More garden learning and my gardening friends have encouraged me to post Part 2 in my garden lessons, building on this blog written a little over a year ago. I have continued to learn at a high rate, so I'll attempt to organize the information systematically.
Pests - the Good News and the Bad News
Deer - what works and what doesn't
First of all, I have continued to learn what the critters like and don't like, so wanted to update you on my latest learning in the area of animals and insects. First the bad news, I am starting to believe that the deer pass down knowledge through generations about where the good eating spots are. The first year it was a tiny deer that ate my roses. I thought it was an orphan so didn't really do much to discourage him or her. The second year we had a pair, and they had babies. Last year we had multiple families, for a total of 11 deer through-out the season. This year so far I've seen a family with twins and one with triplets. The babies are moseying their way through my garden, learning what tastes good and not. I guess they have to learn fear too, because even when I run out banging pots together (which usually works on adults), the babies just keep eating! But, they're so darn cute that it's hard to get too mad.
Early in the season, they eat their favorites. Those favorites seem to be roses (deer candy, according to my sister Fran), sunflowers (sprouted from my bird feeders), geraniums, and oak leaf hydrangeas.
Last year, they went deeper as the season went on, eating all my hydrangeas (even coming up on the porch to get those branches), and the shrub I have growing along the porch. These photos were taken in September. You could tell they were getting hungry!
Roses are a particular favorite. I planted three rose bushes near the house soon after we moved in, figuring no deer would be brave enough to venture that close. Wrong! For years they were fine, but, starting with that tiny deer several years ago they have been eaten regularly. This year they had been eaten several times, and I went out one evening and was thrilled to see my "Gold Medal" rose seemed to be recovering. Two days later, it looked like the photo on the right.
I finally put up a temporary fence when they started eating the petunias I had growing in that bed. I was successful at scaring them off with the motion detector sprinkler (and the crittercam showed some very interesting footage), but we were going on vacation so I threw up this fence. It worked fine, but since I left it up for several months it had flowers growing through it by the time I took it down, so that was a bit of a mess.
The other solution I tried that failed was Irish Spring soap. I had heard that this would work to repel deer because of the strong smell. I bought the soap, cut it up, tied it in neat little bundles, and fastened it to stakes to protect the Sedum Autumn Joy, which also seemed to be a deer favorite. You can see how well that worked!
Turns out it didn't repel deer (they were caught on video eating right next to it!), it DID attract some other type of critter (my theory is raccoons since they not only ate the soap but UNTIED the strings), and the Sedum was eaten anyway. This year they aren't bothering it, yet!
So my words of wisdom on deer are:
Plant behind fences (my backyard fences are 7 ft tall and as long as I don't leave the gates open, that seems to protect my plants from deer).
Plant stuff they don't like. I am starting a list based on what seems to survive well in my yard, I'll share it here when done.
If necessary use motion detector sprinklers or temporary fences to protect individual areas.
Insects - attracting bees and butterflies
As you might remember from the new patio reveal, during the plant selection phase Kara and I were specifically looking for plants that would attract bees and butterflies (but not be attractive to gophers or deer). We caged those that we needed to protect from gophers, and as noted above the deer do like the Sedum and petunias, but otherwise most of the plants are doing pretty well. While I have only noticed a few butterflies flitting through, I do have a ton of BEES in my garden.
The bee favorites in front are definitely the catmint and lavender, although they do also enjoy the penstemon, salvia, and lantana and to a lesser extent, the black-eyed susans and echinacea. They literally swarm over the catmint and lavendar all day long, to the point where I don't want to cut them back!
In the backyard, I added a few more scabiosa and statice plants, and they seem to LOVE them. I can't go out in the garden without getting some good bee photos!
I had never really paid much attention to the type of bees in my garden, but someone visiting yesterday said "Oh, good, you have native bumblebees" which made me do a little research. If you're interested, I found this interesting study on how they determine which flowers the bees prefer in nature, and this guide which shows the different types of bees native to California. So much to learn! I'll have to pay more attention in the future and see if I can document the types of bees I have.
The ever-present earwig
I am not alone in detesting the earwigs that live in my garden. I belong to a facebook group called "Sonoma County Gardener" and quite often there are posts from someone asking "what is eating my plant?" or "how do you get rid of earwigs?". I haven't done a lot more studying on this topic since last year's blog, but in talking with others and reading it seems like the soy-sauce-and-oil-trap works best. I had put mine in plastic containers with lids and poked holes in the lids, but I recently saw 1/4 pint jars sunk down so the top was at soil level. Since I interplanted marigolds in my garden this year to test companion planting, I have the opportunity to see how they are damaged in some areas but not others. I'm pretty sure it's earwigs doing the damage, so all I can think is they are more prevalent in certain beds. I will set traps next to each and test that theory.
They also continue to live in my compost bins, thriving in the tight area where the boards slide up and down. I periodically treat that area with diatomaceous earth, but part of me wonders "isn't this where I WANT earwigs, where they can do their part in chewing up my compost?". But I'm convinced they TRAVEL so I'll continue to try to trap or kill them whenever I see them.
