I have managed to grow some summer vegetables after all! At one point I didn’t think I was going to harvest my own squash until the year 2012 at the earliest but in the last 2 days I’ve picked 5 Romanesco Zucchinis, 2 handfuls of green beans and 4 Ronde de Nice Zucchinis. It was wonderful. They are beautiful. I wish I’d had the time to take pictures but it’s been a bit busy around here. We roasted them on the BBQ last night for dinner and they were marvelous.
After planting our first bed with beans and melons I was directed to plant squash and cucumbers in the second bed. It seemed to me that it was all too late in the season to be planting any of this stuff at all, but who was I to question the Devas I thought to myself? Here is the first bed that was planted in mid July.
And here is what the area looked like before we started construction. I like the comparison. I like seeing how far we have come.
I am glad I did follow the Deva’s instructions. Now I have 2 beds full of summer goodies that are just starting to be ripe for the picking and we have a month left of 80-degree daytime temps to keep things moving. Before it is all said and done we will have harvested 3 types of zucchini, yellow squash, 5 types of cucumber, 2 types of dried beans, 2 types of green beans, purple beans and edamame. There is a slight chance of some melons and I will be really happy when they materialize. Here are the two summer vegetable beds in all of their glory.
But wait, that’s just the summer vegetables! Since planting the summer stuff in July we have been working on getting the fall beds ready. I have now planted 5 beds with fall vegetables. There are also over 100 seeds planted in 6-paks for placement into the beds later in October.
We have 3 types of broccoli, kohlrabi, cauliflower, radish, 4 types of carrots, red Russian kale, golden chard, red chard, red cabbage, bok choy, 4 types of lettuces, spinach and my favorite, brussel sprouts! I love to eat these little babies and I can’t wait to grow them. Have you ever seen them growing?
Are these puppies weird or what? They look like they have cabbages growing on the tops and yet we eat the small buds growing along the stalks. I can’t wait to try out some new recipes for these.
We have been dealing with critter control this year. Some of you may know of our issues with the raccoons of late mostly surrounding the issue of their eating Daphne’s cat food. The short story is that they are quite smart and nothing we did seemed to outsmart them. We went so far as to make some “hot” appetizers hoping that it would dissuade them from every wanting cat food again. But we must have a Japanese-American raccoon because the cat food encrusted wasabi balls we made were eaten all up. Twice. I can almost see them licking their cute little fingers and sighing, “Aaaaah”
Finally, we just started locking all of our sliding doors (as they easily opened them and tromped through the house one night) and placed cinder blocks in front of the cat door (it closes but does not “lock” and they opened this pretty easily and when I blocked it off from the inside they got pissed off and all but tore off the flexible plastic door). The next day when I removed the cinder blocks so that Daphne could come and go as she pleased I noticed a bunch of red muddy raccoon prints. First I noticed them on the sliding door that is next to the cat door and then I saw them 4 feet from the ground on the white wall of the house. I could visualize them standing on the top of the cinder blocks slapping at the house yelling, “Let me in (Raccoon Explitive)!”
One of the issues with vegetable gardens is keeping enough for you to eat. The beds are lined with galvanized metal cloth to keep the underground populations at bay. I see the vole holes in the walkways and mole tunnels around the edges of the beds but they can’t get through. We have never seen rabbits so that isn’t an issue at this time but I will be securing the bottom perimeter of the fencing soon just in case. Our main concern has been the deer that come through the property on a regular basis. The cost of extending the 5 foot fence another 2-4 feet just wasn’t in the budget but I had read somewhere that deer have depth perception issues. So instead of spending hundreds of dollars I spent less than $25 and purchased some wire, shelf brackets, and reflective ribbon. Here is the deer fencing I have installed.
It may be difficult to see at first, but I installed the brackets on the upright posts and strung wire between the posts, then I tied pieces of the reflective tape onto the wire. Now I know the deer love bean plants as they continually ate all of the leaves off the 3 plants I tried to grow in containers last year and now I have about 60 bean plants which have all managed to stay intact. I have also learned that they like grape leaves so I am going to make sure to cultivate our grape vines for them, especially since they are on the other side of the house, away from the garden. I am happy to even sacrifice my roses for them as long as they stay away from our garden.
I am not exactly sure why they have left our garden alone because a friend of mine has her garden surrounded by a 7 foot tall fence with the bottom staked into the ground and still they have all but destroyed hers. My guess is that I am continuing to do this as a co-creative partnership with Nature and along with the Nature Sanctuary I set aside on the property, it is keeping things in balance.
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