zone 3 gardening

Our 2024 Garden: exuberant growth, and seeds are in

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Check out these seedlings!!

The first seedling to break soil surface was a drum gourd – one of the two in the middle pot – but then a Crespo Squash, on the right, burst through and exploded out of the soil. It seems like every time I look at the pots, there’s more visible growth.

What I’m really happy about is that not one of the seedlings emerged with the outer shell of the seed stuck on the leaves. Last year, there was more than a few times that I had to very carefully remove the shell, because the seed leaves were being killed off. As careful as I was, sometimes pieces of the leaves would break off, because the shells were so tightly encasing them.

I really like this pre-germinating technique!

The heat mat will need to be unplugged very soon. I won’t move them off right away, as I need to arrange space. I won’t need it until I start more seeds.

This weekend will be 7 weeks before our last average frost date. I will go through some of my seeds to see what I want to start first. The seeds we have left are pretty much all supposed to be started 3-4 weeks before last frost, but if I started all the ones I want to, I’ll run out of space in no time at all – and I will have way too many things that need to be transplanted, all at once. So I plan to stagger them.

I might even start some of these.

Baked Potato Squash
Mashed Potato squash

I had to go to town today and finally picked up the mail. There were probably in and waiting for a while. Since we have so many varieties of winter squash seeds, we will probably start just a couple of seeds of each. At this point, we’re still after trying out different types to see what we like the most, and will then probably drop it down to one or two varieties.

Who am I kidding. We’ll probably be constantly trying new ones! Just maybe not quite so many different types, all at the same time.

That’s one thing about having the luxury of space like we do. We can spare some to try growing new things we don’t even know if we’ll like, yet.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023/24 Garden: no carrots this time!

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It’s been a while since we could get to the bed with the carrots in it. Previously, we had no issues harvesting them, and the bed did have a nice thick layer of mulch.

Not thick enough!

Here are the progress shots for these three beds.

Rolando Moon lost her favourite sun spot hangout!

One of the first things I did was detach the arched cover from the box cover in the centre, and switch it to the bed on the left. This way, we could put the cover on the carrot bed onto the box frame, making it much easier to attach the plastic.

The painter’s cover sheets I got are 12’x8′. My daughter and I folded them in half to make them 12’x4′. Once we had the plastic over the arched cover, she went to start removing the mulch for me while I attached the plastic to the frame. This is temporary, so I just stapled it down. The staples didn’t want to go in all the way, though, so I had to go around and hammer them in.

I can see wind is going to be a problem with the plastic.

As for the carrots, I had a bin all ready to collect the last of them, but it was not to be. Not only was the soil frozen solid, so was a lot of the mulch! My daughter got off as much as she could, then we put the cover, now with plastic over it, back on the bed.

We then took the other arched cover and set it back on the box cover. The mesh on this one is temporary. The chicken wire I used is too bendy and easily misshapen, so it will be replaced with stronger welded wire or something, later on. For now, though, it’s enough to hold some plastic. It went faster this time, as I went around stapling the plastic down, and my daughter followed with a hammer, tacking the staples down so the were actually holding the plastic in place. Very frustrating.

The second arched cover’s wire is a bit smaller than the first one we did, so there was more excess plastic to tuck under at the ends, and a bit more on the sides. This one went onto the bed next to the compost ring, which still has quite a bit of snow on it. It also did not get weeded or reworked as thoroughly as the one in the middle, before things got too cold.

So now we have two beds with plastic “greenhouse” covers on them. We’ll need to check on the carrot bed regularly over the next few days. As the ice in the mulch thaws, we’ll remove more of it, until the soil itself can finally start thawing out – and we can finally harvest those carrots!

Note for future reference. If we use this method to store carrots again, we need to either use a lot more mulch, or have it covered in plastic like this – or both!

It’s 10C/50F right now, making for a gorgeous day to work outside.

This is what it was like, a year ago today!

We were having to dig ourselves out and were still expecting a blizzard.

It’s not at all unusual to have at least one last blizzard in April. We aren’t expecting anything but warm days and mostly sunny skies for the rest of April, this year. In fact, if the long range forecast is at all accurate (ha!), May will be chillier than April.

Gosh is feels good to be able to work outside right now! Yes, I know, we need more snow, and we’re expected to have drought again this summer, but I will enjoy what I can, when I can!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: making seed tape, and reconsidering plans

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Well, I just had to do something garden related!

So I went through my seed bin again – main bin, not just the smaller bins organized by “direct sow” or “start indoors” – and found my package of Uzbek Golden Carrots from last year. I really liked these carrots, so I want to plant more this year. I also found my leftover Napoli carrots. Those are pelleted seeds, so no need to do anything with those, but after how well it worked out with our Naval carrots last year, I wanted to make seed tape with the Uzbek Golden Carrots. I also found some other things, but more on that later.

The package still had quite a lot of seeds in it. We planted only one row, about 14′-15′ long, last year, so we didn’t use much.

Like last year, I used strips of toilet paper the length of the end of our dining table, split into single ply. I pre folded the toilet paper, lengthwise, to make it easier later on. A flour and water paste was used as the “glue”, and I used a bamboo chopstick to apply the paste with the thick end, and to pick up the seeds with the narrow end. Once the seeds were in place, the toilet paper strip was folded over, pressed into the flour paste, then set aside to start drying while the next batch was done.

