Garden Friends: Snakes

As we were walking down to the garden, we saw a big gopher snake (about six feet long) slithering in the wood pile. We were all happy to see him there and hopeful that he would catch some of the gophers or squirrels that were eating all of our tomatoes. 

Suddenly, we heard a high pitch squeak. We thought (hopefully) that it might be the sound of a squirrel that was just caught by a snake. Maya, our dog, was very excited and ran to the wood pile, sticking her nose in a little hole in the woodpile. We called her back so we could see what she was sniffing at through the hole. Lacey was the first to see a bunny's head. She said that it looked like it was laying still. 

As we were all crowding around trying to see what she was talking about, Maya stuck her nose back in and that is when we heard a very loud hiss. Seriously loud, I did not know that snakes could make such a loud sound. We decided that it was probably a good idea to give the snake its space and called Maya away again and found some work to do away from the garden. 

After about a half-hour or so, we went back to see if the rabbit or snake were still around. All we could see was part of the snake's body sticking out of the hole where we had seen the bunny. One less rodent to eat our bounty.

This was a different gopher snake we found previously in a different part of our land.

Our First Bounty

We have enough ripe sugar snap peas to make a meal, well at least a side dish for a meal
If the kids don't eat them all as we pick them, we will make a recipe Ron found with blanched peas and a ginger citrus dressing.

Pest Control - Earwig Battle: Round One

We think that our vegetable garden is being attacked by earwigs. We see them everywhere around the garden (and house for that matter - which is really disgusting by the way!). Thanks to Google, we discovered a pretty simple trap for them. You put about an inch of vegetable oil and something smelly like soy sauce (some of the articles and YouTube videos suggest the water or oil from tuna) in a shallow container (we used yogurt containers and small cans) and bury the container in the ground so that the opening is at ground level. The earwigs are attracted by the smell and fall into the container and the oil coats them so that they cannot get out. When you go out in the morning to check your traps you will be both delighted and disgusted at the number of dead earwigs in your containers.

We've only done it for a couple nights so far and it seems like there are less holes in the new leaf growth. Hopefully it will help a lot.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Our garden is coming along quite nicely.  We have peppers, tomatoes and basil that Ron started from seeds indoors. Some of them are being eaten by some kind of bug, mostly the basil, but some are thriving. Hoping for a lot of big, juicy tomatoes! We also have some beans growing that we planted from seeds early on. They are beautiful and producing lots of beans.

The pictures below show some of the beds that are almost ready for planting. This area was just an flat space with nothing but weeds. Now we have raised beds and vegetables!

There is still a lot of work to be done. We need to figure out what pests are eating the basil and how to deal with them. We also planted some carrots, beets, lettuces and spinach and those never made it. As soon as they came up, something ate them. It seems to be an insect, not the rabbits or squirrels, because we can see holes in the leaves that are left.

Our Chicken Coop

I realized that I never put pictures of our coop up. The indoor picture is from November, so the chickens are MUCH bigger now.

Ron designed it all by himself, no plans were used. He did a lot of reading about coops, and we looked at a whole lot of plans together to get a feel of what we liked, and then he went designed it on his own. 

We have a few more things to do. It still needs steps to the door so the kids and I can more easily get inside. And we need to add access doors to get to the nesting boxes from outside. But it is fully functional! 

Fruits and Veggies

It's not all chickens on the Potter Farm, we've also been working on the garden. And when I say "we" I really mean "Ron."

Last weekend he put in some fruit trees and table grapes.

The girls planted a row of strawberries and Ron put in a soaker hose

We also have some beans growing that we planted a few weeks ago,

Hopefully we will have some nice fruits and veggies this summer. As long as the gophers don't eat them first.  

We'll see what we get up to this weekend. I still have to add pictures of some of the creatures we've found as we've been working in the garden.