This is where we had winter squash with trellised peas and beans, last year. It has been completely taken over by dandelions!
It took quite a while, just to loosen the soil enough to get started. Compaction was also an issue.
And rocks. A surprising number of rocks, considering it’s been picked over and cleared of rocks every years for several years now! Then the soil needed to be broken up more, section by section, so the weeds could be pulled without leaving behind any roots. Not that I can get every root, but at least it’s better!
The dandelions, with their deep tap root, was one thing. The crab grass with their endless rhizomes weren’t as bad as I thought they would be.
Finding elm tree roots all the way at the far end of the bed, though… that’s just insane! The bed is 18′ long, and it’s another 7 feet or so from the North end of the bed to the tree line. These were clearly Chinese elm roots, too.
Those trees have got to go!
Once the weeds were pulled and raked away, the soil surface got raked a couple of times, too. The first time, using the thatching rake, which pulled out more rocks and weed roots. Once that was cleared and leveled, I went over it with a fan rake, and that found more rocks and weeds, too!
After the bed was cleared and leveled, I got the roll of plastic that had been used to solarize the bed the peas and carrots are now in and covered the freshly cleared soil. This will help warm the soil up more – and keep it from getting too cold overnight – in preparation for planting or transplanting. I haven’t decided what to put in here, yet. Nothing will go in here until the beginning of June, though, so any weeds that were missed will have a chance to start growing again, and will be easer to get pull when it’s time to remove the plastic.
With this bed done, I was also done for the day!
At least, I was when it came to preparing things in the garden.
After chatting with my SIL, who was mowing the outer yard at the time for a while, I went to check on the walnuts that were planted. Things were getting pretty dry, so I filled the wagon with watering cans and buckets of water and gave them a thorough watering. I watered the Korean Pine, too. We really need to remember to water the outer yard transplants more often. Especially with our upcoming heat and lack of rain. We’re not expecting rain until the first week or two of June.
At least they’re no longer predicting snow and freezing overnight temperatures!
I’m very happy with how much progress I got today. There’s still lots to do, and we’ll have to work around the hottest hours. I just have to remind myself not to over do it, or I’ll end up losing several days due to pain while recovering.
So the winter sown flower bed was a total failure. If any seeds did survive the winter, I saw no sign of them. While the bed did get covered with plastic, eventually, once that mulch was removed in the spring, it became a favourite spot for the cats to roll around on!
And did in, of course. 🫤
I decided it should be safe to direct sow more flowers into this bed.
The Dwarf Jewel mixed nasturtium is one of the flowers that had been planted here in the fall. I recently picked up the Cosmos, as I know for sure they grow here; my mother grew them here, and even after we moved back, I remember seeing a few of them show up in places were they’d self seeded. The Aster are seeds that were included in a memorial card for an old friend that passed away suddenly, last year.
The plastic cover on the bed had torn at one end, where the end of a bamboo stake was. That tear was all the wind needed to rip the whole thing in half. So that was the first thing to get removed. Then the hoops and the bamboo stake pieces holding them in place were pulled out and set aside.
The bed itself was full of weed seedlings, plus the dandelions, crab grass and creeping Charlie around the edges. There was even some burdock coming up, next to the high raised bed. It took a lot of loosening with the garden fork before I could start pulling the weeds and trying to get as many of the roots out as possible. Unfortunately, I was also finding elm tree roots in there, too.
Once weeded, I went over it with the rake to pull the soil more towards the middle, making it narrower than before. Partly because fewer seeds were going to be planted here, and partly to make it easier to cover and protect. After everything was levelled, it got a thorough watering, before the smaller seeds were scattered about. The nasturtium seeds are large enough that I planted those, individually.
While cleaning up the bed, I did find at least one nasturtium seed that had been planted in the fall; they were the only seeds large enough that they could be seen. Which means that it is possible that some of the seeds planted in the fall might have survived and could still germinate. Unlikely, but possible! 😁
Then it was time to set the hoops back in place, over the broken pieces of bamboo stakes holding them in place. With the hoops still attached to the bamboo stakes across the top, it didn’t talk long to get them back in place.
While gathering my supplies for this, I had grabbed a folded up piece of mosquito netting I thought might be good to set over the hoops, but it turned out to be too short for this bed. So I went and got the rolled up netting that had been over the garlic, before they got too tall. That turned out be just the right length! I weighted down one edge at the based of the high raised bed, then unrolled the netting. This netting catches on everything, so that was not as easy as it should have been! Once the netting was pulled snug, there was just enough slack to roll back around the stick it had been stored on. I then used the bricks, rocks and pieces of wood that had been used to hold the plastic over the hoops to secure the side, rolling the weights up in the excess netting. I was able to get the netting nice and snug over the hoops.
