Best and Worst of my Garden - July 2012

I was up late watching the Olympic games and Breaking Bad (well , fell asleep halfway through that show) and my brain isn't totally focused yet, but I need to recap the Best/Worst of my little garden this month.

The "Worst" this month goes to the squirrels making off with my produce. It's actually just one squirrel, the mangy brown one that's torturing me. I was about to call a truce and then I found this on my deck. {Serenity now......}

The "Best" of my garden this month is that other parts of my garden are doing OK. The peppers are growing nicely. (These habaneros are growing upside down!)

My tomatoes (the ones that the squirrels have left alone) are blushing. (This picture is of the Marglobes, supposedly very good for making sauces. Can't wait to actually try them!)

And the ground cherry plants are coming along beautifully. After several false starts, the two seedlings that survived are growing strong and there is fruit on the branches.

Deb over at Deb's Garden wrote this lovely post about experiencing the garden, the elements, the weather, the soil, and being aware of it rather than just going through the motions of gardening. I often find myself falling into the trap of just getting my garden chores done so I can move on to something else involving air conditioning, but the garden is much more rewarding when I slow down and pay attention to what's going on. Gardening has taught me to be patient and trust nature (like with the ground cherries pulling through), to be flexible when things don't go as planned (like with the death of my potatoes and starting over), and I'm always amazed that a beautiful flower or vegetable or fruit can grow from a tiny seed. Despite the "Worsts", the "Bests" make gardening so rewarding!

Please link up below if you'd like to share your Best and Worst gardening experiences this month. I'm only going to visit garden sites for the next couple of weeks to avoid accidentally seeing the Olympic spoilers on the news sites.;)

Why I Have No Blueberries or Sunflowers

 {Giant mammoth sunflowers growing in containers, 2011}

First -- a big Thank You to the lovely Tammy of Casa Mariposa for the kind words of solidarity in my on-going Battle Against the Squirrels. Thanks for the support and encouragement, Garden Sister! If you'll indulge me, I have one more sad story to tell....

{The giant containers I usually use for sunflowers. This year they hold my Mortgage Lifter tomatoes.}

This is the first year that I will not have sunflowers in my garden.  We have successfully grown sunflowers in containers in years past, but this year I'm using those giant containers for my Mortgage Lifter tomatoes. However, I do still have some Teddy Bear sunflower seeds, and I saved one pot for those flowers. I wanted to have their sunny yellow blooms near my front door. But here we are in mid-July, and I still don't have sunflowers. Squirrels dug the seeds out of the pots every time I planted them. I'd find piles of dirt and holes in the pot, the bastards. They even climbed up on the deck and dug them out of the starter flats. I finally moved everything to a protected location, and when the seeds sprouted and were transplanted, I waited until the plants were big enough to move the pot to the front yard.

 {Here's a picture of the flowers I don't have in my garden.}

One morning I left the house and noticed that each Teddy Bear leaf had been perfectly snipped. I don't think that was the work of a squirrel, though. I think that was the little rabbit I've seen hopping around and destroying my neighbors' gardens. I'm having a hard time getting angry at this rabbit, though. I volunteer at an animal shelter and that means I sometimes care for and play with rabbits, and feed them treats. To me he's just a poor little homeless bunny trying to survive in the wild, scary DC suburbs. What's a couple of leaves here and there? Besides, the flowers are coming back, sort of...

So here's the double standard: I have no such sympathy for those little rodent squirrels. When I was younger I used to laugh when my friends told me stories about their parents and grandparents flipping out over squirrels in their garden and trapping them and dropping them off across county lines.  Old people are so weird!, I used to think. Well now I'm an old person, and I TOTALLY get it! The rabbit may have only caused damage to my Teddy Bear leaves, but (as I mentioned in a previous post) the squirrels climb up on the deck and getting into my raised beds and are tearing up everything!!  Take my blueberry plants, for example. My husband built this mesh net around the blueberries to protect them from the birds and squirrels.  One day I saw that some of the berries were starting to turn bluish-purple, and they were almost ready for harvesting. I went back the next day to harvest them, and they were gone! Plucked right off the vine. Something had chewed a hole through the net. We fixed it and waited for a few other berries to ripen. A couple of days later I  went to harvest the berries, and I caught a squirrel red-handed!!! Or blue-handed, as it were. I swear that little jerk had blue juice on his face and he gave me the finger as he slipped through the gaps in the fence.

 

My husband then put a wire fence and some boards in the back against the wooden fence (you can see the wide board on the left). That took care of the gaps by the ground, but the squirrels were still climbing up through the top gaps to get the berries. Last weekend, we just pulled the net and boards down. All the berries have been eaten, so what's the point in keeping them up?

As I write this post and reflect on everything, I can't help but feel a teeny tiny bit of admiration at their persistence. I wonder if their moms gave them "If at first you don't succeed, try again" speeches. I wonder if I would be so persistent in going after something I really want if someone kept putting up obstacles (and hoped I would die). Also, there's a McDonald's not too far from my neighborhood. Sometimes I smell that wonderful fried potato smell when I'm working in the garden. I've even seen birds flying by with fries in their beaks, and I've seen squirrels carrying brown things in their paws, probably buns or nuggets or hash browns. I am impressed that these critters would want to balance their diets with some healthy foods.

 So now that this is all out of my system, I'm just going to let it go....(until next year).

Sunflower Setback

Chianti hybrid sunflowers in 2010 garden

We grow sunflowers every year. Last year we grew giant mammoth and Chianti hybrid varieties. The Chianti hybrids were so pretty with their deep red blooms that I absolutely wanted to grow them again this year. The giant mammoth and Chianti seedlings started to sprout a couple of weeks ago.  When I went to check on their progress a couple of days ago, I saw that they had all been cut at the base and were lying there in the soil, dead. Squirrels had dug holes in the soil and just clipped the seedlings out.

When I was younger I thought squirrels were so cute. I couldn't understand why my friends' parents and grandparents hated them and set traps for them so they could drive the squirrels miles away and release them somewhere else. Well, now I understand the anti-squirrel feelings. Squirrels have eaten my strawberries, thrown mulch and dirt all over my deck, and dug up tulip bulbs in the past. And now they've attacked my precious sunflower seedlings!

Chianti hybrid seedlings before

Mammoth seedlings and the two flowers that we started early and took off. The bigger ones weren't disturbed, but the small seedlings were all yanked out.

I replanted both the Mammoth and Chianti varieties, and we're going to cover the containers with mesh, similar to what we're using to protect the strawberry patch, until they're big and sturdy enough that the squirrels won't bother them.

squirrel attack--all seedlings removed. you can sort of see them laying in the dirt

Interestingly, the two giant mammoth sunflower plants that have already grown up are fine (see picture above). This year we're also growing teddy bear sunflowers, and the squirrels left those alone.

teddy bear 

I'm linking to Cottage Flora Thursday today.

The problem with strawberries...

...is that birds and squirrels like to eat them!

I went outside to water my plants the other day and my neighbor came outside and said, "There was a squirrel digging into one of your plants and eating something red."  She sloshed her wine glass in the general direction of my strawberry plant, and sure enough, 2 of the 3 strawberries were missing. Curse the squirrel!

We've had bad luck with our strawberry plants.  We're growing them in containers, and one set had bad soil or something, and the plants died quickly. The other plants just didn't take off. They had blossoms but no fruit, then finally I saw three little berries growing on a plant on Saturday, and I left them there, thinking they might get bigger. Three days later--gone. :(

My strawberries, June 19. At least I have a picture for memories.

Last strawberry standing--of course they left the funky one.

These pictures are all that remains.