yellow onions

Our 2023 garden: root vegetable harvest, plus a first longer drive with the new truck!

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Things started out a bit rough, this morning. While I was in the kitchen, my husband opened the door to my room to let some of the bigger kittens in/out (usually we get both happening at the same time), when Soot Sprite dashed out.

The littles are still too little to be let out.

Unfortunately, my husband couldn’t catch him, but he also thought it was kinda cute, so he started following the Sprite around to keep an eye on him.

Right on down to the basement. The one place that we absolutely did NOT want him getting into. At Sprite’s size, there are too many places he can squeeze into that are not safe or healthy for him. We learned that when we had Beep Beep and Butterscotch have their kittens down there.

I put the food I was working on aside, protected from cats, then went down to see if I could catch him.

I could not.

Worse, I ended up losing sight of him entirely. I was pretty sure he’d squeezed under a counter shelf, but couldn’t be sure. That is one of the worse places (though not the only one) for him to be hiding in. When cleaning up in that basement, we weren’t able to move that shelf. We did clean out stuff inside it, though, which included things like pain cans that had spilled or leaked – it was a long time before we were able to clean out enough to finally get rid of whatever it was that was making the basement smell like a chemical factory! It’s very likely things leaked under that shelf, but we really don’t know.

I ended up messaging my daughters to see who was available to help out, and my younger daughter came down. Part of the problem was that, wherever Sprite ran off, the bigger kittens would run after him and tackle him, like it was a game, which it partly why he ended up disappearing entirely. My daughter had brought a toy to lure him, while I ended up going up and down the stairs with arm loads of other cats and kittens that were causing problems.

Have I mentioned that stairs and I do NOT get along?

My knees are just not stable enough. It isn’t too bad going up the stairs, but going back down is something else entirely. Basically, I have to take one step at a time and hang on to the door, the wall, the window ledge and finally the rail, to get to the bottom.

It took toys, wet cat food and finally letting Clarence (formerly Tweedle Dum) down to finally lure Soot Sprite out. He could barely squeeze his way out from under that counter shelf!!!

That done, my daughter could finally take a shower before heading out. She and her sister had a grocery shopping list and were thinking of going to town, but I took advantage of that to get one more bag of kibble before our stock up shopping, so we went to the nearest Walmart, instead. They carry a 10kg size that costs less than the 7kg sizes that are available locally. Not enough to drive all that way for just a bag of cat food, but worth it if we’re buying other stuff, too.

I made a point of not getting gas on the way out. I’d put some in on Wednesday, before taking the truck home, and got it to just above half. We’d had another trip into town for my husband’s medical appointment, but didn’t go anywhere yesterday. This is our first city trip, enough though it was to the smaller, closer city, so just a 45 minute or so drive, one way. After we did our shopping, we took a different route home so I could get gas at the same station I got gas at a few days ago.

The trip ended up taking just over a quarter tank of gas – I can’t see the odometer to keep track, because we still can’t find where we can cycle through the computer display, and we’ve got that “service tire monitor system” warning. (Which should just be a battery change on the module.) Our model just doesn’t have the computer display buttons that are in the owner’s manual diagram, and there’s nothing else we can find.

The gas station in town we normally go to now has just switched to full service today, which was a nice surprise. Happily, the prices have also dropped a bit again. We are currently at 154.9¢/L When I added gas on Wednesday, it had dropped to 155.9

It cost $102 to fill our tank from the 1/4 mark – and that’s after my CAA discount!

Ouch.

As for mileage… it’s hard to say, considering the substantial difference in tank size between the truck and my mother’s car, and not being able to see the odometer, but I’m pretty sure it’s better for gas than my mother’s car. Probably about what the van did.

I’m glad to have a full tank of gas, but that was painful.

Once at home, I pulled up to the house to unload, then left my daughter to take care of putting things away while I parked the truck in the garage. I even managed to get it in far enough to close the door behind it.

Except….

