What’s Eating Our Garden? (Besides Us)

 It has been a highly-productive year for the garden. We’ve had pounds of chard, stacks of zucchini, buckets of tomatoes, and more cucumbers than you can shake a stick at. I’m personally up to a 2-cucumber-a-day habit. I fear when we run out, I’ll have to wear some sort of patch to ease myself off of them. While we’ve been eating fresh produce as fast as we can, sharing with friends, freezing and preserving, there’s still a great abundance. That is likely why I am not being particularly strict about all the other species that also happen to be enjoying our produce.

The most blatant offenders have been the squirrels. I don’t think I would mind so much if they just picked one tomato or cucumber and just ate that. But noooo, they have to sample half a dozen vegetables. I hate finding tiny tooth marks on an otherwise perfect zucchini. If it’s not too bad, we trim the chewed off bits, but often it’s too much or we find it too late. I can shrug off one or two ruined pieces of veg, but they’re starting to get out of hand. We’ve finally taken a hard line on the tree rats, but it doesn’t seem to be making that much of a difference yet. 

A squirrel left this half-eaten tomato right on the top of the garden gate!

Here's one of the cagey little jerks. I've found they're rather photo-shy.

The deer have gotten a bit too fresh themselves. I planted some rattlesnake beans along the back of one of the garden beds. I made sure to put the trellis away from the fence a bit, but apparently not far enough. Last year, the yard long beans, planted on the other bed at the back of the garden, were right against the fence. The deer enjoyed them quite thoroughly, but I didn’t really care because I didn’t enjoy the taste or texture of the beans. It seems, however, that I trained the deer to come looking for beans. 

It is fun to see them in the back yard.

Too bad they've been eating my beans!

As this year’s beans grew, the trellis started to lean back against the fence. I didn’t not pull it forward in time, so the deer got a taste. They must have really enjoyed the delicate purple spotted pods because even after I reset the trellis, the deer reached over the fence to continue eating them. They had to step up on some sandbags and stretch to do so. Well, my husband devised a solution with a recycled piece of fence. Let’s see Bambi get to my beans now!

Anti-Bambi technology.

Another unsurprising garden invader has been stem borers. We’ve had problems with those little beasties since we started gardening. I’ve read that the best way to get rid of them is to run a wire into the holes in the stem and skewer the larva. Yeah, no. That makes my stomach turn just thinking about it, so they’ve just had their way with our zucchini plants. In the grand scheme of things I don’t mind too much. While the stems have been just torn apart, we have gotten several dozen zucchini already and the plants are managing to keep going. I imagine we could find some heavy-duty poison to eradicate the problem, but there are too many other insects we actually want in the garden like bees and butterflies.

The stems are a mess...

...but the fridge is full of zucchini!

I have to admit that I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for caterpillars. I blame raising monarchs in elementary school. This year, I gave up a second harvest of dill for a trio of swallowtail caterpillars. My husband and I actually moved them from the dill patch in one part of the garden that they had eaten down to just stems to patch in another bed. I’ve already dried a bunch of dill weed and used some of the seed heads for pickles, so I’m willing to sacrifice for the squishy little guys.

Raawr!

We have monarch caterpillars in our orange milkweed too, so that’s exciting!

One thing that hasn’t been eating our garden is the rabbits. Last year, as some may remember, I neglected the garden to the point that a rabbit raised a litter of babies in our pak choi patch. The perimeter fence has been secured since then, so no one is living in there this year. One bunny did, however, consider having her litter under our clothesline; which would have been a very bad idea. We got to watch her one evening digging a hole and lining it with fur. Fortunately, she seems to have abandoned her efforts. I wonder if she was one of the babies from the garden. She does seem particularly young and dumb.

Her lovely little nest we hope she doesn't use.

The sweet little dumb bunny.

Harvest Time Has Begun

The weather has heated up considerably and the garden loves it! Harvest season has begun in earnest now. After a steady stream of asparagus early on and enough rhubarb to make a pie and a cake, there is now a wonderful variety of things to pick and enjoy.

My Garden! Glad I didn't neglect it this year.

The first big harvest of the season was Swiss chard. Suddenly, we had so much of it that I thought I might have to start freezing some right away. We were able to use it all fresh, though, in the form of chard and mushroom galette with goat cheese; pasta with vegan sausage, chard, and beans; a lovely chard and tahini dip that went well with tortilla chips and was equally nice mixed into spaghetti; and a Swiss chard frittata. It’s ready to pick again but I think I’ll let it stand another day or two as there are so many other tasty vegetables that need more immediate attention.