After a while, the stack of drying strips was getting rather thick. There were still plenty of seeds when I stopped, so I took another look at the package.

A minimum of 800 seeds! Wow!

Each strip has 20 seeds in it (a few got pairs of seeds stuck together, but I’m counting those as one). I counted the strips, and had another 20.

I think 400 seeds will be enough! I’d estimate there’s still close to 300 seeds left in the package.

The seed tape is now draped around the cat free zone in the living room to finish drying, before they get rolled up and stored until it’s time to plant.

As for the other stuff I found…

I confirmed that I do have a few Crespo squash seeds left. I really want to grow those, as they are supposed to be quite delicious. I got the seeds from Baker Creek, but they don’t seem to carry them anymore, so I want to be able to save my own seeds. I also am thinking of trying the African Drum gourds again. Last year, I had issues with the gourd seedlings and replanted a few times, to the point I started getting the pots mixed up. By the time the survivors were transplanted and started producing fruit, we discovered none of them were drum gourds! Hopefully, I’ll have better luck this year.

I also was surprised to find I still had luffa seeds! Last year, they also had issues and got replanted a couple of times, but it’s also the first year we actually had a luffa develop. So I think I will try those again, this year. Being in the old kitchen garden was so much better for it compared to our previous attempts, so I will take that into consideration when it comes time to transplant them. It’ll be the same thing with the Drum gourds and Crespo squash. I’ll need to really think about where they need to be planted, as much to protect them from the deer as anything else. The first year we grew Crespo squash, they did fantastic, until then got eaten by deer and groundhogs three times before we could get them sufficiently protected! They recovered very well and started developing fruit like crazy, but there just wasn’t enough growing season left for them. Last year, we had one develop to about the size of a smallish pumpkin, but I think their location got too much sun, and the plants got baked.

Anyhow.

I will try starting the three of them within the next couple of weeks. I still have some larger peat pots left from last year, so they’ll go straight into there. Hopefully, that will mean there will be no potting up needed. The pots didn’t break down after transplanting the Crespo squash, like they were supposed to, but they can be broken up without disturbing the roots at transplant time. The main thing will be to keep the pots moist until then. Otherwise, they dry out and suck the moisture out of the seed starting mix!

I’m still waffling about whether or not I will try growing corn again this year. We have some short season varieties, but I don’t know that we’ll have enough space prepared for them. They are not a priority, compared to some of the other things we want to grow this year. A lot will hinge on being able to get those new beds built in time for planting. We’ll be growing potatoes where we grew winter squash last year, so we’ll be needing space for the squash we want to grow this year, and I hope to grow quite a bit of both winter and summer squash. We’ve got a melon mix this year, too.

Well, we’ll see how it works out when the time comes. For all the plans we’ve made, I’ve found it’s awfully easy for things to side swipe them!

Still, I’m happy to at least have the seed tape done and ready for planting, once the ground is thawed out enough. Carrots, at least, can be planted before last frost, and I can hardly wait!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 garden: teeny tiny thyme

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We have sproooots!

The German Winter Thyme has sprouted.  Gosh, they are so tiny!  I actually had to wait a day before I could get a picture where they could be seen for what they are.

I expect the oregano to sprout next – unless we have problems like last year.  It will be a while longer before I expect to see the peppers sprouting.

We made the living room a cat free zone to protect our house plants.  It has a huge east facing window and gets lots of light for a brief period in the morning.  After that, it’s a pretty dark room.  It’s not too bad for the plants near the window, but our huge jade tree… well… one of them… is against a wall in the middle of the room.  We have another that’s gotten just as big, but with needing the window for seedlings, it’s off to one end of the shelf it’s on, and no longer in front of the window.  The only light it gets is from the shop lights I have over where the seedlings and small plants are. 

Then there are the aloe Vera.  They’re on plant shelf near the older jade tree, which puts them pretty low down. 

The old jade tree is not doing well.  I regularly rotate the pot, so all sides eventually get light – not easy to do, with such big branches, so close to the wall!  Unfortunately, I can see the leaves are getting thinner and less succulent, and a lot of leaves are simply shriveled up.  It does get adequate moisture, and is in a self watering pot.  It’s just not thriving in this location.

There is no room for it, anywhere else. 

What we need is a light fixture along that back wall.  When we moved here, there was a light fixture in the corner where the big aquarium greenhouse is now.  It reaches floor to ceiling, held in place with pressure, and has 3 lights that could have their directions adjusted.  It’s in the storage shed now.  If that thing still works, we could set it up with standard bulb sized grow lights, near the Jade tree.  Those types of grow bulbs are more affordable, anyhow. 

Looks like I need to trek through the snow and see what I can find in the storage shed.  I hate going in there, though.  Every time I do, I’m afraid a cat might sneak in behind me and accidentally get closed in.  That shed is so full of my parents’ stuff, we can’t even access most of it, anymore.  Lots of places for a cat to hide!

I should grab a daughter to go with me and stand guard!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 garden: herbs and peppers

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Today, I did some seed organizing.

