Wednesday, August 31, 2022

August Garden (2022)

August has not been a month for weaklings. Our garden is a warzone. 


Every pestilence for miles around has claimed this land as theirs. 
 

This is MINE - I have a deed to prove it.  Nothing will be shared with a bunch of thieving freeloaders.


Rabbits, armadillos, and groundhogs have arrived en mass.  Rabbits nibble seedlings, greens, and carrots. They aren't aggressive but multiply rapidly. Groundhogs are voracious eaters and can strip a garden in a few hours.  While they graze, they raise their heads to watch the house for any movement in the windows.  Armadillos dig holes looking for bugs, slugs, and worms. They don't eat the plants but uproot them.  An opossum samples the compost pile on occasion but since it behaves and stays out of the garden, it is allowed to frolic ad nauseam.


We are fighting back. Every gate has been boarded over or slammed shut. The welcome mat has been rolled up. This is war.


Additional fencing has been thrown up temporarily to block every entrance.


It has made walking, weeding, mowing, and weed-eating difficult.


The plants don't cooperate either.  A spaghetti squash has become wedged in between the fence links.  I bent the wires apart so the small squash could have space to grow.


This picture was taken only two days later after a drenching rain. It had grown so much that I had to stretch the wires apart even further.


The winter squash beside the yard has overtopped the fence. Good luck finding anything wedged in there.


The fence has only been partially successful. Real success would require an eight-foot tall fence (to stop jumping deer) topped with razor wire (to obstruct climbing raccoons) covered with a net (to keep out crows) buried two feet deep (to block digging moles) and must be charged with a thousand volts of electricity because, well, why not. I'm dreaming. What we have works well until they find a small opening or dig underneath.


A single armadillo can dig twenty to thirty holes a night in my garden. 


Twelve-inch landscaping stakes previously used on the winter hoop houses are now used to secure the bottom of the fence.


A solar-powered motion detector alarm strapped to a lawn chair sounds a warning in the house when something approaches.  It makes Scooter bark so that makes it a double alarm. Then a 100 LED wide angle super bright motion detector shines a spotlight when something has breached the fence (We bought it to go in the parking area of the driveway for evening visitors. They complained of suddenly being blinded). Groundhogs feast in the afternoons, rabbits at sundown and on into the night, and armadillos prefer midnight to 3:00 am.  Getting a good night's sleep has not been possible.


As for what is still in the garden, my Orange Icicle Tomatoes have once again surprised me. They had a sudden burst of growth and put forth a bounty of ripe tomatoes as their leaves shriveled up.


Then as if on cue, altogether they all died. Last year the same thing happened but I thought it was because of the twelve inches of rain that fell in one day.  Not so. After working hard all summer doing over twice the work of any other tomato, they collapsed from exhaustion. I can relate.


Next year I will not plant sweet potatoes under them but instead, put something that finishes early.  Then everything can be ripped up and a winter garden started.


As of today, the leaves are gone.  The sweet potato vines below along with the Lima bean vines on the side arch are taking over the empty space.


After a slow start, the okra plants are finally producing abundantly. The beans below have almost finished. Growing them together worked well except when picking beans. The leaves smacked my face and itched. Nothing major, just being picky. Next year I might try something different. Melons might work since they are harvested early. Or perhaps a fast green bean that finishes before the plants are tall or maybe a late shelly bean that will not be harvested until fall. 


The wax melon has finally awakened and started growing.  It is trying to climb up the Jag Kale plant and is spreading out in all directions. I guess that is normal?


This morning it had the very first bloom.


On to the back corral fence. Only one squash vine borer was caught in any of the traps this year. They came from a different company and I won't purchase from them anymore. The vines are Zucchino Rampicante, (vining zucchini) which is a moschata variety.  They are just now maturing since they were planted so late. The yellow squash and zucchini have failed...again.



This month planting the winter garden seeds began. This crop of white plastic spoons are sprouting all over the garden.


Bill is winning this battle against the invaders. He gets up all hours of the night to shine a light off the back deck or to walk out to the garden. It isn't easy but is necessary if we want to have food. Gardening is tough.

