I absolutely LOVE this time of year! In our area, May is the starting point of gardening. Before we moved to this house almost 8 years ago, I had a beautiful garden. I canned quarts and quarts of beans, beets, tomatoes, pickles, relish and peppers. I never had a fence and very rarely had a “critter problem”.
I’ve been very sad the last few years as I’ve tried to have the same kind of garden here. We moved in after gardening season had ended, so I had the entire winter to plant my new garden. When spring arrived, we blocked out an area in the back, tilled it and added a nice healthly pile of mushroom soil. Then I got to work! I planted all the same plants I had in previous years and got ready for some delicious fresh veggies. I was so excited to see the little beans pop up! Soon, the rest of the plants started pushing their way through and our garden was underway… or so I thought! Little did we know that a family of Groundhogs was living under our barn. As soon as I saw evidence of critters in my garden, we put up a fence and did everything we could think of to deter the pests. Fortunately, the fence served it’s purpose and my plants were somewhat saved.
To make a VERY long story short – we battled bad soil, groundhogs, rabbits and purslane for several years and finally decided to forgo a garden last year. I was sad, but I really didn’t want the hard work to end in disappointment yet again.
Now, on to 2012…
We still have a serious groundhog problem. They seem to like our neighborhood and keep moving in. In the last 2 years, we have eliminated 5 of the pesky critters! I saw another one this morning, so hopefully that number will increase in the next few days.
And just because I thought this picture is funny…
So…we decided to plant a little 5×7 foot garden close to the house this year. I found a great website to help us plan. I was surprised how much we could fit in our little space. I planted asparagus, beets, beans, onion, lettuce, spinach, green peppers, yellow squash and zucchini. We put the tomato plants in buckets and might do potatoes in a barrel.
Ok…have your little laugh over this set up…I’ll wait…
No – I didn’t want to dress up my garden for the critters, and yes, I do plan on changing things soon. But, this certainly has done a good job keeping out the bunnies and groundhogs! My husband had the idea of putting up a fence and then came home with a bag of “baubles” from the dollar store. I laughed and, yes, scoffed, but it works!
I’ll be blogging the progress of our little garden – should be interesting!