After marking out the weeks backwards from our June 2nd last frost date on our calendar, I then went through my bin of seeds and organized them by when they need to be started indoors. Then I picked out the ones I could get started now.

We won’t be starting everything that we have seeds for.

Starting from the 3-4 weeks list:

I still haven’t decided if we’re going to plant any gourds at all this year. There are several I really want to grow, but we just don’t have the space. With the winter squash, we have the new packet of mixed winter squash seeds to try, plus one type for pies my daughter asked for. With the mixed seeds pack, we will of course want to plant the entire package, and see what we’ve got! I would still like to try the Honeyboat Delicata squash again; the few we got didn’t get a chance to fully mature, but they were great in the pie my daughter made! We also really liked the Pink Banana and Georgia Candy Roaster. There are other varieties that didn’t do well that I want to try again, just so we can decide if we like them or not, but that will depend on how much space we have. The problem is, there are a LOT of things that need to be started in that 3-4 week time span. I’m still not sure if we’ll do cucumbers this year. I’d rather use the space for the melons and winter squash. We’ll be skipping the hulless seed pumpkins this year, but I really want to try the Crespo squash again. Last I saw, Baker Creek didn’t carry the seeds anymore, so I want to successfully grow at least one to collect seeds from!

As for the tomatoes in the 6-8 week list, we’ll not be planting all that we have seeds for. We’ll do the San Marzano paste tomatoes for preserving and the Black Cherry for fresh eating. The free seeds we got are tempting me greatly, and I always want to grow more Spoon tomatoes! They’re just fun. I want to start quite a lot of the San Marzano, but not as many of the cherry tomatoes. I don’t want a situation like last year, where we ran out of space and had to give away so many transplants!

From the 8-10 week list: the Butterfly Flower is a type of milkweed, so I definitely want to get those going. We have three varieties of “early” peppers that I waited to start last year. They have such a short growing season, technically we could direct sow them. It didn’t work out. They didn’t get to produce, though with most of them I now know that the grow bags they were planted in were invaded from below by roots from the nearby Chinese elm. So we’ll definitely need to keep that in mind, when deciding where to transplant them this year. I will be starting fewer seeds, shooting for at least 2 plants per variety in the garden, but between the 6 varieties I’ll be starting this year, we’ll still have plenty for our needs. Hopefully, my family will have peppers of each kind to try, so we can decide which varieties we like enough to keep growing, year after year.

You’ll notice there are no summer squash on my list. Those got moved to the direct sowing bin. I’m not going to have the space to start them indoors. As long as I can keep the slugs away from them, they should be okay to start outdoors.

There were four things I could start today. Since I was after fewer plants per variety, I decided to go with the Red Solo cups to start them in, rather than the larger trays with smaller grow cells.

With the herbs, I’m just doing the oregano and German Winter Thyme again. The chamomile we planted last year should have self seeded, and we’ll see if the spearmint survived the winter in their pot. We ended up not using the lemongrass at all, so I’m not trying them again this year. We’ll plan out our herbs more, as time goes by. The herb seeds are so incredibly fine – especially the oregano! They got surface seeded over the pre-moistened seed starter mix, then covered with a light dusting of dry starter mix to just barely cover them, followed by a spritz to moisten the tops. Vermiculite would have been better, but I don’t have any. The herbs went into two cups each. With such tiny seeds, there’s no way to know how many I managed to sprinkle onto them. I still had seed left over, too, so if they don’t take, I can try again. The oregano really struggled last year, and I ended up with only one surviving seedling to transplant. That one plant did well, at least! They were started in the little Jiffy pellets last year, so I hope they do better in the larger cups and a different growing medium.

I decided to go ahead and plant the last of our Purple Beauty seeds, which are two year old seeds. The first time we planted them was a year of drought and heat waves, and they did very poorly. Last year, what was planted in that bed also struggled, so I think it’s more a problem with the soil in that bed. I split the last 7 seeds of Purple Beauty between two cups.

The Sweet Chocolate peppers were the one pepper that we were actually able to harvest mature peppers from last year, and they were also the only ones I started quite early. We saved seed from them, too, but there was still plenty in the packet, so I used those. There was enough to plant three seeds into each of three cups, with plenty of seed left over. I had intended to do just two cups, like the others, but the bin they’re in for bottom watering holds 9, and I just had to fill in that last space! Yeah, it’s a bit OCD, but I have an excuse. If there are gaps in the bins, the cups tend to fall over more easily when the bins get moved around.

So these are now in the big aquarium, on the warming mat.

The next seeds don’t need to be started until the second half of March, at the earliest.

Must… resist… starting too early!!!

😂

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 garden: germination

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While checking on the seedling this morning, have to say, I am very impressed with our germination rates!

It’s hard to judge the percentage with the onion seeds, since I don’t know exactly how many were sown in each section of their growing trays, but I know exactly how many seeds were planted in the big tray.

With the Classic Eggplant in the middle, there were just enough seeds left from last year to plant two to a cell. We have a 100% germination rate!

The Cheyenne peppers, in the row closest to the window, had just enough seeds left from last year for one per cell. Five are up, and one is just breaking ground, so we’ve got 6 out of 7 germinating.

