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.
The mulch around it was flattened, too, in an almost perfect circle. It looked like a cat took a nap on it!
I lifted it up and found that it did not seem to be damaged. I found some short support posts that used to be part of a canopy tent frame that a tree fell on a few winters ago. I set one beside each melon. A cat could still lie on the mulch beside in between, but not on a melon plant – at least not without being right up against a stick!
Yesterday, I’d turned the raw sod on the next raised bed that needed to be shifted. I’d hoped the exposed roots would get to back in the sun, but instead, they got watered by the series of storms we got. I was going to my mothers, so I didn’t do any weeding, as it would have been too messy. Instead, I used the thatching rake to break up some clumps around three sides and level them a bit, then set out boards to mark where the logs will go.
Then I just used a garden fork to turn the soil from the bed in it’s old location, piling it into the new location. Against, I didn’t try to weed, so it went really fast. This bed was in so much better condition than the last one, with all that creeping Charlie in it! Once the soil was moved, I used the rake to level the edge, as well as the area where the bed was that would become path, before adding the last of the boards to frame around it.
Then I had a few things to do, before doing to my mother’s and helping her with her groceries. These days, she just gives me her list and I do the shopping for her, and put it all away. It was actually a pretty good visit, until just before I left. She’s started to talk about coming here to the farm for a visit. The problem is, she behaves so badly here, especially towards my family, they don’t want her here. She also has no interest in seeing what we’ve done here at the farm. She want to see reasons to tell us what we’re going wrong, tell me how terrible I am at taking care of the place (because I’m doing things differently than she did), and rag about what a terrible parent I am for keeping the girls tied to my apron strings (the idea that they chose to out here to help with the property, and their disabled father, just doesn’t sink in with her), and so on. I tried to explain to her about the problems with her behaviour. The truth is, I’d love for my mother to come and visit. I’d love to be able to show her the progress we’ve made, and talk about our plans. But that is not anything my mother has any interest in.
One of the things I’d showed her on my phone was some video I’d taken of the tree that fell on the outhouse, then of the swaying of the trees. She commented on all the “dry” trees (the dead spruces), and I said we need to cut them down. She asked if I’d talked to my brother about this and I told her, yes (I’d already told her I’d sent him the video), and that we’d be cutting down the dead trees. Then I corrected myself and said that it would mostly be my younger daughter doing that.
At which point, my mother started saying that using a chain saw was a “man’s job”, and she can’t do that. I told her, Mom, anyone can use a chainsaw. But that’s a man’s work! I should get my brother to do it!
So… we aren’t doing enough, because we’re not doing things the way she wants them to be done, but we’re also not supposed to be doing any “men’s work” because we’re female.
Well, at least this time, she didn’t go on about how sorry she feels for me, not having a man around the house.
I guess, because my husband is disabled, he’s not a man anymore?
She says awful stuff like that all the time, but when I tried to explain that people don’t want to be around her because of this, she twisted things around to make herself as the victim and me as the big meany.
Not a good way to end the visit.
I did have somewhere else to go, though. I’d made arrangements with a homesteading friend to buy some eggs. She wasn’t going to be home, so they were going to be tucked into a safe spot outside, where I could also leave the payment. I didn’t want the eggs to be outside in this heat for long – when I started writing this, we were at 23C/73F, with the humidex putting it at 28C/83F, and it was hotter where my mother lives than here – so I wanted to leave as soon as I could. I actually got there before my friend had left, so we even got to catch up for a bit – and she gave me extra eggs, because she needed the room in her fridge! 😄
I was considering whether or not I could continue on the bed once I got home, but there’s no way I can do that kind of work in this level of heat and humidity. It will wait until the morning.
Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter by the afternoon, and we’re supposed to get more rain in the evening.
*sigh*
I’d really like just a few day’s break in the rain, so the ground and dry up a bit and we can try mowing some lawn again. At least the parts we managed to do, previously, since the taller stuff is just too wet. We’d need probably a week without rain before we could do anything about those areas.
Or a couple of cows to graze the outer yard for a week or two!
