Promise
A week in the woods was the death stroke to much of the garden. Without me here everyday to spray liquid fence or cayenne pepper or soap spray, a good deal of the garden was descimated by critters. And I mean descimated. My new green bean patch- gone. 40-some little sticks are poking out to the sky with nary a leaf in sight. My lettuce was completely shorn off, and most of the beet greens are gone too. I may get a beet or two yet though. The newly planted kale was digested by something from the insect world- and that is not a cabbage looper- I know what those are. The scarlet runner beans had their stems snapped by rough winds, and the pole beans had their stems eaten through about 8 inches up. I have about 4 pole bean plants still chugging along.
The butternut squash is looking okay, as is the delicata, but there are no fruit yet- as there are no fruit on the pumpkin. The melons are all growing very slowly, and I don’t expect they will bear fruit, really. The tomatillos are growing and pushing blossoms, but they’re not getting pollinated and are not setting fruit at all. The peppers are mostly intact yet, although the fruit they bear is small.
The pots that I recently planted with chard, kale, lettuces and cucumbers have been obliterated by squirrels. I put fresh dirt in the pots, and the squirrels proceeded to dig, dig, dig. With a nut tree in the yard, they are constantly looking for places to bury their plunder. I wish we could get rid of that nut tree.
But then there are these.
Those are on one of my Black From Tula plants.
And these are on one of my Woodle Orange plants.
And this is my Brave General.
Then, as I was tying up a few more branches on one of my plants, I spied this little fella below.
My trusty Sungold that I took from a sucker from those plants in my house. My Sungold plant gave me my very first ripe tomato. As I popped this gem into my mouth and savored the delicious pop of the skin and the sweetness of the juice, I experienced promise. This one little tomato speaks of promises to come. The rest of my garden may have succumbed to the never-ending parade of squirrels and rabbits, but I will have a tomato harvest. It may be modest, at best, but I will enjoy tomatoes of all shapes, sizes and colors, and I will enjoy every single one.
In the meantime, plans are being made. Next years garden will have to have fencing. In multiple places. The beds are going up. We need to get away from tree roots galore, so we’re going up a good foot or so. Where the existing bed heights are, we will attach fencing in-ground to prevent burrowing critters from digging up. And then every garden bed will have a fence- and depending on the bed, a system in place for floating row cover as well. We are trying to decide the best lay-out, but I have to confess, other than the tomatoes, I’m looking forward to starting over. It’s rather saddening to walk out to the garden and take a peek. Even my sage plant has met an untimely demise. How did that happen? I have no idea, but just like that, the plant is void of life.
Next year, the garden will be wonderful, but for the remainder of this year, I will be concentrating my efforts completely on tending and enjoying the tomato patch.
Bummer about the rest of the garden 🙁 I was wondering if you were going to have to fence everything in or not.
I am VERY jealous about the sungold though! What size was it? My sungold are huge, and you probably could pop them in your mouth whole but that would be a big mouthful, almost bordering on small “regular” tomato size.
Mine was smaller than that- what I would consider a normal size for a sungold, which I usually find to be a bit smaller than standard cherry tomatoes- but a little bigger than a grape tomato.
We just didn’t have a way to set up a fence with much of the garden this year. We need to re-do a lot… it will be quite a bit of work, and we’ll have to adjust the way the beds are laid out now.
Seriously, there have to be at least half-a-dozen different rabbits who come to our yard- and we’ve even nabbed a few with pellets.
Why in the world does nothing eat tomato’s? I don’t get it, LOL. Fence, fence, fence, we already discussed that one. You can eliminate squirrels the same way you did your ground squirrels you had in Seymour, HINT HINT. Otherwise I have a very cool contraption that works quite well when teamed up with some peanut butter, remind me and I will hook you up. Just be prepared to set up a small “critter graveyard” when using it. First year gardening in a new location is always rather difficult, but the good news is you are already planning for next year, which has promise in itself. On the Sungold front, we have been consuming quite a few of them from that same mother plant you had. Nothing in the world better than that first one of the year!!! Keep your head up, start building beds this fall for early season crops next year, and the rest will take care of itself.
I know, I know. We probably have 30+ squirrels in the yard. The neighbor is trapping the red ones- which are the ones that burrow. I’ve thought long and hard about getting out the squirrel swimming pool… I’m waiting for Andy to be working someplace where they can be, uh, taken care of after their swimming lesson.
I have had about half a dozen of my Sungolds so far (also from Erika), and everything else in my garden is doing great (except for the radishes which I planted too late in the year). I have had at least a dozen cukes already, several carrots, and my two melon plants are taking over my back yard, with 4 or 5 confirmed fruits at another 30 or so blossoms yet.
I am finally blushing! The large golden king has started to turn, as well as a sungold from my potted plant and a sungold from my rooted plant. I can’t believe the size difference in the tomatoes between those two plants. Hopefully tomorrow stays rain free so I can get some pictures posted.