We are predicted to have another year with hardly any rainfall, so I’m not planning to plant a garden this year. What I’m wondering is, what do I do with the soil to keep the garden from turning back into lawn during this year off. (Covering the soil with clear plastic probably isn’t an option for me because of the cost.). Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing?
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Wait, what’s this about not planting a garden?
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Now you know why God was so ticked about the Garden of Eden.
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If you look at the base of the pinwheel, you can see a nest of baby bunnies. Murphy is definitely not a predator at heart.
My mom was trying to get Geordie to look at the camera so I could take his picture. She said “bunny” to get his attention, and this is what happened. Geordie was my hunter.
A lot of people have tried to make me feel guilty about protecting my garden, but if there are no checks and balances, rabbits can quickly get out of control. Australia was devastated by a rabbit invasion. An island in Greece housed prosperous vineyards for centuries until rabbits destroyed them. Bunnies may be cute, but they are prolific and ravenous.
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This year’s problems started with “Watership Down”. It’s difficult to tell from the photo, but those weeds are over 6′ tall.
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That’s more than 12 Murphys!
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The season began with these voracious little tyrants. I was kind and didn’t kill them, and how did they repay me? At least one dug its way back into the garden and moved into the bean patch.
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Can you find the bunny hidden in these beans?
Neither could I.
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I was taught that pests don’t like marigolds, but rabbits love them. This marigold had so many pretty flowers on it before the rabbit moved in.
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The poor, devoured plant had the misfortune to grow slightly closer to the beans than it’s cousins and therefore lost its robes of glory.
Totally disgusted with the damage the Bean Rabbit was doing, I decided to try a humane trap. Instead of a rabbit, I caught an opossum.
Not my image. Borrowed from internet.
It turned out the rabbit was too small for the trap and was able to squeeze in and out between the bars. So, for several days I just fed the rabbit. The opossum was safely released to its home in the morning after also having a good meal of fruit.
After days of fruitless (ha ha) wabbit hunting, I startled an adult doe on the hillside. “No way!”, I thought. “I will NOT have you burrowing into this hill and leaving ticks and poop everywhere!” First I cut down all the foliage on the hill, then I sprayed with stinky spray and spread Irish Spring soap chips. I planted yet another pinwheel on the hill. Surely I had won this time.
Nope. The next morning I found my pinwheel knocked over, and this at its base.
(I stood the pinwheel back up.)
Inside that opening you could see little bunny ears and eyes. Aagh!
Despite my failures, I knew I had one weapon left in my arsenal…..
You say there’s a what right behind me?
Aagh! Despite being 3/4 Yorkie, this dog, as they say, won’t hunt! He was completely oblivious to the nest behind him.
(Don’t worry, I wouldn’t have let him hurt the baby bunnies. I just wanted to see if he would notice their scent.)
I don’t care for Hasenpfeffer, but I do like a nice marinara.
In the spring, I was tidying up the garden when I noticed that one of my strawberry plants had died.
Strawberry bed without chicken wire cover.
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The strawberry bed has a foot high metal wall with chicken wire on top. When I lifted the wire to pull up the dead plant, I found that some stupid b*tch bunny had hopped on top of the chicken wire and clawed and chewed her way into the bed. She dug a hole under one of my unlucky plants and laid her clutch of fur-covered destroyers. When I picked up the plant, I found a huge wad of her hair where the roots should have been and three sleeping vermin underneath.
Evil lagomorphs where strawberry should be.
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I tried to shoo the undersized monsters away to wreak their havoc elsewhere, but they were stubbornly reluctant to leave.
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Voracious cuniculus is trying to blend in with the dirt.
(I’m not gonna eat that strawberry. Honest.)
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Hence the term “harebrained”.
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You can’t see me!
(Oh yes I can.)
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For the rabbit lovers out there, no cottontails were (seriously) harmed in the making of this blog post. (My turnips, peas and strawberries suffered, however!!) I did tell them that if I caught them in the garden again I would make Hasenpfeffer out of them. So far they’ve wisely heeded my warning.
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Murphy putting his terrier stink in the garden to try to keep the pests away.
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Hello? Are there any bunnies in there?
I recently got a new garden tool. After using it a few times, I am not sure it can compete with my old one.
First, I try to pull a weed. / Toby is off in his own world.
Then he he stops in order to see what I am doing.
