What Did You Do In The Garden?

SPedigrees

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Yesterday being the Summer Solstice (my favorite of all days, and this a uniquely sunny day after weeks of unrelenting rain) I decided it would be a good time to assemble and install this giant Windspinner. It was a present from a relative and has spent months in pieces, so I finally got out the directions and put it together.

Windspinner in action in its new home.

The spot where the Windspinner resides is my old vegie patch, which is now becoming a tiny grove of apple trees. This is the current vegetable garden, aka raised bed atop what is left of a pile of wood chips. It's not much to look at right now, only the cherry tomato plants I started from seed indoors back in April are visible, although my heirloom crookneck summer squash has sprouted.
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Phaedra

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Lovely blooms, Phaedra. What bird produced these colorful eggs, and are you using the flowers in the basket for something (flower petal jelly maybe)?

They are the quail eggs. I used the rose petals as tea ingredients.
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The bees enjoy as I take only petals, and later there will still be rose hips.
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flowerbug

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finished weeding the long skinny garden watered all the seedlings/sprouts in all the gardens and then went back to the long skinny garden and screened some gravel from the dirt. hopefully it will get it planted tomorrow. it needed a good soaking in order for me to have a chance of getting the shovel in the ground. hope i didn't get it too wet, but i don't think i did.
 

Cosmo spring garden

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Rained almost all day so went out and picked off Japanese beetles and bean beetles. Everything looks so green and has almost doubled in size with all this rain!
Tomorrow will be my first ever farmers market selling day! Wish me luck! I only have raspberries and garlic.
I figure I'd give you all an update about the farmers market. I was one of three vendors but the only one with raspberries and garlic. I met some nice folks and the other vendors were super friendly. One also told me aboit another farmers market in the same county and invited me to go on Monday and sell my berries. I plan to go!
As for sales? I sold some berries! And garlic! Not a lot but I'm excited for the next one.
I took notes of what people were asking for and will try to being more variety next week.
 

digitS'

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Arrived at big veggie garden to find the the marmot, who had only nibbled on a few lettuce plants before, had stripped the broccoli, trimmed nearly all the lettuce, chewed up most of the radish leaves, and sampled the beet greens 🤬!

... Marty will have a couple of days then I will be back to disrupt his environment. Hopefully, I won't actually lose any plant before then.
I changed my mind and the schedule to return. Showed up today to "disrupt" Marty's environment.

Moving those tires, so close to the garden, seemed like such a good idea - I did it. There must have been well over 40! One could see where Marty had dug under them but there were no deep holes, no nests. He must have just used them for shelter and a perch.

He now has no distance to go to do the same thing. However, he may realize that he is risking serious retaliation if he continues to invade the garden. Is he that smart? Well, I had once thought so. I have blocked marmot holes with rocks hammered into place. Would the rodent be likely to die after such retribution? Probably not - he lives underground for more than half the year and can dig another escape route. However -- whenever I have done that, I have not seen the resident ever again!

I have also taken more direct measures over the years and killed 5 or was it 6 of the pests! I don't want to do that and he is welcome to stay around. There is nearby alfalfa and grass - I know he will eat lawngrass, I've seen them many, many times doing that. Just respect who owns the garden veggies or I will make more efforts to ... ______ !

Steve
 

flowerbug

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@digitS' if i read what you wrote correctly (maybe i didn't?) it reads to me like you moved a hiding and perching place closer to the gardens? i don't understand this... :)

when i removed the old pallets and cleaned up and plugged the end of that ditch that all those animals were using like a highway to get from the large ditch out back up into our back yard and then filled it in so the various critters no longer had such an easy access but also they had fewer places to hide (and dig burrows!) it really cut down on traffic, but it also meant that if an animal got into the back yard i had a much better chance of hunting and all that open space does discourage them from hanging around. the better fencing i added also has really helped, but it has not ever made predation zero because there is still a few hundred feet of open area they can come through.
 

digitS'

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Not closer, @flowerbug. But, not really further away.

They aren't my tires and were used by the gardening neighbor to surround tomato plants. And, tomatoes were an important part of his gardening. He didn't use them last year and has passed away. They are junk but not my junk. I'd likely be allowed by the widow to haul them off to the dump but, I'm not willing to do that for free and not comfortable asking if she would pay for the effort. I doubt if she would have any idea that I moved and re-stacked them but Marty will know and, hopefully, be very upset by it.

I can't do anything about the weeds that are on two sides of the garden - and extend for dozens and dozens of feet in those directions.

BTW - a neighbor told me about a moose that was seen passing through, and likely through the garden area, earlier this year. I have never had a huge amount of 4-legged pest problem there and really hope it won't be continuing.
 

digitS'

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Picked shell peas for 90+ minutes and watered garden on a nice, quiet morning.

It didn't look like Marty the Marmot had been out there. As usual, there were Ferruginous Hawk circling in the sky. I suppose that I would have noticed evidence if Marty showed up, froze in confusion because he thought he would be in different surroundings, and blam! Well, I can hope.
 

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