be made.

Okay, so now let’s look at the things that never happened – or the things that kinda, sorta happened.

I’ll start with a kinda-sorta happened, and didn’t happen, at the same time!

The bread seed poppies.

Last year, we’d planted some bread seed poppies in the old kitchen garden, which didn’t thrive, but we were still able to harvest dried pods and keep seed for. For 2022, we also bought two other varieties. The plan was to plant them well away from each other, to prevent cross pollination. Poppies self seed very easily, so wherever we planted them, they would be treated as a perennial.

In the spring, we scattered our collected seed over the same bed we’d grown them in before. They really were too densely sown, but at the same time, it was just such a terrible growing year. Lots of them germinated, but there were weeds growing among them that had leaves very similar to the poppy leaves. I had to wait until the got larger before I could tell for sure, what was a weed, and what was a poppy. They still didn’t do all that well, and I didn’t bother trying to collect any of the few dried pods that formed to collect seed. Instead, that bed was completely torn up, and there is now a low raised bed framed with small logs. Whatever we end up planting there should do a lot better.

As for the new varieties, we never found a place we felt was suitable to sow them. The flooding certainly didn’t help. Some of the places I was thinking of ended up under water, so I guess it’s a good thing we never tried planting there.

So bread seed poppies are something we will try again, once we figure out permanent locations to grow them that are in very different parts of the yard.

Then there were the wildflowers.

We got two types of wildflower seed mixes, specific for our region. Both were sown in the fall, when overnight temperatures were consistently below 6C/43F. One was an alternative lawn mix, so we sowed those between two rows of trees behind the storage house, where it’s very difficult to mow or tend. The other was sown outside the fence near the main garden area, where we later put the new sign to identify the property, after the old one disappeared. There is a broad and open strip of grass between the fence and the road, that I would eventually like to fill with wildflowers. To start, our first sowing was done near the corner, where we hoped they would attract pollinators that would also benefit our garden.

We got nothing.

The photo on the right doesn’t show the space between the trees the seeds were broadcast onto, but it was filled with water. The storage house didn’t just have a moat around it, like the garage. The space under it, where the yard cats often go for shelter, was completely full of water.

The photo on the right shows where the Western wildflower seed mix were broadcast and, while there was some standing water in places, it also got covered with sand and gravel from the road, as the ridges left behind by the blows melted away.

Yes, the snow got flung that far from the road!

Not a single wildflower germinated, in either location.

I suppose it’s possible that some seeds were hardy enough to survive the conditions and will germinate next spring. Who knows.

I’d intended to get more seed packets, which would have been sown in the fall, but completely forgot to even look for them. I might still get them and try broadcasting the seeds in the spring. We do still want to turn several areas that are difficult to maintain, over to wildflowers and groundcovers. Once we get them established, they should be virtually maintenance free. It’s getting them established that might take some time!

During our previous two years of gardening, we grew sunflowers. The first year, we grew some giant varieties. For 2021, we grew Mongolian giants and Hope Black Dye. These were to do double duty as privacy screens.

They did not thrive during the drought conditions we had last year, and deer were an issue, but we were able to harvest and cure some mature seed heads and intended to plant them in 2022.

That didn’t happen.

Basically, with the flooding, the spaces we would have planted them in were just not available. Plus, the bags with the seeds heads were moved into the sun room, after spending the winter in the old kitchen, with the intention of planting the seeds, they ended up in there all year. With how hot it can get in there, I don’t think the seeds are viable anymore.

Still, it might be worth trying them!

The reason we wanted to grow the varieties included using them as both privacy screens and wind breaks. We also want to grow them as food for ourselves and birds and, at some point, we’ll be getting an oil press, and will be able to press our own sunflower oil. So sunflowers are still part of our future plans.

We did have sunflowers growing in 2022, none of which we planted ourselves. They were all planted by birds, and were most likely black oil seed; the type of bird seed available at the general store. Only a couple of seed heads were able to mature enough to harvest, and we just gave them to the birds.

I do want to plant sunflowers again, but at this point, I’m not sure we will do them for 2023.

Several other things we got seeds for, some we intended to plant in 2022, but others for future use.

Of those we had intended to plant, one of them was Strawberry Spinach.

These are something we’ve grown before on our balcony, while still living in the city. The leaves can be eaten like a spinach, while also producing berries on their stems. We’d ordered and planted some in a new bed, where we could let them self-seed and treat them as a perennial, in 2020.

They were a complete fail. We don’t know why.