Hopefully, this will be enough to protect the area until the seeds germinate and get big enough that they won’t need the hoops and netting anymore. The nasturtium are edible, but they can also act as a trip crop, to keep insects away from other edible greens.
Once I gather the materials, I’ll build frame to fit over this area and attach these hoops to support whatever wire mesh I have to put over it, making sure to close up the ends, too. That will be much handier than setting hoops over sticks in the ground! I’ll be making several such covers, little by little, all with the same frame dimensions, so they can be interchangeable. The prototypes I’ve made so far have been incredibly handy!
One more job done. Time for another hydration break, then one more bed to work on!
One of the things I was able to get done while it was still cooler this morning, as I was finishing up with watering the garden beds, we to finally mulch the potato bed.
This bed had the summer squash winter sown in it and I made a point of saving the leaf mulch along one side, to be added as the seedlings came up. Except they never came up. Now that the potatoes are planted here and have had a chance to, hopefully, start rooting themselves, and I think I even saw some potato leaves starting to poke through, I decided it was time to return the mulch. I will not be hilling the potatoes, just mulching them.
The bed got a deep watering, first. Then I lifted the netting along the one side and basically just tossed handfuls of leaves over the soil, trying not to include any dandelion flowers with it! Quite a lot of dandelions were growing right through the mulch on the one side, so I pulled a lot of that, too. Once the mulch was in place, it got another thorough watering.
The next thing I worked on was planting carrots on either side of the sugar snap peas.
That job required some damage repair, first. When I watered the bed this morning, I found something had been digging into the edge, all along one side, undermining things.
So the very first thing to do was put the soil back into the bed. I was going to just use a hoe, at first, but realized there was a lot of creeping Charlie trying to creep its way into the bed again, so after removing the protective boards, I went through it all by hand, removing as many of the roots as I could, before replacing the dug away soil.
There isn’t a lot of space between the peas and the edge of the bed, though. Just enough for one row of carrots. I created a slight trench to plant them in, as we are expecting drought conditions this year, and a trench will have any rainfall flow towards the carrots, rather than washing away down the sides of the bed. I used the jet setting on the hose to basically drill water into the trench. This both ensures the water gets quite deep, but the water helps level out the trench itself for planting.
This side got the Atomic Red carrots I got from MI Gardener this year as back up seeds. While we do have carrots coming up among the winter sown beds, there don’t seem to be a lot of them, and I do want to have quite a lot of carrots to store for the winter.
After the seeds were sown, I used the mister on the the spray nozzle to “bury” the seeds a little. Then I put boards back over the trench. Two of the boards that were there before were pretty broken up on the ends, so I traded them for more solid ones that were weighing down the plastic on the bed that’s still solarizing. Three boards wasn’t quite long enough, but I already had a short scrap piece for the last bit at the end.
The boards had been placed along the outside of the peas, and mulch down the middle of the bed, to keep the cats from using the bed as a litter box. They would still walk across the bed, though, and would end up moving the boards. Every now and then, I’d find a board rotates with one end over the peas and the other hanging off the edge of the beds. To prevent that, I got out some of the short bamboo plant stakes I picked up at the dollar store that came in packs of 25. I stuck a bunch of them into the soil along the boards, to prevent the boards from moving if a cat walked over it.
That still left the problem of whatever was digging all along the side of the bed. For that, I went into the stacks of short logs that had been used to frame these beds, before they were shifted over into their permanent positions. I dug out the straightest ones I could find and jammed them into the soil along the sides of the bed. Hopefully, they will be enough to deter the digging.
I repeated the process on the other side. On this side, I used our home made seed tape with Uzbek Golden Carrots. These are older seeds, though, so I doubled them up. Thankfully, the wet soil was enough to keep the wind from blowing them away! A final misting, and they got covered with boards, too. Only one of these had to be traded out. I found more short logs to set on that side of the bed, too.
Over the next while, we’ll keep checking under the boards to make sure things are damp, and to remove them as soon as we see seedlings starting to come up.
Eventually, more protection will be added to this bed, to make sure the deer don’t eat the peas. I still haven’t decided just how to do that, though.
One job down! How many more could I get done today?
When it comes to deciding what to plant each year, I like to pick at least one thing to grow for fun.
For the past few years, one of those things has been luffa.
While these are supposed to be edible in their young stages, what I’m after is the fully mature sponge stage – and the seeds that come with it! Which needs an insanely long growing season we don’t have, so they have to be started indoors quite early. Then they have to survive transplanting, and have a the hotter temperatures they prefer, and… and… and…
Not an easy thing to grow in our climate and short growing season, but the challenge is the fun of trying!
