My sucky, sucky year.

[blueadzuki]

Hi all.

Well, as customary the time has come to report on the current state of my garden, now that 80 or so % of what I am planning to plant has been planted (I think only the corn and the soybeans are left, and they'll go in as soon as I turn the main patch and confirm the round patch is basically fallow (see below), And the state is...........horrific, worse that it has EVER been in years before.

I am used to squirrels and chipmunks taking their egregious toll each year, but this one they seem to have gone on the warpath and determined that NO plant shall escape their ravening (or nearly no) to whit

As far as I can tell, ALL of the cow peas have been devoured, both those that went in as seed and those that went in as sprouts.

The rice bean situation is nearly as bad. Despite basically planting out my whole supply of seed (which amounts to at leas a pound, or several thousand individual seeds) I have only seen a few sprouts show up and of those, only ONE was still in place as of the last time I checked.

For some reason the critters also targeted and decimated where I planted my "wild" grasspeas (you'd think that with the crop seeds so abundant, something of more ornamental use would have been passed up, but there is no accounting for taste I guess, even among animals) In fact, it was so bad I gave up an re-planted the space with some of my adzuki experiment (I did dig up the odd grasspea seed as I did this, which made me contemplate stopping, but when I looked each one had had it's above ground growing tip chewed off at ground level, and so would not have grown anyway. I have a few grasspea seeds left (maybe 5-10) But I think I'll wait until next year to try them (and pot them until they are sizable plants an no longer animal attractive)

The Azukis are slightly more positive. They went in later and in large pots (which make them a touch harder to get to) so a few of those are up (I counted two or three already, and they are only about a week or so in)

There actually are 1-2 peas that have escaped their attention as well, though whether the weather will stay favorable for pea flowering I do not know.

The vetches are basically untouched, but again, not knowing what kind of vetches there are (this was a use up year, so there are at least a dozen different species/varieties there.) I have no idea which if any will flower here.

The patio stuff is a much more hopeful scene. All of the beans are currently intact (the pots and pedestals help a lot). I also have a pot with some chickpeas going (though again, if the weather suddenly turns warm, I may not get a crop off those). Two pots of eating Plectranthus (one variegated one standard) to be bumped up to three when I get back out there (the common Spanish Thyme I go initially is a very small, weak, and slow growing plant, so I got a stronger one)

Two pots this year for seed I can't identify. One (which has something I thought was some sort of cucurbit) does not seem to have had anything come up (though I am keeping it fallow, one the off chance the one or two sprouts I think are common weeds prove to be what I sowed.) The other has had several thing come up, and at least one (something in the mustard family) is about to flower.

NEXT
As I said, the next (and last) planting job will be to put the corn and soybeans in. I'm planning to combine them into a sort of two of the three sisters plan (I thought of doing all three, but no one in the house likes squash or pumpkin much, so I don't plant it, and I think cucumbers would suffer if I just let them run around on the ground without a trellis. Maybe I'll throw in some watermelons or such. Actually I DO have that odd melon seed I got from Richters......)

On my dads advice, if it turns out that there are no more rice beans coming up in the circle patch, or only a few (I'm giving them two more weeks before I call what has come up what there is) I'm going to turn the area into a second corn soy patch. Maybe having two will confuse the animals enough to allow some of it to make it through. Who knows, with my kooky wind patterns, maybe planting my corn in a circle will result in better pollination.

[steev]

Critter predation; yes, such a problem here in Oakland, too; the second batch of chestnuts, generously sent me by castanea, was cleaned out by rats or squirrels that got into the cage; dirty bastards. At least on the farm I can shoot rabbits and ground-squirrels, but it's a tad dicey in an urban area.

The deer used to run on rails through the farm, morning and evening, but no more, since the mountain lions came back; I'm glad the cats are back, though I don't feel as free to wander about at night; I get enough exercise when the sun shines, so no big loss.

As a zoologist and apex predator, I respect our cousins who share our rung on the ladder, understanding their role and value in the ecosystem, even to the health of those on which they prey. Would that our role were as measured and sustainable as theirs.

[blueadzuki]

Sometimes I wish I was Doctor Doolittle, so I could simply go to them and say "Look, I dump MOUNTAINS of excess seed in safe places on the lawn which is FREE to you critters*. Can we strike a deal where you leave the little I actually put in the ground ALONE? If you keep this up, I might simply quit and then you won't have ANY seed to eat. It's really in both our interests."**

Yeah we are short of predators here too. We have a few hawks, and an owl or two (well, at least ONE owl, since I have seen it).

