I Hate Squirrels!

Yes, that's a cage around the peanut feeder. Yes, it's there to keep the squirrels out. And, yes, that's a squirrel, INSIDE the cage! Somehow, it managed to snake its way in through the bottom... It's some small consolation that my husband and daughter ran out and attacked it with the Nerf gun :)

In other news, I planted a half-pound of garlic this fall. Two varieties--Inchelium Red and Italian Late. The Inchelium Red sprouted in about two weeks. It grew about four inches then stopped. I've covered the bed with a mesh cover to keep squirrels from digging--I'm pretty sure they wouldn't eat it, but I know they'd dig it up just to see what it was. Did I mention that I hate squirrels?

Happy New Year. Here's to happy gardening in 2010.

Milkweed and Monarchs

So, I blew it. Photgraphically, anyway. I was checking on my milkweed, in the bed out by the mailbox, on Sunday, when I noticed that many of the plants were being eaten. The main stem was still there, but each leaf was eaten down to the nubs. For maybe the first time in my gardening career, I was very happy about this. The culprits were monarch butterfly caterpillars! There were four or five of them, just hanging out. I called my daughter out to take a look--she thought they were way cool--but it NEVER occurred to me to get a camera! Doh. The next day they were all gone. I don't know if they pupated or got eaten. I'll keep an eye out, and bring a camera, when I check the mail this week...

A New Hope

I'm feeling a bit better today about things in the vegetable garden. I made a batch of spaghetti sauce (known in my husband's family as gravy) with the Romas. Five to six pounds of tomatoes made a quart of gravy. We had half for dinner tonight, along with some zucchini and green beans from the garden. The rest is cooling in a Zip-loc bag, and headed for the freezer soon. I used our tomatoes, yellow peppers, basil, and oregano, and garlic from my father-in-law's garden (thanks, Bill!). A little olive oil, a little onion, a little Chianti. Yum.

I started some seeds for the fall garden. To thwart the chipmunks (and birds), I started the zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumber seeds in peat pots on the deck. I also started some lettuce and spinach in planters. They'll stay on the deck. Tomorrow, I'll soak some sugar snap seeds, and plant them in the garden in the afternoon.

We were going to check on the bluebird babies today, until we saw one of them come to the opening of the box. I remembered that you're not supposed to check them after they're fourteen days old. If you open the box, they may fledge too early. So we'll wait. Best we can tell, they're 15-16 days old. They fledge at 17-18 days. So we'll be keeping a close eye out--they should fledge before Tuesday.

Frustrated and Discouraged

The chipmunks and birds have gotten the best of my garden. I haven't had a single slicing tomato, and only a handful of blueberries. The critters have gotten everything else, including most of the grape tomatoes. The Romas are doing OK, but I'm not getting enough yield to can them, so I'm not sure what to do with them.

The cukes and zukes are running out of steam--the cukes are withered and brown, and the zukes aren't far behind. The cabbages were completely wormy, and the carrots are bitter.

I'm having serious doubts about continuing the vegetable garden. What's the point if it's not producing anything edible?

Bluebird Update

We heard the baby bluebirds today while we were out in the garden. I'm happy to report that they're big enough to make lots of noise when the parents are feeding them! The parents have been very busy going back and forth with tasty bugs. This evening, they sat on a wire watching us check on their babies. We've been sharing the backyard all spring and summer, so I have to think that they know us (and trust us at least a little bit).

Tomatoes!

Finally, the tomatoes are beginning to come in! Most productive are the yellow pear tomatoes. Unfortunately, they aren't as tasty as I'd hoped--a little bland and mushy. The Romas are looking pretty good. I have enough for a batch of salsa. I'm hoping that the rest will come in all at once, in a large enough quantity to make tomato sauce. The Cherokee purples are getting rotten before they ripen, and the Early Girls are getting eaten. Not by birds, especially since I've netted them. These are definitely gnawed, by nasty little rodents--chipmunks or squirrels that are worming their way under the netting.

When I bought seeds, I chose eggplant seeds that contained four varieties. I have four plants, so I wasn't sure what I'd end up with. The first plant to fruit has a traditional oblong, dark purple eggplant. I noticed last night that another plant has fruit--this one looks like a baseball--perfectly white and round! It's beautiful.

After four very dry weeks, we finally got some rain. We had a half-inch overnight, and more than an inch with this afternoon's thunderstorms. I hope we continue to get rain for a while--the garden is much happier (and so am I) when I don't have to water it.

For the Birds

We've solved the tomato mystery. I opened the back door the other day, just in time to see an explosion of birds from my tomato plants! We covered the cages with mesh (like we use on the blueberry plants). My tomatoes are now ripening unmolested. So far we've only had some red grape tomatoes and yellow pear tomatoes. There are many, many green tomatoes on the others. Looking forward to tomato sandwiches and homemade gravy!