So far, we’ve had only one year where we almost had a sponge, but it was too underdeveloped when it got hit by our first frost.
This year, I’m planning something different. They will be grown in pots, in our portable greenhouse.
I set 4 older seeds to pre-germinate, got three seedlings, one of which died off. A second one just sort of stopped growing, and a third seemed to do all right. Especially once in the portable greenhouse.
Then we got that day of high winds that actually blew the greenhouse askew and knocked all bins of transplants to the ground.
Amazingly, not only did the big one survive, but the little one I though was going to die ended up finally sprouting true leaves!
With our overnight temperatures and the protection of the greenhouse, I decided it was safe to pot them up and set them to where they will spend the summer.
I had three pots with soil that needed refreshing, so the first thing I did was empty them into the wheelbarrow.
Next I added some cow manure and a decent amount of a rehydrated brick of coconut fibre, which you can see at the top of the pile in the wheelbarrow.
One of the trays of chitted potatoes had spilled much of its stove pellets that I was using to absorb moisture from the cut edges of the potatoes. A lot of those pellets ended up on one of the pots below, and I just left them, so that would add some sawdust to the mix as well.
The largest pot did not have any drainage holes, and I ended up making a nail hole a couple of inches from the top, so rainwater could drain out rather than drowning the lemongrass that was growing in it at the time. The bottom of that pot had a layer of grass clippings added, before the soil. When I dumped that pot out, I found the grass layer on the bottom was still there, and absolutely matted with roots. The roots were dead, of course. I pulled those out while I was mixing the soil amendments together as best I could, then watered the whole thing down.
I left that for the dry stuff, like the stove pellets and manure, to absorb the water, then scrubbed out all three pots.
I have only two luffa seedlings, so I decided to just refill the two matching pots. They have large drainage holes, and there are no trays for them, so I took the root/grass clipping mats I’d set aside and used those to line the bottom of the pots, so keep the soil from getting washed out the bottom.
I also prepared the spaced for them in the greenhouse. I expect these to climb the frame. I took the wire shelves off of the space directly above them, so they can be more easily accessed, and the vines can follow the frame without going through the wire shelves. As they get bigger, I can train the vines to grow where I want them to.
After refilling the clean pots, I set them in their spots, then did the transplanting. I made sure to well water the holes in the soil I made for the luffa, first. I find pre-watering the planting holes makes a big positive difference.
The fiber pot for the larger one had been damaged when the wind knocked things over, so it had been set into a Red Solo cup, to keep it from falling apart. That seemed to work quite well, and there were plenty of roots visible. I did remove the fiber pot, though. These are supposed to be the kind where you can bury them in the ground whole, so as not to disturb the roots, but I find they don’t actually break down very well. While the luffa roots grew through where the pot had cracked when it fell, there were no roots at all growing into the pot walls, even though I made sure to keep it well hydrated. The root ball held together, though, and was easy to just tuck into the pot. The smaller luffa didn’t have much of a root ball at all, but that’s to be expected.
The tray of failed chitted potatoes that did not fall over still had plenty of stove pellets. I’d been hanging on to those! The very hot and desiccated potatoes finally went to compost, and I scattered the stove pellets around the luffa, to act as a mulch. Then it all got a gentle watering. The stove pellets immediately start swelling up and breaking into sawdust, and do a great job of covering the soil surface.
With the wire shelves above the pots removed, that meant adjusting the bins of transplants a bit. Most are too tall – either the bins or the transplants – to go on the top shelves, without touching the plastic cover. Contact with the plastic could potentially burn them.
So that is finally done! The luffa will now spend the summer in their pots in the portable greenhouse. Hopefully, this means we’ll finally have some actual luff sponges to harvest in the fall!
I’m closely monitoring the forecast over the next while. In the 10 day forecast, we’ve got a few colder nights, and then it seems to warm up enough to potentially start transplanting things outside.
Then I see the long range forecast.
*sigh*
Apparently, around June 5 and 6, we’re supposed to get rain. Rain which is supposed to continue through the 7th, which is supposed to have an overnight low just above freezing – then on the 8th, the rain is supposed to turn to snow, and the overnight low is expected to be below freezing. Even once that has passed, it’ll be several more nights before things are warm enough for transplants.
Which means that for the things that need to be transplanted out sooner, we would have to find a way to cover them with frost protection.
It’s so warm and pleasant right now, it’s really hard to resist getting things planted! It is, however, still just past the middle of May. We’ve got nearly 2 more weeks before it can be considered safe to transplant things!