Well, when I opened the door before we left, I had a bit too much momentum and opened it all the way. The pull strap broke off long ago, so I usually leave it down a few inches, so I can reach to pull it closed again.

Ah, the joys of being short! I could barely touch it with the tips of my fingers, never mind actually grab it to close it!

So I texted the family to let them know, then went to feed the outside cats. My husband, sweetheart that his is, came out to close the door for me. He’s probably the only one that can reach without jumping or standing on something. My older daughter might have been able to reach. Maybe.

We really need to replace that pull strap.

As for the drive itself, it was fantastic. It was a smooth ride, without any of the shuddering or creaking that my mother’s car does, that drives me bonkers. Also, it’s so nice to be driving a larger vehicle again! I can see!

Once we were home and settled in, I headed out to do some clean up in the main garden area. All the stakes and supports needed to be gathered and sorted and tied into bundles, along with tools and supplies. All those feed bags used as grow bags had to be bagged up for the dump, the tree roots growing through the felted fabric grow bags needed to be pulled out as much as possible – they didn’t dry out as much as I’d hoped, given the off and on rain we’ve been having – and everything put away in the old garden shed.

It was also time to harvest the last of the Uzbek Golden carrots, and see what there was among the turnips, beets and radishes.

Would you look at the size of some of those carrots! I am quite happy with this variety.

Much to my surprise, I also found a few yellow onions that got missed, including one fairly larger one.

In digging up the turnips and beets, I honestly did not expect to have anything worth harvesting, but there were a few little turnips of a useable size that weren’t all chewed up by slugs. This variety is meant to be harvested at about golf ball size, if I remember correctly, and these are pretty close to that.

The beets were a complete loss.

There was also one really big radish that I thought was actually the root from one of the two blooming radishes, but it turned out to be next to one of them. Only one other radish was big enough to harvest. I left the two that are still blooming alone. The bed cover I’d set over them got moved to the new trellis bed for storage for now.

What I found interesting about the turnips and radishes, though, it that most of them had lots of fresh new growth. The greens on both had been pretty damaged. Whatever insect has been eating them – I never did see what it was – seems to have gone away with the frost and cooler temperatures, and the greens were actually starting to grow and recover!

This is the last of what was in the main garden area, and as I’ve been writing this, my family has been enjoying the carrots as a snack while making supper! After this, we have the sunchokes to harvest, and the Red of Florence onion bed. The orange carrots will be left and harvested as needed, until it starts getting cold enough to deeply mulch them for winter storage. Beyond that, it’s just preparing the beds for the winter, and hopefully making more beds before the snow flies and the ground freezes. The garlic, saffron crocuses, strawberries, asparagus and the Liberty apple tree will all also need to be given an insulating mulch, but not too early. It’s a balancing act between covering them early enough that they don’t freeze too much over the winter, but late enough that they don’t stay too warm and start growing before the real cold hits.

Which, if the long range forecast is to be trusted (ha!), won’t be for a little while. We’re expected to be consistently below freezing, including daytime highs, in the middle of November. For now, though, we’re supposed to get heavy rains this evening and into the night, and we’re under a weather advisory, as the first Arctic air blast of the season is expected to hit us later this week. We’re still supposed to get days above freezing, though not by much, and we may even get a mix of rain and snow on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

I am so glad we have the truck NOW, before the weather turned! Thank God!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 Garden: partial onion harvest

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One of the problems we’ve had is cats getting into the garden beds. They seemed to especially enjoy laying down on the onions!

As a result, we have a lot of onions with broken stems. Under normal circumstances, that would be a sign that the onions are maturing and ready to be harvested. If the stems are prematurely broken, the plants act as if they’ve reached maturity and won’t get any bigger.

I have been leaving them for the last while, which gives them time to develop that thicker, dry outer skin, but I didn’t want to leave them too long. So today, I harvested the first batch.

This is almost all of our yellow onions, though I did leave the ones that did not have broken stems. Normally, I would not have laid them out with the greens facing in and overlapping like that, but if the greens were hanging off the edges, they’d be way too tempting for cats to play with and drag around! Onions are toxic to cats, so we don’t want any sort of temptation like that.

