A novice's attempt to get 15 percent of his food from his suburban fifth acre
Posted in Uncategorized on Apr 15th, 2010
In the past few days I have noticed some nibbling in disparate parts of my yard that suggests grasshoppers. The complete consumption of leaves here and there in a particular area and the fact that I can’t find the culprit on the hit plants also point toward this pest among others. Caterpillars I tend to [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Apr 12th, 2010
Last season I made an in-expert attempt at fencing. The barriers I erected were created in desperation in the midst of losing my entire warm-season crop — for the second or third time — and were hastily, poorly constructed contraptions. They failed to keep the ground squirrels, rabbits, voles, skunks, and opossums out. We lost [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 24th, 2010
This morning I found myself picking pill bugs off my bean seedlings. I noticed that several of the new sprouts — Kentucky Wonder, Contender, and Scarlet Emperor — had wilted and looked chewed. A few had pill bugs on their tender new leaves, but all had dozens of these tiny crustaceans just beneath the surface [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 21st, 2010
I have perhaps set a brazen schedule for our second spring. The last warm season’s utter failure is one impetus. The crushing persistence of the local pests is another. But ultimately my broad catalog has been inspired by all that I have learned. This warm season we will plant many traditional or heirloom varieties of [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Mar 4th, 2010
For weeks — even before our shipment of chicks arrived — I have been reading about the perils of being a chicken. And there are many. However, our brood will not face most of the horrors about which I have lately learned simply because of its size. As with any animal, high population density encourages [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 5th, 2010
So, the earliest of the spring-blooming perennials have barely had a chance to bud, let alone bloom and fruit and ripen — and the pests have already nibbled. It feels unsportsmanlike, and I know sportsmanlike conduct is a human ambition, even further, a gentleman’s conceit, and that little is accomplished by measuring nonhuman animals against [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 29th, 2009
Despite winter’s rep as a food-less time of year, a season during which many home growers and their yards hibernate, waiting for warm weather and the common edibles that come with it — we’ve been having a good growing experience. Our cold season crop has been a windfall compared to the pest-devastated warmer months earlier [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 23rd, 2009
A few weeks ago I planted a perennial gourd called a Chayote, and in this brief period of time it has displayed the durability I’d hoped for in this enduring class of plants. If the squirrels and rabbits are too numerous to be controlled and starved of other edibles by drought (which they are), then [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 17th, 2009
For about $8 you can buy 1,500 ladybugs. Since August, I have released 7,500 in my yard. Despite all of the troubles I’ve had getting things rolling in the garden this year, I have avoided dousing my edibles in chemicals to ward off or kill the pests. It’s felt like a Pyrrhic victory, at times. [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 29th, 2009
When crops start small, they start vulnerable. This was an essential weakness of my warm season crop: 90 percent of the loss occurred early in the plant’s development. Birds pulled just-sprouted veggies from the ground to eat the seed off the bottom, leaving the first inch of growth to wither in the would-be garden. Rabbits [...]