Wow, busy week and more to come! Tonight I get to talk to a bunch of kids and parents about the different ways that we do justice at Mission. I love to see families embracing the vision for our church and moving forward together. Awesome stuff!
Just in case you were wondering the mission statement for… Mission Community Church comes from Micah 6:8 “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Last weekend I was able to finish cleaning up the front yard and start to implement… The Edible Landscaping Plan… dun, dun, dun, DUN! Hmmm… unfortunately that went better than expected. I pulled up a dead lantana (man that took a while to kill! 😉 ) and planted my artichoke plant. It went beautifully!
Until…
If you can’t even tell from my horrible blurry picture, something is eating my… edible… landscape. I can only guess it’s rabbits. I tried dusting the surrounding area with blood meal since rabbits seem to avoid that smell, but… it has had limited success. Any suggestions on this one?
My other pest problem will hopefully be under control soon, although my pocket gopher might be on to me. The other day I noticed that one of the traps was completely flipped over in the tunnel. The boys and I got ALL EXCITED! I warned them that it might not be dead yet and that we might have to finish him off, so one of the boys grabbed the shovel… okay that wasn’t nearly as creepy in real life as it sounded. Anyway… the gopher wasn’t there so we cleaned out the tunnel and reset the trap. I did notice yesterday morning that the trap on the other side had not been sprung but was completely encased in dirt. Hmm… I need to clean the tunnel out and push the trap in further. I’ll give the traps another try, they seem to be getting close and the infamous Buddy can’t get to them.
As part of my front yard cleanup I worked on my compost. One bin is done and is in the process of being emptied. The other has reached the super awesome “I WILL DIGEST WHATEVER YOU THROW AT ME!” mode. I love that. You can almost WATCH it break stuff down. Amazing.
The seedlings are doing good. I don’t have pepper pictures, but I do have pepper sprouts. One tray is doing much better than the other. I haven’t figured that out yet, but I’ll have to keep thinking. Here is the tomato that had been the first to sprout last week.
It’s looking SO GOOD, I’m very excited. Lots of tomatoes coming up now.
I will probably start to transplant the bigger ones in the next week. The seed blocks work good, but they start to break down toward the bottom and so the blocks start to come together and allow paths for the roots. It’s best to transplant before they are all entangled.
The fall/winter garden is still going well. I need to get some pictures. My youngest son is a carrot hound so he pulled up one of the bigger carrots growing to see how it tasted. His report: all good!
We’ve been eating some salads, broccoli, lots of kale, a couple of peas, a few leaves of swiss chard, spinach, bok choi, and the chickens have been enjoying the huge Chinese cabbage that decided to grow big leaves but no heads and then bolted (anybody ever seen this on Chinese cabbage?)
The weather has been great. A little cold for us this week (in the 60s instead of the 70s), but all in all it’s been a non-winter for us. I’m hoping that this is just a benefit of the brutal summer that we had last year and not an indicator that we are in for another scorcher this year.
Have you started your peppers and tomatoes yet?
The Jones Garden Blog 
Try dusting the plant with diatomaceous earth – that’ll eliminate hungry crawling things from the equation…..
You’ve locked up your chickens right? 😊
Haha… yes, the ladies are securely locked up, and this is in the front yard, where nary they roam. The damage seems to be done at night. The plant has been out in the front yard for weeks, just sitting on a pony wall instead of on the ground. I’ll give the DE a try.
So I tried the DE. I think I just dewormed a rabbit or two.
Look at em go! Nice work!
Thank you! The germination rate is pretty varied between trays and even in the best trays, it isn’t that good. I’m missing something here. Not sure what it is yet.
Jones, the only way I’ve found to block night shade animal destruction is to wire cage it. Don’t use the plastic because the little buggers can chew through it. I use a PVC frame with 1/2 inch grid. The rabbits are prolific in the city and will eat anything leafy. Well, except for tomatoes and peppers. I haven’t seen them eat those yet. Mine are about eighteen inches high and fit the size of the raised bed which is 4X8 feet. When I’m finished harvesting what I want, I take off the cage and let them have what’s left.
I have onion sprouts about an inch high under the grow lights. I’ll be transplanting them into two inch fiber pots soon to encourage their growth until they find there final resting place in the garden to mature. The Walla Walla onions will be started next week on the heat mat.
Good luck with critter control. Have a great seedling growth day.
Thanks, Dave! Maybe some pepper plants would be better front yard, edible landscaping than the artichokes. *sigh* My one artichoke out there was looking pretty small this morning. 😦
Wow! Busy busy all around! Sorry about your varmits. Darn it. Hope your talk went well!
Thanks, it went okay.
Seems like everything is coming along well with your garden. I hope you will be able to solve the critter problems.
I think I got the pocket gophers. No luck on the bunnies…
Have not started my garden yet…a little early still up her in the Pacific NW. 🙂
Yah we are in the opposite position as the rest of the country. We pretty much skipped winter. I’ve been contemplating starting a bed or two and we are still in February. But it’s 70-80s during the day and 50s at night. Sounds springy!
Hi Keith. Somewhere back in Feb your posts stopped coming up in my feed and I thought maybe you had stopped, which I thought was a shame as I really enjoy your posts, and then just recently I discovered I had somehow been unsubscribed. So I resubscribed and not wanting to miss a thing and read your posts out of order, I have a large cuppa tea and some spare time so will catch myself up with your gardening antics from here on and probably get a little envious of your burgeoning spring garden as my is pretty much in the ‘its all over’ stage.
Happy Gardening.
Cheers Sarah : o )
Yah, I’ve had wordpress do that to me before. Hopefully it’s an entertaining cuppa tea. 🙂