Backyard Garden

We had squirrels digging in the garden, mind you they are not eating anything, just digging holes and digging up carrots, cilantro, and basil. We are prepared to hang the lovely aluminum pie plates that make racket, and it might work if we have jumpy squirrels. Problem with that is we have city squirrels! Other than removing squirrels I have read ther eis not much you can do. Once they find a good place to dig and hide things, thye come back over and over and over. Since we have been in the midst of monsoon season for a couple weeks, the squirrels are staying away. Which is good, except all the rain is causing a couple of crops to get that "over watered" look. Most of my cilantro and parsley kicked the bucket (over watering, they had rot at the base of the plant) and I am in the process of figuring out what I can replace it with. I may go to a nursery and see if I can purchase some. The melons look yellwed at this point and we may lose those as well. They love the rain when t

I was hoping we would not have to do this, but we did. And it still looks good and is still easy to get to. We used chicken wire supported with hard wood stakes, I stapled the wire right to the beds so it would stay put. Now we have extra chicken wire for another project. Who knows what that will be, but we are ready.

Setback number 1 Frost hit some of our plants. I was over confident of our in the city, up on a hill status and we were hit. The morning glories, tomatoes, and peppers took a significant hit, and so did the basil. I will need to replant some of these, thank goodness we had extra seedlings. The marigolds, cabbage, and things that were in as seed did not seem affected. Setback number 2 Groundhogs ate our broccoli!  Next post....Fencing for cute little buggers getting fat on your garden.

You can not have a good garden without compost. We made ours out of old pallets and it took about 10 minutes to secure 3 sides and we left the front open for turning. It cost us nothing. I suggest that anyone who can have one do so. Plus there is nothing better for your flowers and for potted plants inside! I also have a "worm bucket" as my father calls it. They are great for super rich nutrient dense soil. You can use the dirt to make "worm tea" to liquid fertilize your plants as well. The worms are now living in the compost for the summer, and I will take as many as I can inside for the winter.

Square foot gardening is our inspiration for the raised beds. I am excited to be so organized about planting. It feels even more productive that you will use each inch to its best potential. I recommend the book if you think you would like to do some raised beds for vegetables and flowers alike. The book is "All New Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholome It is a little corny, but there is a lot of useful information. I like not having to guess, like on soil composition, how to set up the beds, how to set up the trellis, all this information is the result of someone else doing the work first. Everything so far has been fast and relatively easy.

I started some seeds in late April: Our front porch is a perfect spot for them to stay cool and get lots of light. The basil was coming up like crazy...unfortunately a bunch was lost because it "damped off". Here it just looks super strong and awesome: The morning glories were showing off as well... We started way too much for seed, but we were very excited. I planted basil, parsley, mint, oregano, cilantro, early green cabbage, red cabbage, green cabbage, tomatoes (yummy heirloom variety called Nepal, Ace Peppers (green if you pick early red if you wait), morning glories, marigolds, California poppies, Spanish flags, hollyhocks, a weird type of amaranth (I forget the name now), and Shirley poppies. Fun!