We also have the odd coyote, but while that is probably the best one for keeping things down (biggest, biggest appetite) squirrels and chipmunks are on the small side for them, and they tend to eschew them in favor of the rabbits (which are in small enough supply they are not a problem) and local pets (which is a good reason to not want them around much).

At least this year I got some fencing material for the corn. I doubt it will do diddly squat to keep the chipmunks and squirrels from taking seed and seedlings, but at least any stalks that make it through the assault can be protected from the deer and the raccoons (well, the deer at least, I imagine raccoons can just climb over fencing. But most of the corn I plant is tall, and not all that thick of stalk and our local raccoons are so filled with trash they tend to be too FAT to climb a stalk, and too lazy to try and bend one over.)




*That's something that really bugs me, when faced with the excess seed which is simply piled or spread on places in the lawn where I'm not planting anything and the stuff I have planted in the ground that needs digging up (the difference between usually being things of presumably no interest to animals, like seed color), they invariably go for the latter, and IGNORE the former. I've sometimes thought I would be better off reversing the piles and letting the animals plant my crops FOR ME (I often find volunteers from when they decided to cache excess) Except of course I'd then have no idea WHERE anything was.

** If you think I am making the problem worse by leaving excess seed out for the critters elsewhere, you are technically right. However as long as my neighbors keep feeding THEIR critters, the difference between what the population is now and what it would be if I stopped is negligible (we're small enough that the critters move between respective house plots freely)

[prairiegardens]

How extremely frustrating for you. To paraphrase someone or other, you seem to have a deficiency of weasels. It's possible to buy electric netting that is claimed will stop raccoons, whether it would help vs squirrels I've no idea, a high prey drive cat would likely be your best bet, if you could find one, at least for the smaller critters. It's fairly difficult to reliably domesticate a weasel, so they say.

[blueadzuki]

Wouldn't work, Cassia is great with people or dogs. But get her NEAR another cat and she'll go ballistic (and we firmly believe a cat is for life, so she has a home here forever)

In any case, our neighborhood has rules against aggressive pets (there are a lot of toddlers around, and any cat that can't at least TOLERATE being petted is a no-no.)

Ironically, Cassia LOVES to chase Chipmunks, she just stinks at catching them. Or more accurately, she is great at catching them but lousy at killing anything. The few times she has actually managed to do a mouse in, it's because she played with it so long the stress gave it a heart attack (I found one of her "playmates" under the sun room table last Monday. Dead as a door-nail, but no bite marks or signs of broken bones). Plus nine times out of ten she gets so involved in the chase she winds up running up a tree and we have to rescue her.

And forget about a high drive cat, if I have the space and money one day, I'm getting a bloody Caracal, something that's DESIGNED to hunt animals and can take care of any problem birds as well (I think I'd like to see a giant cat pull birds out of the air.) Heck, if it was legal, I'd bring in a frickin' mountain lion and take care of the deer as well. (the Indian maharajahs used to have trained hunting leopards, I wonder how hard it is to do that......)

[steev]

Have you ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree?

I had a cat that only went into the street once; he'd walked up the side of the house and found a strange dog was at the gate visiting our dog; in the resulting chase, he streaked across the street and went to the top of a telephone pole, where I saw him crouched as I was going to work; I figured I'd get him down when I got home, but he got down on his own.

[richardw]

That would be frustrating for you blueadzuki , seems we all have different problems to deal with, luckily my only Critter predation are the feathered flying type which i successfully dealt with every spring sowing thanks to secondhand vineyard birdnets. How would nets go for you, would squirrels and chipmunks bite through em?

[mjc]

May 26, 2017 14:42:49 GMT -5 richardw said:

That would be frustrating for you blueadzuki , seems we all have different problems to deal with, luckily my only Critter predation are the feathered flying type which i successfully dealt with every spring sowing thanks to secondhand vineyard birdnets. How would nets go for you, would squirrels and chipmunks bite through em?

No nets work against my 'feathered, flying type'...the come in 20++ lb sizes and go well with cornbread and sage stuffing...

In the past, I've planted strips of buckwheat well away from the garden areas, but I'm not sure that's going to work, this year, as there are more turkeys and they are both earlier and bolder than they've been in years past.