We really need some grazing animals! As long as we could keep them out of the garden beds, I’d be letting them graze in the main garden area. That would be good for the soil, too.
My daughter wants sheep, for their fleece, as she wants to spin her own yarn. I would like a couple of milk goats. That would be on top of the chickens I want to get!
We’ll get there. It might take a while, but we’ll get there.
For now, building up the garden beds is the main focus.
My brother and I were both saying how we don’t remember there ever being so much water in the yard before. Even when it flooded, a couple of springs ago, it didn’t get this bad. Yes, the flooding was more severe in places, but the ground didn’t get saturated right up to the house, and stay saturated for so long, like it is now! Every time it rains, the standing water returns, because the ground it just too saturated to absorb it. This, even though we have high drainage in our soil, what with it being basically gravel with a few inches of top soil.
Oh! I found an excellent picture of what our soil is like, at this web site.
This image belongs to Joselito (Lito) M. Arocena, UNBC and was taken in Edmonton, Alberta, but it’s exactly what we’ve got here, too. If there is any different I could find, it would be that we have more small rocks in between the second and third layers.
I keep hitting them with the garden fork or spade, while shifting the beds!
Yet another reason why raised beds are the way to go for our gardening!
For now, I just want to get these last two beds done, and get the last of the transplants in. If there’s room for direct sowing, that would be bonus, at this point.
I got a late start to the day, unfortunately. I just didn’t get to sleep until sometime past 3am.
What got me going was nothing pleasant, though. The septic pump was running and not shutting off again. I checked the filter, and it was running dry, so I shut it off. After priming the filter and turning it back on again, it just drained the filter and kept running dry.
We’ve got an old garden hose with a missing male coupling set up in the basement, just for times like this. It’s hooked up to the cold water tap that the washing machine used to be hooked up to, before the laundry set up got moved upstairs. Every now and then, I run it through the drain in the floor, towards the septic tank. There is a bottleneck it always hits, roughly under the basement wall. It takes some wiggling and shifting before the end of the hose can get through what opening is left. Usually, from there, it’s clear to the tank. Lately, though, it’s been hitting another barrier. This morning, I wasn’t able to get through it with the hose. When testing out the septic pump, though, it was working as normal again, so I left it.
I’ll get back to that, later!
Once outside (and after playing with any kittens that would let me!), I started on transplanting shallots with the peppers in the high raised bed. I kept forgetting to do that, and I didn’t want it to be forgotten again!
I considered doing the yellow onions, instead – none of those have been transplanted, yet! – but decided against it. They will form larger bulbs than the shallots, and I figured they would do better with more space than the shallots need.
One thing about the cover being sized to fit the box beds in the east yard: the frame is narrower, but longer, than the high raised bed. Which means there’s contact with the logs in only 4 small spots. This meant I didn’t have to worry about squishing any of the transplants when I put it back on. This cover has fencing wire on it, and a larger mesh. I am hoping that, as the peppers get taller, they can grow into the fencing wire arch, which will support them, while their growing habit should still leave enough light and air for the shallots to grow.
We’ll see if this actually works out!
With those done, the next priority was getting the Zucca melon in, and for that, I had to set up the kiddie pool as a garden bed.
We used it to grow melons last year, so it already has drainage holes in the bottom. I added a fairly thick layer of grass clippings on the bottom. This should act as a bit of a sponge to hold water, before it finally drains out, as it breaks down.
For the soil, I “stole” several wheelbarrow loads from the last bed that needs to be shifted over. The alternative was to push my way through the overgrown grass to the pile of garden soil in the outer yard with the wheel barrow, and sifting each load.
The soil in this bed just needs weeding, not sifting, and most of the weeds had deep tap roots. Aside from the tree roots and a bit of crab grass, it didn’t take long to weed the soil after it was loosened with a garden fork, then shoveling it into the wheelbarrow, where I could get any other weeds and roots I might have missed.
I had to remind myself not to fill the wheelbarrow as much as usual. The soil is still quite moist, making it a lot heavier than usual. All that meant was that it took three loads instead of two, to fill the kiddie pool deep enough.
