Port Potager

Throughout the summer and fall, on quiet nights after everyone else had gone to bed, I would swear that I could sometimes hear the hooting of an owl in the trees on the hill behind our house. I never actually saw  an owl in our yard, of course, because they are so stealthy and secretive. I wasn’t even sure if I could trust my ears, but this area is full of interesting wildlife, so I figured anything was possible. I have been proven right — on the possibility, at least. There’s an owl in Newburyport for sure. Kirk came home from work at the hospital last week with a tidbit about there being an owl in a tree in the park down Kent Street. (I live in a town where the juicy gossip is about bird sightings, it seems.)  We figured we’d check it out between snow storms, and here he — or she — is: Newburyport and Plum Island are major destinations for serious bird watchers, so there was group of people gathered to see this owl. Many came prepared with serious tel...

I've written a lot here about how much I hate squirrels . They eat our fruit , dig up our bulbs , and now it looks like they are following me to work. Ok, so I'm sure it's far more likely that our Newburyport Squirrels just called up their Brookline cousins to mess with me. They probably gave them my license plate number, because just look at what these assholes are up to now: Have you ever heard of squirrels building nests in the engine block of a car? Me neither, but apparently it's a thing.  Luckily for me, this is not my car. This is a co-worker's car, and this is the second  squirrel nest she's had to dig out from under the hood of her car. It's happening to lots of other people who park under the trees at work as well.  The squirrels must be fast workers, because this all happens during the course of just one school day, and when you smell burning leaves while you're driving home, you know you have a problem. No tales of a...

This spring we tried a few new things to keep our crops safe from animals and insects that would like to swipe more than their fair share. One promising idea was using plastic fruit containers to keep squirrels away from our ripening tree fruits. But after all of our blustery days of downpours this month, most of those containers ended up on the ground: I wouldn't mind just snapping them back in place, but the real problem is that they often brought the fruit down with them. I'm not sure if this is a flaw in the system overall, or more of an issue with apricots being kind of delicate in hanging on the tree (at least, this has been true for us — it's not the first time we've accidentally knocked one off the branch before it was ripe).  Alas, the only one we have left on the tree is this one that never made it into a container in the first place. I thought about removing the remaining containers last weekend, but decided to ride out the experiment instea...

This afternoon I planted bulbs in the cutting beds: All told, I put in 150 bulbs today. They included several varieties of daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, irises, allium, and lilies. For the cutting garden I'm not too worried about planting in a natural-looking way – straight rows to fit in as many as possible will do just fine in a place where most of them are meant to be cut down to bring inside anyway.  Faithful readers will recall that the bulbs in the perennial border were either devoured or relocated by our rapacious squirrel population. This time, we are working to prevent damage from the get-go: We covered the whole bulb bed with a roll of chicken wire. Instead of burying it, we screwed wooden battens directly to the edges of the raised bed to hold the chicken wire in place: In the spring, the green shoots should find their way through the holes in the wire, but squirrels will have a difficult time burrowing in. This solution isn't feasible...

So today this happened: Poor Fletch has been pretty bored stuck on the porch on this very rainy weekend — and probably lonely too, since we were inside most of the time. Oh, and hungry, since he blew through his dry food out in the workshop. We're starting to think he's sharing with his girlfriend, who hangs out with him in the driveway before dawn on nice days. Or maybe that a skunk is sneaking in to get some. Anyway, he looks cute and cozy and all, but while he was snoozing, this happened: I'm assuming a squirrel did it, because what other animal out there makes such a giant goddamn mess? It shredded up the stem of one of our pie pumpkins, which we had left out to cure on the warm bricks. This doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but take a closer look: Having the stem ripped off has exposed some of the flesh of our pumpkin — you can see the scratches in the skin at the top. That means that this pumpkin won't keep until Thanksgiving now, unl...

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. ~from "The Masque of the Red Death," by Edgar Allan Poe We've got more than just  squirrel problems with our corn this year (as if that weren't enough). We also have weird, red veined stalks (and these often these have red tassels as well). It starts with the center vein turning red: Lots of our corn looked like this, and it did not grow very tall. They also had very small ears (well, the ones we beat the squirrels to did, anyway). Not all of it turned out this way. Here's a nice, normal one with a good sized ear: (To be honest, we have to assume that ear was good based on the size of the husk the squirrels left behind). These have nice, white center veins in the leaves: So what is going on? According to a very thorough diagnostic chart from the University of Georgia , the Red Death might be a virus called Maize ...

Not that they ever really left (well, except maybe that one that, according to our neighbors, got eaten by the hawk), but the squirrels are back. With a vengeance. This time they are tag-teaming our corn: They run from the back fence into the corn and back again, one after another. There's not much we can do about it — they can climb over anything we put around the corn, short of building a greenhouse for it. So we walk around the yard picking up what's left of corn cobs and husks. Sometimes they leave scraps with actual kernels on them, which I hand directly over to the chickens. At least someone is getting some corn. To be fair, we did  get a tiny bit of corn. But it's not great, as you can see when I put an average-size tomato in the photo for scale: These ears are pretty tiny, and what the squirrels are getting aren't any bigger. I don't know if it's due to the dry weather, the variety, or the slightly shady bed, but corn hasn...

