respublica

Tearing it up and starting over

Today I plan to get into our vegetable garden and remove most of the stuff which has been destroyed by squirrels. I'll keep the tomato plants which have never turned red because the squirrels grab the green ones. But I still have hope. But the poor cantalope and watermelon vines which began with such hope have never had a chance to produce a mature fruit. The squirrels bit the small ones right off the vines. They also took care of the squashes and pumpkin plants. They would eat the flowers. For some reason they are also eating the flowers off of the jalapeno plants.

After I remove the remnants I plant clear the soil and then plant seed of in ground cold weather vegetables like radishes and beets and green onions. They grow under ground. We'll see.

It's been a ton of physical work for nothing this year.

A field of Cleome

Our side yard is filled with Celome flowers right now. They are commonly known as spider flowers or spider plants. They will drop their seeds at some point and the seeds will be next years blooms. We've never seen so many and so beautiful as this year's edition.

Green pond

Last year our Academic Quad pond was totally green with algea. Nothing we tried got rid of it and it looked just toxic. Early on in the summer we bought about 8 pond plants hoping they would reproduce themselves enough to block the sun from the water which is one culprit in the creation of algea. After a couple of weeks the plants were beginning to form new plants and we were happy about that. Well, then one day we walked into the quad and noticed there were much fewer plants and realized someone had come in there and taken most of them. They left a few small baby water plants and walked off with the rest. Just one more frustration we had with local neighbors.

But this year we have plants on the water! And boy do we have plants, the original 12 we bought early on have reproduced in a way that shocks us. We've even taken to removing many just so the fish can see some sky.

Not all green is created equal. We went from bad green to overwhelming good green. If you know anyone who could use some, we'd gladly share.

Dinner with the squirrels

Last night we had a yard dinner for members of the Holy Cross (unofficial) gentlemen's club and their wives. It was a nice night, lots of talk and laughing, but with a big interest in our vegetable garden fight with squirrels. We got some advice about keeping them out, most of which we'd already tried. The best way to keep squirrels out is a pellet gun. haha. Just try that in Clayton.

There were walks over to the garden, especially with Louis who wanted more than anyone to find a way to thwart the squirrels. He did quite a bit of studying our fenced in area. First he went over with Dale and then with Tom and finally on his own.

And here is why this is so frustrating. The squirrels just won't stay out, they find a way and last night we saw that they had begun eating my beautiful young watermelons which I've been babying for days. This was the thing that broke my camel's back.

They can't just finish one, but have to go from one to another and ruin them all.

And our garden has a gate

The vegetable garden Dale constructed last week was finished except for a gate. We've had a heavy sheet of plywood against the opening to keep out the greedy animals. Saturday, Dale built the gate and as always with him, it wasn't just a simple gate.

It opens in the middle like shutters and has a nice latch and of course he couldn't leave the support columns plain, he had to get copper toppers. But it looks good. We have stopped most of the ravaging animals, but there is still one, probably a darn rabbit, who is able break in somehow. We are going to get him yet.

Digging

I spent the past two days digging potatoes. Let me tell you, that is very hard work. The term, "back-breaking" must have originated by a potato farmer. But in the end, it's pretty darn satisfying to look at all the potatoes you planted, babied, and then harvested. I took them to the seminary food bank.

Now if we could just keep the rabbits and squirrels out of the other plantings in that garden. I have tried about every garden tip on the internet but the rabbits have eaten every bloom on the 3 types of squash plants we have and the squirrels just polished off all the green tomatoes. In both cases we have quite a few plants and they are now all bare of fruit. Dale thinks we should chicken wire the whole thing, but that would be a seriously hard and expensive job, this garden plot is pretty big.

I've tried spraying Repells-All around the perimeter and on the ground around the plants. I've shaken red pepper powder around as well as something "guaranteed" to work named, Rabbit Scram. Nothing works. Yesterday I put in a flowering pumpkin plant and am off to see if the blooms on that have been eaten. If so, I'm about to give up.

Where are the Hawks this year?

Those nasty biting gnats are everywhere

The Wall Street Journal (June 17) had a story on the biting gnats we've been dealing with for several weeks. Things have not gotten any better, these buggers are still around and swarm each time we walk out the door. According to the story, the midwest is ground zero for these tiny creatures know as black flies or buffalo gnats. The wet weather and flooding we've experienced is the number one reason there are so many this year.

