Fran Farmer wrote:
songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:
(snip) I have finally mananged to stop him
ripping out my verbasums now as I finally corrected his
misidentification of them.

yes, living as a cooperative between more than one
person is a challenge. i lose garden spaces or plant
diversity here when Ma decides to smother a garden or
mows down some of my plants and it doesn't get replanted.
right now i'm going to lose another garden this year,
but pick up a few more next year or the year after.
depends upon what i can get done.

there's probably a few dozen rabbits

Wow. Lucky yu haaving so few. one night we left 8 dead one son the
grass that had been shot. All were gone next morning and we still have
more bunnies than we know how to get rid of. (Lord - look at that.
Ending a sentence with a preposition! I'm disgusted with myself).

we do not have nearly as much land as you
do at 0.74 hectare.

why wouldn't you bury them in the gardens?

i am trying to encourage predators to come get them
so i don't hunt them as long as they stay out of the
fenced gardens.


around here and
i surely don't need any more, but our main veggie gardens
are fenced and don't get too many rabbits in them. the
fence is more to keep the deer out than the other creatures.
i have more damage from woodchucks that climb through the
fence. i hope i've discouraged those enough this past
year that we don't have them back this year. we'll see.
the birds we have are not too damaging to veggie or
my strawberry production, they get at some of the bushes
that have berries, but we don't eat those berries so
they are welcome to them. no major fruit trees growing
either as of yet, so all birds are welcome here. if
they eat a few of the strawberries i don't mind, there
are enough, they make up for it in bugs they eat.

We have our strawbs eaten by the lizards and they never seem to suffer
any damage from birds. Our fruit trees are a different matter. Leave
one unnetted and the cockatoos can strip it in hours.

do the lizards climb fences? we have no big lizards
around here, but we do have plenty of snakes. only one
type is poisonous and it is rare in open land like ours,
we can find them in swampy places about a half mile from
here. as of yet, no sign of them. the rest of the snakes
feast on the mice, worms, and ground squirrels. a lot of
people who come visit us and walk through the gardens are
afraid of snakes so i have to warn them that they are
about. don't want people to freak out. the fenced
strawberry patch is surrounded by field stones and the
snakes like the warmth they provide and the fact that it
is a raised garden so it captures more of the morning
light. many times when i'm picking i'll have one or more
snakes moving around in that garden. they like our many
rock piles we have around too. with the many mice and
ground squirrels i'm always glad to see snakes. i know
the ground squirrel dens are used by the snakes too.

Ma is pretty good about snakes and doesn't freak out, but
she really doesn't like the mice or the ground squirrels.
it's taken me quite a few years to get her from wanting to
poison or trap them all the time. now i only am setting
traps inside the garage and garden shed. before when the
house wasn't sealed up so well i had to set traps around
the outside of the house to keep them from getting back in
the walls. now i'm hoping i can avoid that as it is a
waste of time, there will always be mice around, i don't
mind letting them do their thing out in the gardens, they
don't do any damage i've ever noticed.


i'm actually surprised by how well the gardens outside
the fenced areas do, some do get raided at times, but
i rarely lose an entire garden's production. planting
multiple crops, some intermixed, etc. seems to keep them
from finding everything. these sort of experiments
continue as i get time for them.

One of our garden writers recommends that sort of planting. You might
find her site interesting:
http://www.jackiefrench.com/cal.html

i need a lot more patience than i have at the moment
to read it.


today i got a first look at the south drainage situation
with the melting snow coming off quickly. the ground is
still frozen and the water is coming across the surface.
not too likely we'll have any flooding this spring as we
don't have a lot of snow cover and the forecast isn't
pointing at heavy rains yet. the nights are still mostly
near or below freezing so that is actually a good thing
as that will keep the trees from budding out too soon.
i was worrying the other day that it was getting too
warm too quickly again, but so far so good.

The pics you've shown of the flooding in your garden in the past
certainly explain why you'd be worried.

before when it was a fallow field i didn't care as
much, but now that it is being farmed and sprayed i
don't want that water going across the gardens.

the run off may be mostly done already, the snow has
been melting quickly. will check it out today and mark
some fine adjustment levels if i can.


queen-annes-lace is one of those weeds that will colonize
our clay soil, but the cover is so poor that i don't really
like them, instead i'm adding fennel which is much more
edible and provides more shade. there's no danger of there
being too little of the lace as it abounds along every
roadside like the dandelion or chickory. i'm also adding
short round carrots to the mix of plantings this season.
they might work in our heavy soils. we'll see what
happens... every season is a new adventure...

Ain't that the truth!

i'm ready! with how much snow has melted off i can
do a little walking around and seeing if any of the early
flowers are starting to poke up. they are always a cheerful
sight after the winter. and some of those earliest bloomers
were pollenated last year and i've put the seeds in some
spots i can watch for sprouts. i always enjoy seeing what
happens from that sort of thing.


songbird