Organic Gardening And Celebrating My Returning Weasels

Monday of this week, I was in garden heaven. The noontime temp out in the vegetable patch was right around 100 degrees. I picked four ripe tomatoes and a double handful of broccoli. It’s months like this that makes me glad I live in San Diego, where you can have a garden that produces table crops abundantly on a near year-round basis.

            The only limitations to my gardening are those imposed by my commitment to sustainable organic techniques.  I use no petroleum- or manufactured chemical additives of any kind and thus far the results of my four year commitment to this type of gardening have been very good.

            Also, I don’t grow Frankenfruit produce and limit myself to seeds from organic suppliers—most of which adhere to open pollination standards. This means in most years I’ve used $.88 bag steer manure for fertilizer, crushed oyster shells for calcium and ash from burned hardwood for potash. I also screen and fine my soil by hand at the start of the gardening season, carefully pulling out grubs, Jerusalem crickets and the like and putting them in a bucket for the neighborhood scrub jays and mocking birds, who seem to delight in my method of soil prep.

Once my garden if established I revert to Tom Sawyer-like pest control.  In middle age, I’ve managed to resurrect the ability to catch lizards by the diving and scooping technique of my long-ago youth. While my method of pest control may seem funny to some, I like using natural things to get rid of garden pests. I just wish the local ‘zard population had a taste for the slugs that are gobbling up my potato vine leaves. When bugs overwhelm the ‘zards I do use organic pesticides; a Canola oil based product and the old stand by of a mild soapy water and nicotine.  I’ve found that slugs really don’t like nicotine and for now this seems to be working on my potato patch.

Another pest control measure I’m using this year are rows of tobacco and burley plants on three sides of my garden. Anecdotally, this seems to work very well—providing you keep the tobacco four to five feet away from unvaccinated tomato plants.  So far this year, I’ve not seen a single white fly or horned worm in the garden. And, the tobacco (mostly Havana, but I also grow a Virginia hybrid) looks quite attractive.

One final thought on pest control. The weasels are back so that means that the gophers and voles that routinely feast on my vegetable roots have changed tense; going from “are alive” to “were alive, but have been consumed.” Damn I love watching the two weazettes gallop through the garden, even if they do occasionally eat my alligator lizards. And, like last year, on of the chick weasels appears to be nursing—always a good thing for a wild thing making a slow comeback.

Late last year, after talking to an agricultural biologist I met at my favorite nursery, I learned the secret to attracting weasels. The California long-tailed weasel really wants a supply of fresh water—which exists in my garden in the form of a 120 year-old hand made stone and cement watering trough set amidst my rose garden. And proof that the weasels like it can be seen once a week or so when I find a desiccated rattlesnake carcass at the bottom of the tank, and little weasel foot prints in the ground on the ground around the tank.

Wild weasels in a garden;  good. Rattlesnakes amongst my hybrid tea rose bushes;not so good.

Yeah Weazes!

One of the new crops I experimented with this year is an Early Girl-like tomato developed in Siberia. Although its fruits aren’t as large as an Early Girl, the Siberian tomatoes are sweet and seem to bear in about 45 to 50 days.

As my plants bear and die back, I uproot them and toss them to the part of may garden that “I’ll plant in June. I turn the decomposing plant material into the soil in the hope of raising the nitrogen content of my garden and aerating the clay-based soil.

Although it was hot early in the week, it’s raining cats and dogs now. And the temperature is dropping. I just checked my trusty barometer and saw that the pressure has dropped two-tenths of a point so I might just tent my tomatoes and potatoes in case it hails tonight.  Another year, Another garden. Jim Forbes, from rural San Diego County on 5/23/2008.

Comments

[Howdy]

Hey Jim - here is a link that discusses several options for dealing with slugs naturally... one of which is Diatomaceous Earth.

http://eartheasy.com/grow_nat_slug_cntrl.htm

why thank you. Anything that helps me get rid of slubs is a good thing. thanks for reading and commenting.--jimF