I admit I’m chomping at the bit! I guess it’s really a good thing I’ve had to do so much running around. While it keeps me from getting much done outside, it’s also keeping me from putting things out too early, too!
The bigger kittens are really enjoying the cat house. They’ve pretty much taken it over, and the adult cats are letting them have it. Even the moms just go into nurse them!
The second photo shows all eight of the older kittens in the two cat beds. Just adorable!
It will be a few weeks before Poirot’s bitty babies are big enough to start moving around. I’m hoping that, at that point, Poirot will finally accept her babies being in the cat cage, rather than up on the shelf, or they’re going to end up falling to the floor!
In other things…
I checked the tracking on our plum and haskap this morning, after the post office was open for a while, and it said they were still in the city, and expected tomorrow. Dang. I was really hoping to get those in the ground today!
This morning, while checking on the garden beds, I took a change and removed the plastic cover on the high raised bed, just tucking it all on one side.
It also gave me a chance to very carefully weed anything I was absolutely sure was a weed, that could be removed without damaging any seedlings. In the first couple of photos above, you can see seedlings for beets, radishes and carrots. Possibly turnip? Plus some tiny onions. Others, I just can’t tell, yet.
The last photo was taken much, much later.
My goal for today was to finish with the weed trimming around the house. Before doing that, I grabbed the ice scraper to clear the overgrown areas between the sidewalk blocks and concrete in front of the sun room. It does a great job. Unfortunately, my body was making it very clear that, after yesterday, I was pushing my limits. So I shifted gears and got out my brother’s riding mower. I could at least work on the southeast and east lawns, where I’d weed trimmed yesterday. It still took quite a while to get done.
When I did as much as was ready for mowing, I decided to go around to the food forest area, where the plum and haskap will be planted. The plum has a space prepared already, but I’m still not 100% decided on the haskap. I could put them in line with the three current plantings, or use them to fill the space just to the north of them. The apple and plum tree would partially shade them there, but not enough to be a problem.
Hmmm… I think I’ll plant them in line with the others, and plant something that gets taller to the north of the plum and apple. As long as it’s far enough away from the buried telephone line, we can get away with planting taller trees there.
The taller grass had a lot of thatch in it, so I went over that a few times with the riding mower. The clippings, a mix of dry and green grass, will make excellent mulch.
By the time I was done all my outside stuff, including taking care of the evening yard cat feeding, it was past 5pm.
Which is unfortunate.
It turns out the plum and haskap did arrive at the local post office today. They closed at 5. I won’t be able to pick them up until tomorrow.
Ah, well.
In other things, I got a call while I was making a lunch before heading back outside. It was the insurance company about the online claim I made for the truck. When I mentioned that I’d called around and no one was quite sure if the insurance could pay for a truck box cover, she was all “oh, yes, of course it does…” 😄
So I now have an appointment for an inspection and estimate on Thursday (today is Tuesday) morning. I’ll be meeting up with the inspector in town (they come out one every two weeks for appointments like this) and they’ll make any final decisions. It’s still possible that, while the damage to the truck would be covered (the cracked tail light and the twisted metal of the box frame), the box cover might not be. If, for example, the inspector decides there was pre-existing damage or something that contributed to the cover being blown off. Once the inspector makes his determination, we’ll decide on next steps.
If the claim proceeds, we’ve got a $500 deductible that will be paid to the company we take the truck to for the work. I was also informed that they do not cover the cost of a replacement vehicle to use while the truck is in the shop. Hopefully, that will not be an issue. Ideally, the company would order everything they need and it’ll just be in the shop for a few hours. I can just hang out in town while it’s being worked on. If it takes longer, we might have to borrow a car from my brother again, and I really don’t want to do that to them again!
I do hope this can be done fairly quickly. We haven’t done a dump run since we lost the box cover. If we have to, we can use a tarp or something to secure the load. A lot of people don’t bother – I certainly see plenty of trucks at the dump, with no box covers and nothing to secure their loads.
I’ve also seen, and had to avoid, more than a few garbage bags on or beside the highway that clearly flew off of someone’s truck, and I don’t want to be “that guy”!
We’ll see how it works out. We’ll probably have to do at least one dump run before we have a cover for the box again.
Ideally, we’ll get it done before our next stock up shopping trip! There’s no way we’d be able to fit a typical Costco run in the cab. With how much I’ve found things moved around when we get home and start unloading, I’ve been very thankful for that box cover!
Anyhow.
Tomorrow, my priority is to pick up the plum and haskap at the post office, and get them in the ground as soon as possible.
Mmm…. the house is starting to smell wonderful. I picked some more rhubarb before coming in, and my daughter is making an upside down rhubarb cake. I’m quite looking forward to it!