The Little Finger Eggplant are a mix of old and new seeds. The cell on the bottom left has 3 new seeds planted in it. The other six cells have 2 seeds from last year, plus one from this year, in them. All but one seed has germinated – and that one might still emerge soon.

I’m rather impressed by this!

Of course, we don’t need anywhere near that many eggplants. We’ll thin them to one per cell. I’ll have to resist thinning by transplanting. I hate “wasting” a seedling! Still, even if we’re just down to 7 of each type of eggplant, that’s more than enough, even if they don’t all survive transplanting in the spring. With eggplant, we’re still working out if these are something we will want to plant regularly or not. The first time we grew the Little Finger eggplant, one plant barely managed to fruit, but even those little eggplants were enjoyed. Last year, none of them grew much after transplanting. Last year, we had only one Classic Eggplant seedling survive and it did remarkably well, though we ran out of growing season and had only a couple small eggplants to try out.

As for the Cheyenne peppers, if we have only one surviving transplant, that would probably be enough for our needs; the one that was able to produce peppers last year had lots on it, though we had to harvest them while still green. Hopefully, by starting them early like this, they’ll have time to mature on the plant.

We shall see how they do over the weeks again, but I do like what I’m seeing so far!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 garden: first!

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Okay, I’ve got a couple hours before I can pick up my new computer, but I couldn’t help but make one more post.

We have sproooots!

They are just barely visible, like tiny white worms! 😆

The yellow onions and the shallots, which are both in the large aquarium greenhouse, are emerging.  The red onions are in the small aquarium greenhouse, which is slightly cooler, so that may be why nothing is sprouting there quite yet.

It is so awesome to see new growth!!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 garden: T&T Seeds order in

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I had an order started with T&T Seeds about a month ago. I wasn’t quite decided on things, so I hadn’t completed it when my computer died.

Today, I logged into my account. No surprise that it had been dumped by now! Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite remember everything I had in there. It wasn’t much, and I remembered in a general sense, so I tried my best.

This is what I just finished ordering. All images belong to T&T Seeds.

The first is a tomato. After experimenting with so many last year, my daughter suggested we do just the paste tomatoes I want, plus a cherry tomato. We did get free tomato seeds with our Heritage Harvest order, and I want to try at least a few of those, but I still wanted to order a variety of cherry tomatoes for fresh eating.

I was torn between two varieties, until I saw that one of them was more expensive – and for only 10 seeds! So I got these Black Cherry tomatoes, instead! It comes in a packet of 25 seeds. This is an indeterminate variety that will need staking.

Yes, we ordered yet another squash variety! My older daughter requested this. In the catalog, it’s called Winter Sunshine Hybrid, which I couldn’t find in the website. I was able to search the product code, though, and on the website, it’s just called Sunshine Hybrid. What caught my daughter’s attention is that it’s supposed to make the “best” soup. At only 80 days to maturity, this is something that we could technically direct sow but, with our slug issues, I think we’ll start them indoors!

We’re going to try two new varieties of potatoes this year. The first is a yellow potato.

This is the German Butterball potato. It is supposed to be a good winter storage variety, and a good all-purpose potato, so I ordered two 1kg bags.

I was torn between trying another all purple potato, or a purple skin white potato. In the end, I settled on this Purple Caribe. It’s supposed to be a good mashing potato that isn’t fussy about where it grows – which matters, with our soil conditions! I ordered only one 1kg bag of these.

This year, I’m considering growing the potatoes where we had the big squash patch for the past two years. I’m hoping a couple of years of heavy mulching will have made the soil easier to dig into, to plant potatoes. The alternative would likely be to use grow bags again, but I don’t think I’ll do that this year. We shall see. The potatoes won’t get shipped until planting time, so we’ll have the opportunity to prepare a place in advance.

The entire order cost under $40, but with tax and shipping, it came out to over $60! To have it shipped by mail was basically $20. I’m not impressed with that. Alternatively, we could have picked it up at the store, which 1) would still have had a shipping and handling charge of a little over $5 and 2) is nowhere near us, so not an option, anyhow! 

Hopefully, the product will be good. We’ve ordered short season sweet potato slips from them before, during what turned out to be a really difficult growing year, so they didn’t have a chance to grow well. I looked into trying them again, but the price increase was way too much. Frustrating.

Anyhow. 

This will probably be our last seed order for the year, though I hope to order at least one fruit, berry or nut tree this year. We still need to decide on what we want to start this year. Aside from that, I would like to pick up more strawberries, but we will probably buy transplants in the spring, rather than order online.

My main focus for this spring is going to be increasing the number of beds we can plant in. The tunnel beds are high on the list, but if at all possible, I’d like to do something with the low raised beds we currently have. They were always intended to be temporary set ups, but with the troubles we had last years, from tree roots at the far ends, to whatever infected those red onions and Roma tomatoes, they need to be reworked. Right now, they are bordered with short lengths of logs from the trees we had trimmed away from the house and power lines, and I want to replace those with longer logs (if we can harvest enough dead trees!), make them lightly higher, and consistent in width and length.  Right now, some of them are a bit wider and, with low raised beds, that makes it harder for us short people to reach. In the future, I need to remember that a low raised bed, accessible from both sides, should be no more than 3 feet wide. By making these even just one log higher, we can keep them at 4 feet wide. We might not be able to do that until after the growing season is done, though. We shall see!

