Once you accept your thirst for revenge has boiled over into a justification to doing something that is wrong, you can begin to look at the problem from another way. How do we make the garden undesirable for squirrels so we can all live in harmony? The two things i have come across, or have been pointed out to me are; planting marigolds and spraying Cayenne pepper.
Luckily there is a lot of squirrel friendly territory around here and an unlimited supply of peanuts, so the hope is we can define my vegetable garden as a net negative, and everybody can carry on. If i were to trap these guys and relocate them far far away, i believe i would be giving them a death sentence. If i were to put a family of life long fed free peanut and free house lodging squirrels out in the wild nature would make quick work of them. I wouldn't actually kill them but the proper relocation would... i guess i could swallow my science background and throw up a short term economic face and justify it, as we do so often as humans, but i like the mantra "see the wrong and then and change and they will see the change in you and learn".
What else have i learned lately: Lots of clay in the Portland soil. I bet you i could i could file a yard of sand into my garden in the fall, till it all in and that would help with the water seeping into the soil for better irrigation.
The last 2 days around here have reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit, which is apparently 32 degrees Celsius. So obviously i have been worried about my spinach... when it gets too hot the spinach wants to "bolt" meaning it senses sure death and tried to make seed as quickly as possible... So far so good.
The mason bees have 6 tubes plugged up but we had a bit of a setback today. A few prized mason bees got into the basement today, because the door was open by a blueberry bush. Clearly we can't have 2 quality bees out of commission on such a bright pollinating day so it took me a while to get them safely out which cut into my time to prepare for my mother-in law's arrival today. I had big plans for how the house was going to be a just shining, but then 2 of my star pollinators fell into the trap. For the record what you do is hold a towel up and use it as a barrier to guide the bee back towards the door that leads to the great outdoors. An old Robertson trick... dad and i would help bats find their way outside by holding up a sheet and cornering them towards a door (at the old Robertson cottage). Simple fools will say you can hit them with a tennis racket, and you can, but that's not really helping if you know what i mean.
Is it time to thin your carrots and beets? Perhaps you got lazy and planted too many seeds in the rows cause it seemed like too much work at the time. If you did then now is the time to think about thinning the next time you are weeding. Try to envision the plant and see the space it might need to grow into a fine edible specimen... In fact my garden needs a good weeding... starting to see some grasses and other undesirable plants to take hold. I'll draw the line on killing weeds... It's OK to kill weeds, just don't be a dumb ass and use herbicides (chemical weed killers), know for sure that the world needs no more chemicals poured on it's soil.
Fire in tomatoes, you started from seed a while ago, get you damn beans in the ground, and water water water. He who waters their garden gets plump vegetables, he who forgets learns a lesson in plant drought development.
Still haven't seen many honeybees... what have we done?
No comments:
Post a Comment