A Coronavirus Garden in the Sun
When we moved to the country in 2014 one of the more shocking discoveries we made was how many voracious animals already lived here. Deer, rabbits, porcupines, chipmunks, and rather surprisingly, the most threatening of all, mice, abound, and all those adorable critters seemed heck bent on eating everything I planted. The cheeky mice went so far as to help themselves to my pea seeds, stashing them in various locations across the property including inside the engine of my car.
So, despite being an avid vegetable gardener, I have not been able to indulge in my hobby, having to keep myself limited to a couple flower beds, hanging baskets, and plants that mice don’t have a taste for.
It wasn’t all bad.
All that is about to change because we’ve finally managed to get all our ducks in a row, by which I mean chickens, and we’re putting in a garden this year! It’s actually not specifically because of coronavirus since we started it last year, but I do think both my husband and myself feel more of a pressure to complete the project than we would have otherwise.
It’s coming along swimmingly, and better yet, affordably. My husband has built the fence completely for free out of scavenged materials (he is a mechanical genius and can build or repair anything). I can’t resist sharing a few pics with this website full of my nearest and dearest arch-enemies.
The red tank will be filled with water and we’ll use a gasoline pump for irrigation, as we don’t have enough “push” from our well to run a sprinkler down at the garden.
He welded discarded wheels together to make fence posts, attached them to some giant cedar logs that came from an old dismantled dock, and the fence is an old baseball backstop. He’s then going to pour mortar mix into the gaps and hang hardware cloth around the bottom to ensure our mousy friends can’t get in to nibble anything.
The view towards the northwest. The building in the background (also built mostly for free from scavenged materials) houses our chicken coop and rabbit hutches, and serves as the wall on one side. The chickens and rabbits were so kind as to make some compost for us, visible in the three piles.
The man himself, getting ready to backfill the garden foundation.
Frodo is wondering what I am doing in his personal domain with my camera. Little does he know very soon he’ll have taken his last dust bath in MY personal garden.
So far, we’ve planted potatoes (in tires, with hardware cloth at the bottom and top since we’re not fully mouseproof yet,) some dill weed as I’ve found mice don’t seem to care for it, and I found some volunteer garlic I’d planted a couple years ago, which remains untouched by bunny, deer, or rodent. I started some Walla Walla onions from seed, but then I then accidentally left them out overnight when I was hardening them off. 🙁 So we’re expecting some Walla Walla plants grown by professionals with better memories than I have to be arriving shortly.
It probably won’t amount to much this year, but we’re having fun with it, something that seems like it’s in short supply these days.
This guy is ready!
When I was a kid my parents had an enormous garden (we lived on over an acre of land, even if it was in an older subdivision in a small town). My mom grew everything – tomatoes and corn, but also Brussels sprouts and onions and strawberries and carrots.
One year she even grew peanuts, even though Ohio is really not the right climate for them, because she wanted my brother and me to see how they do the thing where the peanuts (the fruit of the plant, really) winds up developing *underground* (My mom is a botanist)
One year the chipmunks moved in. I remember my mom disgustedly talking about how they dug up and ate a half-pound of corn seed in a matter of a couple of days. She tried putting out mothballs, which seemed to discourage them a bit. (And led to the weird observation that grackles would pick up the mothballs and rub them on their feathers. I can only assume they somehow knew the mothballs repelled pests and it was like how they take dust baths to try to smother lice)Report
It’s may be a form of Anting (see wikipedia). Many birds rub themselves with ants or other insects, probably to repel pests, and some have been known to use cigarette butts.Report
That’s freaking amazing dude, thank you for explaining.Report
Agh I got Brussel sprout seeds but then I realized when they arrived it was too late to start them this year. They need a massive growing season. I have always, always wanted to do peanuts for the kiddos to see, but just like you say, it’s too cold here at night. Wrong climate entirely.
Yes we have chipmunks in addition to the mice, and pocket gophers, and these awful things called desert woodrats, which are basically rats with furry tails. The cats are making a dent in the population though so I’m hoping we’re going to have less of an issue with them than we did before we got them.
That is fascinating about the grackles! How weird is that?? Nature is so cool.Report
Pictures of Washington state always make me feel homesick. Dad had a vegetable garden growing up. My favorites from it were the corn and peas, though he did have potatos, too. But we weren’t plagued with mice. Happy growing!Report
I am praying to the corn gods for some sweet corn this year. It’s been super expensive at the store lately so I haven’t gotten it much, but growing up we would practically live on it for a couple months (our neighbor grew it) Thanks!Report
Ahhh gardening. My mother loves gardening and maintains a vast expanse of both food and decorative gardens. My siblings and I were the non-voluntary labor source all through our growing years. I still like gardens but gardening is one of many reasons I ran, not walked, to the cities.
But you haven’t eaten a potato until you’ve eaten a potato that was dug out of the ground ten minutes earlier and then immediately cooked.Report
That’s so funny, because I always harbored resentment against my parents growing up for not having a garden. I was always dying to have one and the first year I was married we scraped together our pennies so I could! It is a ton of work, though. Thanks for reading!Report