Garden Log

[saving-10-years]

We could indeed eat the rabbits and in times past have done so. But that is more of an after-the-fact revenge rather than a solution to the 'who ate my seedlings/dug up my potatoes' issue.

The clue to our problem is in some research we did on our 300 year old house when we first moved here. Our small bit of land lies on part of the field named 'little rabbit burrows' on the 1810 farm particulars we consulted. This was 3-4 acres. Right next to the field marked 'big rabbit burrows' (about seven acres). Those rabbits were here before us and will be here after us but I refuse to feed them any more of my vegetables. Their dirtiest trick was waiting til the beans had reached the top of the pole before biting through the stem at the bottom. My sympathy for rabbits is not high.

If anyone can add to my list of plants rabbits will not eat I would be interested. In my experience they don't eat courgette/squash/pumpkins (too prickly?) and onions/leeks (too smelly?)

[George the original one]

I fence the rabbits out of the garden with poultry fencing staked to the ground. Even bother to fence the birds out of the strawberries, too. For some reason, the birds are very sparing of our incredibly prolific blueberries, so have not bothered with a covering for them. The general garden area has an elk fence topped with barbed wire, but the rabbits can easily come & go through that.

Found rabbits won't eat potato greenery, but they'll dig into the mounds.

Earliest potatoes have undergone their second mounding, main crop potatoes got their first mounding. Onion sets were disappointing, with less than half sprouting. Blueberries have a heavy set already (August-September harvest) and the strawberries are building up (mid-June harvest).

[theanimal]

I'll be planting some kale and arugula in the coworker garden here in the next week or so. Maybe some beets as well. Temps have been very warm here lately, trees and flowers are starting to come out in full force. It should certainly be interesting. The northernmost garden, 63 miles above the Arctic Circle.

One of the local's here has a very successful garden every year. Last year he harvested 450 lbs of potatoes along with numerous other root vegetables and greens.

[7Wannabe5]

Hot weather crops planted except for squash which I will get to this weekend. I am stubbornly sticking to rotary mower use even though it is killing me. I ended up spending a bit more than I would prefer on straw and compost just so I could put down more cardboard and smother away some of my mowing responsibility.

Gobs of yummy arugula, collard greens, bok choy, black-seeded simpson and mesclun mix coming from my backyard polyculture.

RECIPE (only semi-frugal)

Lots of arugula
Smaller amount of penne pasta (or similar)
Red onion-however much you prefer (or similar)
Feta cheese (okay if you can only afford small amount)
Roasted shelled pumpkin or sunflower seeds (or similar)
Balsamic vinegar (or similar)(less than you would usually use)
Olive oil (more than you would usually use )
Pepper (lots)
Salt (only a very little unless you were too poor to get very much feta)


Cook pasta al dente. Rinse under cold water and drain as thoroughly as possible. Have arugula as dry as possible also. Slice the onion into quarter rings. Crumble the feta. Douse and toss everything except the feta. Then lightly toss in the feta. Then correct to taste. Will keep or even taste better kept in fridge for a while. If you don't have any arugula in your garden, you might try young dandelion greens scavenged from a lawn but watch out for poison. I served the above with a terribly non-nutritious but quite frugal dessert which involves layering the most inexpensive plain crispy cookies you can buy at the dollar store with homemade stove-top vanilla cornstarch pudding and bananas. If you layer it in a glass bowl and put edible flowers on top nobody will know the ingredients only totaled $2.50 for 8 servings. Even better if you add a layer of strawberries if you have some or maybe just a little bit of wine or rum or strong coffee or chopped nuts etc.

[llorona]

Garlic
The garlic that I planted last fall started leaning over a couple weeks ago. Apparently it was ready for harvest. Here is the yield: 12 heads. Success! Next year I will plant much more.



Raised Beds
The kale that I started from seed last fall was quite prolific - we have not had to purchase greens from the grocery store since January. Now it's bolting, so it will be replaced with lettuce seedlings. Also growing in this bed are red peppers, Spanish onions, scallions, chives, and tarragon -- and two carrots that survived the Attack of the Snails.

