Tag: Critters

Grow a Perfect Tomato

 

To grow a perfect tomato, start with a planter on wheels. You could put your tomato plant in the ground, but you would have to erect a fence to protect it from critters, and you couldn’t control the soil nutrients and watering as well as you could when the plant is in a pot. Place the planter as close as possible to your house or apartment, preferably on a deck or balcony, the idea being to discourage critters, while making it easier for you to tend your plant. The planter needs wheels because your tomato plant needs as much soil as possible, preferably in a deep pot, and that makes the whole contraption heavy. Depending on where the sunlight falls at your place and on your critter situation, you may want to move that planter around a bit.

Now that you have a planter on wheels, preferably a deep planter so that it holds water longer than a shallow one, fill that planter with high quality organic potting soil that has good stuff already in it, like bat guano and worm castings. In order for your tomato plant to stay healthy and productive throughout the growing season, quality potting soil which doesn’t rely on synthetic fertilizers is the key component. Plant your plant, good and deep, and water it in. Your tomato plant is off to a good start.


Tomato on its stem
A tomato growing on its stem. Photo by tooony.

Once your tomato plant starts growing, you will need to place a cage or some kind of sturdy supports around it before it gets out of hand sprawling all over the place. Some tomato plants are more compact than others, but even they will appreciate support for their fruits when they come along. Now is also the time to consider additional critter control measures if necessary by installing a net or other guard along with the cage or supports. Your tomato plant is of value to you, and it could be to others as well, others who are always watchful and ready to strike the moment the fruit is ripe.

Water your tomato plant deeply and infrequently, rather than shallowly and frequently. You will need to keep an eye on the weather. A rain gauge may help. Too much water is bad, as is too little. The amount and intensity of sunlight affects the amount of water your tomato plant needs. Stick your finger several inches deep into the potting soil, and if the soil is dry and no rain is in the forecast, water your plant well. Inspect your plant weekly for tomato hornworms, more if you see signs of leaf eating. Pick off and discard the hornworms. The same goes for leaves stricken with blight – pick off and discard them.

Pomidor
A ripe and ready perfect tomato. Photo by Letrek.

Once your tomato plant starts bearing fruit, be even more judicious with your watering. Too much water at this point could lead to disfigurement of the fruit, as well as ruining their flavor. Add calcium to the soil, along with an organic fertilizer high in phosphorous. Phosphorous will help the fruits grow and multiply, and calcium will keep them healthy. Relax and watch the fruits of your tomato plant turn from green to pink to red. When the fruits are ready for you, they will separate from the plant with a gentle tug from you. If they won’t come free readily, you can still cut them free at the stem and put them on the kitchen counter to continue ripening over a couple of days. They will be delicious!

Cost per tomato: Between 5 and 10 dollars the first year, cheaper afterward.
— Izzy

 

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The Hiding Place

 

For decades now, when gardeners needed a windbreak or a privacy screen they have resorted to planting hedgerow monocultures of a few relatively fast growing evergreen species, among them the Leyland cypress. For some who prefer a more formal, planned look, that plan has sufficed, but others might look at such a hedgerow as boring and as a lost opportunity to bring more wildlife into their gardens. Planting with wildlife in mind takes a generous spirit, particularly for the gardener who is also trying to raise fruits and vegetables for their own consumption. There are trade offs and compromises involved.

One of the problems with a hedgerow monoculture occurs when one or more of the plants dies, creating a gap that must then be filled with the same kind of plant, sometimes at considerable expense if the new plant is not to be too conspicuous by its smaller size. The gardener can feel trapped, and the trap can get more enveloping and add even more expense if the reason for a plant’s death is a disease or pest, engaging the gardener in an endless battle. Sometimes it can be a blessing when a disease or pest spreads quickly from one plant in the monoculture to the next, ending the battle with its consequent frustrations and expenses and presenting the gardener with a blank slate after a tree removal company has carted away the battlefield fallen.


Leylandii - geograph.org.uk - 146076
This colonnade of Leyland cypresses in England is presumably a windbreak for the greenhouses behind. Photo by Ben Gamble.

Instead of persisting in folly and boring landscaping, a gardener might decide it is wiser and more interesting to plant rows or clumps of a diverse assortment of trees and shrubs, more closely imitating nature. The gardener might look for evergreen trees for year round screening for the gardener and cover for wildlife; deciduous trees which with their tall, rounded crowns fill visual gaps between the conical forms of the evergreens, and add nuts and acorns for wildlife food; shrubs and small trees both evergreen and deciduous which give fruits and berries in different seasons; and finally a water source, preferably running rather than stagnant. That’s a privacy screen for the gardener and a home for wildlife, and it isn’t only for large properties, since there are almost always dwarf or semi-dwarf forms of trees available.

Inviting wildlife into the garden this way means being willing to compromise on the amount of produce left for the gardener, and also means protecting vulnerable young plants from the very same wildlife. This is a microcosm and an imitation of nature, after all, and not truly nature. In nature the loss of a few sapling trees here and there to deer browsing is not necessarily a catastrophe since there may be as many more that will survive to maturity. But for the gardener who may have space to plant only a few trees, the loss of even one young tree is important. An example would be the gardener who joins in the effort to restore the American chestnut to the landscape and helps the cause by buying and planting a few saplings at home. Unless that gardener cages the chestnut saplings for the first two or three years of their growth, deer will come along and browse the foliage and rub  velvet off their antlers using the trunks of the saplings, debarking them. Caging is the only truly effective way to get deer to leave the chestnut saplings alone until they are big and strong enough to withstand their attentions.

