Garden Update for September 2011

The wildlife is still making their presence known. Last Friday morning we were awakened at about four o'clock in the morning by what sounded like a bunch of loud yapping dogs. We happen to know there is a pack of five wolves on our mountain so we knew what the sound was. I got up to look around the house to see if I could actually see them--they sounded so close. But after opening a window, I realized I was hearing echos off the nearby ridge. They were probably much less than a mile away, though.

Recently, we had our first near frost. Yes, in September. The forecast overnight temperature was 33°F. We hurriedly threw a cover over the tomatoes and hoped for the best. I picked the one heirloom tomato that was turning yellow so we could at least taste one should the rest freeze. A few days later, the tomato was a nice orange with red stripes--the way it's supposed to look when ready to eat. That was the fleshiest tomato I've ever had--delicious! We were going to try to save it's seeds, but we could only find three! We figured we'd wait until some of the other tomatoes ripened since this one was not the best of the bunch.

I was really annoyed when I checked on our garden this morning. There are usually four or five grape tomatoes ripe enough to pick on any given day. My one year old daughter has eaten about 95% of the tomatoes I've picked this year. Then I noticed something strange. Half of the heirloom tomatoes, including the ripest one that I've been waiting to pick was missing! Then I noticed that the cherry tomato plants had been knocked down to the ground. I went and told my wife the deer had eaten our tomatoes. When I came back out, I realized they had also eaten all of our kale! All of it! I'm glad I got at least one cutting of kale earlier in the month or I would be even more upset. As it is, I have half I mind to go find the deer that ate my kale and eat it!

I can no longer recommend the deer netting that comes with a 100% money-back gaurantee. I don't want more netting--I want my kale! It looks like we'll have to build a fence for next year. We have extremely rocky soil (with very large rocks), so I'm not looking forward to digging holes for the fence posts. But I'm determined to keep the deer out next year. Oh, and keep the bears out of the compost pile, too. And just for good measure, it must keep the moose out, too. A future post will have all the details on our garden fence. Look for it next year.

Our garden after the deer attack: Kale completely gone, and
several heirloom tomatoes eaten. Some sweet 100 tomato
plants were knocked over, too.