Finally, the zucca melon could be planted! These can grow melons up to 60 pounds in weight. If they actually grow this year, they should need take up a lot of space! Last year, they were in the bed where the bare root strawberries went last year. The plants never thrived, and what melons began to from, started to rot and die before getting more than 6 or 8 inches long. After prepping the bed for the strawberries, I now know that bed was being choked out by elm roots, too. This won’t happen with the kiddie pool as a raised bed. Last year, the pool was set up and the end of one of the beds I’ve been working on, quite close to the elms and maple. When I cleaned it up in the fall, there were no tree roots in it at all, unlike the fabric grow bags! So hopefully, this year, the Zucca melon will actually have a chance to grow and thrive!
Once that was done, it was time to go inside for lunch. As I was eating, I realized I was hearing the septic pump … and it wasn’t shutting off!
So I hid my food from the cats and headed for the basement. After priming the filter a few times, and it would still run dry, I tried pushing the hose through the floor drain again.
It did not work out very well at all.
First, I couldn’t get past the nearer bottleneck. After much fighting, I finally got it through the opening, but then it hit the second bottle neck, and that was it. It would not go past and into the tank.
Unfortunately, to do this, I was absolutely killing my left arm. Yes, I’m mostly ambidextrous, but if I need to do anything that requires a higher level of control or strength, I use my left arm. It was absolutely brutal on my damaged elbow.
I finally gave up, left septic pump off, and headed back upstairs. The fact that I hadn’t finished eating and was still very hungry did not help!
After cleaning myself up and finishing lunch, I went back at it, this time with a daughter. I still couldn’t get the hose through at the floor drain, and neither could my daughter. We ended up getting the tool kit so we could open the access pipe, instead. Normally, these can just be opened with a special screw cap – bronze, in our case – but that is fused in place. The entire top needs to be removed, and that’s held in place with screw clamps around strip of rubber and… some kind of finely corrugated metal that I think is aluminum.
So we got that pulled off and tried again with running the hose through. It worked much better, this time! We got through the first bottleneck fairly easily, and it was only a bit more effort to get through the second bottleneck. Finally, we were able to push the hose all the way into the tank!
At which point I went outside and opened the lid to take a look.
Do you know that it’s very hard to see anything when looking into a dark tank in bright sunshine? Meanwhile, I was being totally paranoid and holding my glasses against my face every time I tried to lean over and see. Finally, a cloud passed over the sun, and I could see!
But what did I see?
Well, I could eventually figure out where the float was. There’s a lot of gunk floating at the top, but I could see a couple of spot with flowing water in them – that would be water from the weeping tile, since no one in the household was using water at the time. I got my daughter to try wiggling the hose around, but I still couldn’t see it. It was somewhere under the gunk.
What I think is happening is, as the pump runs and the liquid level drops, the float is probably getting hung on something. Something that running the hose through manages to knock loose, finally allowing the float to drop and trigger the pump to stop running.
As I closed up the tank and went back inside, my daughter kept working with the hose. She could actually feel when she managed to knock something out of the way. I turned the water on, and she kept at it for a while. The septic pump turned on while she was doing this, and we could see water flowing through the filter, so this was now running as normal.
After she was done with that, I took over and ran the hose in the floor drain, towards the weeping tile under the new part basement floor. We know the weeping tile in the north corner is somehow messed up. Plus, we get tree roots growing through. We could see the water turn silty while I pushed the hose, with the water running, as far as it could go.
Once that was done, I decided to not bother tightening the cap on the access pipe again, since we will likely be running a hose through there, instead of the floor drain, regularly. So my daughter put away the tools and headed out while I closed things up and hung the hose back up where we store it. There’s quite a bit of water on the floor, with all the rain we’ve been having, the floor is damp or flooded in places, even with all the fans and blowers running.
Our electric bill is going to be brutal. With the equal payment plan, I won’t be surprised of the monthly payments don’t jump quite a bit, and not just because they’re increasing the price per kw, either.
That all took way longer than it should have, and I was very frustrated.
My husband, meanwhile, helped the only way he could… and I’m torn about it.
