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.

Pest Control: Squirrels

Our tomato, tomatillo and pepper plants were finally looking beautiful. We had so many little baby fruits starting on all the plants we were already thinking about the number of different sauces we could make, learning about how to can tomatoes,thinking about whether we should invest in a pressure canner.

Then one day, Ron went down to check on the bounty that was our garden, and he saw the dreadful squirrel hole right in the middle of a row of tomato plants. After successfully battling the earwigs and other six-legged pests, controlling the moles underground, keeping out the rabbits, the squirrels could not be stopped. They will enter the garden from underground, get through any chain linked fence or just climb right over it. Not only did they make a hole inside the garden, but as if to taunt us, the squirrel left a half-eaten tomato right outside the fence. You may have won this battle my friend, but the war has just begun...

Half-eaten tomatillos left outside of the garden by squirrels

Scorpions, really?

I found a scorpion on the living room floor the other night. As if just finding a scorpion wasn't bad enough, my niece and one of my daughters were both sleeping on said living room floor. Like any normal mother, my first thought was to wake up Ron and the kids, run out of the house screaming, and burn it down. Instead, I found the nearest container, placed it over the scorpion and ran to get Ron so he could kill it. Ron came out to see it, but rather than wanting to kill it, he wanted to capture it.

The container that I had placed over the scorpion was one of those plastic food containers you get from grocery stores or delis. The kind with a plastic lid. Since Ron wanted to capture it, rather than kill it (crazy man!), I got him a piece of stiff construction paper that he could slide under the container and flip it over so that the scorpion would be inside the container and not likely to figure out a way to get out from under it. Once he had the container flipped over with the scorpion inside, I went to find the lid for it and handed it to Ron. As Ron took the lid from me, he asked, "shouldn't there be holes in it?" "Only if we want it to live," I replied. Unfortunately, he wanted it to live so he put holes in it.

Ron had bought a black light that could be used to find tomato hornworms in the garden. Hornworms glow in the dark with these lights and make them easier to find. Ron wanted to see if the scorpion would also glow, and it did. It was actually pretty cool to see it glow, but I still thought it would be cooler to see it dead.

Once it was safely in the container, I started looking up information on scorpions. Basically, I wanted to know 1) what would happen if you were stung by one and 2) did finding one in your house mean that you were likely to have more, like with rats, ants or cockroaches. I was glad to find out that most stings are not deadly and that they do not nest, so having one in the house did not mean that were was a nest in the house. Unfortunately, they do tend to come in houses in the summer, which means that we could find more.

Knowing that this was not likely to be our last encounter with a scorpion as long as we were in East San Diego County, I thought that we should find a place to live where there are no scorpions. While perhaps burning down the house was not an option, we could always move somewhere without scorpions. Sadly, the only place on the planet without scorpions is Antarctica. So, now I have to try and find a research job so we can move there. So far, I have not had any cooperation on this move from the rest of my family though.

Vegetable Garden Update: Squash and Melons

The squash and melons also had a rough start. We made some mounds out on the land, outside of the fenced garden area, so in addition to pest like earwigs and worms,  they were pray to rabbits, squirrels and our own chickens.

We planted summer squash, including green and yellow zucchini, winter squash like acorn squash, water melon, honeydew and cantaloupe.As they first started to sprout, they were getting eaten by some sort of pests so Ron protected them with water bottles by cutting off the bottoms and putting over the plants. That helped them get started and once we took the bottles off, the squashes started doing very well. We put some deer netting over them for a while to keep the rabbits, squirrels and chickens off. Now, they are flowering and producing lots of great looking fruit.

The melons on the other hand kept struggling and finally died off.  We planted them a little early and the nights were still a little cold, so Ron started some watermelon seeds in the house. Now they are outside and looking healthy with some deer netting to help keep out critters.

Vegetable Garden Update: Tomatoes and Peppers

The vegetable garden is going great these days. We've got tons of tomatoes and peppers growing in the garden and squash and melons growing on mounds outside of our fenced garden in some mounds we made.

The peppers and tomatoes had a tough beginning, but are doing great now. Here's a summary of what we learned our first year.

1. Starting them in pots in the house worked well. We bought a warming mat and some lights to get them going.

2. When we first put them in the garden, they were getting devoured by the earwigs. We learned NOT to put mulch in the garden when the earwig population is at it's height, which seems to be winter and spring. Of course we had an unusually warm winter this year, with days in the 90s in January and February. The earwig traps worked well at that time too.

3. We didn't stake the tomatoes or peppers and some of them broke with the heavy rains we finally got in May and with the wind. Next year, we will want to be sure to stake them.

4 .Once the nights start getting warm, the plants will go crazy! Another reason to stake them, the tomato plants are so big that they are spreading into the walkways and I am not sure how we will reach all of them.

Spring In the Desert

We are in a very arid area, close to, but not quite the desert. At times, it feels very desert like to me as can be seen in the picture below.

But even in the desert, spring brings lovely flowers.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (and tomatillos)

The tomatoes are gorgeous, I sure hope that no one comes to eat them before we get them!