I ordered more seeds and we were thinking of a different location to plant them, but then the flooding hit, and we got busy with transplanting and direct seeding, and basically forgot about them.

I still want to grow them, but we still need to figure out a good, hopefully permanent, location for them.

We also found ourselves with a packet of free dill seeds (, plus we were given dill that we were able to harvest seeds from. Since cleaning up the old kitchen garden area, we did start to get dill growing – dill is notorious for spreading its see and coming back year after year! – but they never got very large. We have bulbs planted where they’ve been coming up, so we’re not exactly encouraging them in that location.

In the end, with the way things went, we never decided on a location to plant them, and with all the other issues we had with the garden this year, it just wasn’t a priority.

For 2023, however, we’re actively starting to order herb seeds and will be building up an herb garden, so hopefully we’ll be able to include dill in those plans, too.

One thing we ordered that we did not intend to plant right away was wheat.

These are a heritage variety of bread wheat, and we only got 100 seeds. Even if we had a good year, I doubt that would give us enough yield for even a loaf or two of bread. We do, however, plan to invest in a grinding mill in the future.

Meanwhile, when we do plant these, it will be for more seeds, not for use. In the longer term, we’d need to have a much larger area to grow enough wheat for our own use.

We’ll be starting slow!

Then there were the forage radishes.

Also called tillage radish. We got these to help amend our soil, and loosen it for future planting. These would be something we would use to break new ground in preparation for future garden plots. There are a whole lot of seeds – and that was the smallest size package! – so we’ll probably have a few years to use these to prepare new beds.

I think that’s it!

I’m sure I’m forgetting something. 😄😄

Next, I’ll post my final thoughts on how everything went. With everything that went on this year, that’s going to need its own post!

The Re-Farmer

Update: I knew I was forgetting something! Two somethings.

The first is our winter sowing experiment. You can read about how that turned out, here. Basically, we got nothing, and I think it was due to our extended, cold winter. I know this is something that has worked for others in our climate zone. It just didn’t work for us this year. In the future, I will probably experiment with it more, but not for the 2023 growing season.

The other is our cucamelons. In 2021, the cucamelon vines grew well in a much more ideal spot, but we had almost no fruit. The previous year, we grew them in a spot that was too shady for them, but still managed to get more fruit. I believe it was a pollination problem.

While we do want to grow them again in the future, we decided not to get more seeds. However, in cleaning up and redoing the spot they were growing in, putting in chimney blocks to plant in and keep the soil from eroding under the chain link fence, we found lots of tubers. In theory, we could over winter the tubers and plant them again in the spring. So we buried them in a pot and set the pot into the sun room, where it doesn’t get as cold. The first year we tried that, there was pretty much no sign of the tubers by spring. I found only the desiccated skin of one. When I brought the pot out for 2022, I didn’t even bother digging for the tubers. I knew they wouldn’t have survived the extended cold, even in the sun room. We should have taken it into the house and maybe into the old basement, where the cats couldn’t get at it, but those stairs are difficult for to navigate, and we go down there as rarely as possible.

So winter sowing and cucamelon tubers were both things that just didn’t work for 2023.

Our 2022 garden: winter sowing, and transplants organized

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During the winter, we tried a winter sowing experiment. We sowed seeds in 4 different styles of containers to see which would do better come springtime.

The answer is…

… none of them.

Not a single thing has germinated.

I think they froze. Our extended winter was probably a bit too much for them. People in some of my zone 3 gardening groups have had good success with their winter sowing, so I know the technique works. It just didn’t work for us, this year!

Will be try again next year?

Maybe. We’ll decide in the fall, I think.

When bringing the transplants in last night, I took the time to go through them all, organize them and get labels ready for today.

This morning, while taking them back outside, I gave them another once over, trying to figure out how I wanted to get them in. This is what we’ve got left to transplant.

This year, we have 3 surviving Crespo squash – and one of them was thinned out from another pot. These guys REALLY want to go into flower!

We did all right with the Styrian hulless pumpkins, with 4 surviving transplants.

The Lady Godiva hulless pumpkins did even better. There are 5 pots in there, but some of them have two or three plants – seeds started germinating later, after we started hardening off the plants!

The Kakai hulless pumpkin did not fare as well. There are only 2 of those.

The Baby Pam pumpkin did amazing. We’ve got 6 of them – a 100% germination rate! These are last year’s seeds, and last year, none of them germinated!

