Wintertime and the Gardening is Easy-- Weasels Hunting and the Gophers are Scared

October and November may be the only two months when I don’t spend much time in my gardens.  In fact about the only tasks remaining on my gardening t o-do lists are “clear the lower garden” and “get strawberries under way.”

Clearing the lower garden took all of three minutes, I just run over it with Bambi Deere’s mower deck set close to the ground. It only takes three passes to finely chop the dried tomato and pepper plants into fine mulch. Before the rains come, I’ll add a layer of compost, then use my Mantis tiller to breakup and mix the soil. Later this winter, I’ll begin testing the soil in the lower garden to confirm my suspicions that it needs more trace minerals and heavy metals.

            My upper garden needs more work, a lot more work. I still have two late season heirloom tomatoes producing and I’m waiting for the fruit to finish ripening. And, I have two pepper plants mocking me at another end of the garden with bright red oily peppers that scream “ Dangerous, Do Not Eat or Touch!”

            I had a somewhat painful alimentary lesson this year after I used about a half-teaspoon of a hybrid red pepper in a beef stew.  I”ll probably pass on growing any more of those peppers and go back to Anaheim and Pasilla chilies, which I enjoy and can eat without painful repercussions.

            My big project this winter, is building raised beds in my upper garden. The more I become committed to the concept of sustainable organic gardening, the more I’ve come to believe in raised beds, carefully enriched and thoroughly blended soils as well as “deep watering.” The solution to all of this is to build raised garden beds and pay a lot of attention to the growing medium I use.

            Raised beds also allow me to eliminate damage from burrowing rodents. I’ll line the bottom of the beds with fine wire mesh, and install a gopher proof seal around the bed’s edges. Well at least I can dream.

            I Went down to Home Depot this afternoon with two virgin gift cards, and loaded up my trailer with 2x10’” pine, some rebar, a couple of 2x4’s and some PVC fittings for the irrigation system I want to build in to the gardens. I was surprised at how inexpensive everything was. The total came to less than $40 and since I plan on filling the raised beds with some primo soil, I won’t be doing much dirt work in the garden, other than basic excavation.

            I suspect the most expensive part of my raised bed project could be the growing medium itself.  My bed will take more than a ton of it, plus the sand I need to add to a separate small raised bed I’m going to put in and devote exclusively to realizing my lifetime dream of successfully growing watermelons.

            My quest to grow watermelons makes me feel like Don Quixote. I’ve gone so far as to remove and transport entire plants in their soil as well as scoop up and transport dirt from fallow melon fields. And my best ever result was a pitiful two-pound watermelon that grew hidden under a tomato trellis.  It’s just pitiful and I’m ashamed that I’m unable to grow watermelons. But this year, I’m doing it according to the written instructions provided to me by the master gardener whose soil I once filched. This should be fun.

            While most gardeners use winter to read seed catalogues and begin soil prep, my cleared bay window in the kitchen is ready to be filled with seed starter pods so that my cabbages, Brussels sprouts and broccoli will be ready to hit the dirt in early March. I also am trying to get a head start on some of my barrier plants—notably Virginia and Cuban tobacco as well as some dark burley I’m going to experiment with this year.

            I’ve been pretty amazed at how effective tobacco is as an organic insect barrier. Not one horned worm made it past my tobacco plants last year and my tomatoes were unaffected by white flies and other insects that plague gardeners.

            Tobacco is a pretty plant with white, pink or yellow trumpet shaped flowers. It pulls large amounts of nitrogen from the soil so I try to replenish the soil with steer manure between growing seasons.  My big surprise in 2007 was finding a nearby organic gardener who also used tobacco as a barrier plant. I’m using his Cuban and Virginia seeds in the hopes that the resulting plants will prosper as well on my side of Escondido as it does where he lives.

            The other garden project I’ll begin as soon as I get my raised beds in is to begin growing a new strain of Sequoia strawberries.  I have 150 plants on order and they’re supposed to arrive here in about three weeks. Before they arrive, I want to lay down enough garden tarp to accommodate my strawberry patch and then mark it for planting. The one trick with strawberries is to keep the weeds away.  Planting them through a tarp makes this a very simple task.

            Gardening is great stroke therapy. It keeps me busy, forces me to use my afflicted hand and helps to build the fine eye hand coordination I lost as a result of a stroke deep in the mid right hand side of my brain several years ago. Gardening satisfies my need to stay in touch with nature and gives me a sense of accomplishment that makes me realize there is much more to my life than a 10 point bold face byline. Besides, it gives me a chance to watch two mean little mommy long-tailed weasels take on and devour an acre’s worth of hated burrowing rodents. Go weasels!—Jim Forbes, 11/11/2007.