The leeks in the rear bed have taken forever to grow, but they will soon be ready to harvest. Thanks to FFJ's awesome suggestion, carrot and dill seedlings are safely and happily growing under the tent of garden fabric.



Lesson Learned
Here you can see zucchini, eggplant, and onions. This is my first time planting summer vegetables. I learned that even though seedlings start out tiny, actual plants like squash grow really, really big. Spacing them out is important!

To make amends, I turned tomato cages upside down and began growing the zucchini upward, rather than pulling out healthy plants.



Another Lesson
This is my beanpole. I was quite proud of it...until I saw that neighbors had accomplished the same thing for FREE by making a teepee out of long sticks. Then I wanted to kick myself in the ass. Lesson: Draw upon ingenuity and imagination before resorting to consumerism.



Frugal Compost Bin
This is my compost bin. It is a plastic trash can from Walmart with holes drilled in the top, bottom, and sides. The volume of greens and browns keeps reducing so it's taking a long time to fill, but the contents smell nice and earthy. At least I got that right!

[jennypenny]

Another Lesson
This is my beanpole. I was quite proud of it...until I saw that neighbors had accomplished the same thing for FREE by making a teepee out of long sticks. Then I wanted to kick myself in the ass. Lesson: Draw upon ingenuity and imagination before resorting to consumerism.

We constructed bean poles, and now the beans are growing up the pvc pipes we installed for the hoops instead of the poles.


Squirrels!!
Our fruit trees are doing really well, but the squirrels are a problem. We've tried flashing and upsidedown buckets, but they aren't working. The only thing we haven't tried is fox and/or coyote urine because I think it would drive my dogs insane. Does anyone have any suggestions other than sitting in a chair in my yard all day with a bb gun?

[cmonkey]

The best solution is plant so much that they just cannot make much of a dent in anything or plant something that they prefer more. For example, the best way to keep birds off of fruit is to plant a mulberry hedge. The mulberries fruit earlier and longer than most other fruit and the birds always prefer them to other fruit. Plus they tend to get tipsy from the fermented ones

Squirrels also love mulberries so that might be a good choice.

I can also vouch for the efficacy of an outdoor cat.

until I saw that neighbors had accomplished the same thing for FREE by making a teepee out of long sticks.

Typically hazel sticks are used but you can use any long branch and they work great for any vining plant such as morning glory, hyacinth bean, moonflower. Also look into pea sticks for peas. They are essentially the smaller, more branched version of bean sticks.

[George the original one]

Trapping is the time-honored tradition if you don't want to sit with a weapon.

[7Wannabe5]

I hope my planting of monster pumpkins will keep the human vandals away from my acorn squash this autumn.

[cmonkey]

I posted these in my journal but thought I'd share in the official garden thread. Total veg sq ft is about 1985. We also have tons of smaller flower beds and 25-30 (I lost count) different fruit and nut trees in our orchard.

North Bed ~ 1250 sq ft



South Bed ~ 735 sq ft

[cmonkey]

We've had bad rainfall patterns here which has led to delayed germination. Usually my beans and corn are much further along by this date. Oh well.

Where are you located? I am in north Illinois and its been one of the wettest Mays in several years. Very thankful for it as the past couple years have been dry.

[jennypenny]

A month of hot and dry, followed by a week of cold and rainy. I think it's going to be a tough year.

The surprise beans growing over the zucchini. Not sure what I'm going to do about it.



Gotta love Early Girl



The strawberries are doing much better than last year. Really tasty, too. I see a nutella/strawberry pizza in my future.

[cmonkey]

The strawberries are doing much better than last year. Really tasty, too. I see a nutella/strawberry pizza in my future.

We have been harvesting about a pound a day for the last week now they are in their 3rd year. Made a pie already and will be making jam/drying/freezing.

That pizza sounds.....incredible...

[jennypenny]

That pizza sounds.....incredible...

See viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5124&p=73467#p73369

[7Wannabe5]

I have been consistently harvesting about a half pound of arugula, bok choi, collards, beet greens, kale, mesclun mix, black-seeded Simpson, red sails and other greens mix every day since May 10th. There is a mature mulberry tree on one of my vacant lots and I shook/gathered the first 1.5 lbs. of what will hopefully be at least a 12 lb. yield. So, I am making very slow progress towards my total harvest goal of 365 lbs. for the year which will likely be heavily weighted with variety of heirloom tomatoes and winter squash. But, I am only very cautiously optimistic because August is predicted to be unusually cool due to El Nino.

My 365 lbs. goal is based on estimated dietary needs of 3 lbs. of food/day for my sister/housemate and myself. IOW, my goal for this first year of gardening at this location is to provide 1/6 of the dietary needs for 2 people. Already made a significant dent in the grocery budget since I am quite content to have egg/greens/stir-fry and mulberry crisp for my dinner. However, I must admit I broke down and purchased a lithium battery powered whacker/mower so I am definitely still in the red on this project.

I'm also having some interesting social interactions while gardening in the city. The other day I noticed a man had parked his bike in the over-grown lot across the street from one of my lots and he was walking about gathering something into a large plastic bucket. My curiosity overcame my natural reserve so I went over to investigate. He was collecting large red clover flowers with the intention to soak them in vodka to make an elixir. The friendly wife of a man who is still gardening in his 90s across the alley also gave me some good information about the overgrown grapes on my property. The Pastor who just re-opened a tiny old church across the street invited me to attend services or go on a bike ride and one of my recent immigrant neighbors informed me that he would like to "make hobby" with me when I tried to fend off his offers of manual labor. Etc. etc. etc.

Still too chicken to venture into the abandoned condemned house next door. I am tempted to bid on it if it comes up at auction this autumn but that would almost definitely be a sunk-cost debacle. I am now leaning more towards building an earth-sheltered greenhouse/aquaculture/root-cellar which will use books for northern exposure insulation and have enough unheated square footage to occasionally function as a dining/social gathering room. It will be attached to a base into which my tiny portable house can be loaded and locked when not being hauled about by my non-profit bookmobile which will also serve for compost collection etc. etc. Of course, I might change my mind about any/all of this or be found in violation of some code or another so that is why I am keeping my design very modular.

[George the original one]

A lengthy warm (for coastal Oregon) and dry spell kicked the strawberries into ripening this week. Picked a pint on Sunday and two pints on Tuesday from about 10 row-feet, expecting another two pints on Thursday (varieties are Benton & Rainier). Typical of these varieties, there will then be a week of minimal ripening followed by another week of intense ripening. Plan to double number of plants for richer harvest in future years. Taking time to remove dead leaves has kept the mold to a minimum, but fending off baby slugs is harder. Birds & rabbits are barred from entry with poultry wire, so that problem is licked, though I need to change the framing from hoops to something hinged for easier access.

[vraxxos]

Jealous of all you guys in the USA with your sunny climate! May was an absolute disaster for my small gardening effort here in Northern England. Wind and rain battered everything, resulting in static growth for most of what I have out. Had two cucumber plants out, both ended up succumbing to the elements and died. Tomatoes have taken a hammering, but seem to have perked up a little bit with the decent weather we've had in the last week. Imperative that they can get a few weeks of decent weather now. Herb garden is looking great, have been taking plenty from there. Potatoes while not ready to harvest yet, have been a mixed bag from so far as I can tell (a few plants look pretty leggy).

[vraxxos]

I have been consistently harvesting about a half pound of arugula, bok choi, collards, beet greens, kale, mesclun mix, black-seeded Simpson, red sails and other greens mix every day since May 10th. There is a mature mulberry tree on one of my vacant lots and I shook/gathered the first 1.5 lbs. of what will hopefully be at least a 12 lb. yield. So, I am making very slow progress towards my total harvest goal of 365 lbs.

This is a great idea. Up until now, I haven't really bothered keeping track on my yield (mostly because my yield last year was only about 20lbs of produce), but this year I am definitely going to start logging the amounts I am growing.

[jennypenny]

*sigh* I was all excited to post a picture of my squash until I saw ffj's pics. I have produce envy.





The upside-down pots on the trunks and hanging CDs seem to be keeping the birds/squirrels off of our fruit trees.

[vexed87]

How will you deal with them ffj?