Tag: garden

Gardening Gone Wild

I love playing in the dirt, always have. I love watching things grow, especially fruits, vegetables, and herbs. I have also become really excited finding nature’s predators in the garden taking care of business for me. Toads are always welcome and if I see one somewhere else in the yard, I will catch it and take it to the garden to search for food. This year I found ladybug larvae scattered throughout my sedum and when they hatched, the ladybugs went about eating all of the aphids that were attacking the sedum. Now I am watching a small Carolina Mantis stand guard over my poblano pepper plant.

In addition to the pepper plants, I have planted different varieties of tomatoes, onions, leeks and cantaloupe this year. We devised a type of trellis for the cantaloupe to grow up on instead of along the ground. We thought this might keep the voles at bay. Well as usual, we grossly underestimated plant growth. The plants have taken on a life of their own and are producing lots of large fruit, some too large and heavy for the vine to support. I have four melons that I found in the garden so far that have fallen off the hanging vine before they were ripe enough to pick.

This morning while inspecting the plants checking on a couple that are close to picking, I found two that were growing tightly wedged between the fence post, the 2 x 4 support and the back fence slat. One was quite large with a squished shape and the other was a bit smaller, though just as squished. The two were forcing the two slats to bow out and pull away from the support. We had to push the two slats away from the support in order to get the two melons. Have you ever seen a flat melon? It is something to see. Nature always finds a way.

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I have a long-standing opinion of not feeding wildlife. I believe that feeding wildlife, birds, deer, squirrels, etc. is a bad idea. They can become too comfortable being close to people or lose their ability to hunt on their own. Then if we move away, the next person may not continue the practice, then the birds, squirrels, etc. have to re-learn to hunt on their own.

I do however provide water for the bees and the birds. I started with a bee bath to entice them to come and pollinate my vegetable garden. Ravens came and hogged the bee bath, so I added a bird bath for them. They loved the bird bath, drinking and bathing in it. They would make a huge ruckus, if the bird bath ran dry. They would sit on the fence or in the Cedar trees in the yard and yell at me until I refilled the bird bath.

When we moved back to the Midwest and started a much smaller garden, we didn’t have many pollinators around, so I set up another bee bath and the smaller birds, sparrows, house finches, robins, etc. availed themselves of the bee bath. I added a larger deeper tray with some rocks in the bottom and filled it with water. Soon that became a huge hit with the local birds. I kept the bee bath also and also set up small individual tiny bee-sized cups in and around the tomato plants, oregano and thyme.

This spring I ordered two real live bird baths and put them out in the back yard in different locations and waited. It took a day maybe before the birds found the new baths. They were lined up around the rims taking their turns at dipping their beaks in the water, then flying off after their thirst was quenched. Another bird would land in the vacated spot. We noticed that the birds would line up along the fence waiting for their turn.

Now we have swallows coming in the backyard darting back and forth, along with the sparrows, house finches and robins. Our backyard looks like a bird sanctuary and bee farm with honeybees, bumble bees and even a great gold digger wasp, something I’ve never seen before.

We are so popular.