In the first image, you can see the seedlings that need potting up. They all should be much bigger than this, but it’s just not warm enough, even with using the heater and the heating pad, in the basement.
With concerns about the outside cats potentially knocking the transplants over when we moved them out, I decided to use some storage bins to hold the Red Solo cups I was going to re-use to pot up into. They’ve been stored in the sun room all winter, so they had to get a cleaning of cob webs and whatever other debris managed to get on them. Thankfully, the old basement is where the laundry used to be, so we still have the old laundry sink that I could soak them all in, then scrub the ones with drainage holes in the bottom to transplant into. I also pre-soaked the seed starting mix with hot water, so it still be at least not cold, by the time the cups were filled and the seedlings transplanted.
These bins hold only 9 cups in them, so that basically became my default for the maximum number of transplants to pot up into. Which worked out really well. With the Black Beauty tomatoes, there were only 4 large and strong enough to pot up. With the Chocolate Cherry, there was only 5 to pot up, so they got to share a bin. The Spoon tomatoes and the Sub Arctic Plenty both filled one bin each. The Sweetie Snack Mix peppers and the Turkish Orange eggplant both got one bin each, too, with almost zero “extras” that didn’t get transplanted.
In the second photo, you can see them after they were all potted up, before I topped them with vermiculite. The potted up seedlings are small enough that I could use the lids on the bins, but I had only 2 of them handy at the time. The next photo is after the vermiculite was added. Then I got more lids for the bins from the sun room and my daughter helped me get them out of the basement. Which was actually quite dangerous. We started with me taking them through the old basement and up the stairs to where my daughter was waiting at the door, one bin at a time. She would grab the bin at the door (keeping the cats from dashing downstairs) and take it to the old kitchen, while I went to get the next bin.
The old basement stairs are narrow; each step is about half the width of a typical step. It is also steep than most stairs are, and there is very little space at the door. Which means I could only go to the third step from the top before I ran out of space. Even going sideways and carrying the bin on one arm, I couldn’t reach the door knob, so having my daughter open the door was an essential. Once she had the bin, I could go higher and close the door, but just going up and down these stairs is simply not good. I go down them backwards, like on board ship or using a ladder.
After a few bins, my daughter kicked me out of the basement and we traded places. Apparently, I sounded like I was in a lot of pain. Which I was, but I wasn’t going to say anything, since I know it’s not any better for her!
In the last picture, you can see all the bins and trays now set up on the freezer in the old kitchen. I was so tempted to put them into the portable greenhouse. The thermostat in there was reading more than 40C/104F! Pretty impressive, considering we never got above 4 or 5C today (39 or 41F). And that wind!! Yikes! The problem is that we’d just have to take them back inside after a couple of hours, and I didn’t want to do that today. We’re still forecast to have -6C/21F tonight, though we’re not expected to reach those temperatures until 6am tomorrow, and I know it will drop below freezing inside the greenhouse, even with the heat sink. They will go into the greenhouse tomorrow, after I get back from running around.
Once that was done, I grabbed a late lunch, then headed to the post office to pick up a parcel. On the way back, my cell phone started ringing. I don’t have hands free, so I couldn’t answer it. When I got home, I found a message from the home care coordinator asking about something strange my mother had told the morning home care aid about her puffer, and having already taken it in the hospital.
???
I called back and left a message telling her as much as I knew, then called my mother. I hadn’t gotten through to her this morning about her telephone doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning, so I told her about that, first. She wasn’t impressed that it was in the morning, but it’s at about the time she gets her morning meds, so she’ll be up, anyhow – and I intend to be there, too. I then asked her about the puffer. She told me a completely different thing from what the apparently told the home care aid. She also seems confused about the type of puffer they used with her while she was in the hospital, and the original type she was using before then – which she has started using now. She had an unopened refill from before she went to the hospital, and the other type was done, so she started taking it on her own. I have no idea where she had it stashed away. Then I found out she’d already taken it three times today. I told her, she’s only supposed to take it once in the morning, then again before bed. Not several times throughout the day. Plus, we already talked to her doctor about it. This was an experiment to see if it would help with her breathing at night. It didn’t, and she turned out to be developing pulmonary edema, which she no longer has after being in the hospital for a couple of weeks.
Things were still confused, but we agreed we would talk about it when I’m there tomorrow, and she could show me what she had. I then called the home care coordinator back and got her right away. We talked for a while and confirmed my mother told different things to them than what she told me. I then found out they were giving her two puffs in the morning, but not in the evening (with the disc type of puffer, a dose is one puff, while the other puffer, a dose is two puffs, which is why the pharmacist and I decided to fill the prescription for the disc type). So there’s a mix up right there, too. Not that the puffer has been helping her in any way, but a neighbour of hers has asthma, so she decided she needed a puffer, too, and the doctor was willing to test it out with her rather than go through the years it would take to refer her to a specialist and get all the respiratory testing done.