The bluebirds are incubating their new clutch of four. We're keeping track of number of eggs, hatching, fledging, etc., this time.

The robins nesting on the rain gutter are feeding three babies. They're big enough for us to see them from below (and from our living room).

Independence Day

Random updates:

• The neighbors DID pick cukes, beans, and squash while we were gone! I can only imagine what the pile would've looked like if they hadn't. The cukes are still going wild, as long as I keep them watered.
  
• The bluebirds are back. There are four new eggs in the nest box. We'll keep a closer eye on their progress this time.
  
• There's a robin's nest under the eaves on the front porch. I think they've hatched--it looks like she's been feeding them, but they're too small to see or hear (and too high up to see).
• Something is eating my tomatoes. My cherry tomatoes are beginning to ripen. Several times this week, I've seen ones that will be ready the next day. The next day, however, they're gone, except for a few chewed-up pieces on the ground. The likely culprits are squirrels or chipmunks, but I haven't caught anyone yet. We bought Shake-Away, a granular powder that's supposed to deter small critters. It contains fox urine...
• My bean yield isn't as high as I wanted, so I'm soaking more seeds to plant a few more squares of each kind of bush bean and add to the pole beans. I'll plant them later today.
• After a very wet spring, we've had two weeks of hot and dry weather. The grass is getting crunchy and the ground is cracking. We've been watering the vegetable garden and some of the landscaping. I've planned the landscaping to need minimal watering, but things are getting really bad out there. There are thunderstorms in the forecast for tomorrow, so maybe the weather pattern is changing.
  

A Week Later...

We were out of town last week. Our wonderful friend, Tim, agreed to water the garden while we were gone. This happened at the last minute--we had so much rain in the last month or so that we didn't pay attention to the forecast for the coming week, so we didn't plan ahead for watering. That was a bad idea, because it was hot (near 90) and dry the whole week we were gone. Thank you, Tim!

Even though we'd encouraged our neighbors to pick whatever was ripe, we still came home to huge yellow squash, zucchinis, and cukes. There were six yellow squash, weighing over 10 pounds all together; five zukes totaling over eight pounds; and 10 cukes totaling over 10 pounds. The biggest was a yellow squash weighing more than 3.5 pounds, and measuring 16 inches in length and four inches in diameter. It looks like a baseball bat without a handle. That's it at the front of the picture. Looks like I'll be making zucchini bread tomorrow.

Oh yeah, I'll need to pick the beans, too. I'm expecting about two pounds of yellow wax, green filet beans, and pole beans.

So far, the deer have stayed away from the vegetable garden. It seems they've been too busy eating the landscaping in the front yard. While we were gone, they chewed up the coral bells, deciduous azaleas, red twig dogwoods, and tall garden phlox (which are right up against the front porch!). Last year, we sprayed Liquid Fence on the plants they were eating. It is the most vile-smelling thing I've ever encountered. It seemed to work, as long as you reapply after a heavy rain.

It's good to be home. It's even o.k. to have a to-do list a mile long. I'll get right on it...tomorrow.

Vegetable Harvest

The vegetable garden is getting into full swing. The peas, sugar snaps, spinach, and lettuce are done. This week I harvested the first (and probably only) cabbage, and the one experimental clump of broccoli. The cabbage is a bit ragged--since I didn't use any pesticides, various insects have chewed up the outer leaves quite a bit. Even so, the whole plant was almost three feet in diameter! Once I took off all the outer leaves, I had a nice looking head of cabbage weighing about a pound and a half. The other plants are much smaller, and don't seem to be forming solid heads. My daughter bought me a small broccoli plant at an Earth Day festival. We stuck it in the ground to see what would happen. It grew into a gorgeous head--tasted yummy for dinner tonight, too! It was an awfully big plant for the relatively small edible amount, so I'm not sure it's worth the space in the long run to plant enough for a reasonable crop.

The beans are doing quite well. First up were the yellow wax. The pole beans are just beginning to produce. The filet (bush) beans were the last in the ground, and they're just in flower. We're hoping to have a lot of fresh beans to eat, plus plenty to blanch, vacuum seal, and freeze for the winter.

After a brief rest this week, the cukes are kicking back into production. We picked four more today, and there are plenty of little ones coming along. My daughter's a big fan of the little carrots. I find them a bit bitter.

I'm enjoying the progression of different crops through the season, and I'm looking forward to the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants later in the summer!

Another Day, Another Cucumber.

Or three, or five, or more. The cukes have been the most successful crop by far this summer. We're overrun. Today, we tried pickle-making. We used an old family recipe for bread and butter pickles. First, I sliced the cukes and onions, then salted them, covered them in ice, and let them sit for three hours. Next, I mixed sugar, vinegar, and spices, brought it to a boil, added the drained cukes and onions, and boiled it again. Finally, we put it in jars and processed it. Ta-dah! They need to sit and pickle for four to six weeks. I'm looking forward to trying them.