We have had trouble with sunflowers since the beginning. It started with chipmunks digging up the seeds and seedlings back in June. We thought we had it covered by using putting mini-cages around each seedling , figuring that by the time the plants grew taller than the cages, they would be too big for a chipmunk to dig up, and the seed would be long gone anyway. Well, I guess that is technically true. I don't think chipmunks are after our sunflowers any more. But something else is: As soon as the plant reached above the cage, something else came by and mowed it down. This is just one example of the fate of many of our sunflowers. This happened before the plants were anywhere close to producing a seed or flower, so something just wanted the leaves.  Our mystery predator also bent one over to get leaves that were too high to reach (we assume): We have seen a groundhog (sigh), and it has eaten some of our zucchini and a lot of our parsnip leaves (better thos...

In addition to the plague of squirrels in the front yard, it would seem that we have some marauding chipmunks in the back. They have been digging up sunflower seeds that I planted and even dug up the seedlings to get to the seed. We lost all but one of our first go-round of sowing, so we slapped some row covers over the seeds on the second planting: Clearly, this is nothing special. It's some short pvc posts holding up tent of row cover fabric, which is weighed down along the sides with lengths of scrap wood. Still, it's been enough to keep out chipmunks over the last week — they are burrowing animals but can't get at these from underneath, so it's working well enough so far. Ah, but that lone seedling that made it through the first round of chipmunk attacks was left uncovered. We thought that surely by now it was big enough to escape their attention. And today it was lying at an angle, half dug up and a little scraped along its stem: This is it a...

I always like to start with the bad news, because until it's out of the way, you can't enjoy the good news anyway.  Bad news: I found a half-eaten peach in the back yard. This means that either the squirrels are now attacking the only tree that has fruit and dropping the pieces wherever they are when they get bored of them, or chipmunks are picking the June drop peaches off of the ground and carrying them through the drainage tunnel to the back.  Man, I hope it's the second one. Just to be sure, though, I guess we'll try to cover the peaches we do have. Somehow. That tree is really big, and this is going to be a giant pain. Good news: Our first garlic bulb! This variety is Spanish Rosa — the same ones that put up scapes a week or two ago. I was out picking the rest of the scapes to add to our creamed spinach for supper and noticed that one garlic plant had leaves that were totally brown. From what I understand, garlic is best harvested when just h...

After a week of rain, I took a stroll through the orchard to give it a check and see if the trees needed any spraying (we use a judicious bit of insecticidal soap to control aphids and a copper fungicide for rusts). And this is what I found: On the ground under our apricot tree (the one we worked so, so hard to nurture through the spring freeze ; the one that was loaded with tiny green apricots) are a pile of half-eaten apricots. This sin't just a June drop or wind damage. You can see the bite marks: One apricot is left on the tree. The rest are gone.  Gone. Eaten by squirrels . This is my assumption, at least, after some internet research revealed just how much those horrifying tree rats like apricots. And it's not just the apricots. The squirrels (or possibly birds, but this seems doubtful) ate every last nectarine, and all but two Granny Smith apples. So from four trees that were bearing their first fruit this season, we have three pieces of fru...

As we started out on our hike last Sunday, we noticed something strange in the front yard: Can you recognize the furled, pointy leaves sticking out of the still-dormant grass? There are actually two in the photo above — you have to look carefully sometimes to find them. Those are tulips, and they were popping out of the lawn all over . Hmm … any guesses on how they got there? Squirrels , I tell ya. Goddamned, no good squirrels. So it looks like they got a hold of a lot of our tulips last fall before I covered them up. According to the post that I just linked you to, I planted 100 tulips last fall. Well, I counted the ones that are up so far, and there were 13. Not good. So I spent yesterday afternoon doing a search and rescue over the lawn, pacing up and down with my eyes on the ground to dig up all the tulips that the squirrels had replanted. Some were easier to find than others: By the time I was done, I had 17 in my bucket to replant. Now, there...

Yesterday, January 7 , it hit 55 degrees. It was a lovely day for a walk and for puttering around. On my way down to the mailbox to send a DVD back to Netflix, I noticed this in the perennial border: Siberian iris shoots have been popping up throughout this warm autumn — anywhere there was a bit of root left from all my perennial border renovations this summer, those tough little guys sent up tiny new leaves. But if you look more closely, you'll see something else: Yep, that's a tulip. In January. In Massachusetts. So I gave a much closer look to the border, and there's also new growth on what should be a dormant delphinium: Some daffodils are also making an early appearance: So the good news here is that the goddamn squirrels didn't get all of my bulbs in their digging frenzy earlier this fall. That had been a very real fear. There are tulips poking their noses out all over the border, so a whole lot survived the marauding hordes. But that...

Earlier this month I got a giant box in the mail. The fall-planted bulbs arrived! Here in all their un-planted glory are 100 tulips, 250 daffodils, and 300 Siberian squill. That's a LOT of bulbs! For a refresher, you can check out what the flowers will look like when they come up in April here . As excited as I was to get these in the mail, it was hard to motivate myself to get them planted. The weather was actually too good to do it over Columbus Day weekend — we were out enjoying ourselves doing other things. On Monday of the long weekend, though, I finally made myself get out there and start digging, with the help of Kirk and a young friend of Jonas' (who was a quite interested and very helpful). Daffodils need to be planted about 6 inches down, so that means driving the spade or hand trowel to the hilt. I am too cheap to buy a special bulb-planting tool that won't get much use, so this was pretty labor-intensive and kind of hard on the hands. After many bulbs ...