He used his Amazon credit card to buy me a commercial level drain auger, so we won’t be fighting with a hose. I don’t know that it will clear the nearer bottleneck, though. I fear that is the cast iron pipe collapsing, and that running an auger through would damage it more. That would really mess us up, since repairing that would probably require breaking through the concrete floor in the basement, and excavating between the basement wall and the septic tank outside, to replace it.
*sigh*
I don’t even want to think of it.
That done, and the water flowing through properly again, I needed to destress.
For me, that means manual labour! Yay!
I headed back outside (topped of the cat food for the evening, played with a kitten…) and to the garden.
We had reached the hottest part of the day by then, and I realized I’d forgotten about the melon bed. We have a few small piles of straw mulch from last year that I raided.
The Zucca got watered after transplanting, of course, but after the mulch was laid down, I gave that a good soaking, too. I had considered putting a jug in the middle for watering, like with the pumpkins and drum gourds, but using the kiddie pool as a raised bed, with the grass clipping base, makes that unnecessary. It will take a while for water to drain, so the Zucca roots should find all the water they need before it finished draining.
I soaked down the mulch on the other beds, too.
Last of all, I started working on shifting the next low raised bed. That meant breaking new ground where the bed will be shifted over, and turning the sod, first.
I didn’t get very far. It was just too hot!
So I’ve left it for now.
My current plan is to try going to bed early, and hopefully actually falling asleep, so that I can get an early start tomorrow. This bed should go much faster than the last one, as it’s nowhere near as weed filled. I want to get at least a few hours in, in the morning. It’s supposed to get a lot hotter than today, in the afternoon. Which makes it a good time for us to do our combined birthday/father’s day pizza night, courtesy of my older daughter.
Based on the current forecasts, we’re supposed to get hotter every day until Monday (it’s Wednesday, today), but not get any rain until Saturday evening. After Monday, it will cool down a little, with no other rain in the 10 day forecast.
We shall see.
We’re in the final stretch to get things in the ground! For transplants, it’s just those last few San Marzano tomatoes, the yellow onions and a few shallots, and the Orange Butterfly Flower. Those have to go somewhere where they can be treated as a perennial, and I’m not sure where that will be just yet!
For all the garden plans we made over the winter, we’re basically flying by the seat of our pants right now.
Of the four Zucca melon seeds in the container, two were starting to germinate. With the Cream of Saskatchewan Watermelon, four out of five seeds germinated – and two were getting almost overdue for planting!
At first, I thought four of five Sarah’s Choice seeds had germinated, but it turned out the one of the seedlings had gotten big enough that it dropped its shell completely! So we’re five out of five on those.
As for the Pixie melons, I could see a couple of seeds starting to open up, but they are not at all ready yet. They, and the two remaining Zucca melon seeds are set aside now, to give them more time.
I was originally going to use one of the large celled trays for these but, at the last moment, I decided to use individual 4″ cardboard pots. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but I used a marker to label the pots directly, before filling them with pre-moistened seed starting mix. With some of the Sarah’s Choice seeds, the roots had grown between the layers of paper towel and spread quite a bit, so I tore the paper round them rather than risk damaging the roots by pulling them through. I now have all of the pots in a tray over the heat mat, with water on the bottom for the pots to absorb, rather than absorbing water from the premoistened growing medium.
As for the Summer of Melons blend, all the pre-germinated seeds but one have fully emerged.
We now have quite a lot of squash and melon seedlings going! Hopefully, they’ll all survive transplanting, but we have enough that we can afford a few losses. What was that poem again? Four seeds, all in a row; one for the blackbird, one for the crow; one to die and one to grow! Something like that.
I’m glad I got at least one gardening job done today, without making my messed up right arm any worse. 😁
We now have various melon seeds set to pre-germinate above the heat mat – indirect, so they don’t get too warm.
