Sigh....Ready to pick my first big slicer tomato when I go out to water them.

M

melissa-dallas

Well-known member
Ack!!! Not there... Very elderly very happy old dog lying in middle of yard finishing it off (along with ruining the still green one hanging next to it). Guess he thought he needed salad with his dinner. Kinda wanted to kick his old arthritic butt but he wouldn't even get what I was mad at him about. Good thing he's such a good boy....

 
I keep trying to tell him to help himself to the pear & cherry tomatoes, just leave

me the big ones. He never does. Guess I'll have to start picking them at the barely pink stage and letting them ripen on the windowsill. I'm sure mine would strip the strawberries bare too. I wonder if dogs eat whole canteloupes and watermelons?

 
Sorry, let's try again: Don't pick 'em pink. . .

fence the pooch out. Get some welded wire, big cross wired, and just circle each plant, if you only have a few. Plus, if you get wire that is big enough to stick you hand through, you have automatic tomato cages, just remember to weight them at the bottoms so they won't tip.

Dogs always know the good stuff. . .

 
I really need to do that. I've seen recommendations to buy concrete reinforcing wire

to make cages with and that also would have helped with my pots tipping over in the high winds from the storm last week. I think making a cylinder to cage pot and all would make them more stable. For some reason I've had a hard time finding the wire except in huge rolls though.

 
Bunny issues--and chipmunks, deer, ground hogs, birds...

Jean I have the same problem. Hundreds of them. I can stand and look out the window and watch the bunnies chasing each other, scoping out my patio containers for a snack, lounging in the cottage garden (mercifully, they don't seem to like my perennials--lilies, roses, geraniums, salvias, yarrow, veronica, spiderwort, and the like). My next door neighbor's mini-schnauzer has a deer girlfriend that visits him every evening.

After 8 years of feeding them choice tender shoots of peas, beans, cabbages, kohrabi, etc, I moved my garden to containers on a walled patio off my dining room. House is two sides and a decorative wall supplies the third side, I just had to stretch a bit of screen fencing across the wrought iron railing on the open side. I grow tomatoes in 5 gallon pots, beans, peas, kohlrabi, mesclun, spinach, green onions, etc, in long deep planters. Eggplants, peppers, chilies in 3 gallon sized pots. Herbs in 1 gallon pots. I harvested more last year (the first year of the fortress vegetable garden) than in the previous 8 years combined.

I also have a water scarecrow (a motion activated jet sprinkler attached to a water hose) trained on the garden as well. Birds can still get in (and starlings will pick every tomato they see).

Keys to success in containers are having a large enough pot to support the plant, not overwatering (leaches out nutrients and constant wet conditions will destroy most vegetables), and providing a nice light soil mix. I use half miracle grow potting soil (doesn't have weed seeds like a lot of the other stuff one can buy), 3/8th peat, and 1/8th perlite (keeps the soil light and loose, as well as holding in moisture). Otherwise, regular soil will be so heaavy you can't move the planters and it packs down and isn't good for growth.

Hope this gives you some ideas to work with.

 
A good package of advice there. I also use plastic mesh over my pots as they are starting. Keeps

squirrels from digging for peanuts they thought they planted in the winter (when the pots weren't even there)

I must be thankful for all the animals in our yard (and there are lots). They leave the veg garden alone entirely. Wish I could say the same for the earwigs and slugs.

The ducks occasionally make a misstep when they are out for a stroll and wander over the arugula, but it recovers.

 
Most pups love fruits and veggies...

my two boys regularly eat tomatoes, potatoes, celery, carrots, banana, cherries, blueberries, strawberries, oranges, apples, etc. Just don't give them grapes or raisins as those are bad for them.

 
We have self marinating bunnies around here. They love my herb container

I finally wrapped it in plastic chicken wire and managed to save most of it. They still get what pokes through, tho. I have discovered they don't care for rosemary, so the bushes are doing fabulous.

My tomato and pepper plant were inside a chicken wired 'cage' so to speak. I had staple gunned it to bottom rail and corner posts and put it the chicken wire over the top in order to keep birds out. It went fine for awhile, the plants were growing hearty and healthy. Then nubs, nothing but nubs.

It appears the bunnies had somehow gotten one corner of the bottom rail to lift up just enough to squeeze in and out of but not enough to make me any the wiser until they had finished it off.

Hubby and I laugh about it, we keep come up with new ways to foil them and the bunnies plot away until they figure out how to get around our latest efforts. We apparently have very smart bunnies.

 
Carrots are the favorite around here.

They all go nuts when they see carrots. They feel they must do quality (and quantity) control checks.

 
I catered a dinner party Sunday and dessert was Lemon Tart with a bowl of Strawberries on the side.

A few guests found out the family dog, a huge black lab, liked strawberries and fed her most of them.

Those were premium berries--I paid 18 bucks for a half-flat. I was hoping to sneak a few home for breakfast, lol.

 
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