In the other bin are the two Little Finger eggplants I found among the squash and pumpkins, plus the two giant pumpkins started from free seeds given out at the grocery store near my mother’s place. We won’t be doing any of the pruning or special care to grow a competition sized pumpkin, but it should still be interesting to see how big they do get!

Here we have 3 pots each of winter squash, but some of the pots have 2 or 3 seedlings in them! We’ll decide what to do with them, as we are ready to transplant. I don’t like to “waste” strong, healthy seedlings, so they might all get transplanted. We shall see.

We’ve got 2 Apple gourds, for sure – these were from a second start, due to the Great Cat Crush. There are two others that are either more Apple gourds, or Ozark nest egg gourds. The writing faded on the labels.

We have quite a lot of ground cherries, and still have no idea where we are going to plant them!

Here are the last of the seedlings that were started at 4 weeks before last frost date. There are 4 green zucchini (the yellow zucchini and the Magda have already been planted), and 8 of the G-star patty pans, which we got through a happy mistake. The Teddy squash are from last year’s seeds, and these ones grow in a bush habit, rather than vining.

Then there are the three pots that have Yakteen gourds planted in them, but only one pot has seedlings – and a new one germinating again! That was one of the pots that got re-planted, because none germinated. The other round pot that has a label stuck in it was also replanted, but nothing has germinated. The middle round pot had Kakai pumpkins sown in it, which did not germinate, so I used the same pot for more Yakteen gourd seeds. Nothing. Very strange!

When it’s time to plant these, we’ll be trying to work them in groups or clusters, placing like away from like, as much as possible. At the same time, we want the summer squash to be easily accessible, which means not letting them get crowded by the sprawling winter squash! We’ll see how many we can fit into the area my daughter dug a grid of holes into.

It’s a littler over a weeks since our last average frost date, so hopefully, it’s not too late to be transplanting these. As you can tell by the yellowing leaves, they really need to be out of those pots and into the ground!

The Re-Farmer

Another beautiful day!

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Today was originally forecast to be only 0C/32F. Then the predictions were for us to be “5 degrees colder than yesterday’s high” – apparently we reached 8C/46F at some point!

Even as I was reading that on my app, we’d already surpassed that adjusted forecast, and as I write this, we have continued to warm up and are now at 6C/42F.

It’s awesome out there!

The outside cats are loving it.

I think the heated water bowl is working again. The metal bowls had iced over, though they weren’t frozen solid. The hole formed around the heated water bowl, however, was a pool was water. I’d chipped the ice and snow away from part of the cord so I could see if there was any damage (I couldn’t see any), so I had enough slack to move the bowl to a new location, out of the water. It had no ice in it at all.

We’ve been clearing snow off the winter sowing experiment as best we could. They all have holes in the tops for air circulation, but I did put snow inside them every now and then. That has completely melted away.

In comparing the 4 different types of containers, so far I like the milk just style (it’s actually a water jug) the least. The plastic is a lot softer, so if feels less stable, and the packing tape I used to hold the top and bottom halves no longer sticks to it. Other than that, they all seem to be responding to the light and temperatures the same, as far as I can tell. We’ll have a better idea of which type of container works best once the seeds start to germinate.

If the seeds start to germinate, I suppose!

Today is Saturday, which means the dump is open longer hours. Between the weather and vehicle troubles, we were way overdue for a dump run, and finally got it done today. The van was backed up closer to the people gate in the chain link fence for loading, but the packed snow of the driveway had softened so much, we almost got stuck trying to leave!

The part of the drive that bothered me the most, however, as the lane to the dump itself. I’m particularly paranoid when it times to tires. Between the vans we’ve had and my mother’s car, we’ve dealt with quite a few tire problems. I’ve had tires blow out on me on the highway. I’ve had to drive on a rim for blocks before finding a safe place to pull over. I’ve had tires suddenly and unexpectedly go flat on me (only one of which I could reasonably say was not vandalism). I’m far too familiar with how it feels to drive on a flat.

Driving down that lane was so rough, it felt like driving on 4 flat tires.

I was never so relieved to get back onto a muddy, pothole ridden gravel road than after we were done at the dump! 😀

Once at home, my daughter was sweet enough to take the time to clean the windows and lights on the van. They needed it!

I took advantage of the warmth and started digging out another new path. This time, towards the fire pit. In past winters, we were able to maintain paths around the entire house, a path to the fire pit, the area around the fire pit itself, and of course, a path to the wood pile.

This winter, even if we’d managed to start some of those paths, we couldn’t have maintained them. Maybe if the big snow blower was working, it would have been possible, but certainly not with little Spewie. There was just too much snow for that little electric machine.

