Raised Vegetable Bed Protection Update

The wire cages I manufactured to protect my vegetable garden have worked out great!  They are very light and easy to lift off my raised beds.  I can now report with confidence that they are also effective in preventing chipmunks and gophers from ravaging your harvest.  The pvc handles on top are a must for easy removal and replacement.  See my September 2009 posts for more information on these cages and their purpose.

I added a third irrigation tube in the center of the bed to better distribute the water.  Prior to that I was hand watering my new vegetable seedlings to get complete coverage.  All of my raised beds and fiberglass barrels are now on timed irrigation and it has been working beautifully.  We have been enjoying radishes, romaine lettuce and spinach for the past two weeks. I have been picking off the larger leafs for our evening salads which seems to promote speedy growth of the remaining smaller leaves.  I did this last fall and was able to keep ourselves in salad fixings for months.    

Tomatoes are just now starting to ripen. I had 5 plants before the chipmunk invasion but am now down to one.  Still, there are plenty growing and they will liven up our salads for several more weeks.

This is my third attempt to grow snap peas in the desert.  So far, so good, but I am bracing myself for the worst.  I am hoping that consistent watering provided by my make-shift irrigation system (see prior blog posts for construction and layout) will make a difference this time.  My wife loves snap peas so I have to get this right!

Mexican Sunflower - a love-hate relationship

Mexican Sunflower (tithonia fruticosa) is one of my favorite desert plants.  It has a commanding presence in the summer garden with its tall leggy stems, large green leaves and bright yellow sunflowers.  A profuse bloomer when watered, it attracts hummingbirds, butterflies and bees.  Birds also love to eat the spent dry flowers, so be sure to dead head them and leave on the ground.   But, in winter, Mexican Sunflower is not a pleasant sight to behold.  It no longer flowers and the large leaves turn wrinkled and brown. If it is a featured plant, like my two were, it becomes a blight on your winter garden.

 

So, last winter, I dug up one of them, divided the clump, and planted two pieces in an area that would become a back drop to my oasis garden.  I didn't have the heart to dig up the other one, so I severly pruned it back and waited for new, fresher growth in the summer.  Well, even after much attention the clumps never produced.  So I began calling the various nurserys in town only to learn Desert Survivors was the only one who carried the tithonia fruticosa variety.  Unfortunately their plants were still in the greenhouse and wouldn't be ready until fall.   I had to wait.

Then, one morning when watering I noticed a very small plant growing among a patch of salvia leucantha that looked like Mexican Sunflower.  A seed must have been carried by a bird or blown over and dropped there.  I gently dug it out and planted it in the hole that previously housed the clump and surrounded it with chicken wire.  It grew!  A miracle according to some who told me you can't transplant Mexican Sunflower.  I will be diligent in my efforts to keep it healthy until next summer when I am hoping it will shoot upwards and blossom.

The 1/2 inch wire mesh cages I described in my last post have worked well in protecting one of my raised vegetable beds from small critters.  The handles work great, making them easy to lift off the bed while I water and putz about.                               

So right now life is good.  I'll keep you posted. 

Critter Protection

In my prior post I discussed the challenges of protecting a vegetable garden in the Tucson region.  I have chain link around the garden area, but small critters such as chipmunks, ground squirrels, rabbits, mice, birds etc. can easily come in and set up shop.  Mel Bartholomew, author of Square Foot Gardening (see link on side bar) recommends constructing a cage out of chicken wire that is easy to lift and place over a raised bed garden.  Materials used are chicken wire and 1"X2" select pine boards.  Mel uses less expensive chicken wire with larger 1" or 2" openings, but it won't keep smaller pests such as chipmunks from squeezing in and gobbling up your tender plantings .  I purchased a heavier wire with smaller 1/2" openings which takes more time bending to shape but is still light enough to easily lift off your bed when tending/watering the garden.

I built two 4'X4' cages to fit on top of one of my 4' X 8' beds.  I found I could cut a piece of  4' wide wire 7' long and bend, with the help of a straight edge (see photo to the right), 2 even creases 18" from each end to form 2 of the 4 sides.  That left only two 18" by 48" pieces to cut for the remaining two sides.  The base of the wire was then stapled to the 4'X4' frames and the two single sides attached with those nifty plastic awning lock ties you can get at Home Depot.  To easily lift off and replace the cages on top of the beds I created a 12" long plastic handles out of left over pvc pipe and wire and attached one to the top of each cage in the very center.  For step-by-step directions for building these cages see Mel Bartholomew's New Square Foot Gardening book.  Having completed the cages, I planted seed of lettece, bunching onions, radish, spinach and snap peas with hopes that the resulting harvest will now be protected.

For my remaining raised bed and fiberglass barrels I have removed the bird netting (effective, but awful stuff to work around and a lizard strangler).  Since these plantings are mature (tomatoes, strawberries and herbs) I am taking my chances they will survive most attacks.  If not, I plan to set out a small Havahart critter trap that will be used to humanely capture the rodents and remove them far from my property.  I've heard peanut butter works well.  Before replanting the remaining bed, I will build two more 4'X4' cages to protect it as well.  I will share the results of these endeavors to protect my garden in future posts.  

