Filed under: Gardening
We finally got a pretty decent rain shower yesterday. It was the most rain we have had for several weeks. And there is a chance of more this week. I stood out on the patio to feel it on my face. It felt like a blessing.
I picked our first tomato this weekend. And I picked green beans, such as they were. Every time the plants get to a decent height, the deer come and eat them down to bare stems. I suspect they are doing this to the lima beans I planted, too, although at first I thought the limas were not germinating well. The valiant bean plants keep putting on more leaves each time they are eaten, and they keep blooming. The deer must be truly desperate for something to eat to be foraging out of the gardens in the front. These garden beds are in the open, about 10 feet from the house, and next to the driveway.
I even planted decoy beans at the back of our property where I have seen the deer hang out from time to time. I gathered every partial packet of beans of any kind that I had left and planted them in the sunniest patch of ground I could find. Most of them germinated nicely there in spite of only getting a few sprinkles of rain from time to time. But do the ungrateful deer eat the beans I planted for them? Of course not. They would rather eat the beans we were counting on for dinner.
So yesterday I conceded defeat and planted squash seeds, both acorn and spaghetti, among the pitiful stubs of the green beans and lima beans. So far the deer do not seem to have a taste for squash plants. Tonight I will order more bean seeds and plant them in the back yard, within the fence. Lesson learned – no beans outside the fence, at least during a drought.
We have planted chickpeas and Swiss chard in the new patch my husband plowed up. And the Jerusalem artichokes are blooming prettily in the back corner of the yard. I continue to pick blueberries and wow, are they delicious. So life goes on, in spite of marauding deer.
Filed under: General
I feel like we should be growing cactus instead of vegetables. We have not had any rain to speak of in the last few weeks – maybe an inch in all that time. The weeds in the yard are crunchy. It will rain all our area, or on the other side of town, but not right here. The other day we got a sprinkle while the people half a mile north of us got a good steady rain. But we are still pretty lucky – a county that is maybe an hour’s drive west of here ran out of water this week. They are having to buy water from another county. What happens if that county runs out of water, too?
Still, we have managed to harvest some things. We picked the last of the lettuce a couple of weeks ago – vey late for where we are. The snow peas lasted until the end of May. Now we have green beans coming, and will have tomatoes soon. The chili peppers could care less about the heat and the drought – they keep bearing anyway. Bring it on, they seem to say. I did pick blueberries today, from the one bush of ours that was not too much affected by the late frost. And we have had some blackberries, too. Every harvest, no matter how small, is a blessing.
So this week, we will be trying to build a rain barrel, just in case it ever does rain again. If it works out, we will build more. And we are talking over building a pond in the back, where (ironically) we already have a depression of several feet, because the person who built the house decided to bury the trees that had to be cut in order to have a space to build this house. Right now nothing grows there in the sunken spot except for a few discouraged blackberry vines and one anemic oak tree. Twenty years ago, it was our garden spot, until it started sinking. Now it is fringed by young oak and black walnut trees. Nature’s revenge.
This will be the pattern for the years to come, I fear. This is the worst drought on record for this region. And the hottest summer since I can’t remember when. The trick is to figure out how to grow food, and otherwise survive under these new climatic conditions.