On a small lot in particular a gardener should not expect to get very many fruits and berries for their own consumption. Birds love eating the same things, and they are outside all day every day, watching for ripeness, and when it comes the birds get to the fruits and berries very soon. Netting is a nasty business that tangles up birds and other critters, killing them, and it has no place in a garden planted for wildlife. Either be content with gleaning a few fruits and berries here and there, or build a small greenhouse to grow a few protected plants. Gardeners with large plots of land have more options, both for the wildlife and for themselves. Plant native plants when possible, because they are better adapted to coexist with native wildlife. Once there are birds and frogs and other insect eaters living nearby, the gardener may actually find fewer pest and disease problems in the rest of the garden, and that alone makes it worth the trouble of devising a landscape scheme more varied and interesting than a soldier row of Leyland cypresses.
— Izzy

 

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Deerly Beloved

 

Every gardener will at one time or other have to contend with wildlife or neighborhood pets causing problems in their yard and garden. Vegetable gardens are especially apt to be browsed by wildlife, obviously, and the legal options for backyard gardeners in coping with unwelcome visitors are much more limited than the options available to a farmer whose livelihood is at stake. Today as in the past a farmer can dispose of a varmint chewing up his or her crops with a well-aimed shot from a .22 caliber rifle and law enforcement or neighbors are unlikely to interfere. That option is not generally available to the urban or suburban gardener tending a small plot in close proximity to neighbors’ houses.

 

What is a varmint? A varmint is any animal whose survival habits conflict with your own, just like a weed is a plant out of place. Some people are thrilled to see deer browsing in their back yard, at least for a while, but to others those same deer have long since crossed over into varminthood after they have eaten hostas down to the ground, nibbled away rosebuds on the cusp of bloom, and used their antlers to rub the bark off young fruit trees, killing them. Garden enemies are not limited to deer, although they are probably at the top of most peoples’ lists, and a by no means complete catalog of varmints would for most folks have to include groundhogs (woodchucks), gophers, rabbits, rats, mice, voles, moles, chipmunks,  skunks, dogs, cats, poisonous snakes, raccoons, opossums, squirrels, inattentive drivers, and unsupervised children.


Bill Murray as a golf course groundskeeper in the 1980 movie Caddyshack plots the destruction of the gophers who have been disfiguring the fairways and greens.

For some of these varmints, the critter kind, there are no shortage of chemical and mechanical repellents manufactured by companies eager to help out a distressed gardener and incidentally make a buck on a continuing basis, because all of them require regular re-application or constant tweaking to keep up their effectiveness. Gardeners who have wised up to this laborious and expensive treadmill may look instead to fencing, the only truly effective solution, though effective only in the sense of diminished and insecure expectations. No fence is a 100% effective deterrent for all critters at all times in all situations, as any convict will tell you, although in this case the malefactors seek to break in rather than out.

 

Some gardeners will try to remove the problem from the garden by relocating it, or by hiring someone to do so. Although this practice is illegal nearly everywhere, the gardener can feel smugly humane about it. Unfortunately, it is a poor strategy for everyone concerned. The varmint, let’s say a groundhog, is trapped in a humane trap, but sometimes the animal injures itself in some way in its panic to escape. Injury to a wild animal is often a slow death sentence. The gardener, or his or her proxy, then takes the groundhog out to some countrified place and releases it, feeling good about him or herself, even if the groundhog begs to differ. This is likely another slow death sentence for the groundhog, because for one thing it is not familiar with the new territory, and for another the territory, if it is any good, is likely already occupied by another groundhog or two who will not treat an interloper kindly. The gardener then, with a warm and fuzzy feeling brought on by reflecting on the newfound happiness of the groundhog he or she has just released to frolic in fields of daisies in the countryside, returns home where another groundhog from a neighboring yard eyes the newly unoccupied territory and its fresh crop of tasty vegetation.

 

There are all sorts of other strategies for dealing with varmint pressure on the garden, such as companion plantings or planting only things offensive to them. It can seem the options come down to living in a fenced-in or foul-smelling compound, or giving up on planting old garden favorites like roses and daylilies. There is another option involving compromise and a relinquishing of control, and in the end it may be the only sensible option whether the gardener is willing to acknowledge it or not. It doesn’t mean giving up, but merely giving in where other options are inhumane, or too expensive or unsightly, or just plain idiotic insistence on controlling every little thing. The critters – varmints, if you insist – have just as much right to be here as we do, and that’s true whether you want to acknowledge it or not. Putting up a fight is fine, but try to retain perspective on who is supposed to be the rational creature capable of long-term, ethical considerations.
― Izzy

 

White Tailed Deer
One of the Varmint Cong, or a Beloved Creature? A white tailed deer fawn, Odocoileus virginianus, in Raleigh, North Carolina; photo by Clay Heaton.

 

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