Bluebirds!

We put up our new bluebird box this spring. Within days, a pair of bluebirds was hanging around, and we hoped that they'd found it to their liking. Eventually, we saw them making regular trips in and out, so we looked forward to seeing the new family. About two weeks ago, we could hear the babies when either parent came to the box. This morning, things seemed a bit more urgent. The parents were constantly going back and forth, the babies were really loud, and we finally saw the babies at the hole for the first time. We set up on the deck with the camera and binoculars right after lunch. Then we saw two babies on the ground below the nest box. We'd been keeping an eye out all morning, but somehow we missed their first flights. For the next two hours, we watched. The parents were still coming back and forth, alternating between feeding the babies on the ground, and taking food to the box. We caught glimpses of two more babies inside. Finally one stuck its head out, then grabbed the edge of the hole with its foot, and then...fell back inside. Again it came to the opening, looked around, and ducked back inside. Finally, it popped up and just sat there, for about five minutes. One quick flap, and it was sitting on the ground with the others!

Garden Critter

I went out to check on my garden before dinner tonight. I picked my first cuke and a handful of sugar snaps. I oohed and aahed over the tomato blossoms. I snipped off the pole bean vine that had already topped the six-foot bean tower. My daughter came out to join me. She bent down to look at the cukes and found Jethro here, our new garden feature, curled up under the cucumber vine. Yes, it's a copperhead. Yes, it's right next to a cuke that's big enough to pick. No, I didn't look for snakes before I reached down to pick that cuke. Yes, I'll look the next time. Yikes. I really hope he's big enough to eat chipmunks.

The Vegetable Garden

The mad rush to get everything planted is over. Now I wait for the things that I planted to grow, and try to keep ahead of the things that I don't want to grow (weeds). It's a cruel irony of gardening that the things that grow best are the things I didn't plant. Oh, and the critters like to eat what I've planted, not the weeds. Sigh...

I pulled out the spinach, since it was beginning to bolt, and I planted a couple of leftover tomato seedlings in that space (left front). The rest of the tomatoes look pretty good so far. I have eight Romas, two Cherokee Purple, two Yellow Pear, two Early Girl, and two Sweet 100 (red grape). They're in the cages on the right side of the garden. I'm hoping we'll be able to can the Romas, either whole or made into homemade sauce. In the center back are eggplant and peppers (giant Marconis, and tiny yellow bell peppers). The pole beans and the bush beans are coming along--they're in the back left corner. Garden peas and sugar snaps are along the left side, with lettuce and cabbage in front of them. There are a few squares of scallions and carrots tucked in there, too. The cukes and zukes and cantaloupe (oh my!) are in another part of the yard.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.

And, boy, did it rain. About two inches in less than an hour. We had torrents running through the yard, and standing water everywhere. My peonies and delphiniums were knocked flat. And those seeds I planted last weekend? Unless they grew roots and dug in (most hadn't sprouted), they're at the bottom of the lake down the street by now. No more starting seeds outside.

Did I mention that we were trying to make strawberry jam when the storm hit? And that a storm-spooked dog found its way into our garage when my husband came home from the grocery store. Talk about a wild evening... But the jam gelled, and the dog's owner found us, so things turned out pretty well in the end.

Blackberry Winter

We've had a run of warm, summery weather for the last few weeks. Yesterday, however, was cool and rainy. It was quite chilly this morning, too. A long time ago, a botanist friend of mine told me that, when she was growing up, folks called this weather blackberry winter. She said that there's always a cold snap in the spring when the blackberries are blooming. Most years, that's what happens. Like today.

Happy Mothers Day!

I'm having trouble starting flowers from seed this year. Not much is germinating, and what does sprout seems to get eaten within days. The morning glories were full of little holes, like some bugs were chewing on them. The cantaloupe shoots just disappeared, like they were bitten off at ground level. So I'm trying again. I've planted morning glories and cantaloupe seeds in little peat pellets. I'll put them in the ground when they're big enough to defend themselves. I also replanted sunflower, wildflower, zinnia, and cosmos seeds. This time, I've covered the plot with pop-up screens to keep the birds (and maybe the chipmunks) away. We'll see how it works.

It's an absolutely perfect day. Sunny, breezy, warm. Wow. Irises, peonies, delphinium, coreopsis--it's all blooming. Usually I look around the garden and see what's wrong with it--I need to weed, I need to plant something in that spot, I need to move those plants that are crowding each other. In the beginning of May, however, it all just looks great. I can sit on the porch and feel pretty good about all the work we've been doing out there. All in all, a pretty good way to spend Mothers Day.