Can you tell the warm weather has me itching to get working outside? 😂😄😂

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 garden goals: review and reset

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Okay, now that we’ve gone though and analysed how our garden did in 2023, it’s time to use that information to review and reset our plans for our 2024 garden.

For the past few years, we’ve done a lot of experimenting. We will continue to experiment, but some things will be set aside for now, to try again later.

Photo by Binyamin Mellish on Pexels.com

So let’s go through the different categories again.

Fall garlic, perennials and food forest items

Our fall garlic is already planted. This year, we’re just doing one variety, so we got 3 pounds of garlic and they’re planted in locations, in the old kitchen garden. Hopefully, they will survive the winter in their raised beds, and we’ll have a good harvest out of them. Garlic will be a staple crop. We might still try other varieties to find which one we like best but, at this point, it’s more about figuring out how much to plant to meet our needs.

We’ve also got the unexpected purchase of saffron crocuses planted already. I’m quite excited to see how they do. They’re zone 4 and got extra protection for the winter, but our winter has been so mild so far, they should do just fine.

Berries, fruit trees and expanding the food forest

What we do next here will depend on our budget. With fruit and nut trees, they really should be planted as early as we can get them, since they can take so long before producing. We still need to get more sea buckthorn, since we lost 3 out of a bundle of 5. We got two tiny Trader mulberry along with our Liberty apple tree. They didn’t have stock of the usual sizes they ship, so instead of one 2 yr seedling, we got two 1 yr seedlings. Those were so small, we ended up keeping them indoors. They’ve grown quite a bit and, as I write this, they have gone dormant for the winter. Hopefully, they will start budding in the spring, as we harden them off before transplanting outdoors.

We might get another, hardier variety of apple tree, but we also need to keep in mind that almost all the crab apples we have now are dying of a fungal disease, and once that gets in the soil, there’s no getting rid of it. We’re looking at hardy plum and pear trees, but I’m also keen on getting things like hazelnuts, butternuts or black walnut trees. The hazelnuts bushes, at least, will start producing in 3-5 years, unlike the much longer time needed for the bigger trees.

We have black currants that need to be transplanted out of the shady area they are in now, and the haskap probably need to be transplanted, too. They have yet to produce.

Saskatoons are on our list, as are gooseberries.

More raspberries are definitely on the list. The goal is to have different varieties that mature at different times, so extended harvesting.

I would like to get more strawberry transplants and use them as a ground cover under food forest transplants. Those are something that should to be replanted elsewhere every few years, so that would work out.

We intended to get green asparagus and more purple asparagus, in alternating years, but we are having trouble figuring out where to plant something that we can expect to produce for 20 years, so that will wait.

No change on the sunchokes. They’ll take care of themselves at this point.

We also need to figure out where to plant annuals that we can treat as perennials that we didn’t plant in 2023, like strawberry spinach, dill and other varieties of bread seed poppies.

We also need to get native wildflowers to attract pollinators growing. Those will be scattered about, and bordering other areas.

Root vegetables

Potatoes will, of course, be grown again. I just don’t know where, yet! While I like the fingerling varieties, I don’t like fussing with smaller potatoes as much, so I think this year I will focus on just two basic varieties, one a white or yellow potato, and one a red potato. Scab resistance and storability will be the main factors to consider when choosing varieties.

I think we’ll need to skip beets and turnips for a few years. I’d still like to grow a couple of radishes for their pods but, so far, none have had a long enough growing season to reach that stage, so it might be skipped. We might still grow a few radishes for their roots, for those family members that enjoy them.

Carrots, however, have done well, so we’ll keep growing those for sure. I can’t remember if I still have Uzbek Golden carrot seed left, but do want to grow those again. The only down side is that I haven’t seen a Canadian supplier, and the cost of ordering from the US is getting too high. I’ve got lots of seed for other varieties, though.

Onions and Shallots

These will continue to be staples, even as we try different varieties to see what works. I’ve just got seeds for yellow globe onions and pink shallots in, plus I need to get seeds for a red variety. It’s yellow onions we use the most, so finding something that grows well here, and stores well, is the priority over other types.

Tomatoes

We had so many tomato starts in 2023, and not enough space to transplant them!

While we liked the black varieties we experimented with, my daughters have suggested that for 2024, we stick with just one fresh eating variety, and requested it be a grape or cherry tomato type. Besides that, we will try a different paste tomato variety. Something more resistant to blight!

When cleaning up the old kitchen garden, the Spoon tomatoes still had some ripe tomatoes on them, so I just stuck those into the ground after pulling up the plants. Who knows. We might have some self seeded Spoon tomatoes next year!

Corn, peas and beans

I want to grow peas again, but would like to try them somewhere else. We have yet to have really healthy pea plants, even though we’ve managed to have some to harvest. Deer eating them is only part of the problem!

With beans, I still want to try the varieties we didn’t manage to plant in 2023, with both bush and pole bean varieties, plus dry bean varieties. If we have the space, I’d like to try the seeds I’d harvested from the self seeded varieties that grew in our compost pile. I still haven’t been able to figure out what they are, or where they came from!

