Back in the Garden

Back in the Garden

I got home late Monday night. I waited until the sun came up before going to work; so I could look at the garden. The summer squash, zucchini and cucumbers are finally coming up. One more tomato has “bitten the dust”. It looks like a cut worm. We picked greens Tuesday night and tonight we will have a salad. We had to buy cucumbers and tomatoes.

Wednesday morning the temperature went into the high twenties. I feared for the tomatoes; but they did just fine. The figs also survived. Those are the only things that I was afraid could not stand the cold. Now the only big worries are the drought and the bugs. I am going to interplant the whole garden with mole kills (castor oil beans), basil, mint, onions, garlic and hot peppers in the hopes of keeping most of the crop. It is better to eat a vegetable with a little blemish than to ingest a lot of poison. A spray of baking soda and dishwashing soap should control the powdery mildew.

The plants that deer and rabbits eat are protected by poultry mesh. Rabbits dig so some will still get in. The area around my home was all woods when we moved in. Now it is all houses. I feel sorry for the wildlife that has lost so much habitat. The birds and squirrels are probably better off. Everyone feeds the birds and most people have dogwoods, holly, oak trees and other things that generate a lot of berries and nuts. The deer have plenty of food. They just don’t have cover and water. I put in a bigger bird bath this year and there are deer tracks around it almost every morning.



David Segrest is an International REALTOR in Charlotte, NC. His email is david@segrestrealty.com , His webpage is http://www.segrestrealty.com , and his international real estate blog is http://dointernationalrealestate.blogspot.com/.