Extension News: April 2010 Archives

Growing a vegetable garden is a delightful experience for the senses: the sight of green leaves, the yellows, oranges, and blacks of the fruit, the feel of warm soil or a sun warmed tomato just picked, the smell of soil and plants, and best of all, the taste of the vegetables.

At the height of the growing season, I quickly run out to the garden to pick fresh lettuce or tomatoes to add to the lunchtime sandwiches. Perhaps tonight’s pasta needs some pesto for a sauce, so I’m out to the herb garden to harvest some basil. Ah, and what could be better than corn on the cob, freshly picked and popped into a pot of boiling water?

Then comes winter, when the garden is covered with snow. But down in the freezer are bags of green beans and containers of homemade tomato sauce, seasoned with garlic, basil, parsley and tomatoes, all grown in my garden. Yes, growing a vegetable garden is a sensuous and worthwhile pursuit.

Sadly, gardening isn’t all harvesting, eating and enjoying. It’s also battling the parts of the natural world that enjoy the garden as much as I do.

As many people know, raccoons are very clever creatures that love corn. They come a couple of weeks before the ears are ripe and test a few. Based on this exam, they know when to return to find the corn at perfection.

The night before I plan to harvest the first ears, the coons come and eat their fill. They pull and trample the stalks and eat all the ripe ears. They taste a few immature kernels to gauge when they will be ready for the coons’ next visit. In the morning, I face worse than a mess. I must bear the disappointment of knowing I won’t be having fresh corn on the cob for dinner this evening.

A wise gardener told me to add a floppy fence. Here’s how I did it. First I erected a solid wire fence, set down into the soil so the thieves can’t crawl under. Then along the top I added a floppy chicken wire fence, two feet high. I wired it onto the other fencing so there were no openings for the raccoons to crawl through. It seems they don’t like floppy fences the lack of stability makes them uncomfortable, so they turn around and leave. Using this method has saved me many a crop of corn.

Another mammal pest is that cute little chipmunk. Who couldn’t love these adorable wee creatures? Try liking one when you see it sitting on a rock, chomping away on one of your tomatoes! Then go into the garden and see where he’s sampled several before finding one he likes and carrying it away. The fences just don’t work with this guy he tunnels under or squeezes through. He always gets his ‘mato.

Having the vegetable garden within the dogs’ yard has been a big help. The chippies never know when the dogs will come out to chase so they tend now to leave the tomatoes more or less alone.

Last summer I had a different problem one that remains an unsolved mystery. Something was stealing my carrots. One day, a carrot would be growing there, its shoulders barely visible above the ground. The next day I'd find an empty hole. This was a neat hole, making it clear that the carrot had been pulled straight up and out. Gone. What could have done this? I have no idea. Everything else nearby, including the corn, was untouched. Whatever it was, I’ve been hoping it doesn’t come back.

Of them all, the worst offender I’ve encountered is the woodchuck. Because it tunnels underground, I’ve never been able to erect a fence to keep it out. At our last house, the woodchuck visited the garden regularly and ate everything it liked, right down to the ground. Things would grow up again and back it would come. Once again, devastation.

I walked around the garden on hands and knees, but I never found the hole where it got in. I checked the fence, held down snugly against the ground with large, heavy stones no opening, no weak spot, no way it could have gotten in, but there it was the evidence. Sometimes I’d even see the thief, but I never found out how it got in or out.

One of the great joys of this garden has been the lack of woodchucks in this area. So you can imagine how I felt this noontime. We were just sitting down to lunch when someone asked, “What’s that?”

There, just outside the window, moseying toward the daylily bed, in all its brown furry glory, was a woodchuck.

“Oh, no!” I cried. “There goes the garden!”

By: Susan M. Poirier, Master Gardener

The average person would probably identify the blue jay as the most curious of birds, but I would cast my vote for the crow. Most people who live in rural areas would agree with me because they, like me, have had opportunities to view the crow up close. Let me relate why I favor the big, black bird.

Growing up in Kansas, I used to have to shoo crows away from the corn and strawberry fields. Not only are crows curious, they are also very obstinate. We tried all sorts of devices to keep them away from the crops. Aluminum pie plates, an occasional blast from a shotgun, and of course running around waving our arms in the air and shouting.

It worked for about five minutes. You could tell the crows had a sense of humor by listening to their seemingly defiant cawing. They’d go off in a tree and face us as a group of a dozen or so, drop their voices about half an octave and draw it out longer than normal.

More recently and here in New Hampshire, I've once again been required to match wits with this wily bird. Every evening while my house was being built, I’d come to the property to see what progress had been made during that day.

On the perimeter of the lot there were some large pines. As I parked my car, I’d be greeted by a chorus of caws. The crows didn't fly away in fright, but instead asserted their territorial rights. If I stayed too long, they would elect a scout to come down and stroll, at a safe distance, recording whatever I was doing to report back to those in the trees. I could hear the crows in the trees in heated discussion, or so it seemed, about how safe it was for one of their number to be strolling around just out of reach of the human intruder.

As I returned to my car, the crow conversation seemed to lose some of its intensity as the elected scout rejoined the group. As I got ready to drive away, they joined a larger flock to fly to their nighttime location.

Those of us who observe crows know that not only are they extremely curious, cooperative and intelligent, they’re thieves and scavengers. The builder had a backhoe parked on the property while construction was in progress. One morning he came to the property and saw a large crow on the hood of his machine. As he approached he noticed the crow had something in its mouth. Upon further inspection, the builder discovered the crow had what remained of the wiper blade for the machine. When the crow felt his act of defiance was sufficient, it flew away with the wiper blade still in its beak.