First the left paw…
Then the right…
Then get out of the way, mom, it’s Toby’s turn to work!
What was so interesting about this experience was that Toby watched which weeds I was digging up, then he sought them out and removed them himself. I don’t know if he meant to be helpful or if he thought he was depriving me of the fun of clearing ground, but it sure was great having him around!
I’m a good digger. I know it.
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Geordie was always hyper aware of birds of prey. He could spot a hawk in a tree from a quarter mile away. Toby never seemed to pay much attention to them until my folks brought this owl decoy for the garden. When he saw it he let out such a blood curdling scream that you would have thought he was being murdered. If the little guy weren’t so afraid, it would have been funny.
I am curious if the owl will discourage Toby from trying to steal beans from the garden. So far the bunnies and the beetles don’t care. (Stupid bunnies.)
It may have only been a few days I spent working in the garden, but Toby makes me feel as guilty as if I’d left him for a year.
Don’t talk to me until there’s food in that garden.
She’s a fool if she thinks she is going to keep me from my dirt!
This is the latest I’ve ever been putting in the garden, but Toby doesn’t appreciate the extra digging time he had. All he sees is that fence between where he is and where he wants to be. Poor evil beastie. He is in for several weeks of disappointment…well, till the beans come in.
What can I say? I am a sucker for green beans.
Beets me!
Really, this is how large it was. Not a record-breaker, but still pretty good sized.
Believe it or not, these are both cucumbers.
The cucumber on the left was 18″ long and nearly 3 lbs. The one on the right was even bigger. (I have a friend with some funny tales about a neighbor who accidentally made cucumber bread instead of zucchini bread.) The yellow one was as sour as a lemon. Interesting…a self-pickling cucumber!
Okra – still pretty tasty despite being large.
Thankfully the watermelon was regular sized.
This year was the shortest garden season we’ve ever had. It lasted less than three weeks. The the beginning of the month we had slightly cooler temperatures and a little rain, and everything exploded. After that we were back to high heat and drought. I couldn’t believe that I actually had to buy a zucchini from the store this summer. Normally I find myself tricking the neighbors saying things like “This one would be perfect for zucchini bread!’ then foisting off a green baseball bat on them. This afternoon I finished pulling up about half of my plants. It is too hot and too late in the season for them to produce more. It is sad to know that the garden is basically done.
Gallery o’ Weird Vegetables
(from years gone by)
Get your mind out of the gutter. Those are sweet potatoes.
Somehow I seem to end up with mostly oddly shaped food. Perhaps that is why nobody want to come over for dinner.
I’ll have dinner with you…as long as it’s beans!
(Max, don’t look)
If your young man will be starting back to in-class school soon, it might be hard to find clothes since most stores and malls are closed. Stop by my store to see what is available to help your child make those important first impressions.
See my little pea? I went out super early in the mud and the cold to plant him and his kin so that they would have lots of time to grow big and strong before the heat arrived.
What arrived instead? The bunny brothers!!!
Seriously, what kind of an idiot would lovingly portray vermin such as this?!? Oh, wait…
Thanks to those two idiot rabbits, my plants never got any larger than in the picture. If they dared grow over 1″ high, they were chomped off.
I tried inviting a snake into the garden, but it turned its head away and lithped thomething about being thcared of bunnies. I guess this one wasn’t a self-motivated hard worker like that Garden of Eden snake.
Although I have a fence, it didn’t keep the bunny brothers out. They tunneled in under the tomato plants. Their tunnel was big enough that it eventually caused the tomato plants to fall over.
(Hey snake, why don’t you crawl down that hole? Snake: “No thankth. I think I will justh keep eating thith dead toad.”)
I tried using spray made of rotten eggs and garlic and a host of foul things. The label said that it was supposed to repel all different sorts of animals.
I guess in the manufacturer’s world, “repel” means “come hither”. Not only did the bunnies like it but so did my dogs.
Come on Ma, just let me off this leash, and your bunny problem will be history!
Bunny Bane
Why doesn’t the governor force the bunnies wear masks? It would make it a lot harder for them to eat my vegetables.
If you would like to send pictures of vermin (bunnies) to friends and family, then come visit my store at L Bowman Studios. I have several styles of note cards to fit your correspondence needs.
(Oh, and if you haven’t been to the Post Office lately, they have some interesting holographic dinosaur stamps for sale!)
The Adventures of Bitey Dog 