As for corn, I think we’ll save experimenting with popcorn again for another year. Likewise with the purple corn. I want to focus on growing sweet corn. We have a couple of short season varieties that didn’t get planted in 2023, so I want to grow at least one of those, and a decent amount of them!

Peppers, herbs and greens

For the sweet bell peppers, my daughters have suggested we just do one variety, and they don’t particularly care what kind. They find they all seemed to taste the same. I do have a request to grow hot peppers, too. We still have plenty of seeds to choose from.

For herbs, it should be interesting to see what makes it through the winter. Did the chamomile self seed? Will the thyme make it? I normally would expect the spearmint to survive, but they’re in a pot, not in the ground, so they will likely not survive the winter. We will likely find other varieties of herbs to grow, as we convert our old kitchen garden into mostly herbs, but we haven’t decided what to try next, yet.

As for greens, we probably will skip the lettuces again, but I won’t be unhappy if the Jabousek lettuce managed to self seed. I also want to try growing the Hedou Tiny Bok Choy seeds I harvested our of the tiny little plants that survived being choked out by Chinese elm seeds.

At some point, I want to grow cabbage, but I don’t think it’ll be this coming summer.

Melons

We love melons, so we will definitely be growing them again. I just got a summer melon mix of seeds to try, plus we still have seeds left from the varieties we tried in 2023. I would love to get the Cream of Saskatchewan Watermelon growing. It’s a short season variety that I might actually try direct sowing, since starting them indoors was a complete failure!

Summer squash

These are a staple crop, and we still have plenty of seed for the green and gold zucchini, the yellow pattypan squash, and the Magda squash. I might need to get more G-Star seeds, as those seem to do so well here, but I’d also like to try a new variety of patty pans, too. If we can get control of our slug problem, these can be direct sown instead of started indoors.

Winter Squash

I want to try all the varieties we tried in 2023 again! We won’t have the space, though. We have the new Wild Bunch winter squash mix of seeds that just arrived, and those will probably take up most of the space we have available. If we have the room, I’d like to do the pink banana and candy roaster again, as they did so well. There are also others that didn’t do well that I want to try again, with better growing conditions. The main reason I am willing to dedicate so much garden space to these is for their winter storage that will provide food for us for many months.

Gourds

Gourds are something I’ve been wanting to grow mostly for crafting purposes. Especially the larger varieties, such as the canteen gourd and the African drum gourd. Luffa, of course, I want to grow for their sponges. Unfortunately, we’ve had issues with getting most of them to survive at all, never mind bloom and produce early enough to fully mature on the vine, even for varieties that I know should be able to do so, in our short growing season. I need to rethink where to grow these, and focus on improving the soil. I think that’s the source of most of our problems. These are heavy feeders, and our depleted soil needs more work. Whether or not we grow gourds again in 2024 will depend on having that sort of prepared space. They are not as high on the priority list for the upcoming year.

Eggplant

I definitely want to grow both the Little Finger and Classic eggplant again! We had the one Classic eggplant do surprisingly well. I now know not to plant any in those chimney block planters, but the wattle weave bed seems to be a much better space for them.

Salsify

My daughters had requested these, as the roots supposedly taste like seafood, and that appeals to them. With their deep roots that, from what we’ve read, are fragile, they were going to be grown in repurposed garbage cans turned into planters. It just didn’t happen. I’d like to give it a go in 2024 and see if we can successfully grow these at least once!

Sunflowers

We still have the seeds for Mongolian Giant and Hopi Black Dye sunflowers. They need to be grown while they are still viable. When we grew them before, we tried starting them both indoors and outdoors. The main problem was, the deer!

So I do want to grow these again, if we can figure out where, and how to protect them. With the Mongolian Giant, I want them to double as a privacy screen, too. Ideally, I would interplant them in the food forest area, but that’s where the deer traffic is heaviest!

Cucumbers

We still have Lemon Cucumber seeds that I wouldn’t mind trying again. We’ll see if we have the space. I don’t think we’ll bother with pickling cucumbers. The year we grew those, my sister dumped loads of cucumbers from her garden on us. We pickled as many as we could before we ended up having to toss the rest on the compost, because they went moldy before we could finish them.

We haven’t been eating the pickles.

My husband normally loves pickles. We only opened one jar, and that’s it. No one’s wanted to eat any of them, since.

I have no idea if our own pickling cucumbers would have done better, as we never had enough of a crop to pickle, though we did have some for fresh eating (they were a dual purpose variety).

Perhaps some day, we’ll try pickling cucumbers again. For now, though, if we try any, it’ll be for fresh eating, and I think the Lemon cucumber is an interesting variety I’d like to try – if we can get them to germinate and survive long enough to transplant!

So that’s my thoughts on what we want to plant. These are the other related projects we need to work on.

Raised beds

A priority needs to be put onto getting the trellis beds built. Then add the trellises and, if we have the time, join pairs of them to make the trellis tunnels we have in mind. We will also need to have portable trellises for climbers that will be planted in other beds that will not have permanent trellises built in.

