Garden Blogging

I got a wild hair up my arse today and splurged on some cube steaks for dinner tonight. I had sides of potatoes and salad. Everyone commented that the salad was especially good. “What did you do different in the salad, today, mom?”

“Well, how about home grown lettuce, radishes, and green onions fresh from the garden?”

Actually, the green onions aren’t ready to pick yet, but I knocked a couple over while I was hoeing today, so I threw them in with the lettuce and radishes.

My garden almost wasn’t this year. I had a veggie garden for the first time in several years, last year. I had gotten discouraged in the past from critters eating everything, and from year after year of unsuccessful tomatoes, (I have walnut trees). But completely by accident, last summer, I discovered an area of the yard that is far enough away from the walnut trees not to be affected. So I was able to grow tomatoes for the very first time in 10 years, successfully. Late in the summer, however, the critters had discovered its bounty, and had started helping themselves to everything they could get their paws on, including my tomatoes. The culprits? Rabbits, raccoons, and woodchucks. The damn woodchucks will take big bites right out of your pumpkins.

I’ve always resisted getting a fence, because it seemed like too much of a hassle and expense, but this year, when I saw my lettuce, and my peas (that I planted in March) getting eaten every day, never making it more than a couple of inches off of the ground before getting nibbled down to stubs, I decided to make my husband put up a fence.

Wow, what a difference it made. You could see the results almost immediately, my lettuce actually started growing, and the tomatoes that I had started from seed indoors, and were going nowhere, started shooting up. My husband went out at night with a flashlight to check on the garden for several nights in a row after he put up the fence. The rabbits were out there circling the garden trying to figure out a way to get in. The little bastids!

My peas were goners so I planted green beans in their place.

Should have put up the fence a long time ago.

And now, thankfully, we are starting to enjoy fresh veggies from the garden.