For most of the gardening season this year, my best plot was rendered unusable by a hulking construction debris box chock full of tons of lumber, plaster, concrete, and the detritus of our remodel.
The debris box was hauled away, emptied and returned three times, to it’s spot over where for the last five years I’ve grown vegetables and been tormented by a clan of truly evil field voles.
So when the debris box was finally removed a little more than a month ago I had feint hopes of getting at least one crop of tomatoes from the plot, and I sincerely believed that the local snakes would have wiped out the shallow burrowing voles. But when I got around to preparing the soil in the upper garden for planting, I quickly discovered the effects of tons of trash sitting in a metal box on what previously had been “perfectly balanced lose soil”. One week of using a pick and Maddox later, I was able to use my tiller to build two small rows for my last of the season French heirloom beefsteaks.
How hard was the soil? Well I’ve had to reset and sharpen the tines on my mighty Mantis two-cycle tiller and I’ve added 10 cubic feet of soil amendment to get the dirt back to a Ph level that’s conducive for tomatoes. And even after all that, four of my prized French beefsteak heirlooms, croaked within one week of going in the ground.
On a whim I also planted Mad Max giant orange pumpkins in the just-reclaimed upper garden patch. They took off right away, giving me just enough false hope to believe I might actually get something out of the beloved patch.
And two weeks ago I discovered that the local vole and rattlesnakes were working in concert with the damn debris box to dash my hopes for produce in my upper garden this year.
Unbeknownst to me, the voles and rattlers had signed a mutual non-aggression pack while living quite happily under the debris box. The net effect of this is that the voles now frolic in my garden, free of concerns about being injected with venom and subsequently eaten whole.
How was I to know that every vole in the county has an insatiable hunger for tender young pumpkin plants? Four plants in two weeks?
I surrender—until this winter during which season will have eradicated each of the little pests.
In the mean time, I have nearly two score tomato plants down in the lower garden, free of attacking rodents and later this evening. I may excavate and harvest the last of my Kennebec potatoes.
Of such small victories are smiles on a gardener’s’ face created.—Jim Forbes 07/20/2008.
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