One of the main reasons I want to clear a path to the fire pit is because the BBQ my brother gave us is there. We had a gazebo tent over it, but then a storm broke a tree branch on top of it, and the whole thing collapsed. It was still covering the BBQ and the picnic table, so we left it for the winter. My brother, however, bought us a new cover for it that is the right size; the one that was on it when they brought it over was for a smaller BBQ, and while we could get it to cover the important parts, the wind ended up tearing it to shreds, which is why I had it under the tent. So along with clearing the fire pit out, I want to be able to put the new cover on the BBQ, too.

This is going to be a multi-day job, though. For now, I just got a path about 2/3rds of the way to the fire pit. The warm weather is supposed to continue through into April, with the exception of 1 day that’s supposed to dip below freezing, so we’ll have plenty of good days to work on it.

The sun room, meanwhile, has been reaching almost 20C/68F during the day! The overnight temperatures are still a bit too chilly, but it’s going to be time to stop letting the outside cats have access to the room, now that their water outside is no longer freezing, and start prepping space for the seedling trays, and work out how to set up the new shop light.

I am so looking forward to being able to get more seeds started!

The Re-Farmer

Morning kitties, and some things still buried

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The bitter cold is still hanging in there. Even with the sun shining so bright and clear, we don’t reach our high of the day until late in the afternoon. Thankfully, the deep freeze is supposed to end today and tomorrow, and then keep warming up as we head into March. I’m not holding my breath on that, since the cold has already been sticking around longer than forecast.

The outside cats have handled things well, with their shelters all over the place, plenty of food and access to warm water.

The winter sown seeds are still buried, though. I just cleared them a bit; any more than that will be done when we’re hauling snow away with the wheelbarrow, so we don’t end up with melted snow draining into the basement.

We ended up leaving the doors to the sun room partly open all night, when we saw cats using the swing bench as a bed. Potato Beetle prefers to eat in here, well away from the main crowd of cats – and an aggressive Distinguished Guest. Agnoos has a liking for the sun room, too.

Plus, sitting on rigid insulation instead of snow must be much nicer on the butt!

The heated water bowl was frozen over, though I’d made sure to turn on the power bar, so I topped it up with some warm water, too.

It wasn’t until I uploaded this picture of Broccoli, peaking at me, that I suddenly remembered something.

When I took the set up on the mini-greenhouse frame off, I had unplugged the power bar.

I never plugged it back in.

Yeah, that might explain the heated water bowl not working!

It’s plugged in now. 😀

Meanwhile, I’ve heard from the Cat Lady today. She sent me pictures of a very roly poly and healthy looking Cabbages, snuggled up with her daughter.

They watch cat videos together.

*melt*

Yeah, I’m thinking Cabbages might not be going anywhere else. She is quite bonded with Tiny Human!

At the time I’m writing this, both Nicco and Saffron should be recovering from surgery. The cat lady promised to let me know how they did. She’ll be swinging by here today to drop off kibble for us, so we’ll probably get updated then.

If you would like to contribute to our fundraiser to reimburse the cat lady for Cabbages’ vet bills, click on the button below, or click here. If you would like to read more about it, click here.

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This morning turned out to be a busy phone morning. At least by our standards. 😀 My husband had phoned in a prescription refill to be delivered today, so I called for my own refill, only to discover they had no refills left on file. Just last month, they’d had to fax my doctor to get more refills, and for some reason, he’d only added another 30 days.

So while they faxed the clinic again, I called them up. The receptionist figured my doctor wanted me to come in, and could I do that this morning?

Uhm. No. Even if we had transportation, they’re a 45 minute drive away.

When I explained we had no transportation, she set up a phone appointment for me, for late this morning.

That done, I tried to move on to other things, only to have the phone ring again.

It was a Jehovah’s Witness lady that calls every now and then. Normally, I don’t have any problem chatting with her, but had to cut it short this time.

Then my mother phoned, just 10 minutes before the doctor was supposed to call me!

Normally, our phone rings maybe once every week or two. 😀

The call with the doctor went well. He did want me to get some blood work done. I told him we have no transportation right now, so I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to come in. They no longer fax requisitions to other labs, so no chance of getting it done closer. Which is fine. Whenever we have wheels again, I can go in at any time, pick the requisition up at the reception desk, then turn around to the lab across the room.

I think I’ll wait until after March 15, when our province is supposed to finally open up completely.

