Not the best day

[TZ -OH6]

Got up got out a bed, dragged a comb across my head, went down stairs ...and

1) a racoon had eaten and or torn down 1/3 of my flour corn
2) something big and dead in the woods behind the garden smelled up the place...I probably got poison ivy, lime diease and ebola trying to find it, didn't find it...have to go look again tomorrow when it will smell worse.
3) I had to prep the ex-garlic bed in the heat and stink to put in my brussels sprouts.
4) bugs ate some plants
5) I broke some plants
6) Squash nipping ChipPunk is still on the loose.

On the plus side I have a bunch of big Pennsylvania neck squashes developing. Male and female blossoms opened at the same time.

How was your garden Day?

[Bobberman]

I actually spend more time on this forum than in my garden trying to learn more and more! I guess I will try to read more and post less since some of my ideas are to remote I spend about two hour in the evening every night in my garden and the weekends most of the day! Picked about 6 zucs today to give away to some of my carpet customers! I got new zucs coming up in boxes in the shade that I will plant next week!
+++
Gardening to me is creating a new enviroment through plants that brings enjoyment to me by solving one problem after another while fighting nature and its surroundings. Its a real challenge and learning process! Today was good just looking at several rows of new crops I planted last week!

[gixxerific]

Sorry but I have to laugh, though I feel for you.

I went to work, outside in 100 degree weather again. Came home to find more tomatoes tore up by something. At least I don't have a stinking dead un-found animal on my land.

Oh yeah my wife came home from a business trip, farewell to my peace and quiet.

[BrianIllinois]

And somebody spoke and I went into a dream...

Ah, yes, such are the perils of gardening. You'll have better days ahead:

...Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers, that grow so incredibly high.

[TZ -OH6]

Coming to a theater near you..."Night of the Sabertooth Grizzlycoon"

All of the flour corn is now destroyed (mostly half eaten cobs, plants torn down), the live trap was sprung and the bait gone, which means it was a very large R.O.U.S. I have about a month before the sweet corn is ready. I'm glad I don't raise chickens or small sheep.

As for the theory that planting squash in with the corn will keep varmints away with their prickly leaves. Not true.

[bcallaha]

TZ, I feel for you. I'm hoping we have more civilized coons here in Indiana. I have one that took two ears of my sweet corn this week, partially ate them one day, and then came back the 2nd day to finish them off. So far, he hasn't been a real pain like the one you're dealing with. If he starts getting that way, I will borrow our neighbor's big dog!!

Brad

[Fig3825]

Got up got out a bed...
How was your garden Day?

Not as bad as yours, but not excellent either. I did my normal work thing yesterday and we had a massive storm come through. Very heavy but somewhat short. About an hour. Got home and all of my squirrel cages were blown over and some had taken the plants with them. I lost a tomato for sure - the rain was so hard it pretty much drove the young seedling into the ground... 2 cages that flipped took out two corn plants, but I think they'll come back based on what I've seen in these forums. I doubt it matters, but nearly everything in the garden was covered by soil splash, some plants looked like they had just been plucked from underneath mud!

Storm 1, Tomatoes 0. Guess I'll try to get another one started...

[jal_ut]

Aw, too bad all the critter damage. Try putting a radio in the garden and tune it to the hard rock station. Nothing can stand that noise. It works for skunks in my garden.

A friend of mine, who lives by the river, started trapping racoons. He caught 72 the first year. My neighbor, who lives a block away, had a big racoon in his garage this week. I haven't had racoon damage here in past years, (knocking on wood) but looks like the potential is there. The skunks are a pain. They pester my bees too.

I had a great day in the garden. It was market day, so I spent some time getting veggies ready for market. I took lettuce, spinach, carrots, kohlrabi, onions, garlic, beets, and strawberries. I just about sold out. It was a good day at market. Then at the end of market, a beautiful rainbow.

[SPierce]

I finally managed to combat the colorado potato beetles that keep attacking my one potato container that I have left!

Also trying to figure out which direction I should be directing my pumpkin so that my roommate doesn't yell at me, since it's passing 11 feet long and will clearly be spreading out across our lawn.