After a couple of days, we’ll braid them and hang them in the cat free zone inside, aka our living room.

The potatoes that had been curing on these screens were put in cardboard boxes to store and are now also in the cat free zone. We’ll have to eat them fairly quickly. I didn’t bother picking over them to separate any for the root cellar. There just isn’t enough to make that worthwhile.

I did use some of the red potatoes with breakfast. I now know that the Red Thumb potatoes are not really suitable for making hash browns. 😄 They really wanted to mash, instead! Still tasted good, though!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: sowing carrots, beets, turnips and bush beans

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I really need to give myself a break.

With the weather we’ve been having, I have been feeling really anxious about getting the garden in “in time”, when we physically don’t have places prepared for everything yet. I feel like I’m falling behind, and everything is being planted late.

Then I remind myself.

Today is May 29. Normally, I wouldn’t be transplanting or doing a lot of direct sowing until after June 2.

Still, with the weather forecast being what it is, the more we get in the ground now, the more time we’re adding to our short growing season.

I headed out shortly after 7am this morning, to beat the heat, and didn’t come back in until almost 11. It was already feeling too hot by 8am, but I stuck it out as long as I could. My main focus was to finish planting in the beds the tomatoes were transplanted into, and get something into the high raised bed.

I’m still bordering everything with the yellow onions. I decided to plant bush beans in the high raised bed. That will make harvesting so much easier on the back!!

There wasn’t a lot of space left in the low raised beds, though that is partly because of the boards protecting the tomatoes. Once those are removed, it will open things up.

In the bed on the far left, with the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes, I sowed all the Gold Ball turnips in one half, and Merlin beets in the other. These were densely planted in many short rows, more Square Foot Gardening style. When we planted the Gold Ball turnips last year, something ate them pretty much as soon as they germinated. I’m hoping surrounding them with onions will help keep away whatever ate them – I never saw any hint of what it was. I had intended to put a floating row cover over the turnips to protect them, but the space is too narrow for that.

In the bed with the Black Beauty tomatoes, I planted one long row of Uzbek Golden carrots. There was only space for the one row, which I then covered with boards. I will check under the boards daily and remove them as soon as I see carrots sprouting.

Both beds got a thick mulch of grass clippings along the outside, next to the onion transplants. Aside form helping keep the soil cool and moist, and slow down the weeds that come up from under the log boarders, the grass will also help prevent soil runoff while watering. I’ve basically used the last of our grass clippings at this point. We haven’t been keeping up with the mowing, unfortunately. Not only are the dandelions now all going to see, but in a lot of places, so is the grass!

With the high raised bed, I planted the yellow Custard beans – a new variety for us – on the left in the photo, and the green Lewis beans – a variety we’ve grown before – on the right. At each end, I stuck in a few more onion transplants. By this point, only the smallest yellow onion transplants are left, and I was planting them a bit closer to each other than usual, but I was still left with may 10 little transplants left. They’re so small, I probably shouldn’t bother transplanting them, but I’m sure I’ll find someplace to shove them into the ground!

(As an aside, while working on all this, I was happy for a breeze that kept away the mosquitoes. It wasn’t enough to keep away what turned out to be horseflies! Thankfully, they didn’t seem interested in bighting me today. Just in dive bombing my head.)

The large low raised bed you can see on the right is still completely empty. I’m considering using it for the Roma tomatoes, which are growing much faster than expected – one bin in particular is has plants so big, if it weren’t for the labels, I’d have thought they were Black Beauties or Indigo Blues that were started so many weeks earlier! Why that one bin of Romas is so much larger than the others that were started at the same time is an interesting question. I was originally wanting to plant peppers in that bed, but the Roma tomatoes need transplanting more urgently. I wont’ be able to fit all of them in there, but if I can at least get the biggest ones transplanted, that would be a good thing.