A few pounds of rainbow chard

The zucchini is now coming in fast and furious. At first, I didn’t know if I would get any. It was quite a saga, really. I planted the seeds in one of the beds where we had spread last season’s compost. Well, the compost had various squash seeds that decided to sprout on their own while the ones that I had planted were taking their sweet time. So, as insurance, I purchased a zucchini plant off a rolling rack outside the grocery store. As soon as I planted it, my seeds decided to grow like crazy. By that time, I didn’t have the heart to thin them as heavily as I should have so I ended up with six plants in the 4’ x 11’ bed. The plants seem to being doing well despite the close quarters and I’ve picked eight zucchinis so far.

So, that's a full bed of zucchini!

The cucumbers are coming on strong as well. There’s nothing like a fresh cucumber straight out of the garden with just a little sprinkle of salt. The purple green beans are starting to bean, though it is far from overwhelming. I’ve almost picked enough for a serving.  

Yesterday evening's harvest

I spent this morning harvesting and processing herbs. Three years ago, I went to the Mother Earth News Fair in Burlington, Vermont. This year, with covid-19 going on, they decided to have a virtual fair. I bought a ticket and have been enjoying dozens of videos on a whole range of topics from fermenting to beekeeping to breadmaking. So, this weekend, I decided to try out a couple of the things I learned.

Herbs!

I started by setting up our solar dehydrator. (Here’s a post from four years agoabout the fun, useful tool.) I put sprigs of wild bee balm on the bottom screen to dry for tea. On the top screen went dill, thyme, and just a little bit of lavender.

Loaded dehydrator

Within just about four hours on this lovely, sunny, hot day, the dill and thyme were completely dry and ready to be bottled. The bee balm and lavender needed just a smidge more time. I’ll probably do more batches of herbs as the summer goes on.

Jars of freshly-dried thyme and dill

The fresh basil that I picked got chopped up and went into a bowl with a pound of rhubarb that I had frozen last year and ¾ cups of sugar. This is the base for a rhubarb-basil shrub. I’ll mix in some vinegar after it has set for 24 hours, let it sit again for three more hours, and then combine it with some gin and lemon juice for cocktails tomorrow evening.

Rhubarb-basil shrub in the making

Finally, I made my first ever tincture. I found out that California Poppy could help with sleep and I just happened to have some growing in my un-Shaker garden. My husband and I tried it fresh as tea. There were all sorts of warning online about how bitter the tea was, but I thought it was quite nice. He said he slept really well after a cuppa and it gave me vivid dreams. Fun. One of the Fair workshops was on tincture making so I thought, why not try it with the California Poppy. I put 3.5 ounces of chopped up plant plus 7 ounces of 100 proof vodka into a jar. After about a month, I’ll see what we got.

A tincture to-be

I’m very glad that I pulled myself together this year and am actively working with my garden. I’m not sure if the rabbits who found a home in last year’s garden would agree, but that’s their problem.

My Un-Shaker Garden, Part 2

My un-Shaker garden this morning.

As promised a couple of months ago, here is a report on the second un-Shaker garden. I’m really not much of a flower gardener, but I knew I wanted more pollinators for my vegetables (an appropriate Shaker sentiment). In May 2017, I pulled up the sod along the southern edge of my vegetable garden, laid in some good soil, and planted a mixed pack of annual and perennial seeds. Being an analytical weirdo sometimes, several months earlier, I had sorted the pack of seeds by type and started samples of each to see what would grow. So, I had some seedling started to plant along with the random scattering of seeds.

The brand new flower bed in 2017.

By July, it was a lovely mess of flowers of all different colors.

July 2017

And it was bringing in pollinators too!

Butterfly!

Each spring, I have tried to weed around the perennials and have scattered in a new packet of mixed seeds.

This April, I cuffed the flower bed around again and it is still going strong. The Sweet William seems to particularly like it there.

Garden post-cuffing, April 2020

Sweet William

There is one pink echinacea that has been struggling in the bed for the last few years. Our resident deer will swing by periodically and nip off most of the leaves. But it is still trying and I hope to see it blossom this year again.

They eat my plants but I love them anyway!

The Garden is In!

The 2020 vegetable garden is officially in the ground. I planted all the seeds and transplanted the seedlings on Friday, May 22. It was a lovely warm day without too much sun. As soon as I finished watering in the last of the seeds, a gentle rain began to fall.

First view of the fully-planted garden

My original plan, in light of the global pandemic in which we find ourselves, was to just use seeds that I had on hand from previous years. I was going to call it the “Leftover Garden.” But, I happened to find myself at the big box home store to pick up an item for my job, and saw that there were still lots of seed packets and no one browsing them at that moment. So, I got some. I purchased royal burgundy garden beans, rocket salad arugula, mixed colors swiss chard, black turtle shelling beans, flatleaf parsley, and fernleaf dill to supplement my leftovers. Those leftovers include rattlesnake beans, purple dragon and St. Valery carrots, Chicago pickling cucumbers, oakleaf lettuce, Cascadia sugar snap peas, and black beauty zucchini. Some of those seeds are as much as six years old, so we’ll see what happens.

