Saturday Morning is for Gardening

Check it out! I got all the remaining grass out of my new bed and got all the rich soil in! And it was so much easier since the rains.

I will probably get my transplants in tomorrow. I want to spend a little bit of time planning exactly what will go where. I think I'm only going to plant three rows. In my first bed I planted four and now that I see how big the plants are growing I can see that was cutting it really close.

I'm also worried that some of the herbs I'll be planting will be very attractive to the neighborhood birds. I have basil, dill, cilantro, oregano, parsley and mint. I'm especially concerned about the mint. I think I may leave that out of the bed and just plant it in a container. The birds already got to it once. Plus from what I've read it sounds like the mint is going to grow all willy nilly and try to take over the plot. I'm considering planting the mint in a container and then planting the container in the ground to prevent it from spreading.

I'm also going to plant some leftover onion, cucumber, zucchini and tomato seedlings. And I have a freshly sprouted yellow squash plant and peas, too.

What am I going to do with my zinnia seedlings? If I have room in the new bed I'd love to put one or two in the ground, but I don't want to attract butterflies. Butterflies mean caterpillars, and caterpillars do a lot of damage.

Also- very exciting- I've got my first flowers on the zucchini plants! Hopefully, I'll have zucchini really soon. And check out the yellow squash in the foreground of this pic!

My Plants are Huge

Scroll down and compare today's photo to the one taken on May 20th. Wow!

I worried that the constant rains we'd been having had done more harm than good. Not so, says nature, not so.

Solutions

I recently posted on an organic gardening online community about the recent goings ons in my garden and asked if the others had had similar problems. Here are some of the responses:

-YES!
In fact seedlings are the fave choice for crows and that family.
Squirrels and other birds seem to be convinced that under that little plant is something the need.
I have an eggplant that has been dug up many times by the same damn squirrel!
Good luck and let us know if you come up with something.

-omg yes. I live in an apartment, and there is a small tree near my balcony where birds hang out. when I am home I periodically run out there and shoo them away. Especially the crows/whatever the giant black birds that hang out on my porch are.

If you hang CDs outside that helps deter them, but you have to periodically switch out what you keep out there to scare them away otherwise they get used to it and start back up.

-Hang a house and let a wren be your seedlings' guardian. I have heard they are very territorial and 'do not tolerate' birds and other animals in their area. I saw this tip in a forum about protecting a berry patch, and I thought it might help you.

-Several kinds of birds do this, most notably corvids (ravens, crows, magpies, and jays). I have to cover many of my beds until the seedlings have grown enough to be well-rooted, to keep the jays from pulling them all out just for fun. Starlings are notorious as well, and will usually eat what they pull. Sparrows also pull and eat a lot of seedlings sometimes; peas are a favorite target.

Bird netting is your best bet - just keep the birds off long enough for the plants to get bigger and well-anchored. Flash tape sometimes works, sometimes not. Corvids in particular are quite bold and will quickly adapt to most scare tactics.

from http://community.livejournal.com/organic_garden/

A Second Raised Bed

Here it is- the future home for my peas, tomatoes and other assorted vegetables and herbs!

Hit Again!

Who is doing this to my plants?? A bird? A squirrel? A neighborhood hooligan?

About 7:30 this morning, I went out to water my plants and just look at what a sad scene awaited me on the porch. One of two strapping tomato seedlings I had recently transplanted into bigger containers was lying next to its planter. I could almost hear the roots gasping for soil and moisture. There the plant lay on the porch railing, like a beached whale drying out in the summer sun.

And for what? My tomato plants are weeks, if not months, away from bearing fruit. A single leaf was ripped from the seedling. What's worse, the leaf wasn't eaten or carried away. No, it was just severed and left there to wilt inches away from the fading body.

I immediately returned the plant to its rightful place and watered generously, but it may have been too late. It has been about an hour now and the plant is leaning over to one side, looking like it has given up.

I'll keep you posted.

RAVAGED

Something terrible has happened.

Some creature has made a meal of my mint! And in the process assaulted my healthiest pea plant.

The incident occurred between 8:30am and 9:00am Eastern Time.

When I arrived on the scene, I first noticed the pea plants toppled over in their tray. The tallest pea plant had been snapped in half at the stem. Four leaves were lost as a result.

However, the fledgling mint seedlings bore the brunt of the attack. Six of the twelve young plants were lost as a result. Evidence suggests the suspect perched on the pea plants as it devoured the mint alive.

No other plants were harmed.

The suspect remains at large.

Any tips may be reported through this website.

Out With the Lettuce

Here is a pic of my garden as it stands today. In the bottom lefthand corner of the photo you can see the three new cabbage plants I transplanted. I pulled out a couple lettuce plants that were there. The lettuce just looked so pathetic I had to put them out of their misery in favor of something hardier. I think it was the heat that was getting to it. The spinach, over on the right, might also need to be replaced with something else.

Hopefully, by the weekend I will get a second bed ready for planting. It will be another 4 by 8 foot plot like this one. I have plenty of seedlings ready to move into the ground. So the sooner I get it all set up, the better.