The Crafty Cultivator

My April update was less than stellar, so I will try and make this one better. I am back to work now, so a thorough update like in March might not be in the cards, but I will try and keep up with my sporadic and random posting, and doing a monthly update. As long as I am keeping up with keeping all the plants alive, and (ideally) harvesting food from most of them, that is the main goal

May 2 –

• I planted out 3 pots of potatoes (15 gallon re-used tree pots).
• I also planted a 7 gallon pot with some onion sets that I started in small cells in the house to give them a head start. If the weather turns, these would probably be fine, but since they are in a pot, I can move them into the garage if needed. You can’t trust mother nature in May around here, but you can hope she will be nice.
• Additionally, I have been moving my inside baby trees out for the whole day, and then back inside for night. They might be fine outside now, but I will probably wait a little longer… at least until the trees around the neighbourhood start getting their leaves.

May 8-10

• My landlord decided to build a new fence, so I needed to move all my raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, rhubarb, strawberries and my rescue Emerald Cedar before they were all crushed. I manged to get them all in pots, and I’ve been trying to pot up the strawberries into all their own containers. I might not get any berries from any of these this year because of this move, but hopefully they will at least stay alive and I can find them a good safe home – probably at my parents house.
• My goal for the 10th was to get my baby trees potted into their own pots and kick them outside… But it is snowing today and the nighttime temperatures are still below zero most nights, so I will keep babying them in the house until next weekend maybe… Stay tuned 😉

Work got CRAZY busy, and I’m not even sure what day it is anymore at this point… So here is a quick breakdown of the rest of the month. If I don’t write this down now, I won’t get this update posted in time. This is going to be a bit disjointed as I write down what I remember doing.

• I got about half of my baby trees from this year potted up. Still finding time to get the rest done. Some of them might end up just straight into the ground at my parents house and I’ll wish them luck surviving the real world (but probably build them something to protect them from deer at the very least). I also went through my Chance seedlings from last year and managed to write something about them… You can read that Here.
• May 24, I kicked out some of my taller tomatoes. They were getting roasted by the grow light because they grew so tall, so I’m risking them to the last frosts we are possibly predicted over losing them all together. I still have the 2nd round that I need to find homes for, but I’ll try and get them hardened off correctly at least.
• We had crazy rain and snow around the 21st. Work was not fun… I was out of any cares left and mostly just came home and slept. I’m pretty sure we ate chicken fingers and ketchup was counted as the vegetable. I hope this all calms down soon.
• My Combo Apple has finally started to come alive, although one of the grafted branches (It lost its tag saying what it was), is very slow to wake up and I don’t know the long term survivability of it, but Its growing at the very least. The rest of the tree is a Heyer #12, and one branch of Dexter that is doing well… The other mystery graft is doing better than the first, but not as good as the tree as a whole.
• I also kicked out my Celery (except 4 of them), into the ground on May 24. I’m still hoping to make a self watering container but we’ll see if getting the parts to do that is even an option with how busy and tired ive been.
• I have some haskap cuttings that are hopefully rooting. I didn’t mark each branch but i figure i’ll just mix them all up and if they survive, then at least I have a decent haskap patch for the future that will pollinate itself… ideally anyway.
• All of my blueberries survived the winter and are coming to life, except the pink popcorn. I snapped its branches shovelling snow onto it and I don’t think its going to recover.
• I left a white currant out over winter and that thing is going so amazingly strong. As if the White currant wasn’t already my favourite currant… Now it extra is ;). Words are hard, I’m tiredd.
• I started cucumbers, pumpkins and zucchini inside around the 15th, and they have all sprouted, except the Black Beauty Zucchini. I’ll give it some more time, but at least I have the Dark Green. I also sowed some Yellow Crookneck Squash outside, and there are no signs of life just yet. Its been cold, so it gets a pass. If there is nothing by the first week in june, I’ll sow more seeds.
• I kicked the zucchini and pumpkin seedlings outside as soon as they germinated so they don’t get too babied in the warm house.
• May 24th I also kicked the Blue Popcorn out as well. I think I ended up with 8 little seedlings. Hopefully they make it and I get some cool corn.

That is about all that my tired exhausted brain can manage at the moment. I’ll catch up on more tomato posts once I have the time (and brain power). I know I did more things, but I can’t seem to put into words what they are.

As of May 31st, I have not done much more, apart from watering things, and some quick plantings at my parent’s house. We had a tornado warning today, with one touching down just a little bit north east of here. It is pouring rain as I quickly finish off this post, and if it isn’t too wet tomorrow, I might try and get my zucchini seedlings in the ground. We have some below zero nights in the forecast, so I will be waiting to put out the cucumbers, cucamelons and peppers… and the rest of the tomatoes.

Sorry for the lack of photos again… Maybe June will be different.