As with the Wild Bunch Mix of winter squash, I wanted to do all the seeds in our Summer of Melons Blench, There were four more of the Wild Bunch winter squash ready for potting first, though. There were still some seeds left, but I put those in the compost bucket. Some were looking like mold was starting to grow on them, and others were looking slimy, so I figured they were done for. Which is fine. We have so many from the Wild Bunch mix that successfully germinated, we won’t be starting any other winter squash this year, as much as I’d like to. We just won’t have the prepared space for that many large plants, even with trellises.
All of the smallest and not quite emerged Wild Bunch Mix squash are now together in the one half of the aquarium greenhouse. The larger ones got moved to the mini greenhouse frame at the window. The larger ones that were already in the mini greenhouse frame in the window were tucked into a bin and, together with the bin that had peppers and herbs in it, are now in the sun room. The cats like to sit on these shelves to look out the window, but the bins should protect the transplants.
The tray with the hot peppers and eggplant is now on the shelf between two windows in the sun room, along with one of the tomato trays. There’s also space for a cat to sit by the door, as a few like to do. These trays will get plenty of light through most of the day. I’m taking a chance on putting them there, but last year the cats were good about leaving the transplants alone, for the most part. They were more interested in getting at the window, so as long as they can still do that, the transplants should be okay.
Once the space was made in the mini greenhouse frame and the aquarium greenhouse, I made some decisions as to which melons I wanted to start.
The Summer of Melons Blend was the only for-sure choice. The package had 21 seeds, and I set all of them to pre-germinate.
For the others, I decided to try the Zucca melon again. It’s been rough going for these, even though we’ve had success starting them out, so I’m hoping to actually get some this year. They are supposed to get quite massive in size. The seeds are pretty huge, so they got where the only ones to be scarified to help with germination. I decided to try only 4 seeds, with plenty left to try again next year, if it doesn’t work out this year.
The Pixie melon is one we’ve grown successfully before, during a drought year, which is what we’re supposed to be getting this year, too. They are a small “personal size” melon. I set out only 5 seeds, which left another 4 in the package. If we have the space, I might try direct sowing the last seeds, since they only need up to 75 days to maturity. The plants are very productive, though, so even if we only have a couple make it, that should still provide us with a decent amount of little melons.
The Sarah’s Choice is one we tried last year, but I think only 2 seedlings survived to be transplanted. They were planted together with some other melons and, to be honest, I’m not sure which variety was which, the vines were so interwoven. The plants did well, but they didn’t start producing both male and female flowers at the same time until quite late in the season, so we didn’t get very many that fully ripened before frost hit. So I want to try them again. This year, I’ll make sure we plant them away from other melon types, so we can tell them apart. Again, I started only 5 seeds, which was a little under half was what was in the package.
I had two types of watermelon to choose from, and I decided to go with the Cream of Saskatchewan. Both were short season, cold climate varieties, but I only had one container left. 😂 Again, I picked out 5 seeds, which was half the package.
The 7 day forecast has changed, and we’re now looking at a cooler day tomorrow, with possible rain, and only slightly warmer days after that. We won’t be back into highs in the double digits (Celsius) until next Monday, if the current forecasts are anything to go by. Which I don’t mind too much. Unless the winds are a problem, the cooler days make it more pleasant do to manual labour in, and we’ve got garden beds to prep, and new ones to build! We need to make room for all those transplants, plus the stuff we want to direct sow!
Okay, so I managed to get a bit done in the garden this evening. Also, I had a wonderful surprise. Rolando Moon appeared! I haven’t seen her in at least a month, maybe two. At her age, we just never know if she’ll disappear and not return anymore.
I was also happy to see The Distinguished Guest wander into the north side of the property. Happy, that is, until I heard a cat fight and discovered he had attacked Pinky, and I had to chase him off. *sigh*
I had some squash that were getting too big for their pots that needed to go in, so I focused on the hill we grew pumpkins in last year.
This is how it looked after taking a weed trimmer to it, after the mowing around it was done. Those bricks had been placed under the developing pumpkins to keep them off the ground. The round thing is an ant trap. There was two of them, but one disappeared when it got caught by the push mower, last year.
They didn’t work. The ant hill is still there.
