Garden update- the ground hog

For weeks we have been watching as our newly sprouting garden is mowed down again and again.  The other day my husband took the dog out and was able to obtain photographic evidence of what appears to be a ground hog, our prime suspect. 

Okay, so it is weak photographic evidence. 

Heck this could be a Big foot sighting.

What is clear is the damage this little rodent has done.  Notice the bean plants on the right.  Big and leafy.  Notice- not one leaf remains in sight on the left.  Funny how it did not touch the other row of beans??

To the left of flower mountain (that mass of green on the right planted by the girls) you would have seen big watermelon plants growing at one time.  Now completely missing! 

Same for my herb section this year. 

The one in the front-just a twig remains. 

Besides beefing up our fence, which we have done, there is not much we can do.  We have discussed trapping and re-homing if anyone would like a pet ground hog??  Another suggestion from a neighbor was to let Hershey out after him. However, I fear Hershey would lose that battle.  He is a bit of a wimp and is afraid of bumble bees.  (Is it a coincidence we did not have this problem last summer when our 88 pound Rottweiler was around?)   My favorite suggest thus far came from an avid gardener that shall remain nameless.  In their exact words " When my friend so and so (another avid/professional gardener by my standards) sees them in her driveway they run them over with their car!".   While that does sound like a permanent solution to our problem, I am not exactly sure if that would be such a good idea to maliciously run down ground hogs in my mini van with the kids in the car......

The garden is planted!

With this run of good weather we have had lately we finally got the garden planted.  Well, basically anything that could still withstand the chilly nights.  The rest is being started from seed and are on the heating mats in the sun room.  Which as I type I am remembering I really should go water them. 

We (or really my husband that is) always keep track of what we plant in our blue binder.  Just to make sure we rotate the plants around the garden from year to year and also instructions on care and harvesting. 

 I had lots of help as usual, here we see my shortest assistant in blue with her free planting technique.  Similar to free range chickens.  The seeds get to go wherever they want.  Who knows what will come up?

Lots of love goes into planting a garden too.  and one very tolerant dog, who seems to be enjoying himself! 

Back to the garden.  The garlic is coming in nicely.  The peas, pumpkins and cukes are planted.  Tomatoes, beans, basil, summer squash, zucchini, watermelon and acorn squash are started in the sun room.  Still need to purchase kale and swiss chard seeds.  Those will be new items for our garden this year. 

 Flower hill has been planted once again.    The girls picked sunflowers and Nasturtium's this year. 

More love ......



And daddy has started building a surprise for the backyard-stay tuned.............

Spring!

Could Spring finally be here?  It is raining today, but at least I feel like I don't need to start the wood stove.

The rhubarb is coming back nicely this year!

 The Marsh Marigold came back too.  Hopefully this will continue to spread along the banks of the little stream we have in our back yard.  Last year we had a frog take up residence under the leaves!  We would sneak up to take a peek, it would hop out sky high and the girls and I would run screaming in the other direction.

Forsythia in full bloom.  I love looking out my window to see this bright yellow!

  Spring garlic is coming along nicely.  We still need to plant all our other veggies.  Hopefully that will be one of the Mother's Day tasks!

First Garden Post of 2011!

We already have garlic growing from when we planted in the fall!!

Garden Post # 18

New garden space and white pumpkins are growing!

The white pumpkins did not get the memo to stay INSIDE the fenced in area!

Garden Post # 13. More trouble........

And it is called powdery mildew:

 

Powdery mildew is a fungal disease which affects many types of plants. Cucurbits like zucchini, squash, pumpkins, melons and gourds are all susceptible to powdery mildew. It usually appears on leaves as small round white powdery spots which quickly spread and cover the entire leaf. In our garden here at the yardstead we've lost many zucchini, squash and pumpkin plants to powdery mildew.    (source from Yardstead.com)

Yup, that would be us.  It has affected the zukes, summer squash, butternut, gourds and pumpkins!  AHHH and it gets worse:

 It can be controlled with quite a bit of effort and regular applications of a fungicide. Once you get it in your EarthBox (garden bed) though, it will stay there. The next growing season you either need to plant veggies that are not susceptible to PM (i.e. tomatoes, peppers, eggplant) or you need to get rid of your potting mix and sterilize your box with a mild bleach solution. This would be why you get it two years in a row.  (from Earthbox forum)

Double AHHHHHHHHHHHH   Empty out all the soil, bleach and start all over.....................   that sounds like way too much work!   And would definitely increase the price per vegetable to way past ridiculous!

For now we are trying an organic (and cheap) solution of 9 parts water and one part milk to try and ward off this awful stuff.   We'll see what happens next...................

Garden Post # 12. Trouble

JUST when things started looking good we are under attack!  It appears there is a critter sneaking into the yard at night nibbling on the goods.  First our peas were munched, then the sunflowers were beheaded and now the ONE and ONLY cuke that we have was completely mowed down! 

What USED to be a cuke plant.

Sunflowers with no flower buds left.

Up goes the fence!

So at the rate we are going- cost for wood for raised beds, cost for soil, cost for lobster compost, cost for seeds and now cost for fence we are looking at our tomatoes costing about 25 bucks each to raise, basil at 85 bucks a handful and with our small amout of surviving pea plants- 100 bucks a pea!  Would anyone care to join us for our million dollar salad at the end of August??