13 comments:

  1. Wow, I can't even imagine! Having a large population of rabbits is challenge enough for me (that, and of course, a lack of sunny spots). I have cages everywhere around ornamental plants to keep the rabbits out as much as possible. And my only sunny spot, on the side of the house where I grow a few veggies and sun-lovers, is fenced with a tall chicken wire fence dug into the ground. The squirrels and chipmunks do some digging, especially in fall, but we have plenty of acorns and hickory nuts to keep them happy. With that harvest, it looks like you've been pretty successful, though!

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    1. Beth, I don't mind sharing, like with the dark shadow whose eyes glow at night in the compost pile (we are guessing it is an opossum). It can have all the decomposing rotten stuff it wants. But what is happening has gotten out of control. The morning I walked out and gave up counting the holes was when I sat down and cried. That was it. War was declared.

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  2. You are right! Gardening is a hard way to eat! Yet I love it anyway. It sounds like you are winning the war against the critters—good for you! How’s everyone’s health?
    —Melanie

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    1. Our health is fine, it is the phones that are broken. I spent 5 hours today (not an exaggeration) on the phone with technical support trying to get my phone to work...again. It isn't my location, or my phone, or the phone company (since we have changed to three different carriers since March) but Google's engineering. They keep changing things but not improving anything. I'm sending you an email and I want you to come over for a garden tour as soon as you have a moment.

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  3. Gardening is tough. I can relate, but I think you have more pests than we've had at one time. So far, knock on wood, the groundhogs haven't found us, though they are in the area. A gracious plenty of moles to make up for them though. So glad to see you are getting tromboncino. Are you harvesting them soon, or letting them turn to winter squash?

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    1. I just got my first three, shown in the picture, and they were harvested as soon as the camera snapped. They were shredded, dehydrated for a few hours, and then went into zucchini - tomato salsa. A VERY first for me! It is in the canner right now as I write. Can't wait to try it. So, I don't know how they taste. There are many zucchini recipes I want to try but have never been able to so I will probably eat all of them fresh except for one which will be used for seeds. It will definitely be grown again next year!

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  4. Oh dear you have had another challenging month! The animals must have heard how good you are at gardening and spread the word! Hope you get some more sleep in September and you win the battle!

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    1. Well, this month hasn't started out peaceful. In the middle of last night the alarm began chiming and the light began flashing. We looked out a window and knew something was happening. Bill crawled out of bed, put on his work clothes and boots, headed outside in the dark to search the whole garden while I watched him from a window. Eventually he returned and said after he looked everywhere, he noticed the horses were standing in front of the alarm quietly watching him work. Needless to say, he turned the alarm away from the field and toward the garden. It was silent the rest of the night.

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  5. Your garden is amazing! I keep my fingers crossed for you and hope you will win a war with rabbits and other uninvited animals. They can be a big trouble.

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  6. Your garden looks lovely and green, lots of veggies ready to harvest.

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  7. Such beautiful goodness and it is a tough job to grow and to protect your garden! But it looks like all of your hard work has made you successful!

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  8. Boy oh boy oh boy... too bad you can't put your kids to sleep out in the garden. No doubt Scooter feels, though, that he is doing his part. (I grew up with a Scotty mix, Patches, who would corner the varmit, then bark for my Dad to come shoot them. Then Patch would strut around, like he pulled the trigger. We called him the GWP -- Great White Patch.)
    After all the grasshoppers disappear in late August, our zucchini plants finally started kicking out babies. A few of the greens grew, but the second crop I planted is really going to town. I am hoping they will survive a light frost, at least -- which should be happening here in the next few weeks. Of course.

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    1. Cindy, the destruction hasn't stopped here. Bill has shot three more armadillos, a racoon and has seen two additional racoons late at night heading toward the garden fence. They got in again two nights ago. We forgot to turn the motion detector alarm on when we went to bed. The next morning I gave up counting the number of holes they dug when I hit 105. The good news is that they like digging in the grass mulch in the walkways and haven't bothered many plants.

      I got a bad batch of potting soil so my winter seedlings kept dying before I realized what was wrong. They sprouted then killed over. Now I am almost six weeks behind on my winter garden. Being late doesn't matter in the spring but it makes a big difference in the winter.

      I am pushing hard to get the last of the summer garden in. We usually have our first frost about October 15th which gives me three more weeks. I am so tired.

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