My father related an experience he'd had when he was a youth. He and his brother were trying to keep crows off a field of corn by removing and destroying their nest in a tall cedar near the field. They found the nest contained two rings, a dime, three bright-colored shoe strings and a piece of broken mirror.

There are some benefits to having crows around. (I draw the line at calling them friends, however.) They keep small rodents on constant high alert. Chipmunks, voles, ground squirrels and mice are articles of diet for crows as well as other birds of prey.

I have observed crows’ group hunting techniques a couple of times in my back yard. They fly in quietly in a group of six or eight. They disperse themselves around the perimeter of an open area, staying in the treetops. When the prey animal appears, they allow it to get well away from its bolt-hole and then dive on it, playing out the attack with precision. Each crow knows what section of the circle is his and is prepared to kill or maim. I have never figured out how they divide their spoils.

I've never seen them attack songbirds, but I have witnessed crows diving on an eagle, some red-tailed hawks, and blue jays. They also dislike cats. In these cases, I don't think they are attacking to kill; they just don't want raptors, jays, or cats near what they consider their territory.

If you are observant, you may discover other things about the crow. For instance, they gather in large numbers in the evening and spend the night roosting, with guard crows on the perimeter, alert for danger.

They have a strong self-preservation instinct and will be one of the last birds to be in danger of extinction. So we humans might as well get used to living with this curious and fascinating bird.

By: Bill Dawson, Community Tree Steward

“You could have bought the peas for less time and effort,” my father said.

“But I like planting and harvesting,” I answered.

He frowned. “It makes no sense that you work in that field, when you could have a regular job and buy your food. I don’t like seeing my daughter as a subsistence farmer knee deep in animal manure.”

“You raised me to be self-supporting and hardworking. I love my farm. Besides, you’re my guest.”

He stomped off to the small, run-down farmhouse. Father would brag back at home about the wonderful meal and the animals and the fields. But he’d worked years to raise himself up from the farming grandparents, mill-working parents. He’d worked hard to educate his children, and it made him furious to see me doing manual labor.

I collected the rest of the peas and hustled into the house, where I began preparing lasagna from scratch. I’d actually started the meal months earlier. The baby shoats grew all summer to become round, fat pigs, later stuck and bled, cut, packaged and rendered into sausage. The ground had been tilled, hoed, raked, fertilized and sprinkled with seeds that grew into parsley, tomatoes, garlic, celery, onion and basil.

I made the noodles from artichoke flour traded at the whole-foods co-op for bookkeeping services. The eggs came from my own Rhode Island Reds and the milk from my beautiful goat herd. Only the olive oil and salt had been purchased from the store.

The main attraction at my farm was the 13 milking goats. They provided much love, as well as funding from sales of their milk, cheese and meat.

Mother asked, “Can I sit outside while you put the meal together? It is so hot with the wood stove going.”

“Sure Mom. Take a chair from the gazebo and put it out by the paddock and I’ll bring you some tea.”

I brought Mother some peppermint tea and left her to watch the farm. I rolled out the dough and cut the noodles. I simmered the onions, garlic and olive oil for a while before adding the scalded and peeled tomatoes, the basil and the parsley.

Then I browned the pork sausage. I always thought of the pigs living in the old Ford behind the pond when I cooked their parts. Pigs are nice animals, and many afternoons I’d sit by their sty, feed them apples, listen to their snorts and tell them all the disturbing things the other animals on the farm were up to.

I never named the animals I knew I would slaughter. But that didn’t keep me from knowing them.

The kitchen began to smell lovely. I had bread in the oven. My beige and lime-green wood cook stove had a high back with a shelf to raise the bread, curdle the milk and dry the herbs. It had four burners that lifted with a tool shaped like a bent fork. The oven was on one side with a big temperature gauge on the outside of the door, the fire box on the other side.

I’d learned to split the wood just right to lay it snug, so coals would form and keep the oven warm enough to cook but not too hot to burn. I’d gotten good at using this appliance­the only stove I had for eight years.

I finished layering the lasagna into a large glass baking dish I’d purchased at a discount store for this event. I took the bread out of the oven and put the lasagna in.

“Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!” I heard my mother scream.

I ran to the back door and out into the yard. My mother was sitting as I had left her, dressed in her best hat and gloves and nylons and heels. I think beige and pink was the theme that day.

I let out a guffaw. There in my mother’s lap sat the pet goat Tag-a-Long I let roam the farm at will. Tag-a-Long wasn’t good enough to breed, so I made him a pet. He loved peppermint. He’d hopped right into my mother’s lap and stolen the tea bag off her saucer, depositing a small pile of droppings in her lap.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” she kept screaming.

We got Tag-a-long off Mother’s lap, cleaned her skirt, and retired to the house for the meal. I set the table, poured the wine, cut the bread and cheeses, and placed the fresh-churned butter on the table with plates and napkins and silverware.

Then it was my time to scream, “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

The baking dish I’d bought for the lasagna wasn’t ovenproof. The glass had cracked right down the middle. The 20 pounds of from-scratch lasagna was stuck to the bottom of the woodstove oven. I scooped it into a bucket and served it to the pigs.

We rounded up the animals for the evening, shut up the barn, closed the chicken coop, secured the paddock and went out to eat.

By Stephania Pearce, Master Gardener