animal repellent

On the menu, and passing through.

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My morning rounds were shorter today. I did not water all the garden beds this time. I’ve been keeping a close eye on the weather radar, and we might actually get rain!

Yesterday evening, I grated a whole lot of soap to scatter around in the old kitchen garden. It either worked, or we didn’t get any critters visiting last night.

This morning, I raided our spice cupboard. The newly planted beds of radishes, chard, kale and kohlrabi have now been treated with a hot spices, and when I ran out of that, I started scattering black pepper, including the perimeter of the corn and sunflower blocks. I checked everything carefully, and there were no new nibbles among the corn and sunflowers, that I could see.

Before heading back inside, I was able to gather some summer squash.

It’s been a while since our first harvest of 2 green zucchini and a Magda squash. This morning, we’ve got 5 green zucchini (3 of them from one plant!), 1 Magda squash, and our very first Sunburst squash!

Later, I was able to grab a few garlic scapes, too. We still have a few left to grow more before we gather them.

These will be on today’s menu, for sure! :-D

Once settled inside, I checked the trail cam files and saw this on the garden cam.

I was not expecting the deer to cross through from that side! And there’s no way we can rope things off on that side, without it causing access issue to other beds.

At least he didn’t stop for a snack along the way.

I did put black pepper across the open side of the garden beds, and down some of the bigger paths between blocks. I hope this will convince the deer to go around the garden, instead of through it!

Thinking ahead with the girls, I remembered that the Whiffletree catalog has a wildlife tree package. We’ve been talking about planting things away from the house to feed the deer, so they’ll have less reason to go for our gardens. We don’t want to get rid of the critters. We just want them to stay out of our gardens! I went looking through the catalog and found an item I’d highlighted but forgot about. They also have a Wildlife Plot seed package. There are enough seeds to cover 2000 sq ft with things like turnips, forage kale and other tasty plants. If we get a package like that and plant it in the outer yard, that could do a fine job of keeping the deer – and the groundhogs – out of our garden beds.

I hope to order the seed package this fall, so we can use it next spring. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: more critter carnage

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I went out to do the evening watering this evening, after trying to wait until things cooled down. When we were still above 30C/86F by 7:30pm, I headed out anyway, so I could be done before dark.

I started in the old kitchen garden, and this should have been my first warning.

When I had gone out earlier to apply the spray repellent, I made a point of spraying the edges of the beds and into the paths, where it would not be washed away by watering as quickly.

Nutmeg is sprawled right on top of where I’d sprayed. Clearly, he is not the least bit bothered by the repellent!

If you look to the bed on the right, you can see the stems of our nibbled on carrots. They were like that this morning, before I did the spraying. In fact, they were why I made a point os going out to apply the repellent when we were nearly at the hotted part of the day!

Meanwhile…

As I was finishing up in the old kitchen garden, I picked our first rhubarb of the season.

We could have picked rhubarb long ago, but we were thinking to do a crumple or a crisp with them, and no one wants to bake in this heat. However, I had other reasons to pick them.

We planted poppies in the new bed next to one of the rhubarb bunches. The only seeds that germinated are all near the rhubarb. While I was trying to weed them, I discovered there was more than we thought.

The rhubarb leaves were covering them, and preventing them from getting any sunlight.

So I uncovered them by picking rhubarb. :-D We’ll see if they recover, now that they are getting light.

After I was done watering the more southerly beds, I headed over to the main garden beds and started watering. When I had been there earlier, spraying around the carrot bed, I was noticing that they looked to be recovering quite well, with lots of new fronds. I made sure to spray a wide swath all around them, on them, and even on the wire mesh cover.

As you can probably imagine, I was must unhappy when I came back to this.

The entire bed is once again decimated. All of it, from end to end. Apparently, when I sprayed the repellent, all I did was season the fronds for the woodchuck!

I am so frustrated!!

I’ll be taking the wire mesh cover off. All it’s really doing is preventing me from weeding. Though I suppose there’s no point in weeding it anymore. I will, anyhow, but the chances of the carrots recovering just dropped substantially. We knew it couldn’t stop a woodchuck, but I thought it might not want to be under something, and potentially trapped, and at least the carrots in the middle would be ignored. Nope. Apparently, this furry beast had no problem being under a wire net for so long!

This was not our only loss.

The greedy guts even eat the mystery squash seedlings in the old compost heap!

Obviously, I hadn’t sprayed the compost heap, but still… they weren’t exactly easy access in there, and were surrounded by all sorts of things the woodchuck never tries to eat, like the self-seeded raspberries that are also growing out of the pile.

I was really hoping to find out if they were from last year’s pumpkins.

Thankfully, nothing else was nibbled on, but this is damage enough!!

The Re-Farmer

I thought it was supposed to be cooler?

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Once again, the real world made liars out of the forecasters. 😄

We were not supposed to break 30C today.

I’ve been watching the weather radar as rain supposedly passed right over us. Out my window, it was bright and sunny.

I headed out earlier with the animal repellent spray and used it around the garden beds. Hopefully, that will mean no more critter damage. We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

New “toys” and things to repair

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Yesterday, a couple of our hoses sprang a leak. I still used them this morning, to do the morning watering. I took advantage of the leak whenever I could, and placed it where it would at least water something!

The water is spraying out of both hose ends. Where the hose is attached to the tap is also leaking, though nothing as bad as this, so today I headed to the nearer city to pick up what I needed to repair them. I was happy to see a flexible tap attachment that will prevent the hose connector from breaking at the tap, too.

After the watering was done, I took the canister of Critter Ridder and started spreading the granules. I did the old kitchen garden, and just barely had enough left to do the beet bed near the garlic. I figured I would need at least two more to be able to rest.

That turned out to not be an option.

They didn’t have the granules in stock; just the spray. I was going to try the spray when I noticed this.

This should be enough to spray around our beds, including the ones I should have planted in by now, and have some left over for later applications. I hope it works!

Since I was in the store anyhow, I went looking at the garden tools sections, and was very excited to find one of these.

It’s an “action hoe”. My brother has one and just loves it. They are very hard to find, however, because they sell out so quickly! So I grabbed one, even though it was a stretch on the budget. It will be a huge help, and there are spots I will finally be able to reach and weed properly!

The girls are going to be starting the evening watering, soon, though it will still be in the 30C/86F range. If we wait any longer, it’ll be too dark. Plus, the overnight temperatures will be staying high tonight. We aren’t supposed to drop to 25C/77F until 7am tomorrow, and by then, I’ll be heading out to do the morning watering! I’m hoping to get the hoses repaired before then, but even if I only get a chance to do one or two, it’ll be better than nothing, and the hoses are still useable at least.

Tomorrow is supposed to be our hottest day of the heat wave, with a forecasted high of 36C/97F and a humidex of 39C/102F. After that, we will quickly drop back to average temperatures for July. They are no longer predicting thundershowers for tomorrow, unfortunately. Now it’s just a 40% chance of precipitation, which for our area, probably means none at all. I wold have been happy for a good thunderstorm! We could really use the rain! Still, it means I can apply the animal repellent and not have it washed off right away, I guess.

The Re-Farmer