The current low raised beds in the main garden area need to be rebuilt into more permanent fixtures, but the priority is to build more beds in general, first. Especially since we won’t be growing squash in the old squash patch again, and still plan to grow a lot of squash. That space will also eventually have raised beds in them.

The soil in the low raised beds, however, needs further amending, particularly to prevent soil compaction. I suspect soil compaction is the cause of a lot of our problems, even though we use mulches to help prevent that.

Rebuilding the garden tap

When I was a kid, helping my mother with her garden here, that tap came in so very handy. I hope to put a priority on getting that set up again, in a way that will last at least another 50 years! Along with the tap, which will be set up strong enough to support a garden hose attached to it, there will be a vegetable washing station and work station.

Garden shed

I want to at least get started on the base of this. We need to replace the old and rotting garden shed. I also want to do a small cordwood construction practise building. The original plan of building a 10’x10′ outdoor bathroom with composting toilet, to replace the outhouse, will be postponed. We’ve chosen a location for it, but when it comes time to fell the rest of the dead spruces, we need to be able to fell some of the trees in that direction, then drag logs through there.

So what I want to build first as a practise building is a smaller garden shed. Because cordwood walls are so much heavier, we need to prepare a base that will support that weight and not sink. That will mean bringing in gravel (now that we have the truck, we can actually drive to the gravel pit to collect some!) to cover the ground and raise the area a bit higher and level it. We plan to visit a ReStore in the city, or a salvage yard, to find concrete blocks or pavers to use as a floor, and a base for the cordwood walls.

The shed itself is planned out to be 6’x8′ on the inside, not counting the thickness of the walls. The cordwood walls will probably be 8 inches thick (for a larger building, like a house, they might be 12 or 16 inches thick, or even more), and have a shed roof, which will probably be a metal roof. The south facing wall will have a window – we have many salvaged windows, complete with frames, in the barn to choose from – and bottle bricks in the wall around it for light inside. We have doors in the barn and sheds, too, and should be able to find something we can salvage.

I want to take advantage of the cordwood construction to include longer logs in the walls, extending outside the northern wall closer to that garden tap, that can be used to build a bench and maybe a counter. Other longer pieces can be extended into the interior, closer to the roof, to build shelves on.

There are other things that are a priority that will take a lot of time and resources, but I do hope to at least get a start on the base. We really do need a good garden shed, and I’d like to build one that will last many, many years.

Well, that’s all I can think of right now. I’m sure I’m forgetting something!

We’ll definitely have our work cut out for us.

I’m rather looking forward to it!

The Re-Farmer

Analyzing our 2023 garden: the videos, and final thoughts

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With the previous garden analysis posts, I wasn’t able to include a lot of photos that I would like to have. Due to media storage running out in my WordPress account (I’m at 98% now, so I have to go find some more photo/critter of the day posts to delete!), I did a lot more videos, instead.

Turns out, I did quite a lot of them.

So this post is going to have all those videos, starting with the longer garden tour videos.

But first, I want to mull over my final thoughts on this past year’s garden, before I do a final review and reset post for next year’s garden.

Honestly, I’m not sure what to think about how the garden went this year.

I’m unhappy with the fact that the garden was so much smaller, and that we didn’t get the trellis beds built, that we wanted to. Even if we didn’t get the trellises added until later, we should have at least been able to build the raised beds. It seems that every time we had a day where we should have been able to get in to fell the dead spruces to use for it, something would come up that needed to be done right away, like helping my mother with errands, or doing our own errands in the city, etc. Then there were all the days when it simply wasn’t safe to try and fell trees due to weather. Mostly high winds. Felling 60′ + tall trees against the wind is just not a thing to to! It got me very frustrated. Still, I’m glad we managed to fell the trees we did, and the more that are taken down, the more space there will be to fell the bigger ones that we need to make sure fall away from the house.

The price of lumber is still quite high, which is why we’re scavenging our dead trees. Though prices have been slowly dropping again, they’re still high enough that I’ve even had people offer to cut down the dead trees for me, in exchange for the lumber. In another world, I would have happily taken them up on this exchange, but we need the lumber for ourselves!

The other frustration is not knowing why some things, like the beets, did not do well at all.

Oh! I completely forgot to include the radishes in the root vegetables post! They were planted as a fall crop, and while a couple grew fast enough to start blooming, and they certainly did better than the beets did, by a long shot, their roots still did not do well. Plus, my one daughter that actually likes radishes happened to be away and house sitting at the time when they would have been best for harvesting, so even what little we had never really got used.

Discovering that the roots from those trees my mother allowed to grow where she’d had a row of raspberry bushes, many years ago, were actually getting into the grow bags and crowding out the things I actually wanted to grow was another frustration. When she asked us to move here, and I mentioned wanting to clear those trees away, she demanded they stay. They’re a wind break, she says. Well, sort of, but even as a wind break, they’re not located in a good place. When I was starting to clean up around them, I discovered a number of stumps that showed these trees had been cut down in the past, most likely by my late brother. Much of what we’ve got now are actually suckers that grew out of the stumps.

Those trees have got to go, and go permanently, if we want to be able to use that space to grow food.

