Friday, May 6, 2011

The Garden Report

Disappointing!
There you go, that word says it all.

Everything seems to be a real battle this year.  The weather is the worst, cold and wet.  The orchard garden is still too wet to plant anything.  Things that I seeded a couple of months ago in the garden close to the house, came up, and then did nothing.  I just reseeded arugula, salad greens and spinach.  The chard needs reseeding too.  The broad beans, or at least the ones that haven't been eaten off yet, are doing great.  There's a big rabbit around that we see occasionally.  I think that must be what's dining on the broad beans and the peas.  I had long narrow pieces of gauzy fabric laid over them, but now they are too tall.  The broad beans are disappearing again.  I've already reseeded them once, and now I have more seeds to do it again.
At least the night temperatures now are closer to normal, but the daytime temperatures are more below normal than not.  It keeps raining.
6:30 this evening I dashed off to the Otter Co-op to buy a roll of chicken wire, and then spent an hour out in the rain getting some posts pounded in and the wire up around peas, beans and the stuff I just reseeded.
I asked David if he was into rabbit hunting.
He said they are too cute.
I have seedlings in the greenhouse.  The tomatoes are doing fine.  The broccoli seedlings that I was too scared to put out because of the rabbit, are now being decimated by mice, I guess, that are getting into the greenhouse.  They have also eaten some tiny lettuce seedlings off, and some of the zucchini seeds that were planted have been completely removed.  Tonight I have those three flats balanced on the tops of tall buckets and pots.  The only way the mice can get at them is to take a flying leap from the potting benches.
I wouldn't put it past them.
Mouse traps are in order I think.

The Abbotsford Farmers Market opens for the season tomorrow.  Rain is forecast.
Spring is a write-off.
Roll on Summer!

3 comments:

  1. Gardens are a lot of WORK. I did it "one" year. :0) Mice...I have mice in my feed room. They will bring in snakes. I don't like either. Traps are in order today.

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  2. Mice and birds..and chipmunks..all terrible in a greenhouse. Mice will find a way to get to the greens. Yes it is a non spring here too..still very cold at night..frosty even..and then warms to about 60 during the day..maybe when it is not raining or dreary and dark and the wind blowing ninety miles an hour.
    No one plants anything here til June 1..because until then you most always have to replant:)

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  3. last night was the first time I didn't bring all my little starts into the garage. Maybe I"ll plant them (my garden is about the size of my bathroom)

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