Hopefully, we will get that straightened out tomorrow.
After I was done on the phone, it was time to get out and see what I could do to protect the winter sown raised bed.
I have a cover for the bed, but it needed some maintenance work first, so I brought it closer to the garage, where my tools where. One of the things that needed to be done was secure two sections of the mesh. The jute twine it had been tied together with before had degraded and broken apart. I’d already had to replace the twin in the other join and used paracord for that, so I did the same thing again.
The hoops supporting the mesh are sections of pipe that turned out to be rather too strong. They are held in place with strips of metal strapping, but would get pushed downwards – usually because of a cat jumping on it! So I wanted to get those nice and snug, then screw them into place.
Syndol and Judgement decided the mesh was a night place to sit!
After the hoops were secured, I brought the cover over to the raised bed, but had to get a daughter to help with the rest, because of the wind. We got the cover on the bed, then opened one of the 8’x12′ plastic I’d picked up to cover it.
It was a lot thinner than I expected. Definitely not 7mm, which is what the guy looking up the information for me said it was. I suspect he didn’t quite understand what I was asking for.
Still, it will work for now.
We made sure to water the bed before putting the cover on (and I had to fix yet another hole dug into it). I noticed there are more sprouts coming up, so getting it covered to protect it from tonight’s cold will be a good thing!
After unfolding the plastic, we rolled and tucked the excess under the frame as best we could, but that wind was still threatening to blow it off. After looking around, I found a couple of sticked I’d joined with twine threaded through sections of a hula hoop to create a support for ground cherries flattened by the wind, a couple of years ago. That did well to drape across the top of the cover. We also found some lighter old boards to set on top as well; you can see the end result in the last photo above. Hopefully, it will be enough, but with how strong the winds are, I’m not entirely sure!
If it does hold out, it will protect the sprouts from tonight’s cold – and I plan to leave it on to also protect the bed from the cats! When it’s less windy, I’ll see if I can find a better way to secure the plastic, too. It’s meant to be temporary, though, so we’ll see. When the plastic is no longer needed, I have to find a way to close up the ends of the cover, so it can still be used to keep the cats out.
Since the coldest time of the night will be around the time I’ll be feeding the outside cats before heading to my mother’s, and then I’ll have to hit our own pharmacy in a different town when I’m done there, I’ll have to get my daughters to keep an eye on things and, when it starts warming up, move the transplants into the portable greenhouse. We’ll probably need to leave the door tied at least partly open so it doesn’t get too hot in there. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be only 9C/48F, but if it could get as hot as it did in there at our current temperatures, it’ll get even warmer tomorrow. By the weekend, we’re expected to get highs above 20C/68F. Hopefully, before then, we’ll be able to get more progress on the trellis build. We’ll also have our Costco stock up trip in a couple of days.
We had such a gorgeous day today! I finally got to the winter sown beds to remove the mulch, and even got to work on some beds that were not pre sown. I got enough done that I went ahead and recorded some video, instead. I hope you like it!
Temperatures are going to drop over the next few days before getting back into the double digits (Celsius, of course), but only for a short time. We’re supposed to be fluctuating quite a bit over the next couple of weeks. We’re still supposed to stay above freezing for the highs, at least, but a few nights are dipping below freezing. I’ll continue to monitor the temperatures in the portable greenhouse. It might still be a while before we can safely put trays in there and leave them overnight. Once we bring the trays out of the basement, they’re not going back!
I was really happy with the covered bed in the old kitchen garden. I had to be SO careful removing that mulch. There were a lot of seedlings visible. It’s too early to tell what they were. I’m hoping they survived the disturbance! The cover should protect them enough, now that the mulch is off. Especially considering there were still patches of frozen soil in there! I was especially happy when I uncovered the garlic bed. There were so many garlic tips visible! All blanched because of the mulch, but they will soon turn properly green, now that they’re exposed to sunlight. I’ll be watching all the winter sown beds closely for the next while, as a light mulch will need to be added, once the seedlings are large enough.
If felt so good to finally do some real work in the garden!
The first (rather crappy) image above is of our very first sweet pepper seedling! I was starting to wonder if they were going to make it or not.
The pre-germinated Spoon tomatoes (in the next image), however, are growing like gangbusters! Almost every cell has at least one seedling emerging. Of the four varieties, these ones have been growing the fastest, and I’m quite impressed with them.
