Port Potager

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...

At first I wanted to blame the kids for this: After all, this young broccoli plant is at the end of the row, and in a spot where balls from the yard have been known to fly. But a closer look shows some teeth marks, I think. And the there's this cabbage from yesterday: And this denuded baby bean stalk too: I haven't seen anything around except chipmunks. They are living in the perennial border and don't seem to have bothered with anything there at all. They do use a drainage pipe under the screened-in porch as an expressway to the back yard, though, so maybe they've been sneaking grocery trips in the garden without us noticing much. Looks like it's time to break out the bird netting and row cover fabric for the season. The netting worked last year on the beans, and once they were bigger, no animals bothered with them any more. Now I know what I'm doing in the garden today, I guess.