Which has nothing at all to do with the trucker protests. Nope. Not at all…

We’ll see if it actually happens or not.

Hopefully, our van will be ready for pick up tomorrow. I want to contact the garage again to make sure they have the space for my mother’s car before I arrange a tow. Then I have to figure out how to get there myself, to pick up our van.

I really look forward to having transportation again!!

The Re-Farmer

Morning critters

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First up, I’m happy to say that Cabbages is seeming better this morning. She got more hydration last night, and we even got some solid food into her – also through the syringe. She didn’t like it, but she ate it!

We are still keeping Turmeric closed up with me. I’ve been letting other cats in and out, and while she did growl at the tuxedos, once they were inside, she seemed okay with them. As soon as she’s out of my office/bedroom, however, she still turns into a snarling beast for some reason.

Beep Beep has pretty much moved in and taken Cabbages under her wing, so I had the three of them with me last night. I was awakened by the sound of a cat scratching under the door to get out, and it was Cabbages! That’s the first time she’s made the effort since we brought her into the room.

It turned out their food and water bowls were empty. When I refilled them, Cabbages parked herself at the water bowl and stayed there. I did see her drinking, but mostly, she was just a loaf. I was in and out a few times, and she stayed like that for at least an hour. Right now, she’s back on my bed, next to Beep Beep.

We will keep up with the hydration and the semi-liquid food, even though she is a bit more active.

The other cats still seem very confused by my closed door. I usually have the majority of them splattered all over my bed, finding myself trapped by several when I wake up in the morning. They’ve had to find other places to sleep. A couple of them already preferred my husband’s hospital bed, but now he’s finding his bed covered with 4 or 5 at times. That bed is pretty narrow, so they basically take up the whole thing when that happens! Mostly, though, they have been converging on my daughters, upstairs.

They have not been getting much sleep, lately!

I do wish I knew what was going on with Turmeric, and why she still hasn’t settled down, yet!

Anyhow.

When I head into the sun room to get kibble for the outside cats, it’s not unusual for me to see a cat on the hand rail outside. It’s usually Nosencrantz or Potato Beetle. Sometimes it’s Agnoos or Tuxedo Mask. Not this morning!

The Distinguished Guest had her butt parked there this time! I managed to get a picture before opening the doors, at which point she took off. Not far, though. She knows it’s breakfast time!

She is really looking to be a permanent “guest”.

I counted only 13 this morning, though I did see Ghost Baby show up soon after. We were short two orange tabbies. I didn’t see Butterscotch or Nosencrantz this morning, either. It’s not unusual for Butterscotch to be missing, but I usually see Nosencrantz.

Chadiccus came over for pets, and I was happy to see he’s all cleaned up. No sign of the blood that was all over his front, yesterday. Since no cats look injured, I’m hoping it was just from some rodent he caught and ate.

I can see that the cats checked out our winter sowing experiment! The jugs themselves were undisturbed, though, so that’s good.

Once I was done my rounds and back inside, the two deer that come by regularly were soon at the feeding station. Then I spotted one of them in the south yard!

There is a short path along the chimney block planters that has been shoveled, and that’s where she is standing.

Then she made her way around the white lilacs, to the shrine! From the tracks in the snow, they have been checking out the kibble tray fairly regularly. Which is interesting, since there is nothing there they can eat. There are birds that like to steal the kibble, though, and of course the cats are often there, just like at the feeding station, so maybe the deer is associating the presence of birds and cats with food!

Or she’s just curious. 😀

I like how the cat is so chill about the deer coming at it.

Doing my rounds this morning was a bit of a bother. Those high winds from yesterday drifted over many of our paths with hard packed snow. A couple of days from now, we’re supposed to get hit by a storm, with 10-15 cm of snow (4-6 inches).

*sigh* I suppose we should clear out the end of the driveway again, before the plows have to go through.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: winter sowing experiment

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I was inspired by WolfSong to try something new – and help with that urge to be planting something already! Winter sowing.

Today, I finally got some seeds started.

We’ve been keeping a variety of plastic bottles and jugs for potential garden use. We’ve got mostly the blue water bottles. The distilled water we get for my husband’s CPAP used to come in the same type of jug as milk does, but suddenly all the brands seemed to switch to those blue bottles, all at once. Which was a problem, at first, because many of them no longer had handles of any kind. It made it very awkward for my husband to fill his CPAP humidifier, as the sides would collapse inwards as he poured. He ended up transferring the water to an empty jug with a handle, to keep from splashing water all over his CPAP!