Speaking of compost bins, one of the issues I reported in my last blog was the fact that I was attracting animals with my compost bins. My handy son Brian and his wife Anujin built lids, and that works much better.
They even created this simple system to keep the lids open if I need to use a shovel or both hands to break up compost (for example, I crumble egg shells as I dump them in).
Other than critters, what else have I learned?
Raised Bed Learning
I've learned that as things age they need maintenance or replacing.
One such item was our raised beds. When they were first built, Randy underwired them and placed a metal rod across the middle to keep the sides from "bowing out". One thing we should have done differently was run the wire up to near the top. Over time, we started noticing gopher damage, and it seemed they had penetrated the underwiring, or climbed up and over the raised bed.
We dug all the dirt out of one bed, and you could see all the gopher tunnels under and around the wire, trying to get in. They finally found a weakness. A few years back, we "raised the wire" because the original wire which was just attached near the bottom had gotten breached. When the higher wire was attached around that middle bar, it was tough to get a close fit and the gophers found a weakness and got in.
So my learning on raised beds as it relates to gophers is:
Run the wire all the way up the inside, not just at the bottom.
Don't use black plastic or anything else inside the beds, as that gives the earwigs another place to hide (I learned this from a friend who made that mistake).
Don't leave gopher mounds built against the outside of the bed, or trailing plants (e.g. pumpkins) tumbling out of the bed, as I am convinced they use these as stairs and climb up them!
We think we have fixed most of the beds. The support posts are also starting to rot so we reinforced those last year. Our latest raised beds have been placed in stock tanks, which have the added benefit of being higher and harder to climb, I think they keep the soil warmer, and they're solid in the bottom (thus not needing wire). Of course, you need to drill holes for drainage and run irrigation pipes up inside before you fill them with dirt. In the next year or two we'll probably need to replace the original raised beds, but considering they were built over 25 years ago, that's not bad.
Volunteers are the Best
Most of you who have gardened know about "volunteers", or plants that come up without being planted. Usually, they are very hardy stock and do well if you decide to leave them. This year, I've had some particularly interesting volunteer experiences.
First of all, while I'm still studying companion planting, I think that strawberries and dill do well together, at least if you believe what nature does in my garden. Take a look at this photo, taken in March of this year. I didn't plant that dill in there intentionally. It volunteered!
Last year I had several dill plants, but the bed where they reseeded the most successfully was the strawberry bed. I was leaving these plants, thinking I'd eventually pot them up or pick the dill and dry it, when one day I noticed this! Yep, apparently gophers LIKE dill! I knew this bed wasn't gopher-free, because I hadn't wanted to dig up the strawberry plants to fix the wire underneath, but was hoping against hope they wouldn't make a nuisance of themselves. Nope, they proceeded to eat every one of those dill plants, as well as the sweet pea that was growing at the end of the bed. So sad! But, it did save me the trouble of figuring out what to do with all that dill! And Rick, with his cinch traps, was able to catch the gopher before he did a lot more damage.
In other volunteer news, my experiment with planting nasturtium as a companion plant is turning into a "once you plant nasturtium you never need to plant it again" lesson. It is happily residing in all my raised beds, almost too much of it. I did pot some up in the winter and it sold well at the plant sale I did at the church, so others must like nasturtium as well.
Many of you know that the flowers and leaves of nasturtium are edible, but I recently learned that the seeds can be pickled and used like capers. Also, I had read about the value of nasturtiums as companion plants, protecting some plants by their smell or being a "trap crop" to attract pests INSTEAD of the crop you are trying to protect, but I recently learned that they can also make other crops TASTE better. I need to do a lot more research on companion planting, that will be the topic of a future blog. In the meantime, my own garden is a test bed for many of these theories if I just pay attention.
Some other volunteers in my garden this year came from my compost. This teaches me that my compost isn't hot enough to kill the seeds, good thing I don't put weeds in there! Someone suggested I cover it with black plastic, so I'll try that next. In the meantime, when I thought I was being all "plant healthy" and spreading my compost as top dressing over the raspberries, I apparently spread dill and poppy seeds in my raspberry beds. Most of the dill didn't survive, I guess it couldn't outgrow the raspberries and get sun, but the poppies are very happy. I haven't had poppies in my garden for at least 10 years, so that says how long the seed lived in my compost!