While I was out today, I picked up a new dial type thermometer for the portable greenhouse. With the old one showing temperatures like 50C/122F, and I thought for sure there was something wrong with it, since it didn’t feel anywhere near that got while I was in the greenhouse.
It looks like I was wrong!
In the next photo, you can see old and new thermometers, next to each other. The new one is on the right, and had been in there for maybe 10 or 15 minutes.
This time, however, it did actually feel very hot in there. Not sure why it didn’t, last time!
The last image is of our chitting potatoes. When I’ve done this in the past, I’ve laid them out on cardboard egg trays, cut side down to dry off. Recently, I watched and MI Gardener video on chitting potatoes, and he was laying them down on wood shavings to absorb the moisture. With I think would work better than the egg cartons. So this time, I used some older drain trays from seed starting kits – they have cracks in them and can’t hold water anymore, so they won’t be used for seed starting anymore. I put a layer of the stove pellets we use for litter on the bottom. As they absorb moisture, the pellets will swell up and start breaking apart into sawdust. I am thinking that will do a very good job of absorbing moisture so the cut surfaces will try off and “heal” better.
In the past, I set the trays of chitting potatoes up on our chest freezer in the old kitchen, which gets in the way of actually using the freezer. They are supposed to be set in warmth and light, so I moved things around and set them under the light next to the seedling tray with the warming mat. I had to lay them crosswise to fit, so half the potatoes weren’t getting as much light. That was solved by shifting the winter squash tray on the shelf above, so now the shop like that shine through the openings in the shelf. That should work fine, and the trays can be rotated, if necessary.
I checked on the pre-germinating seeds while I was at it. Still no sign of radicals.
As for the potatoes, I honestly don’t know where I’ll be planting them this year. They can be planted before the last frost date, though. I am expecting to plant these in one of the main garden area beds, and it will just depend on which one I can get ready yet. We hit 15C/59F today, and tomorrow we’re supposed to reach 17C/63F. I’m rather hoping that the snow covering the beds in the main garden area will finally melt away! Maybe then, I can lay some plastic down over some beds to help them thaw out faster.
I’m itching to get started on a lot of clean up out there, but some areas are just too muddy, while others are still covered in snow! At the very least, though, I should be able to start removing mulch from the winter sown beds that no longer have snow on them. Somewhere along the lines, I’ll figure out where the potatoes will go!
Okay, so working on that pipe is not going to happen today. Pain levels are on the upswing and I know if I try to work on it now, I’ll mess myself up for days.
So, instead, I worked on garden stuff!
The tomato seeds were all showing radicals, with some even starting to show seed leaves. It was time to get them into the seed starting mix.
The first image has the Black Beauty on the left, Spoon tomatoes on the right. Those Spoon tomatoes were really doing well! It’s hard to see, but all the Black Beauty seeds had radicals showing.
The next image has the Sub Arctic Plenty on the right. As a short season variety, it’s no surprise that they germinated so quickly. On the left are the Chocolate Cherry. I was a bit surprised that these were the slowest to germinate. I would have expected the Black Beauty to take the longest, considering they have the longest growing season needed.
I had to moisten more seed starter mix for this job, and I made sure to use hot water for that. By the time the cells were filled and the seeds were being transferred out of their trays, the damp mix was still warm. Warmer than the damp paper towels the seeds were on. Now they’re in the tray along with the Turkish Orange eggplant (there’s 6 visible seedlings there), the luffa (all three have finally emerged) and sweet bell pepper mix (no sign of any of those, yet). The bottom of the tray got warm water, too – I wanted to make sure those square peat pots had plenty of moisture to absorb, so they don’t try out the seed starting mix.
That done, I went through my next batch of seeds and decided to go for it with the melons. The White Scallop seeds were set aside for now, as they can wait until May to be done. I got the containers all prepped and labeled ahead of time, and even got some markers labeled for when it’s time to put them into seed starting mix.
For the watermelon, I used my older Cream of Saskatchewan and Kaho seeds. The Sarah’s Choice melon seeds are also older, but the Green Flesh Honeydew packet is new seeds.
Then there are the Zucca melons. Which are the giants. These seeds, which I made a point of scarifying by scraping their edges with a utility knife, are also older seeds, so I made a point of choosing the plumpest, most solid feeling seeds. Which could have been any of them, really. They were in quite good shape. I started 4 seeds. These are the ones that started out so well last year, only to be decimated by slugs, so any transplants we get out of these are going to require extra protection.
Four seeds each was what I was shooting for; we over did it with melons last year, and I want to cut back. With the Cream of Saskatchewan, there were only 5 seeds left in the pack, so I set them all out. With the Kaho watermelon, there were only 3 seeds left in the pack, so I guess that balances things out!
