On 3/19/2018 5:58 PM, Terry Coombs wrote:
On 3/19/2018 5:10 PM, Muggles wrote:
On 3/19/2018 8:16 AM, Terry Coombs wrote:
On 3/18/2018 10:18 PM, songbird wrote:
Terry Coombs wrote:

...fence...

Â*Â*Â* i would have went 1ft on the ground and 3ft up.
rabbits will do a little climbing and groundhogs
will too.Â* the electric fence will help.Â* Â* we
don't have that fancy technology here yet.Â* not
sure i'll ever do that, but some day i may...
Â*Â* There's a 'lectric wire right at the top edge of the chicken wire ...
I figger they'll be well grounded when they touch that one .


Â*Â* Â* Things is beginnin' to pop around here , the bees are building up
for
the spring flow , seedlings are (mostly) coming along nicely , and
we're
getting just about the right amount of rain at the right time . Got 29
strawberry plants in the ground with landscape fabric as a weed
barrier
, 2 kinds of lettuce , bok choi , and green onions in the ground and
well mulched with straw and preps for the rest coming along . I sure
hope this is the year for outrageously huge crops , the wife thinks I
need to just give up since the production has been so abysmal the last
couple of years ...
Â*Â*Â* diversity and persistance will get some return, but
last year wasn't the best here either for some crops
(especially the beans which i grow the most).Â* i just
assume that some percentage of what gets planted will
be animal food.Â* last year they got 99% of the
edamame soybeans and the three remaining plants had
some chewing from rabbits.Â* the chipmunks that ate
those soybeans pretty much ignored all the rest of
the bean plantings.Â* only minimal sampling of those.

Â*Â*Â* i'd hate to be up against bear.Â* deer, chipmunks,
groundhogs and grackles are the worst i have to
contend with (and mice in the walls and in my car
but that's not garden related, mostly...).Â* the
raccoons as of yet do not get into most of what
we plant other than uprooting a few here or there
if they think there's some goodies under them (they
smell the fertilizers used by the greenhouse for
the starts).Â* as of yet the raccoons have not dug
up any of the worms/worm compost i put under the
plants even if it is only an inch or two below
the surface of the soil.Â* i top it with plain
garden soil and that seems to not attract them
enough so they don't disturb them going for an
easy feast (thousands of worms per planting).
i hope they don't read...Â*

Â*Â*Â* there's a vast number of other creatures around
but as of yet they are minor and temporary when
they are noticed at all (skunks, minks, muskrats,
fox, possums, ...).Â* i'm hoping there will never
be a large feral pig population around here.Â* in
some other wilder areas they are about, but the
closest i've ever heard of one getting to here
was 3 miles away.Â* there's a lot of open land and
people with guns around here.Â* too bad they don't
get more of the deer.


Â*Â*Â* songbird
Â*Â*Â*Â* We've had possums , rabbits , armadillos , and raccoons , but no
ground hogs yet . The bear thing I suspect was just a chance occurrence
, they tend to stay a little more out in the woods as a rule . Feral
hogs are not here yet , but have been sighted within a couple of miles
of us - those will end up in the freezer if I see them . I haven't grown
worms , we seem to have a pretty good population since I quit treating
the ground for chiggers and ticks - that's a trade-off , I hate ticks
(ever since I had Lyme Disease ...) with a passion . Ground squirrels
are a potential problem , but we now have a cat - she just showed up one
day - and she's a hunter . She has thinned the small rodent population
and the dog likes her (70 pound dog playing with a 5 pound cat makes for
some amusing scenes) , I guess we'll let her stay .

We have a neighborhood feral cat that the neighbor has been feeding off
and on so it has decided our block is it's domain.Â* My husband thinks it
may be sleeping under our house and getting in through a small hole, but
he also said he hasn't seen any mice at all in the house or around the
house, so I guess the cat is eating everything it can find!

Â* Miss Kitty isn't feral , but doesn't like to be held , and will only
take a little petting before she jets off . That's just right for us .
We feed her , but not necessarily enough to totally meet her needs .
Some may disapprove , but she also manages to catch and eat an
occasional bird . I call that natural selection ... and it hasn't seemed
to affect the local population other than to make them more watchful .


We used to have an orange tabby cat that was strictly and outdoor cat.
He'd catch birds every now and then, but one time he caught a some sort
of animal, either a gopher or a large rat, in the back yard. I saw it
out the kitchen window and by the time I got out the back door to
dispose of the thing the cat had half of it eaten! ugh! I just walked
away and let him finish. Tiger looked like he was pregnant with a
litter 10 kittens for a week after eating that thing, too. He wasn't
meowing for food for a while, that's for sure.
--
Maggie