I haven’t done much in the garden this past week. I reconsidered staggered plantings of peas and put in the whole 12-foot rows on Thursday afternoon. The more I thought about it the more I felt a three-foot row of plants might not give me enough for a single serving and peas store in the freezer really well. I was also looking toward the future and decided it was better to take them all out together to make way for the pole beans that will follow in their space.
I also put in seed for collards, spinach and Raab broccoli. With all these seeds in the ground I grew nervous about the murder of crows watching me from the pecan tree. I have a rather artful water sprinkler on a four-foot high copper-tube pole. It’s round and has a lovely blue-glass crescent moon in the center of circular copper-tube rings. When a hose is hooked up to it and water pumped thru, it spins around and throws the water out in lovely arcs. So, I fetched it from the workshop in the barn, placed it in the center of the garden and hammered its supports into the ground. I then dug out a roll of iridescent mylar tape, the kind used for party streamers, and taped some lengths of it around the outer copper ring of the sprinkler. The nearly unceasing winds here hit the moon center and spin it around; the streamers flash and flap. The crows took off with a racket of complaint. This contraption is a great deal prettier than a scarecrow and is doing its job.
The weekend blew in frigid winds and even a light dusting of snow. At least once every morning, I bundled up and went out to see how the garden was doing. Since I already have cabbage and broccoli plants in the ground, I wanted to check on them. Both of these vegetables are highly frost-tolerant but if they started to look droopy, I was prepared to cover them with plastic milk jugs. Seriously. I’ve been saving up gallon milk jugs for a couple of months now and when you cut off the bottoms they make perfect cloches. They allow in light while keeping out cold and, if they get too warm, the caps come off to let in some air.
I am mainly concerned about critters treating my garden like a salad bar. I’ve seen rabbit droppings in the yard and the footprints of raccoons. When we first moved here I noted that none of my neighbors had put up fences around their row gardens and I wondered about that. Perhaps, I thought, there is so much abundant vegetation available that the wild creatures don’t feel the need to venture near human territory.
But, Monday morning there were footprints in my brassica bed. Something four-legged with small paws jumped into the end of the bed, walked among the cabbage and broccoli plants and peed on two of them! Then jumped out and went on its way. The leaves that had been sprayed had turned yellow and there was no sign of nibbling. So I thought it must have been a neighbor’s cat and giggled about how the cat piss would keep the rabbits away for a goodly time.
When DH came home that evening, he logically asked and I had to admit that I have not seen one free-roaming cat since we moved here. So, out he goes to inspect the footprints. Ah, the spacing of the prints, the depth in the soil that indicated the weight of the creature, the size of the paws — he was in high, former Scout Master heaven! After a great deal of this, he declared that it was a cat after all, maybe a small bobcat from the nearby swampland. If the wind hadn’t been blowing so fiercely for days, I think he might have done a CSI and looked for hairs. I was pleased to have gotten the general species right and consider wild bobcat piss might be even more threatening to bunnies than house cat piss.
It’s been raining since the snow blew away but it’s supposed to clear tomorrow and allow me to go out and put in turnip seeds and pop onion sets into the ground. And if the sun shines this weekend, we’ll fill in another bed with horse manure and get our early potatoes slips underground. The seed potatoes have been hanging in the cold pantry and instead of budding eyes, they’ve got six-inch long stems sticking up out of them. So it’s past time for them to have snug dirt beds.
I think back on the panic attacks I had last summer while I was stuck in a little apartment in Lynchburg, feeling like I was running out of time to prepare for whichever of the many possible disasters that may befall us. I feel so much calmer now with seeds germinating and starter plants spreading their roots. In hard, dark times food is more valuable than gold. When I have peas and spinach in the freezer, mason jars full with stewed tomatoes, crocks of dried beans and a barrel of salted carrots, I should feel serenely secure.
I hope, too, those of you reading who do not have a garden now, or even a yard to put one in, may be stocking away valuable information for future use whether for pleasure or by necessity. Real life is basic — it requires food, water, and shelter; all else is embellishment. I sincerely hope we aren’t reduced to basic survival but it’s always good to know how to do it if you must.
I want to thank the few of you who voted for me to continue this series but the deciding factor was my son telling me how much he is enjoying it. Maybe one of these days, he’ll register and enter the Pond instead of lurking around the shore.
retroactively. Gardening is so basic to improving our way of life. Growing at least some of our own food is not that difficult. Even people in apartments can at least grow some salad greens in the window instead of buying them in plastic bags.
After 45 days of rain we now have nightly frost. The earth warms up by late morning – enough for some weeding. I took over a garden that was originally well-planned but in recent years neglected. There are a lot of invasive plants, especially vinca minor choking the shrubs. The vinca was so stubborn, I ended up putting heavy cardboard on it to weaken it before I continue.