[blueadzuki]

May 26, 2017 14:42:49 GMT -5 richardw said:

That would be frustrating for you blueadzuki , seems we all have different problems to deal with, luckily my only Critter predation are the feathered flying type which i successfully dealt with every spring sowing thanks to secondhand vineyard birdnets. How would nets go for you, would squirrels and chipmunks bite through em?

Dig under them, more accurately/ A big problem with out property is that it is so up and down it is legitimately hard to get the garden anything close to level, there is always some point where the fence is dug into the ground shallow enough they can dig down and make a tunnel in. Actually there HAS to be, in the form of the door (a perfectly secure fence is kinda useless it if means I can't get in either to weed, or check or harvest at the end.

And yes, they will chew through the plastic mesh (and the holes in the chicken wire they sell around here are big enough chipmunks can just squeeze through them)

The door thing is also the reason I don't just buy a shitload of poles and make a palisade. Well, that and the fact a palisade would probably destroy the corn crop anyway (with no way for wind to get in, natural pollination would be poor, and total hand pollination would not be feasible for any significant amount of corn). Actually now that I think of it, it would probably destroy ANY crop, since in order to keep things from climbing over it I'd need to make a roof out of poles as well, and the plants would be boxed in in darkness (as a Jewish person with a little experience building sukkoth I am WELL AWARE that a roof of open branches makes for no protection from climbing critters.)

[steev]

Isn't "Sukkoth-tush" a Native American dish? Mormons might know.

[blueadzuki]

Close enough to sohquttahhash.

I'm trying to be philosophical about the whole thing. This year may be going down the tubes, but, going over things, I'm not sure if they is anything I ACTUALLY will be out of (as in "all seed used up, no more to be had). This year may have destroyed my whole supply of found owls eye cow peas but I fortunately did not include the ones I actually got from my plants last year, so I can still use those to recover next year. I can find more "Great Owl" with a little time and effort, ditto "Painter's Splash". Richter's still isn't out of Avakli so I can try again there.

Rice beans are going to be trickier since the amount of off color material has gone down dramatically this year (to the point where I suspect that it will only be a season or two before my own saved seed is the ONLY source I have for alternate colors). But I have a decent backlog of that, and the outside supply hasn't completely dried up. Plus less rice beans means more room for azukis and mungs (maybe I can even get around to those mothe bean trials I was planning.) Or maybe a chance to unravel the mystery limas (though by my rules, big beans have to swap for big beans, so limas would only get an extra shot in cases where common/runner beans failed.) Or even do some fava playing next year. One things is obvios, as long as I am a seed hunter I will NEVER run out of things to plant!

[steev]

There you go; we'll not run out of work until we run out of life and it won't be our concern, thereafter.

[blueadzuki]

Did the weekly casing today here is the update

1. There are now about eight rice bean seedlings in the stump. However none of them look particularly healthy. Either that, or they are all from the "wild" stuff which is smaller, but I am fairly sure that got planted on the other side (easy way to check tomorrow, I can just go and read the tag I put by them).

2. Two healthy looking sprout. In the tan spectrum azukis, unfortunately. Don't get me wrong I am grateful for any plants I get at this point and I could luck out and have one or both of them be cream. However a big part of why I planted azukis this year was to definitively find out whether the green ones I find from time to time in my searches are a legitimate seed color or just tan spectrum ones that where harvested a little early. And to do that, I need some plants in the pot of GREEN azuki seed to come up, grow and set seed, and none has of yet. And since, as of this point, all the new off color material I have been getting in is on the mottled side of the spectrum, if I don't get something by seasons end, I'm not sure if I can repeat the experiment.

3. A new plant has shown up amid the mustardy things in the test pot (BTW I tasted a bit of leaf from one of those. I did not TASTE like mustard, but I don't know if mustard greens and mustard the plant you get the spice from are the same thing, or if seed mustard leaves taste of anything.). Long, linear and pale green. So I can have hope that once again I have sown a seed of that pink flowered campion I was so pleased with having come up last year.

4. One of the beans may be beginning to get a climbing vine, but it is a bit early to tell.

[steev]

Mustard greens are not the spice-seed plant.

All the off-color material I get is in the blue spectrum.

[blueadzuki]

Hmm, I didn't know you grew Azukis.

It's odd, you aren't the first person who has said they have bumped into blue adzuki beans. When I first found them, I thought they were one of the rarer colors (that's part of the reason I named myself after them). Maybe I should change my name to "black adzuki with red speckles" (which, as far as I can tell, really IS rare) or "pintoadzuki" (haven't seen one of those since college)