I decided once again to try growing some of the tomatoes in buckets. Last year, I had troubles with both woodchucks and deer disturbing the plants where they were on our back patio. I ended up moving the buckets into the main garden last year, and then proceeded to ignore them as I was doing with the rest of the garden. This year, I’m trying again with the buckets on the patio, but with an inelegant yet hopefully successful solution. We got some leftover plastic mesh from the building site of my in-law’s new house. I wrapped it around the buckets as a barrier to furry menaces. I hope it works well. I also planted four tomato plants in the garden proper. It will be interesting to see how they do in each location.

Spooky tomato plants! Pink brandywine, black vernissage, black cherry, and red cherry, like last year

We also decided to rebuild the plant teepee in the front yard. Last year we (meaning my husband in this case) tried loofah sponges with surprisingly great success. This year, he planted birdhouse gourds. The seeds are leftovers from several years ago, so, again, we’ll wait and see.

Front yard teepee take two.

In the few days between then and now, all the pepper (Poblano and sweet banana), tomato, and basil seedlings have perked up nicely, and the arugula, cucumbers, and shell beans are sprouting.

Arugula

Black turtle beans

Some squirrels have been digging in the beds, making shallow little round indentations in the soil, but they’re only disturbing the seeds by chance. It’s annoying, but not the end of the world. I have seen some blue jays hanging around in the garden too. Hopefully, they won’t cause any trouble. Never can tell with those tricky birds. They’re too clever for everyone’s good sometime.  

I wish I had a better picture than this fuzzy one, but the jays have been too quick for me so far.

Dandelion Jelly

Sometime this spring, I stumbled across the idea of dandelion jelly. I think it was a Facebook post from Mother Earth News, but I can’t be sure. When I looked out the front door yesterday morning, and saw all the dandelions in our yard, I decided to make some.

Just a few of the dandelions in our front yard.

I grabbed a big ol’ plastic bowl, and headed out around 9:30 in the morning. It had rained overnight, but the lawn was drying out, and the dandelions were perking up for the day. One interesting thing about foraging like this is that I wasn’t the only one after the little yellow blossoms. After I grabbed my first black slug (and apologized to the little thing profusely), I became more aware of my competition. Quite a few tiny green leafhoppers were hanging out on the dandelion heads, and the honeybees were out working busily. Part of me was concerned that I was taking food away from these creatures that we share the world with, but every time I stood up, stretched my back, and gazed over the yard, I saw there were plenty for all.

My buzzing competition.

My squishy competition.

I have to say, I am glad I am in fairly good health and physical condition. There was a lot of squatting involved in picking dandelions. It took about an hour to fill my bowl, and when I brought my haul back into the house, our cat was duly impressed.

He does seem impressed, right?

Okay, so now I had a giant bowl of dandelion heads, an impressed cat, and very sticky, orange hands. The next step was to pull all the yellow bits of the blossom off the green parts. (Can you tell I’m a historian, not a botanist?) I did this by twisting the base of the flower, and plucking the petals out in clumps. In a way, it felt like plucking a chicken, but I’ve never done that before either, so I’m just guessing.

After a little over an hour of blossom plucking, my husband joined in the efforts. Maybe another hour later, we finally had four lightly packed cups of dandelion bits with which I was to make a tea.

We stopped plucking when I had just enough done, and I actually returned maybe a quarter of the dandelion heads I had picked to nature.

Before starting all of this, I asked Mr. Google for a dandelion jelly recipe. I found quite a few, and ended up choosing one from Lonely Pines Farm. So, as guided by this recipe and all of the others I found online (there really is very little difference in the recipes out there), I poured four cups of boiling water over my pluckings, and let it steep 24 hours. The tea smelled a bit like steamed asparagus to me.

Dandelion tea just beginning to steep.

And dandelion tea after 24 hours.

 After straining the tea through cheesecloth to pull out all the flowery bits, I added the tea, two tablespoons of lemon juice, and one box of Sure Jell to a pot and brought it to a boil. I added four cups of sugar, brought it to a boil again, and let it boil for about two minutes. Then I ladled it into waiting jars. I filled seven small jelly jars and three half-pint jars. The jars then went into a hot water bath for ten minutes. I had gotten the water bath going before I even strained the tea so it had time to get up to a boil.

Jars of dandelion jelly straight out of the bath.

Some people online wrote that dandelion jelly tastes like honey, others that it tastes like sunshine, or joy. It certainly has a honey quality to it. I just tried a little off a spoon, and now I want waffles.  

He actually wasn’t that impressed.