Yesterday, a large wild rabbit ran in a diagnol across the back garden. It was so healthy looking it made me wonder how it ever achieved good health with all dogs in the neighbourhood and the proximity of the highway. Maybe it lives in the berm behind the property where previous owners have thrown their garden waste for 20 years.
I worked with a reknown horticulturist George Radford when I was a volunteer at the Government House gardens. I hear him saying over and over, “Get the weeds out in the early spring before they get a stronghold.” Well, that’s where I am now, going after weeds and invasive species. Daphne laurel, artemesia, look out.
I am so longing for spring.
I think there ought to community covenants requiring everyone to have a garden and classes in elementary schools, at the very least. People have become so estranged from the earth, from weather, from the reality of living on a planet. Gardening restores that awareness.
The first three-pronged claw rake I ever bought was on account of vinca. I was younger then but being on my knees yanking up seeming miles of vine got tiresome. Attacking it with a claw released quite a bit of aggression, too. After removing the above ground parts, I covered the areas under my shrubs with a solid layer of pebbles to prevent the roots from putting up new growth. This was the end of the vinca but oddly didn’t discourage woodland violets. I rather like them as a ground cover and they don’t choke off their shade providers.
Thank you for your support.
Victoria BC. Many elementary schools have school-yard gardens for the kids. I try to instill love of gardening in my grand-children over on the mainland. I hope when they grow up they remember me telling them compost was ‘black gold.’
I think I will get a 3-pronged claw rake for the vinca. So far I have used a lethal two-part hand hoe, hedge cutters and a loper. Thanks for the tip.
From what I remember, wild animals and gardens are always kind of a tricky balancing act. You can spend a lot of time and energy trying to keep them out, and you probably will keep most out… But some will always find a way in. If you don’t bother, it should self-regulate to a degree… But the question is how much of your veggies will get eaten before then.
And, in practice they only discourage midnight raiders. I don’t mind sharing entirely. At this point, I don’t have any delicacies to plunder but a couple of months from now I would be quite discouraged to come out one morning and discover a rampage of rabbits had eaten all of my lettuce. Or to hill up potatoes for months and then, upon harvest, discover a mole had taken a bite out of each and every one.
In my last garden, my worst pest was squirrels. They didn’t care for my crops but dug them up mercilessly, looking for nut stashes they’d buried before I put the beds in. I have a long-haired cat that I groom daily so I spread her hairs everywhere and that drove them away. I’ve also poured my own urine around the perimeter of beds and that works, too.
Like I said, my neighbors haven’t put up fences so I’m encouraged by that.
We’ve done a 3-foot wire fence to keep kids and dogs out, and never had a problem with anything eating our stuff. The deer seemed to like the neighbor’s garden better!
I got my Murry McMurray catalog last week, and I wondered if you’re doing chickens this spring? My Araucanas and Wyandottes are 5 months old now…the days are getting longer, so it should be egg time soon. 🙂
And we’ve run out of disposable income until April. Also Hubby became rather obsessed with worrying about drafts and building a perfect brooder box for the chicks. Now, we plan on starting them in the never-used west wing bathroom shower stall. The stall is very large but the room isn’t heated. By May, with the afternoon sun beating on the brick exterior, it might be a perfect 90 degress in there and only require an electric heater at night. har.
We’ve already bought the chick feeders and waterers from Tractor Supply Company at half the cost McMurray charges. They sit on a shelf, reminding us of our intentions.
I’ve mentioned before that a neighbor across the road has so many cocks crowing that I suspected him of breeding for fighting purposes. I was wrong. His entire flock escaped today and was spread out in the field by the road, pecking madly. I grabbed my McMurray catalog and identified Rhode Island Reds, Speckled Sussex and Lakenvelders. He must have started with one of McMurray’s assortments. There were hens aplenty but I still don’t know how he manages so many cocks in one flock.
I was really enjoying watching them and then the garbage truck came by and they all ran like mad into the woods.
I was so excited when I saw the rabbit, in a good way. I’ll worry about the garden later.
I shrieked when I first saw a woody woodpecker with the big red hat. Later I red a garden column complaining about them making holes in ornamental trees. I say wild animals: bring em on.
I’ll grow veggies for one on my deck.
Usually, when the almonds bloom, you can hear the entire tree buzzing from about 20 feet away. As you draw closer, the sound of the bees becomes deafening. This year, I saw maybe a dozen bees at this tree. I had read that almond growers were deeply concerned about pollination this year (most wild hives and many of the commercial hives have been infested with mites), but this really drove it home for me. Our Earth lives with such fragile balances.
Almonds are an ideal protein.
Usually we get great harvests — although we have to duke it out with the squirrels!