Thankfully, the bug spray I used seems to do a good job of deterring ants, too. I dug up the bed with a garden fork and pulled out as many weeds and roots as I could. The ground was crawling with ants, but while I had them on my boots, that’s about as far as they went.
Before, this hill had only ever had two plants transplanted into it. After weeding it and working the last of a bag of sheep’s manure into the surface, I raked it out into a flattish square.
I fit 6 transplants in. The row of three on the far right are Zucca melon, from a second seed start. In the middle row, the two in the foreground are African Drum gourd, also from a second seed start. The other four were in an unlabeled pot. I restarted both the Zucca melon and Drum gourd at the same time, but one unlabeled pot got mixed up. I think they are also drum gourds, but I’m not sure. At this stage, the leaf and stem shapes look almost identical.
We’ll figure it out soon enough, if they survive.
I then filled in the last of the space available in the wattle weave bed.
I had removed the protective plastic from the Sweet Chocolate peppers, and they now all have support stakes. I left the protection around the one Classic Eggplant, though it did get its own support stake, as did the luffa in the corner.
I transplanted one of each variety of pepper seedlings we had waiting. Between the luffa and the eggplant is Dragonfly. The three around the curve are the Cheyenne, Early Summer and Early Sunsation. I wanted to get at least one of each type transplanted, just in case we aren’t able to get things ready early enough to get the rest into the ground.
To the left of the luffa is the largest of the 3 mystery squash that germinated with some Roma tomatoes. I think they might be luffa, but I’m 100% not sure.
As I write this, it’s coming up on 8:30pm, and we’ve finally started to cool down a bit. What I got done wasn’t a lot, and certainly didn’t involve much physical exertion, but it still left me dripping with sweat. The next few days are supposed to be every so slightly cooler, and then things are supposed to heat up again. And physical exertion is going to be the main work, because we have to start hauling garden soil over to the squash patch, so we can start transplanting. We can’t even start that until I take the weed trimmer to the tall grass around the pile that couldn’t be mowed.
It’s going to be hot, sweaty and disgusting work, but we’re running out of time. It’s not just prepping spots for the transplants. This year, I was going to try direct sowing the summer squash, and those seeds should be in the ground already.
I suspect that by the time we finish building the permanent trellis beds, it’ll be too late to direct sow a lot of things. I might try, anyway. We could find ourselves with a long, mild fall again.
There’s only so much we can do, though. None of us area handling this heat well.
Once things started to cool down, I went out to do some weed whacking. I especially wanted to get the outside of the chain link fence cleared, because the grass was getting so tall, it was interfering with the garden beds on the inside.
While trimming the grass by the gourds, I realized I was seeing something new!
This is our very first Zucca melon flower!
When we tried to grow these last year, we had four transplants, and they all got flooded out. One did start to recover, but by the end of the season, it was still smaller than this one was when I transplanted it here. And now we have a flower!
This was not the only surprise flower I saw today. While trimmed around the outhouse and the raised box beds, I saw a tree deeper in the spruce grow in full bloom. It looks like another rather large apple tree. There is another one nearby that we had uncovered while cleaning the edges of the spruce grow that had already bloomed and is done. The nearby cherries have also bloomed and are done. It should be interesting to see what we find in there in the fall!
While moving closer to look at the flower tree, I walked through the tall grass of an area we’ve been able to clear so far. It’s quite overgrown with crab grass and some of the poplars we cleared are trying to come back.
I found flowers among the grass and weeds.
There are strawberries in there! Because they are surrounded by the crab grass, the plants are a lot taller and thinner than the ones we planted with the asparagus, but they are most definitely not the very fine wild strawberries we have growing elsewhere. I have no idea why there would be strawberries in here. There is also a path of some kind of lily that started to grow after we cleared away the area of dead trees and other detritus.
You’d think, after being here for more than 5 years, we wouldn’t still be finding surprises like this, yet there they are!
Eventually, I would like to transplant the strawberries I found to someplace where they won’t be competing with crab grass to grow!
As for weed whacking the edges of the yard and around some garden beds, I didn’t finish the job, yet. There is still lots to do, but it will have to keep. It likely won’t be tomorrow; as I plan to head into the city to do our second Costco shop. I’ll be making a couple of stops along the way, and just arranged to meet my SIL for lunch, since the Costco I go to is a fairly short drive from their place.