They all got covered with dampened paper towel, and are now set up on top of the aquarium light fixture. At this stage, they don’t really need light, but they do need warmth. I didn’t want to set up the other heat mat yet, and the light fixture is ever so slightly warm. Not as warm as a heat mat, but warm enough. Once they germinate and get transferred into trays, they’ll get a heat mat. It should be interesting to see how many germinate. Especially with the older seeds.
After this, the next things we might start indoors are some herbs and a few back-up White Scallop squash. Those can be started towards the end of April or beginning of May. I’m hoping we’ll be able to start using the portable greenhouse at around the same time. It really depends on those overnight temperatures inside the greenhouse, as we have no way to heat it. We won’t have the option to use the sun room this year, as the space is pretty much all set up for the cats now!
Ah, well. We’ll figure it out.
It felt good to be able to do some garden related stuff on such a dreary day.
I really look forward to those bulbs I ordered to arrive. I’ve received a shipping notice, and they are on their way. I really need more light for the seedlings in the basement!
Here is how the winter squash was looking, this morning.
In the first image, you can see the Baked Potato and Mashed Potato squash are coming up nicely. Still no sigh of the Sunshine squash.
Normally, once seedlings are emerged like this, the tray would be taken off the heat mat. With the basement temperature being so low, I don’t want to take away the one consistent heat source. What I’ve done instead is add a cooling rack – I picked up several at the dollar store to use with my seedlings – on the heat mat, then put the tray on that. This puts a bit of space between the tray and the heat mat, so there is no direct contact, but there will still be at least some warmth from below.
The second image is of the two Arikara squash that are pushing their way through. After taking the photo, I added more water to the tray below (with the heat mat, it dries up pretty fast), I brushed aside some of the vermiculate to get a bitter look. Those seeds leaves are a LOT larger than what can be seen in the photo. They’re also still mostly encased in the seed shells. I’ve left the light on for the day and will check on them later. Hopefully, they’ll be able to shed their shells once the leaves start reaching for the light. Sometimes, they need a bit of help to get the shells off, so the leaves and unfurl.
Still no sign of the eggplant or peppers, but it hasn’t been long enough, yet. I believe both take a week to ten days to germinate in soil, and with the seed starter mix being cooler, even with the heat mat, I would expect them to be closer to the ten days than the seven.
Looking at the long range forecasts, it seems we’ll start having overnight temperatures above freezing consistently, by the last couple of weeks of April. By the end of May, we typically have overnight temperatures consistently at or above 6C/43F At that point, we can start direct sowing cold hardy, frost tolerant seeds.
Once the snow clears away from the garden beds, we’ll be able to start prepping the ones that have not been winter sown. I’m kinda hoping that I can get at the raised bed cover on the high raised bed and bring it around to the front of the house. I want to cover it with plastic, then set it over the winter sown bed in the old kitchen garden. The trick is going to be getting it covered securely enough that the cats can’t push through. The plastic cover will need to be temporary, too. I might need to replace it with netting, to keep the cats out later on. I think we still have some mosquito netting we can use, if we need to keep voracious insects out, too. Most of the mosquito netting we have is attached to the chain link fence over the garden bed, there, rolled up at the tops. They will be stretched out over the beds later, to keep the Chinese Elm seeds from burying and suffocating the seedlings. They can also serve to deter deer. The main problem I found last year is that, no matter how thoroughly I pinned down the bottom edge of the netting, the wind blows it loose, and it ended up fluttering like a sail. The mesh on the mosquito netting is great for keeping bugs out, but the weave is tight enough that the wind can’t blow through very well. The mesh on the other netting we have would work with the wind, but is too open to prevent insect damage.
With the pre-sown bed, we have the sunflowers and a few Montana Morado corn planted. If those survived the winter, they will grow much taller than the fence, to the netting won’t be useable – at least not how it’s set up now – once they get tall enough. We’ll have to find some other way to protect the bed from the deer.
All things to keep in mind over the next few weeks, as we wait for the snow to melt away, and we can finally get started on the garden beds again! One of my priorities will be to set up the trellis posts on the one low raised bed that’s ready for them. I want to be able to use them to trellis pole beans or peas in that bed this year. The other half of that bed is already planted with red and yellow seed onions. There should be space between the onions and the pole beans or peas available for something else, but I haven’t decided what, yet.
We’ll have lots of work to do, and not a lot of time do it. Thankfully the winter sowing – if it worked – will have given us a head start and give us time to work on other things, instead.
I am so itching to get out there and work, but there’s still snow on the ground!!!
The Re-Farmer 