Before heading in, I made sure to water the corn bed, too. There are corn seedlings popping up now! I’m quite happy to see them. I was afraid that, with the heat and minimal rain, they might not make it. Checking the raised box beds in the East yard, I was happy to be able to see more carrot seedlings showing their true leaves, without having to look close and wonder, are those seed leaves carrots, or a weed? It’ll still be a while before the carrots are strong enough that we can safely weed around them. Right now, weeding mostly involves removing the biggest leaves from the weeds, and pulling and dandelion flower buds, and being careful not to disturb any carrot roots.

I was thinking of doing more transplanting later today but, at this point, I think the mowing is a more urgent priority. Not just because of how overrun both the inner and outer yards are getting, but because I need the grass clippings!

I also want to get in and around the garden beds and where the squash will be planted with the weed wacker.

When I came in, my weather app said it was 23C/73F. I think it felt quite a bit warmer than that! We’re supposed to reach a high of 26C/79F, with chance of a 43% chance of thunderstorm at about 4pm. I suspect I will have no problem getting out and doing the weed whacking when it’s cooler.

For now, though, it’s time to stay inside, stay cool, and hydrate!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: transplanting first tomatoes

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Well… starting to!

It’s not even 11am as I start this, but I’ve already put in several hours in the garden, trying to beat the heat. Which wasn’t easy, since it was already feeling too hot when I was doing my rounds, first. The weather app was saying 18C/64F, but it felt hotter. It would be good to set up a thermometer in the garden area again.

My focus today is to get the Indigo Blue Chocolate done, and as many of the Black Beauty as I can fit, plus an edging of yellow onions. There are only 11 Indigo Blue and, at about a foot apart, they will easily fit in one row in the bed I chose for them. This bed is somewhat narrower, so it will be able to fit one more row, plus the onions around the edge.

The problem?

There are 26 Black Beauty transplants.

I also counted the Roma tomatoes as I set them out. There are 61, though the plant that broke in the wind yesterday is looking like it probably won’t make it.

Then there are the 30 Spoon tomatoes.

Right now, we have 2 more low raised beds, which are about 15ft long, for about 14ft of growing length. Then there is the high raised bed, which is 9′ x 4′ on the outside, so about 8′ x 3′ of growing space. Aside from a small section in the wattle weave bed in the old kitchen garden, and 4 blocks between the gourds at the chain link fence, that’s all we have left for prepared beds. The squash patch needs work and, of course, we need to get those trellis beds built.

Meanwhile, the lawn is getting out of control, we still need to cut down the dead spruce trees that will be used to make the trellis beds, as well as pre-cut and drag over the trees I cut down for the trellises.

As it is, I did as much as I could this morning, then had to head in to get out of the heat. We are at 24C/75F right now – yes, to me that’s way too hot already! – and we are supposed to reach 30C/86F this afternoon.

I got the Indigo Blue Chocolate tomatoes in, after setting up three of the salvaged T posts to hold their vertical supports, then transplanted some of the yellow onions along the outer edge. The tomatoes were starting to wilt already, so I added a grass clipping mulch around them and along the outer edge of the low raised bed on the one side, being careful not to cover the onions before giving them a final watering.

I was planning to plant the Black Beauty tomatoes on the other half, but I think I will put them in another bed, instead, and direct sow something else with them.

Unless I fill an entire bed with just Black Beauty tomatoes, I will have room for only about half of the transplants. And I don’t want to fill an entire bed with them. A dozen plants is more than enough for fresh eating. The Romas are the only variety that I’d be willing to dedicate an entire bed to, since those are being grown specifically for preserving.

Meanwhile, we’re still getting storm warnings for tomorrow evening. We’ll see if the system reaches us or not, but be ready to protect the garden beds, just in case.

For now, I will be staying out of the heat! Maybe get a nap in, since I will likely be working outside once it starts cooling down, and staying as long as daylight holds.

Yeah. That sounds like a good plan. I didn’t get much sleep last night!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: peas, carrots, turnips, onions

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We got some gardening done! There was a break in the rain and we quickly headed out.