People must have complained, because the next time I had to buy distilled water, the bottles had handles attached to their tops.

We have 4 different types of jugs, including two styles of juice bottles. I decided to try one of each.

I’ve been cutting plastic containers to use in the garden for some time, and it’s a real pain, so today, I took the easy route.

My wood burning kit includes a knife tip. The heated tip makes it SO much easier!

I started by cutting drainage holes in the bottoms, and air circulation holes at the tops, by inserting the knife through the plastic, then giving it a bit of a twist to widen the hole.

Then the jugs were cut most of the way around. With each jug having a different design, they each were cut at different spots.

How much was left uncut to create a hinge depended on how much of a flat area there was. Which, in the case of the blue jug, meant none at all, but that plastic was soft enough that it could still work. The juice jugs are a heavy plastic, making them the most difficult to cut, while the water jug that is the same as milk jugs is such a soft plastic, the melted plastic of the cut edges actually stuck together again in places, and they had to be recut!

I’m hoping the blue bottles work the best, because we’re going to have so many of them.

Just to be on the safe side, the hinges were reinforced with strips of duct tape. For the jugs with distinct handles, the hinge was placed just under them, while the one with indentations to create a handle had the hinge placed above, so the container wouldn’t squish into itself if grabbed by the handle.

The handle of the blue jug is at the cap, so it didn’t matter on that one. I just followed one of the lines, just above the middle.

That done, it was time to put some soil in them.

They all fit in one of the baking trays we got last year, to make it easier to carry seedlings around. Especially the ones in the red Solo cups. Those have come in very handy. I plan to get more They are very inexpensive at Costco.

I had the seedling mix potting soil recently picked up to use for this. Once the soil was in, it all got thoroughly watered.

The water almost immediately all drained into the tray.

I watered them more, drained the water out of the tray and used it to water the soil again. After doing that a few times, I used a spray bottle on the soil surface, while leaving the bottoms to sit in water.

Even then, only the surface became moist. The soil mix was still bone try below.

I spent a bit of time, working on moistening the soil before leaving it to sit while preparing the seeds.

I had already decided to try starting kohl rabi indoors, as our attempts to direct sow them outdoors last spring failed completely. It was the same with the kale. All I can think is that something ate the sprouts as soon as they emerged. It was the second year I’d tried kohl rabi, and the first year’s attempt also failed, with only a few plants surviving, only to be decimated by cabbage moths and flea beetles.

So this time, we’ll go with transplants and, if it works, we’ll be making sure to protect them from both critters and creepy crawlies!

Bahahahahahaha!!!!

Okay, I do remember, while going through our seed inventory, looking into the packet for Early White Vienna kohl rabi, seeing a few seeds, and deciding to keep them. Until today, I didn’t realize where was only five seeds left!

Once the seeds and their labels (strips of masking tape) were ready, I used a chopstick to make evenly spaced holes in the soil for the seeds.

Then I used the spray bottle to water into the holes, because it was still so dry under the top layer!

Because of the different shapes, they each fit a different number of holes in the soil for seeds. The jug with the indented sides for a handle meant it had space for only five holes, so that’s where I planted those five, lonely White Vienna Kohl rabi seeds. Being 2 years old, we may well have none at all germinate, but who knows? The white jug had room for the most seed holes, so that’s where the Russian Red kale went. The last two got the Early Purple kohl rabi seeds.

Once the seeds were in, covered, watered with a spray bottle, labels affixed, it was time to close the containers.

I used packing tape to close up the jubs. The tape is enough to hold them together while the jugs are being carried, but to also be easy to remove, later on.

At least I hope they’ll be easy to remove!

The tray was drained again, then it was time to take them outside.

There we have it. Four different jugs, sown with kale and kohl rabi.

I’m leaving the caps on, since they have air circulation holes, but if the holes turn out to be too small, I might still take them off. We shall see.

I had originally planned to leave the jugs somewhere else, but decided that first spot was not visible enough. I had to consider things like cat and deer traffic, as well as where we shovel the snow from the paths. Hopefully, this spot will be easy to monitor, and they won’t get knocked about by critters. They will also get lots of sunlight, too.

Not that you can tell in the above photos. It wasn’t even 6pm yet, but it was full dark when I set these out!

I still have kale and purple kohl rabi seeds left. I might try starting some indoors, when we start other seeds, then direct sowing the last of seeds. That would give us a chance to compare all three methods.

It should be interesting to see how these do!

The Re-Farmer