Rather than puncture the skin as a mosquito would do, these gnats slice open a wound with its mouth and laps up the blood. This causes a very itchy welt that can hang around for days. I'm telling you from experience. This is true. The one item which is recommended in every story on the gnats to keep these things from biting you is vanilla. There are other things you can try, Deet, lemongrass, citronella, bug spray, but the vanilla keeps them away the best in our experience here on the campus.

Problem is you have to re-apply it frequently if you're outside for any length of time. Our grounds people keep a spray bottle of vanilla body spray in their Gators.

You can make your own by combing equal parts vanilla and water. If you aren't a big outside type of person, 1 tablespoon of each and a cotton ball to dab it on with is fine. But these days you might want more and if you go looking for the vanilla body spray, you may find it sold out. Vanilla body products have been flying off the shelves.

I'd link the Wall Street Journal article but it's behind a subscribe wall, but stories like this are everywhere right now.

Down came two trees...on purpose

Here at the seminary there were two trees on the east side of our house, one on each corner. That side is where our bedroom is located. One tree was a huge thick pine that was about 70 feet tall and very top heavy with branches. The other was an older Birch. The Birch was the messiest trees ever, constantly dropping small branches and limbs. It was also leaning more and more toward the roof. The Pine did some scary dances in the wind we've had this year, twisting side to side and up and down. Ever since the huge evergreen tree next door to us fell onto our cars in January, I've been...well..paranoid. So yesterday the east side trees came down.

I have to say, Gateway Tree Service is one of the best. They are skilled, fast, and clean up so that you'd never know they'd been there.

Here is the birch work

Then the pine

 

Now that they're down and gone, we can sleep easier. At least I will, Dale never loses sleep.

 

Keeping animals at bay

Vegetable gardening is more than fertilizing and picking the fruits of your labor. It's also working every day to keep all variety of animals from making the garden their own personal dinner table.

On early Sunday morning as I walked out with Ferdie, I looked down at our big garden and watched as a huge Opossum was making a fast bee line toward it. I yelled at him and clapped my hands to try and deter him, but he merely stopped for a moment, looked back at me, and then continued right into the garden. The next day I walked down to the garden and all of a sudden several squirrels were scared into jumping out of there and running off. Next came a family of rabbits.

I"d planted some bean plants and they've been eaten down to the stems. Same with some cantalope plants we put in. And, the first zucchini blossom turning into a fruit I'd been watching disappeared and the stem chewed down to nothing. The tomato plants have been left alone, but since they've now begun producing green tomatoes, it won't be long before the squirrels grab them.

It's a battle. There was an old saying that when you plant a garden plant enough that you get a harvest and the animals get a harvest.

But enough is enough. They can't have it all. So I went out and got some Repels All, a terrible smelling spray that supposedly makes critters stay away. You spray it on the ground around the plants and they just gag and go away. It does smell bad, a combination of fish emulsion, garlic, rotten eggs and some other stuff. I hope this works, but of course it rained a few hours after I sprayed everything.

Gardening is hard work. Don't get me started on that darn nut grass invading everything.

Gardening with landscape fabric

We have a rather sizeable vegetable garden in the lot between our house and Sieck Hall and this area is like a lot of areas on the campus, rather virgin land on which nothing but grass and weeds have taken root over the decades. It's hard to get rid of all these things, we think we've cleared them and 3 days later here they come again.

Earlier in the spring I began planting nice rows of tomatoes and peppers and squashes and onions and potatoes and covered the ground around them with straw. This helped quite a bit in keeping the weeds at bay. Now, though, that darn nutsedge grass has just filled every space it can find. Nut grass is the worst what with it's roots filled with round nuts which we can never get to the bottom of. We can pull the grasses out, but there is always some nut root left.

So yesterday when I rototilled the second half of that area, I finished by putting down black landscape fabric. The science dealing with weeds supposedly believes that weeds and grass and anything else won't grow in the dark. Weeds need light. We'll see. After laying down the fabric I started planting by cutting an X in it and sticking a plant in the opening. I did that for each plant. Then it was necessary to secure the fabric so it didn't blow away. There are several ways to do this, cover it with mulch or some such or use fabric stakes.

When Dale bought the fabric he didn't buy the securing stakes so until I get out to get them I put wet straw on top and also used a few tomato cages to hold it down. I was glad I did this when I woke up during a loud and windy thunderstorm last night.

I just hope this helps the weed issue somewhat.  With this area almost done we have Okra, baby watermelons, cantalope and acorn squash, all things we know students like.