When it comes to my gardening, I can be ruthless and cold-blooded. If a vegetable doesn’t thrive after bfor a month, I have a simple policy; it’s unceremoniously plucked from the ground.
This weekend I noticed the enemy vole army had attacked my broccoli, so I pulled their withering cadavers and put the greens under my peach tree, where my local cottontails gather in the morning sheltering from hungry birds of prey.
Clearing space in my garden is a very good thing. I get to try new plants and every year I learn a lot more about what my garden can and cannot produce. Rather than lose more young seedlings to tunneling voles, I proned out this evening above my garden waiting for the voles to surface; with my loaded and cocked Beeman pellet rifle.
When it comes garden predator control I have two choices, Type One poisons such as strychnine or sharpshooting sharp. A well placed high velocity pellet doesn’t have produce downstream effects in the produce I grow and eat, and the damn voles don’t suffer when you shoot them in their little buck toothed heads.
I’ll come back to my wanton slaughter of voles in a moment
but what I wanted to write about is something I’m growing for the first time
this year, a hybrid cucumber called the “Perfect Pickle.”
I've already been wanred; I may need to string the Perfect Pickle hybrid on trrellises because they have the reputation for bing verdant producer. SoI'm of to Hiome Depit later this moning to buy some PVC to make yet more frames for some lanky vegetables.
I’ve graved trout and salmon but I’ve never pickled produce.
This summer, I want to make kosher dills and pickled Mexican onions. Pickling is a, a process I understand. I have
my supplies stored in the garage and expect to begin pickling sometime in late
July or early August after my three new cucumber plants bear.
My garden is a source of extreme enjoyment. I enjoy making
dinner for my family with ingredients I grew just 50 feet from my house and I
love working in the dirt and seeing my plants grow.
Apparently the local meadow mice (aka “the enemy voles”)
like my vegetables too. Unfortunately for them, I’m better armed and still a
very good shot. So what do you do with a vole or gopher carcass?
I’m thinking about turning them into cases for eye glasses. Can’t
you just imagine the listing on eBay?, “Gardener’s Revenge glasses cases—includes
snout/latch so you never lose your glasses.“
I hate the damn voles about as much as I dislike the
visiting diamondbacks who show up here in the summer—Jim Forbes May 6,2012.
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