How Does Our Garden Grow?

It certainly would grow better if we didn't have a family of raccoons living right next to the lot where our garden is located!  This being our first year of family gardening we have a bit of a learning curve.  We discovered that we placed our garden on top of some perennials and weeds that were not the least bit daunted by all the layers we set down the previous fall.

Oops, thought it was all grass.

It took many hours of weeding to clear the weeds and dig out the bulbs (and there were a few we didn't get that I'm sure will be back next year).  Again we had many children from the neighborhood coming and asking if they could help weed.  They weren't focused enough to actually weed much but we had some good gospel conversations as they dug up worm after worm for the fun of it!  It wasn't surprising to learn that all of them have heard of Jesus (they've all been "churched") but none of them knew what Jesus did so they wouldn't have to pay for all of eternity for their own sins.  Also not surprisingly, they resisted the idea that their sins were at all serious or even their own fault.  So I guess you could say we've been planting physical and spiritual seeds this spring!

Our seedlings were doing great 

 until the few extra weeks of cold weather this spring.  They all managed to die right before the weather was warm enough to plant them.

We also purchased some night crawlers so Biggest Brother could help Little Big Brother and Little Mama start a worm farm, something he did by himself last year.  The plan was to release them into the garden once they multiplied.  It worked fabulously last year for Biggest Brother's little box garden but for some reason this year all the worms disappeared.  We couldn't find a single one after a week or so!

No worries, though.  Weeding in the garden has shown us that it's already bursting full of big, fat earthworms.

Since sweet peppers need a long head start we ended up purchasing those and transplanting them into our garden.  We also purchased some Everbearing strawberry plants.  The spaghetti squash, zucchini, lettuce, carrots, and green beans we simply planted directly into the garden using our remaining seeds.

But that was before we knew about the raccoons.

Over the first few days there were strange holes popping up all over the garden and some of our stakes were pulled out and tossed aside.  In the end, the critters dug up all of our lettuce and carrots before the seeds could even sprout.  They dug up a few of the squash seeds causing our neat rows to grow in zig zag as the seeds they tossed continued to sprout and grow.

One morning I went to check on our newly planted strawberry plants and found this: 

 

At first we thought we had rabbits or groundhogs (which we do have around here in abundance) but it quickly became clear that we were dealing with something a lot smarter and more nimble than rabbits or groundhogs.  Then we caught a raccoon in our yard one evening and watched him scurry into the abandoned house next to our lot and garden which confirmed our suspicions.  We've since caught them in the lot and learned that there are quite a few raccoons living in the attic of that abandoned house--including a giant one that looks like a panda bear.  

We tried pepper spray around the garden and fencing the lot but neither kept them out.  Five of our sweet pepper plants and two tomato plants bit the dust during this time--sometimes chewed down to a stem and other times torn out of the ground (roots and all!), tossed aside, and trampled-- so we purchased and planted more.  After researching we discovered that almost nothing will keep raccoons away except coyote urine or an electrified fence.  

We opted for coyote urine and it appears to be working--so long as we apply it every evening.  If we miss one day, something is almost always guaranteed to be missing or damaged in the garden the next day.

We now have tomatoes, sweet peppers, spaghetti squash, zucchini, and green beans beginning to grow! 

 

We also have lemon balm which has remained untouched.
I guess raccoons don't like lemon!

Since we started the large garden this year, Biggest Brother passed his garden box down to Little Mama to grow red and green romaine lettuce.  He helped her plant in May and she's been harvesting lettuce for our salads all summer.

For a brief while Little Mama's lettuce was getting eaten as soon as it grew to harvesting height.  We caught a baby groundhog in there munching away one day and he slipped right through the openings in the fencing.  So we bought fencing with tiny holes.  It solved the groundhog issue but the raccoons simply climbed over the fencing and ate the lettuce.  Since we've been applying the coyote urine around the box garden the lettuce has been growing big and bountiful once again.

Now it's back to weeding, weeding, more weeding

--AND harvesting!