Of gardeners that is…

I’ve been gardening alone for close to seven years now but there is just no way to know everything. I love my alone time being in my own garden. I consider that my special place. The special place however has been ruined by a flurry of unmerciful destruction from some unidentified furry critters.

One of the things I have been able to grow pretty well in the past is swiss chard:

Not this time!!! As you can see through two layers of fencing and a cover in a raised garden bed the rodents and/or raccoons were able to uproot and destroy! They did it to my onions, peppers and tomatoes. Out of five tomato plants not one tomato did I get 🙁

So as I said before when I had trouble with voles I am not giving up! It’s war time. I am going to install several of these:

and I am going to construct cages all around them them so nothing can get it. While I am working on that though I still want to grow things. Afterall that’s why I have a garden is to grow things right?

Just down the street from my work is a community garden made available by a partnership but the local county health and the UC Davis Master gardener program. This is a learning garden for master gardeners and for the community to grow their own food. For only $20/year you get a 16 x 16 foot plot with water and access to a tool shed with all your gardening needs. The whole area is behind a locked gate that is electrified to keep the rodents out.

I knew that space was limited and it was unlikely I wouldn’t get  a spot. I went to one of their garden meetings just to see what it was about and I was lucky to find a person who would let me have half of his space. I now had an 8 x 16 foot spot to get started!

It is so much fun to to a quick trip after work and see what others have done with their plots. I have gotten to know some of the other gardeners there and see what creative things they have done with problems and their solutions.

Not knowing the soil too well I brought in a few boxes I had and planted some lettuce and some snap peas in the ground for half of it and a few left over tulip bulbs I had.

This left the other half to figure out what to do with…

I mentioned this to my friend who runs the college California native nature preserve about this spot and he was pretty interested in learning more about it. He volunteered to amend the other half of the soil and donate some California natives to the to the other half.

After updating my iphone to IOS recently I had to play a little with the panorama. Here you can see the cute little garden shed in the background!

Hopefully with this new plan I will have a lot more successes to share than failures for the next post! 🙂