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Thursday, May 01, 2025

May 1st and the first daffodil buds are ready to spring (hah hah!) open. (later) the first bonnet appeared on May 2nd.

And the first blossom of my indoor geraniums appeared today.

Saturday, May 03, 2025

A great day! I conned (grin!) Kerry into taking a small bucket of daffodil bulbs (“I’ll plant ‘em at Mums”) and a tub with about 6-8 strawberry plants. I am pleased that Kerry has a growing interest in fruits and vegetables.

Quebec municipality asking residents to delay mowing lawns . I mowed only twice last year, same as each summer since 1019. My policy is to wait until a few weeks after the first dandelions have generated clocks of seeds, then mow to help disperse the seeds (evil grin), and then mow again late fall to disperse the remainder.

May is the month to start planting a batch of seeds each day. This morning, two trays of beetroot (Cylindria and Detroit).

Here are two completed trays along the Western bed. To the left a half-dozen rows of Cylindria, to the right Detroit.

I make six or seven grooves in the soil, and carefully drop seeds, one by one about one inch apart in the furrow, then gently ladle a half-shovel of sieved soil across the top. The rain tonight will settle the soil and moisten the buried seeds.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I have eight more trays ready to receive seeds. The theory is that each morning I can make up at least one more tray of vegetables.

In the background are cans waiting for cores – apple and pear.

I enjoyed the tray-filling trial, but found that lifting a tray of soil, let alone a buried tray of soil, is not fun, so I shall return to straight-sieving and then shoveling the soil into the trays, perhaps with the empty tray sitting ON the cart.

Saturday, May 03, 2025

I weeded and de-stoned the bed of hyacinth; I thought that I had but one survivor, now I see that I have a dozen,

Sunday, May 04, 2025

The first dandelion blossom has appeared. Three or four more rhubarb are pushing up outside the study.

Monday, May 05, 2025

Tuesday, May 06, 2025

Never underestimate the power of life.

The rhubarb plant at the top of this image poked through well over a month ago, followed a week later by a single plant on the western side of the house.

This morning I see that a second, sturdy plant has grown alongside the first. There were perhaps four weeks between the first and the second. Four more plants have displayed in the western side of the house.

I am surprised because I expected all the rhubarb to shoot on the same day; not weeks apart.

Wednesday, May 07, 2025

Two slices of tomato cut this morning and set out in the sunshine to dry for four hours or so.

Two paint cans, loaded with rough soil late last year, settled down over winter rain, snow, and rain.

I place a slice of tomato on the surface of the soil.

Then cover with up to half an inch of sieved soil, and leave them alone.

Mervyn’s daffodils. We think that they are a calendar – the bulbs planted at the southern end of the row receive more morning sunlight. The bulbs at the far end receive no morning sunlight. Mervyn’s boat shades the southern part of the bed in the afternoon.

Mervyn’s onion bulbs. He is partway through planting and is hurried to place netting over the plot. The birds, it seems, are ravenous. (Like Ravens?)

In the shed I found a bag with three hyacinth bulbs. I have dug a shallow trench, planed the bulbs, and covered them with sieved soil. Let’s see if they catch up to the bedded bulbs.

The propped sieve is good. I took a half-barrow of rough soil from the trench, sieved it, and trundled a half-barrow of sieved soil back to this trench. Ba-da-Bing, Ba-da-Boom!

Friday, May 09, 2025

Well! This morning I have FOUR rhubarb plants. All four survived the winter. The first of the four sprouted Thursday, April 17, 2025 and the fourth this morning; a gap of three weeks. This might be due to the depth of coverage (late fall did I toss extra soil over two of the plants) or several other factors.

Saturday, May 10, 2025

The first tulip bud; no flowers yet!

I begin stacking this years seeds alongside the deck. Here are ten peach pits, next to a tin of pomegranate and a tin of tomato seeds.

I the afternoon I weeded the eastern bed, starting at the southern end …

…passing through a patch of strawberries …

… and ending up well on the way to the northern end.

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

The first tulip bloom of the year.

Now that 1,000+ books are gone, I start jacking up the Guest Room shelves with a scissor-jack. My biggest screw-driver won’t bear the torque-load of dozens of jars of food, so across the street to borrow to small bars. Which won’t fit through the holes in the jack, so back across the street to borrow a vary, which does.

Start jacking up the lowest shelf (circled). The jack slips in, I start cranking, but soon a large crack appears in the shelf. These aren’t planks; they are concertina doors from closets, so I offload every jar, full or empty.

The jars are stacked on the bed. I will return them in specific groups – fruit, jams, stews, vegetables and so on. The twenty cartons of VHS tapes can sit on the top shelf for now. One shelf might hold just the empty jars – two sizes of mason and a motley collection of screw-top jars.

Thursday, May 15, 2025

One of the two dandelions given a crew-cut at 11:45.

Two such heads of dandelions about to be diced in the kitchen. No need to rinse, and so no need to spin-dry.

Friday, May 16, 2025

I spotted a potato plant growing out of the vermicomposter this morning. If nothing else that suggests that the bin is still moist enough to encourage potatoes.