My lima bean vines have grown past the climbers that I gave them, and is heading towards the house. I need to figure out some kind of 10 feet tall trellised system, for them... same thing for my fancy gourds, which will soon be crawling as far as THEY possibly can.

I'm also fretting over a giant rootbound tomato plant, which I shouldn't really be fretting over, but it's my biggest plant with the most tomatoes, and i worry about it.

OP- may I recommend a chicken wire fence of some sort around your garden? I was running into similar issues, but finally gave in and went for the fence. I can't solve the bug issues, but I sure can solve the racoon, etc ones!

[digitS']

TZ, I can't help but think of you as one of the best gardeners around. Things getting out of whack out there is probably just a temporary abomination for you!

Yesterday was both a marketday and a gardening day. It apparently rained almost continuously during the market. The vinyl tablecloths hanging out on the line are still wet! It doesn't rain often here during the summer and the little drops of water really suppressed turnout, DW tells me. I just know that it was all I could do to get everything hauled back home in a single load.

Meanwhile, I was only about a mile away and the rain had stopped after just a couple of hours. I almost had time to get the dahlias corralled but for the neighbor coming over to get me to help him lift a heavy crate into his pickup! I'm sure he knows that I garden because I'm too messed up to do martial arts, or something . . . We got the crate in the pickup, some of the dahlias are still uncorralled and I can hardly walk this morning!

TZ, I've got Painted Mountain flour corn in a corner of the big veggie garden this year also. The racoons show up every season when the sweet corn is ripe. It becomes something of a race as to who will get the ripe ears first. I don't remember a problem with the coons in the flour corn the last time I grew it but I've now planted it right where the critters like to enter the garden. May have set myself up for problems, eh?

Neighbors are waaay, way too tolerant of wildlife . . .

Steve

[TZ -OH6]

Being a good gardener depends a lot on your dirt, which is why I'm only good at growing tomatoes (which seem to like clods of clay)...and whatever goes into the small portion of my garden that has the good dirt. I can't grow a bell pepper to save my life.

Here are my garden "helpers" this year. They are like the mythical brownies and squeeze through the bars of my garden gates at night and look things over to make sure I am doing everything right, unfortunately their little feet often step on newly planted things. They haven't eaten anything yet.

The other day they started to follow me in so I had to shut the gates while I worked. Fifteen feet seems to be their comfort zone. I'm pretty sure their mother was one of my previous garden helpers because she doesn't seem to mind.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51251503@N ... hotostream

[applestar]

TZ, I'm bummed for you.... 

[lakngulf]

Being a good gardener depends a lot on your dirt

I could not agree more. It's all about the dirt

Here are my garden "helpers" this year

What a great picture!

[TheWaterbug]

Gardening to me is creating a new enviroment through plants that brings enjoyment to me by solving one problem after another while fighting nature and its surroundings.

Heh. There's the rub, right there! I know who my money's on

[stella1751]

What a lousy day! I feel for you, and I thank you for sharing. It makes me feel a little better about the comparatively small depradations I am suffering. Something is eating my strawberries, so I've ordered some netting. It is terrifically annoying to work that hard on producing something, only to have some stupid critter step in and take it all.

My best dog died this spring. I've never had to worry before about anything eating my produce; nothing would have dared to enter my yard with Dempsey around. Now I am stressing ahead of time about the corn, which I am growing for the first time in years. The other dog, now 13, would sleep through an elephant stampede.

Those of you who use transistor radios, how loud do you play it? I'm in close proximity to my neighbors here, so I would have to set it pretty low.

[digitS']

Loud Radios? The neighbors may have tried this ploy - on me!

They must notice, however, that I wear hearing aids . . . except at those times when they have loud music playing . . .

A stuffed cat works well at repelling birds. You just have to move it often - like a couple of times a day. I also enjoyed finding out-of-the-way places for the toy cat, slightly hidden under plants or looking out of an overturned bucket, that sort of thing. I wonder if this would work for mammals . . . (click)

If not, it might make a good sleeping companion for an old dog. He'd have to go looking for it every night, if you moved it around a lot.

Steve