It’s been a long day for me, even though I did end up taking a nap (woke up to find Cheddar using my hand as a pillow!), and it’s going to be a long one tomorrow, too, though in a very different way. The girls were able to put things away, bring in the plants, and close things up for the night for me while I took a break and hydrated.
I really hope I didn’t screw up by transplanting these so early. They all need really long growing seasons, though. It was either transplant them, or pot them up, and I really didn’t think they’d benefit from being potted up.
So here it is: today’s transplanting of Zucca melon, African Drum gourd, Caveman’s Club gourd and Crespo squash.
I actually thought I had two Zucca melons to transplant, but when I looked at the label, I saw that the smaller one was a drum gourd. It’s a good thing I labeled them or I would have been in for one heck of a surprise at the end of the growing season.
Assuming these survive getting transplanted. Also, assuming they don’t get eaten by something along the way!
The Re-Farmer
June update: I discovered the file got corrupted somehow, and re-uploaded it. Let me know if you see problems with it! Thanks.
Much of today has been a total waste. I got almost no sleep last night, and it was basically all because of the cats! First, there was the constant stream of cats wanting in and out. I swear, even the cats that are outside the door have a sense of when I’m finally lying down and comfortable in bed, because that’s when they start scratching at the door again! As the ladies have been able to tolerate more of the other cats, that means more scratching at the door to be let in or out.
All that, because we’ve got two cats that always go after Nosencrantz, forcing me to keep the door closed to keep them out!
The other cause of interruption was Nosencrantz.
I have one small window I can open – a window with a deep sill the cats like to sit on. The screens on all the new windows are high quality, but the cats have still managed to damage all of them. With mine, I tried to have most of it blocked off with a window fan, a salvaged metal mesh window screen and a hunk of Styrofoam insulation, to protect the screen, but even when the fan was put away for the winter and the window kept closed, the screen would get clawed at. I finally removed it completely – then had to hide it behind the metal mesh screen – because Nozencratnz still wanted claw at it!
We ended up getting what is supposed to be cat proof window screen, and have replaced the screens on several windows, mine included.
Yes. It’s supposed to be cat proof. However, I don’t think even cat proof window screen can withstand a cat sitting up on its hind end and going at it with both front paws! Even if the screen managed to survive the attack without getting holes, chances are it would get yanked right out of the frame, eventually.
That’s what I was trying to stop all night. Nosencrantz is fixated on clawing on that screen! I even jammed the salvaged screen in front of it. It’s narrower than the window, and Nosencrantz would just reach around the metal mesh screen, to claw at the window’s screen! There aren’t even any bugs or blown in fluff that she’s after. She’s just after the screen!
So that was another thing that had me getting up repeatedly. Oh, and also the sound of cats using the carpet as a scratching post, instead of the scratching post… 😕
I’ve now stolen my husband’s box fan, which fills the window almost completely. I just had to stick some cardboard between the wall and a shelf to cover a gap on one side. Hopefully, at least that problem is solved.
The whole thing left me feeling awful by morning. A sleep repeatedly interrupted is far worse than simply being up all night. It’s not even feeling physically sleepy that’s the problem, though I was so physically tired, I felt ill. It’s the affect on mental acuity that really knocks me out.
The girls took care of feeding the outside cats and taking the transplants out so I could sleep in, but I still found myself constantly awakened and having to open and close my door. I finally gave up and tried to leave it open, cat fight or no, only to have the breeze from my open window slam it shut, over and over!
Yeah. I was pretty miserable this morning, and finally gave up.
The afternoon, at least, was better after indulging in my last energy drink. 🙄 I finally went outside to see how much work I could manage to get done.
Which turned out to be far more than I expected.
I took a significant risk today.
I did some transplanting of squash and gourds!
Normally, these would not go in until about the middle of June, but some of them were getting quite large. I didn’t want to keep potting them up, and they were getting so big that taking them in and out of the sun room to harden off was damaging them.
