|
|
Gardening Blog (Archive): July 2003
A gardening blog, generally organic.
Profile
| Current Blog
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Day one. I got the gum.
I should explain, I read on the Net that you can kill pocket gophers with Juicy Fruit gum. Supposedly, the gophers eat it, can't digest it, and die.
Now if only that were true; I've also read that it's an urban myth. But what have I got to lose?
You wear gloves to unwrap the gum and place several sticks of it (unchewed, naturally) inside their tunnels. i.e. you don't want any human scent on the gum.
I didn't dig into the tunnels, just looked for fresh holes. It's a bit tricky, since they backfill the holes almost right after they dig them. But I did find two...I used a piece of rebar to hollow out each hole and reconnect it with its tunnel.
I put 3 sticks into each tunnel, pushing them into the tunnel with the rebar, and covered the holes with dirt. (You don't want to bury the gum, so cover the holes with care.)
Why do you cover the hole? If it's open, the rat, erm, gopher, will push dirt forward to cover it, possibly burying the gum.
I'm going to do this for a while with every fresh hole I see...I've heard it takes a while to work.
--Josephine
posted by TheBroadroom.Net at 4:22 PM (Pacific)
Sunday, July 27, 2003
Hummm...I really enjoy gardening.
I suppose, not in the conventional sense...I don't like chemicals or poisons, or pampered plants, particularly. Having a manicured garden doesn't quite appeal. I prefer a garden that has a more accidental, natural, yet lush feeling to it.
That said, this is my first real garden. I lived in apartments mostly, when I was growing up.
And this place, when we bought it, had been a rental for the past few decades. i.e. no one did a thing to the garden; it was entirely overgrown, jungle-like, with an enormous yucca here, a small Christmas-tree pine there, lots and lots of concrete...and a plentitude of well-established, ugly plants.
The concrete didn't make sense until we'd cleared up all the junk. Apparently, this lot is cursed with pocket gophers. Little, tiny, horrible creatures, who produce nothing, yet destroy anything you try to do.
I could name the many plants I tried to grow that ended up getting killed by the gophers. But that would be depressing. There are a few...very...plants that they don't seem to like. And I feel that it doesn't really mean anything. If they get hungry enough, they'll eat them, but here's what's worked so far (past six years):
lavender
ruby slippers (large sort of mounding plant, deep-pink daisy-style flowers with yellow eyes)
roses
camellias (knock wood)
jasmine (ditto)
sage
lemon verbena
calla lilies
irises
daffodils
white lilies
They don't seem to like bulbs in general, but they have eaten amaryllis and chives.
So there's the good news! You can seemingly have as many roses as you like. As far as sweet herbs like basil and parsley, forget about it. Put 'em in pots.
Sheesh, where was I. I'm doing some experiment now with the apple trees...we have a couple of old ones, that produce millions of teeny, sour fruits. I've been pruning it back each year, more and more. This year the apples were actually close to sweet (and quite good, whatever kind they are). And bigger. I went up there today, here's my advice:
figure out which branches are alive and which are dead
don't sit on the dead ones.
:) I cut off all the smaller branches I could reach. I really want to prune the dang thing more drastically, but that's for after the fruiting season.
Yup, the gophers killed my fig tree (it was there for two years). I have an orange tree in a pot now. Washington Orange; it's good, we got sweet oranges (small, pool ball size) last year.
I also got a lemon tree and again it's in a pot. Not Meyer lemon; I got the sour kind.
This year I want to do something different with the garden, anyway. I'm not happy with that water-soluble fertilizer. It costs too much and it's too much hassle. I'm going to try the kind Peter Strauss was flogging...shake it on, it lasts three months?
And I'm danged if I let my roses mildew this year. I was chicken to spray them, what with the kids around, but I am game now to find some hopefully organic treatment for them should they mildew again. I was impressed that three totally mildewed-out roses, came back to life after we pruned them down to the ground. Roses are very strong plants.
I would also like to find some faster-growing plants than some I have. I put two camellias in, and they look maybe three inches taller now than they were two years ago. :( And I have "Paraguay Nightshade" (that plant with loads of purple flowers) and it's...two inches taller than it was two years ago.
On the other hand, the ruby slippers exploded--I had to cut it back today, it was actually strangling my lavender. The lavender grows well (Northern California, Bay Area climate). Mint is always a good option (the gophers eat it, it's just that it grows so well some always survives), ditto sage and lemon verbena.
I think the best game plan would be to add just a few things...I still have to put tomatoes, basil and parsley in pots. They deserve nice large pots, since they can't grow directly in the ground because of the gophers. And a few flowers in pots.
Otherwise I'm going to go with the same stuff I already have.
Will post here how well the Peter Strauss stuff works.
--Josephine
posted by TheBroadroom.Net at 4:56 PM (Pacific)
|