Just a side note for Amber Rose, our 9 year old grand daughter.  Your strawberries planted in the gray sink had babies!  Tendrils from your plant crawled over to the sink next to it and rooted. I'ved transplanted several of your baby plants to another barrel so there will be more strawberries to pick when you visit.

Summer Garden "Issues"

The photo above was taken on our Pacific coastal vacation towards summers end after our grand daughters returned to Missouri. But more of that later. This post is to explain my absence this summer and what has been happening in the vegetable garden. My spring vegetable garden efforts were thwarted at every turn this year. No sooner had a seed sprouted or transplant put in they were gone within a few days. As you can see in my earlier photos I use raised beds and large containers to grow vegetables. My early conclusion was a wily rabbit who had figured out a way to get by my chain link fence. This proved to be true to a certain extent. One morning I witnessed a small one that was able to wiggle underneath the fence. But it would take one great hopper to jump into my fiberglass barrels. Thinking I had solved the mystery I covered everything with chicken wire and re-planted. And waited.

A week went by with incident and then it happened again. Everything stripped to the ground. At this point I was considering cutter bees, but nothing of the plant was left over. Surly if it had been bees there would have been large pieces left. I increased my observation efforts throughout the day. Then, finally, I observed two very small ground squirrels frolicking among my beds and pots. We had noticed in increase in ground squirrels in the neighborhood, but had thought nothing of it. Ground squirrels have no problem fitting through the openings of a chain link fence.

So, I begin covering everything in bird netting and re-planted. A real pain. But it did the trick for about 48 hours. But then it happened again - everything except a few mature plants were gone. At this point it was funny and I pretty much gave up. This was hard as my two grand daughters would be staying with us for a couple of months this summer and they expected to help me in the garden. Only a few days before they arrived I witnessed the same 2 ground squirrels I had seen earlier inside the bird netting. When they saw me they quickly escaped through what I later discovered to be tiny folds of loose netting that hadn't been secured down. At this point I was left with 3 tomato plants, some squash and a couple of barrels on strawberries. I turned my attention towards other goings on at this point.

As it turned out, our grand daughters kept us running this summer and there was little time to garden. After they returned to Missouri Chu and I headed for the coast and slowly moved north to keep cool. Incredible scenery and, compared to desert fauna, all plants are on steroids. Our favorite spots were the small towns of Elk (20 minutes south of Mendocino, CA) and Yachats, OR. You can see photos and videos of the trip on my Facebook. Both were fabulous coastal areas surrounded by beautiful national forests.

So, now I turn my attention to the fall garden. And better ways of protecting my vegetables from desert creatures.

Strawberries in the Desert

When Amber Rose, my granddaughter, asked me if we could grow strawberries last Fall I reluctantly purchased some small sad looking plants from a local nursery. Growing strawberries in the desert just didn't sound like a good idea to me. I planted them in a large fiberglass whisky barrel (Home Depot), which I've learned lasts much longer than one made of wood in Tucson's hot and dry climate.

So here we are in March enjoying delicious strawberries. What a kick! To protect the fruit from birds it is necessary to lay a piece of rabbit wire over the top of the barrel. I now have 5 barrels and two thick porcelin sinks in addition to my two 4' X 8' raised beds and find them excellent containers for growing beans, cucumbers, peas and tomatoes.
It has been a very mild winter and spring is already poised to turn to summer. This season I have put in snap peas, yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers, egg plant and two varieties of cherry tomatoes (large beefsteak tomatoes are tough to grow in Tucson). When my niece from Sweden, Sarah, visited in January she introduced us to a wonderful concoction called ratatouille, which uses copious amounts of zucchini, eggplant and tomato. It can be eaten cold, hot, in spaghetti sauce, on toast - the list is endless. It also lasts well in the fridge and can be frozen. My hope is we can successfully grow enough of these vegetables to keep an ongoing supply of ratatouille in our fridge throughout the summer.

December Bounty in the Desert

December brought mild weather in the Tucson region in 2008. A nice surprise for gardeners who normally turn their thoughts to other pursuits during the colder weather. We continued to enjoy tomatoes, pole beans, lettuce, spinach, carrots, peppers and the beginnings of the strawberry crop into the new year. My peas, however, never took off. I will try a different variety this Spring.

I pretty much stopped gardening activities in January, enjoying my smaller water bills and having extra time on my hands. And that is when it happened. One morning I took a peek to see how my strawberry plants were doing. They were fine, but one of my raised beds had been totally stripped of all vegetation - except the green onions. Since I have critter proofed the garden area I am suspecting it is a ground squirrel (or pack rat) that has made its home in this area for years. It took it this long to figure out how to climb into the bed. I will be constructing "cages" made from chicken wire and wood before Spring comes.
On a completely different note my grand daughters moved to Missouri a couple of weeks ago. They are living in a rural area not far from Springfield. So, this blog will also be geared towards them so they don't miss anything. It's likely, however, that they will want a garden in Missouri and be able to share their experiences of planting in fertile soil. Wouldn't that be cool.