Another area of massive volunteer experimentation was the new flower bed we underwired this year. Rick and I worked our tails off to protect and irrigate the flower bed along the new fence. Last year I planted flowers there and noticed that the irrigation wasn't working and I had gopher holes. So this spring I worked hard to figure out the irrigation problem (it turns out the line ran next to the boxwood shrubs on the other side of the fence and as they grew, they "squeezed" the irrigation line and blocked it). So I fixed that, then after the new fence was installed, I dug out all the dirt in the flower bed (it's about 30 feet long and 2 feet wide). After doing that, Rick and I bought big rolls of "hardware cloth" (the sturdy, square wire that is small enough to protect against gophers) and attached it to the new fence and the old 2x6 sunk as a border). That was a challenge, since the old wood was rotting, the shrubs on the other side of the fence left big roots in this bed, and the old fence had left chunks of cement we had to work around, but I think we were successful at gopher protection. After all that work, we added back in the dirt, amending it with compost, and I happily added worms and top dressed with compost. I planted some of the plants we bought in Cambria in February which had survived in pots all that time, I transplanted black-eyed susans, shasta daisies, one of my Mom's dark pink roses, seedlings grown from neighbor Melissa's cosmos and "bee friend" seeds, plus a bunch of other flowers. I was happy to see the flowers growing, but also noticed lots of things I DIDN'T PLANT growing as well. This just shows that God really does want me to grow vegetables and flowers together, as I now have pumpkins, tomatoes, dill, cilantro, and tomatillos all growing happily next to my flowers. We'll see how it does, I pulled and repotted lots of plants but left some, I just want to see what happens. Here is a gallery of photos showing the process:
Last but not least, for some reason this year the lobelia came back from prior years in massive amounts. Along my front walkway I noticed it coming up in the back of the bed in the winter, so I potted some up and gave it away, then dug more up and spread it around. It has almost taken over that bed, which is not a bad thing. I'll probably cut it back soon, as it and the Santa Barbara daisies are starting to look ragged, but it sure added a pretty color the last few months.
Always Learning - Raspberries
One of the things I realized in retirement is I enjoy learning! I still have a lot to learn in this area, but one of the things I came across was tips on pruning raspberries. I guess I never researched this topic, I just cut all my raspberries back to about a foot tall in the late Fall, while thinning and potting up extras. After attending this webinar on multiple topics, including growing berries and pruning them and fruit trees, I got my first clue that I shouldn't be doing that. It helps if you know WHAT type of raspberries you have, because I guess some have different pruning requirements. I'm pretty sure I have the Heritage Variety, and according to Fred Jarvis the way I've been pruning them means I get one crop, at the tips of the plants. If I prune them differently, I can get more berries and spread throughout the summer.
I might also be pruning them at the wrong time, this photo from early January shows I had already pruned them this year. I think if I leave them longer the old canes feed the roots of the plant. You know how youtube works, once I watched the recording of this webinar, it led me to another video on pruning raspberries specifically, this one is recorded by a woman who lives in Sebastopol and she talks a lot about summer bearing and ever bearing types. I also watched this video, after months of "saving" it in my browser tabs, and it provides very clear instruction. At the end of this video he states that if you cut your fruiting canes back more than 25% you are seriously impacting your yield, so that might explain why I didn't get many raspberries last year. Next year I plan to apply this new learning, so I hope for a bumper crop next year.
You probably all know that raspberries need to be supported, and the videos show various ways of doing that. Since mine are in a stock tank, I don't really have rows of berries. My solution has been to use "texas sized" tomato cages. Luckily, I found these initially at a garage sale, because they're kind of expensive. They nicely include their website on the tomato cage, so when I wanted to shop for more, I realized how expensive they are new. I put my new facebook marketplace skills to use, and searched for "texas sized tomato cages" and FOUND SOME being sold. We had to drive to the east bay to pick them up, but that gave us a good excuse for a road trip, Rick gave me a nice tour of Alameda where he grew up, and we saved a ton of money. Oh, the joys of retirement!
Before I had enough cages, I would "rope" up the berries using jute twine, because otherwise they would fall all over the place. I learned that if I tied them too tight, they created a "close" set of plants that was a nice habitat for the earwigs. I started seeing a lot of chewed leaves, so set my traps inside the raspberry bins and caught a bunch.
So that's my raspberry learning for now. I will prune them differently next year and keep you posted.
Laziness Pays Off
In my garden learning blog last year I talked about how I "live and let live" in my garden, and how the bees enjoy the blooms on the spent vegetables and herbs. This year, my "laziness" has led to more learning. For instance, if I let my "Sedum Autumn Joy" plant "lay down" after bloom, it will send out roots at each joint in the branch, so I get LOTS MORE plants that way. Eventually I get tired of potting them up, although last year I mailed a bunch of trimmed plants in moist paper towels to my sister in Idaho and apparently they survived the trip AND the winter in her greenhouse!
Sweet peas seem to grow best if they sow themselves vs. if I try to plant them, so I let my sweet pea plants stay long past the time they are producing. They look messy, but they sow themselves and I can gather ripe seeds to share with others.
Recently, a friend gave me a start off her jade plant. I put it in a wet napkin in a plastic bag and it got lost amongst all the fair baking activity in my kitchen. I found it a week later and it had happily rooted. I tranplanted it and I think it will do very well. If I had tried to plant it right away I don't think it would have done nearly as well.
Well, I could go on for days but I think that's enough for now. It's a nice day, not too hot, my youngest son is working in the back garden and I have new plants from Harmony Farm Supply to get in the ground, so nature calls!
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