I took photos of the progress and will put together a small video later, but here is a preview.
Four of the transplants were climbers, so I cleaned up the blocks and transplanted them here. Because they all can potentially get quite large, I put them in every other block. In the foreground is the Zucca melon. I put it there so it has room to expand away from the others.
I thought the next one was also a Zucca melon, but when I took out the label, it said African Drum gourd. We have extra, much smaller, seedlings of both. The next two are the Caveman’s Club gourds.
All of them are long enough that I was able to get their tendrils wrapped around the chain link fence and start training them up it or, with the Zucca melon, away down the side. These all are supposed to have fairly large fruit, though with the Caveman’s Club, they are more about length than girth. If any of these reach the point of developing fruit, we’ll figure out how best to support them.
The next thing that had to go in were the Crespo squash.
Then went into the bed we had a hulless pumpkin variety in last year, near the old squash/bean tunnel. This will likely be the last year we use this spot for gardening, and hopefully we’ll be able to plant something for our food forest here, next year. We shall see.
The Crespo squash plants can get really huge, which is part of the reason they went in this far away bed. The old rain barrel I filled yesterday is nearby – but it was only about a quarter full when I got to it today! I couldn’t see if it developed a new crack, or if the seal on one of the old ones gave out.
We really need more rain barrles.
I’m quite glad I found that one last hose in the old garden shed, so I could give this area a thorough watering. I’ll have to keep that up for at least a few days to make sure it’s damp through the new mulch, all the way down through the layers we put here, least year.
I’m reeeeaaallllyyy hoping I didn’t jump the gun by transplanting these so early. There is no sign of frost in the long range forecasts. In fact, June is looking like it’s going to be quite hot, and rainy. If, however, we do find ourselves with a frost warning, I think we’d be able to add covers to protect things fairly well.
After I was done and putting things away, I fed the outside cats for the evening (and chased away a couple of skunks eating their kibble!). Judgement is still limping, and the foot seems to be bothering him more. He still won’t let me look at it, so I tried seeing if I could sneak a look through my phone’s camera.
It didn’t really work, but I did get this video!
I did not get a response to my email to the vet, asking about being able to bring him in as we are able to catch him, without an appointment. I’ll have to remember to phone them, tomorrow.
So I did get at least something useful done today. If the weather holds, this early planting will make a big positive difference for things like the drum gourds and Zucca melon.
I’m not sure what I will plant in the empty blocks. Ideally, it would be some other climber, but since I expect the fence to eventually get completely engulfed by what just got planted, perhaps it would be better to choose a shade loving plant, instead. We’ll see.
I’m just happy to have gotten at least a bit of productivity in today!
I’ve been waiting for days before finally getting a picture with the newest drum gourds, then went again and got progress pictures of the rest.
I found a new baby this morning!
The red arrows are pointing to the barely visible first zucca melon!
The new drum gourds were taking a lot longer than the first ones to break free of the soil. When the first one did, the reason became obvious. It was still completely encased in the seed shell! After a while, I very carefully removed it and just dropped the pieces on the soil surface, but the seed leaves have still not started to separate. I can now see that the other one is also still encased in the seed shell. Once it manages to break free of the soil, I will carefully remove it, too. The risk in doing that is tearing the encased parts of the seed leaves right off, as they are so very fragile in there.
The earlier drum gourds are just barely starting to show their true leaves. The luffa’s true leaves are coming out nicely. Even the lemongrass is showing some true leaves. I think. They don’t look very different, other than there being more blades. I honestly can’t tell with the thyme.
That last cell of sweet chocolate peppers finally has a single seedling germinating, so we now have a total of four. Still just the seed leaves in even the oldest ones, though.
The onions and shallots are growing very slowly at this stage. No new haircuts needed! So far, they’re all surviving, too. Hopefully, we’ll be able to keep them alive! Last year, we had some issues with the yellow onions and shallots not doing well, but we have different varieties of both this year, and they seem to be doing better so far.
We’ve got two varieties of red onions, one of yellow onions, and one of shallots.
The Re-Farmer 