My daughter had the bigger job to get the peas in. We’ll be using the pea trellis we used for the purple peas last year, as we still need to do some work on the other trellis frames. The ground was prepped in the fall, but she had to work through it to pull weeds that were trying to reclaim the space, first.

Now it just needs to have some of the wood shavings, or maybe the stove pellets, added to protect the soil surface from crusting. It’s a light enough mulch that the seedlings won’t have trouble pushing through.

The edible pod pea packet turned out to have very few peas in it. Those are between the two labels on the front left side of the trellis. The rest has pod peas in sown. There are still some seeds left of those, which will probably be planted in with the corn.

This should be the last year this trellis, and the nearby beds, will likely be used for gardening. If all goes to plan, next spring, we’ll be planting food trees here. :-)

While she worked on that, I seeded the bed that was already prepped and mulched with the stove pellet sawdust.

My priority was to get more carrots planted, as they should have been started a while ago. I marked out short rows (making things more like square food gardening), as well as a perimeter line. I started with the Black Nebula carrots. The packet had a nice amount of seeds, and it filled about half the bed, which is about 14-15 ft long. Next, I planted the Uzbek Golden Carrots, which came as a freebie from Baker Creek. There were very few seeds in the freebie packet, and I was only able to plant 4 short rows. For the rest, I planted the Gold Ball turnip, which we got as a freebie from Heritage Harvest seeds, and the Purple Prince turnip at the far end of the bed. I still have some Purple Prince seeds left, but the others in the bed got used up.

We planted the last of our onions started from seed already, so for this bed I used the onion sets I picked up at the grocery store as back ups. I got two boxes of yellow onions – no variety name is on the box – and it took almost all of them to fill the perimeter at 3-4 inches apart. The bed got hosed down to settle the soil over the seeds and onion sets, then support posts were hammered into the ground to hold the netting, after cord is strung through the holes in the posts, and crisscrossed over the middle. This bed will not be getting anything else added to it, so it can be covered sooner rather than later. The other beds have room for transplants in their middles, so they will get their net covering once that is done.

In planting the onions, I naturally was able to grab the biggest sets, since they tended to be on top, so when the bed was completely surrounded by onion, I had a pile of tiny onion sets left behind.

Well, we can’t let those go to waste!

They went into the retaining wall blocks. Two already have shallots in them. After pulling weeds and roots from the empty blocks (the others that look empty had mint transplanted into them in the fall) and adding the wood shavings, I had 6 blocks ready. I was able to fill 5 of them; 4 with 4 onions each, and one with only 3. That one block at the side is still empty. There is a matching block at the other end that doesn’t have anything planted in it, but it looks like it has chives coming through!

We have one box of red union sets left. Depending on where they end up being planted, if we have any left over, I’ll be finding space of them here, too.

The bunching onions planted in the bed along the retaining wall are still looking wimpy after transplanting. Hopefully, all these onions will make things too stinky for the grogs to want to go after the lettuce and beets. A groundhog could easily tear through the net, if it really wanted to. It’s going to be the big garden area that will be the most difficult to protect, however.

~~~pause for real world interruption~~~

My older daughter and I just finished bringing the transplants in. We have so many strong, healthy tomatoes! It’s going to be a challenge to plant them all, since they’ll mostly be going into new beds. Maybe that’s where those grow bags and fabric raised beds will be the most useful!

We’ve got our work cut out for us, but I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do tomorrow, as I’ll be heading to my mother’s to help her run errands. She is suddenly taking her back no longer hurts – I guess it took that long for the meds to have their effect, but she still says that when she takes them, they do nothing. She feels up to going out for her errands, though. She has her telephone doctor’s appointment, so I will probably go over there early enough to be there for her appointment, in case she needs things explained to her.

The question for me will be, can her car make it through that one muddy spot on the road? I might have to take the van, even if my mother will need a stool to get in and out!

The Re-Farmer