Still, they do provide a small amount of shelter, so that will likely wait until we’ve been able to plant more shelter belt tress in better locations. We just have to be very careful about where, since we need to avoid a buried telephone line.

We might just cut down the Chinese elms, though, as their seeds were also a contributing problem. The maples that are in there are not so bad. They have different root systems, too.

All in good time, but where they are used to be part of the main garden, and that’s space I’d like to reclaim at some point. I just didn’t realize, until this year, the extent of the problems those trees are causing.

Then there was the stuff planted in the new chimney block beds against the chain link fence. The bed we had there previously didn’t have anything to hold the soil in place, and we were losing it under the fence, so we had to do something. These are the last of the chimney blocks that were intended to replace the chimney for the old wood furnace – back when my parents bought the property in 1964! A chimney that was taken down when we got the new roof last fall, as only the electric furnace is being used.

We’ve used those chimney blocks as planters in the old kitchen garden retaining wall, so I expected them to work find. Yet nothing planted in them thrived at all. I can make some guesses, but I can’t say for sure why they failed.

There was some frustration with deer damage to the peas, bush beans, strawberries and asparagus, but nowhere near as bad as the year we had so many groundhogs move into the yard, so that’s a relative thing.

We did have some good harvests, especially with the pink banana and candy roast squash, the carrots and – eventually – the tomatoes. Even the tomatoes that had to be harvested early because they got blight, which is a first. We’ve never had tomato blight before and, as far as I can remember, my mother never did, either.

Though I have to say, it’s been great to grow potatoes and not have any Colorado Potato Beetles! We had massive problems with those in my mother’s garden when I was a kid! We also grew massive amounts of potatoes to last 7 people all winter, but there until we started growing them again, I don’t think anyone has grown potatoes here for many years.

So I am happy with quite a few things, but disappointed or frustrated with quite a few other things. A real mixed bag!

You will be able to see how that progressed over our year in these garden tour videos. This first one is the spring tour I included in another post.

I was able to do monthly garden tour videos, starting in June.

In this July tour, you can see the self seeded red poppies that showed up in the shallot bed, that turned out to be this variety – and I have no idea where they came from originally!

In this August tour, you can see just how poorly the plants did in the chimney block planters – and how well the compost pile squash did!

This September tour was done on what was our average first frost date.

We even got one last tour in October! We’d had our first frosts by then.

Also, I completely forgot that the cat we now call Syndol had been named Rudy!

Amazingly, we still had crops in the ground to harvest in October. The frosts we got came quite a bit later than usual, and the temperatures remained mild, so we could get away with quite a bit being left out longer!

These next videos are more topical, starting with one I included in an earlier post, about preparing beds and making carrot seed tape.

This next one was done in early April, when we got a snow storm. I was able to pot up tomatoes that day!

You can also see some of the early sprouts, many of which did not survive to be transplanted.

This next one is a time lapse video of planting the carrots, and preparing the spinach bed.

Gooby, the yard cat you see often in the video, has since disappeared. 😥

In this next video, we planted the Alternative Lawn Mix, spinach in the bed prepared above, and the bed preparation and planting of the Hungarian Blue poppies.

Sadly, Marlee, the cat in the thumbnail, did get outside and disappeared. She was unhappy that we’d brought the tiny kittens and their mother in, and when a window screen got knocked open, out she went and we never saw her again.

I miss her!

This next video took 5 years to make, and shows the progression of the old kitchen garden from completely overgrown in 2018, to our 2023 garden.

This progress video includes time lapse video of building the last two raised beds.

The next video is another time lapse video, and one I posted previously, showing where we reworked the tulip bed and planted our new apple tree – and protected the area from deer!

That was another area that had been very overgrown when we first moved here.

This next short video is of planting our Purple Peruvian potatoes in grow bags, with comparisons to the first year we’d grown them.

This next one was done in late May, when we transplanted our gourds and some squash, before our average last frost date.

It’s a shame that such healthy looking transplants did so poorly!

Here is another time lapse video, also done in late May, planting the Tom Thumb popcorn, plus the free Hedou Tiny Bok Choy and Jabousek lettuce seeds we tried.

This next one is very different. It shows what was discovered as I tried to repair a hose from the house to a tap in the garden, including more time lapse video.

The damage turned out to be far more extensive – no surprise, given the pipes were likely older than me!

Since this video was taken, I’ve dug up half the pipe, from where I’d first tried to repair it, to the tap. I asked my brother about the mystery sections of pipe the narrower pipe was running through. He said those were put there to help protect the narrower pipe. Which seems and odd way to do it, to me!

Now that we know the whole thing needs to be replaced, the plan is to dig a trench and remove the remains of the old pipe, then lay down some PVC pipe, with drainage holes, to protect a contractor’s grade garden hose that has been gifted to us already. At the garden end, we’ll have the tap and a sink set up – I’ve found what I want to use in one of the sheds – as a vegetable washing station. We will also be building a garden shed nearby, to replace the current one that’s rotting and starting to fall apart.

Lots of work to be done!

Finally, one last short video, showing our first major harvest!

For all the struggles we had this year, I think I can say we had a pretty decent gardening year overall. Especially compared to our Terrible Now Good Growing Year, last year. 😂

I hope you enjoy these!

The Re-Farmer