But when I stooped to take a photo I spotted a second tuber sending up a shoot.

I believe that this is NOT a bluebell, but it is an attractive blossom. Here it is facing down. Reminds me of the Leschenaultia of the Darling Scarp .

I hooked up the (hard) gray hose this morning. Note to self: Unroll and lay straight the other two before hooking up. Trying to unroll a cold, stiff hose that has fed its loose end inside the loop is not funny.

Four hanging baskets of my would-be alyssum, rescued from the beds before hoeing. I topped them up with sieved soil and hosed them down three times to settle the soil around the plants. In two weeks they should be luxuriant.

After lunch I did one pass of the raised bed. The first pass runs clockwise, but note how the four-tine pass throws good spoil out of the bed. Some lands on top of the bed’s one-inch thick planking; a great deal is thrown out of the bed and falls through the grass and weeds, but some of that sits on top of the weeds. What a waste of good soil!

The first pass is complete. I skirted the four rhubarb plants and shall leave them in place for this year. I have four more plants that I can give away from the western side of the house, after which I can dig out that area, sieve it, and eliminate the gravel.

Here is the south-west corner of the raised bed. Note the soil heaped up at the corner, and covering the outside ground.

After a short break inside I headed out to The Gooseberry Patch for a half-hour of weed-pulling, mainly dandelion and “alyssum”. One barrow-load of weeds with clumps of soil attached.

It makes a difference. I ought to (hah hah!) spend 30 minutes each afternoon out here weeding, and potting the cuttings from last year.

I want to run the rotary-hoe down both sides of this bed to gain another foot or so.

By the end of the day I am exhausted; my back has some pain now; it will be more tomorrow.

The rotary hoe with David’s outrigger wheels looks like a beast. Besides adding stability to the machine, the wheels make it easier to turn within the bed.

I erected a single bin in the NE corner of the raised bed, I can fit three along the northern wall, and I think three along the eastern wall.

In the foreground the barrow of weeds pulled from the gooseberry patch after lunch. They can dry out for 24 hours in the dry northerly winds, then into that first bin with them!

Saturday, May 17, 2025

I planted a tray of fruits from the red-berry bushes that are around town.

Then I planted seeds from the second half of my pomegranate. In the centre of the tray I placed the shell with some fruits/seeds that were not scraped out with my knife.

Three bins are not half of the long side (~12 feet)

In the late afternoon, a bit of sedentary weeding, but first a hectic search for the trowel. Look in the trowel’s place in the shed. Then wander around the gooseberry patch where weeding took place yesterday. Back to threshed. Walk slowly around the gooseberry patch clockwise. Then anti-clockwise. You never know …

What a disappointment; it all worked so well yesterday, and I am, or was, psyched-up to do more weeding. It was possibly a mistake buying a trowel with a lime-green handle; it could be anywhere now. Pity.

I collected, you remember, a whole barrow-load of weeds from the gooseberry patch. Dumped them alongside the raised bed.

Ta Da!

The next time you lose your garden trowel (secateurs etc), run your gloved hands through the barrow-load of weeds you tipped out this time yesterday!

Sunday, May 18, 2025

Much of my time is spent devising trials. Especially in the garden. Today (“this year”) I am effecting a full-scale trial of my in-bed compost bins (3) of Wednesday, August 21, 2024 last year.

Starting in the corner closest to the delivery point (the driveway) I have errected and joined three panels along the northern edge of the bed. I appear to have made a four-panel bin at this stage.

Here is the view from the west. The four-panel bin is evident, along with the two extra side panels.

But the fourth panel is not joined/bound to the column; that panel rests against the structure. I might end up with a loose tie just to stop it falling over.

The plan is to extend the row of bins one bin at a time, and always top-up from the original end.

I have old grass/thatch from last year; barrows of weeds (see the end of Friday, May 16, 2025), and stacks of cardboard from last year. All of this green and brown stuff will be tossed into a bin. The bins are surrounded my microbe-laden soil that can be layered as the bin builds up.

Another trial. I have about four dozen pips from “Minnesota” mandarin oranges .

(1) I rolled the cart to the propped rack sieve after sieving a few more shovels of soil and sweeping this work area clear.

(2) I shovel sieved soil into a seed tray in the cart. Excess soil drops through the cart and remains near the sieve.

(3) I have watered the tray and left it for two minutes for the excess water to soak into the soil.

(4) With a garden trowel I make five grooves in the wet soil. Parts of the groove stand, other parts collapse. No matter, as we will see. Soil is coated around the tray; this will rinse off within five minutes.

(5) I drop seeds in one at a time, every inch or so. I visualize tiny citrus seedlings popping up every inch or so. If two pips germinate I might try to separate the seedlings when I did them out, or I might not.

(6) I don’t worry too much about overlaps, but a twig (circled) helps me nudge the blatantly errant pips back into a trench.

(7) I cover the lot with a shovel of sieved soil and leave it be. After lunch I will trolley the tray to the nursery where it will receive a light watering twice a day.