Gardening Report January 29, 2021

The rats won.

They cleaned out our winter crop, totally eradicating everything despite our best efforts to keep them out of our new plot.

They’re hitting all the open top plots in our part of the community garden pretty hard, so we opted to use our stimulus money to build an enclosure for the spring season, thus pumping something back into the local economy.

All the enclosures at the community garden have to be the same size / design / color (called “community garden green” at the local paint store).

Problem:
The standard design is only six feet tall, and yrs trly is six-one.

So we opted (with community garden committee approval) to extend our vertical posts up another six inches.

Problem:
The chicken wire used to keep rodents out only comes in three foot wide rolls; they will come three inches short on the top panels now.

So we’re taking an extra 100-ft roll, dividing it into four 25-ft lengths, and using that for a cover across the top, bringing the sides down to overlap the tops of the side panels.

We’ll join those together using zip ties (I just bought so many that I’m probably on some FBI domestic terrorist watch list now).

There’s still a few minor details to attend to, but we’re 90% done.

We’ll take a brief break in February then start prepping the soil in March for April plantings.

© Buzz Dixon