Gardening Woes

I love to garden and truly miss it during the winter. Our fruits and vegetable gardens have been spectacular the last couple of years. Last year we had 13 tomato plants that yielded over 225 pounds of tomatoes. We were busy harvesting and making sauce and paste through October.

All was looking good for 2014 in the garden. Tomatoes, peppers and eggplants were in cages, green beans were running up poles, and corn was on schedule to be knee high for Fourth of July.  Then Nature hit!

We got 20 minutes of hail on June 16th. In January we don’t get 20 minutes of hail! This hail came down in sheets. It was big, it was cold and the temperature dropped 15 degrees so it actually accumulated on the ground.

The shade cloth saved the lettuce crop. Who knew putting shade cloth up for your lettuce can double when hail strikes!

Our blueberries were netted but unlike the shade cloth they still got plummeted by the hail. Now I have blueberries with what looks to be age spots. The flowers have a white cast on the leaves and the flowers were blown off. The corn, the cabbage, the peppers, the tomatoes and the eggplants were stripped of leaves and buds.

I have weathered garden hazards before like deer, teenagers, firecrackers and toddlers but escaped with minor damage. This storm, which 1-mile down the road did not hit, almost caused me to cry! The cantaloupe and watermelon plants just died. The pickling cucumbers are on life support. It is times like this that I am happy I do not farm for a living!

Has nature ever devastated your garden? Do you feel my pain?

The Plight of the Urban Gardener

   My husband and I are big vegetable gardeners. If I am spending time growing something it better give me food. Sure we plant the flowers too, but that is just decoration for the vegetables. We have about 9000 square feet combined of raised beds garden in the front yard, back and side yards. The back and side yards are fenced, the front yard on my corner lot is not. We live up a ridge from the High School and on the corner of a walkers’ path. What this all means is that lots of folks walk by our home and yard.


Scene of the Crime




 I fight off the squirrels and the birds, as well as nosey neighbors but a new more difficult prey has besought my front garden, the teenager. Last Saturday around 8 AM my husband heard some talking and giggling out front. Being the nosey, alert person, he encountered 2 teenage girls with 3 of our squash in their arms! He asked them what they were doing and they told him they picked the squashes because it didn’t look like we were using them. My husband showed good sense in not explaining that squash need to stay on the vine until it dies down, but instead told them he wanted 2 back and gave them one. He also instructed them not to smash it. I thought he handled it well.

You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce where the smashed squash remains 2 blocks away all over the road came from! These squash are a mutant of acorn and butternut and pumpkin, which I happened to plant all in the same bed. I said I love to garden not that I am very good at it! They are spherical shaped and green but turning orange and weigh about 4-5 pounds. I call them ‘Butt-Corns’. I have no idea how they will taste but we will eat them and we will like them. At any rate they are mine in my yard.

So if these teenage girls were not intimidated by a 6 foot tall man confronting them, the question remains how to protect our crops from this urban prey? I came up with a plan. I am yakking them to avoidance. That’s right; I have become the crazy lady in the corner house who starts talking and asking questions any time they walk past the house. Trust me I am not talking about anything that would engage them but I am giving the yak of urban legends; rabid squirrels, coyotes in the woods, and bona fide weirdoes in the neighborhood. It seems to be working. Yesterday I saw them walking on the other side of the street. I waved and asked them if they heard about the one arm homeless guy perving around the neighborhood? The kept on walking!

Butt-Corn Volunteers

Have you had your home egged, TP, or vandalized by teenagers? What would you do?