Since adding the bird scare tape, there haven’t been any birds in this part of my garden. No birds in the garden means no damage and more to harvest. The wind keeps the tape moving. The movement, flashes of light on the metallic surfaces and the crackling sound the tape makes keeps them away. Even in the morning, when the wind is very light or non-existent, light reflection does the job. I don’t know why any of this works, but it’s non-toxic, inexpensive, effective and best of all, very easy to use.
Gardeners using containers do have to water more often. The heat of the day and the direct sunlight on the sides of the containers can dry up the soil. The vermiculite in Mel’s Mix helps retain moisture, but I check my garden late in the day, if it has been especially hot. Those days where the temperature reaches over ninety degrees, I water a little in the late afternoon. For me, since there is no water where I garden, it means I have to fill up my five gallon paint buckets where I store water in my garden twice a week. I’ve found a simple way to do this. I had six large plastic jugs sitting in a kitchen cabinet doing nothing. I’ve enlisted them to carry water to my garden. I fill them up at the kitchen sink and place them in the small rolling cart I bought for carrying papers and books back and forth from my car to my classroom at school. It takes only one trip from the kitchen and about six minutes to fill up the buckets on both ends of my building.
But most of the time, all I do is nothing. I water, untangle the bird scare tape around my very bushy Early Girl tomato plant if necessary and go to the beach. From time to time I pull a carrot, cut a zucchini or snip off a cherry tomato or two, but nothing else is ready. All that’s going on is growing. It’s wonderful to see the pole beans climbing up the trellis and the tomato plants setting more fruit, but there really isn’t much else to do. So the rest of my summer vacation will be filled with taking my grandsons on little summer “field trips”, reading and finishing all the little chores around the house that teachers don’t have time to do during the school year. I didn’t know that gardening could take so little time and be so easy.
Until next time,
Elizabeth
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The sides of the corral were perfect for grape vines. The back worked well for boysenberries. The fences helped tame both, while the plants added beauty, privacy and yummy fruit much of the year. In all the years we lived there, the boysenberries never made it into the house. They were rinsed off and devoured straight off the plants.
We also had a half dozen fruit trees, two kinds of apples, a cherry (not much fruit, since it didn’t really get cold enough), a plum, a lemon, an orange and a peach (which we eventually removed, since we could not keep ahead of the “volunteers”). Then, there was my cinder-block raised vegetable garden. It was about the size of a three car garage, complete with redwood arbor and a small paved area where we stored firewood. I used Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening method, and drip irrigation. It was no where near as much work as the fruit trees. They drove me a little crazy with all the thinning.
We also had a rose garden, with twenty four bushes, including three climbers. Roses take as much work as you have heard, but no one is able to convey the pleasure of cutting your own roses and placing them around the house in vases. The house was filled with fragrance almost all year long. In California, rose bushes do not have to be cut back to their canes to protect them from the cold. I’ve cut roses at Christmas.
I think with fewer trees, it wouldn’t have been so exhausting. It was really too much for a working mother of one, with a husband who preferred golfing with the neighbor to gardening. But we did enjoy the bounty. Every Sunday morning, my daughter and I would take a large basket and a pair of shears up into the garden. We snipped and pulled and collected what we ate that morning. It became a tradition and filled her childhood with happy memories of Sunday breakfast in the dining room, over looking the bird feeder and bird bath. I think her love of fruit and vegetables began in the garden.
There is an epidemic of childhood obesity in America, but not in my family. My daughter, and her two boys, Mike and Nick, have never been over weight. Neither have I. We think vegetables taste better than fried foods and all those other less healthy options out there. They do, you know. All the studies show that children who eat more fruit and vegetables are healthier and do better in school. They grow to be healthier eaters as adults too. Other studies make it clear that kids who are involved in the growing of fruit and vegetables are more willing, even eager to eat them. Any bargaining going on at the dinner table in our homes is the reverse of most. “You can eat another bite of carrots (or peas, orange slices, etc) after you have had a bite of turkey or mack and cheese.”
This past Friday, my grandsons spent the night. We went to Mimi’s Café for dinner, as a treat. That was the exact conversation we had at the dinner table. The next morning, before orange/cranberry juice and French toast smothered with sliced fresh strawberries, we went outside to water my condo garden. We took the trowel and carrot and marigold seeds with us. The boys planted carrots and marigolds and watered the plants. This is always a wonderful time. Kids’ minds are open when they are occupied with some physical task. The younger boy, Nick, looked up as he was watering the zucchini plant and asked, “Grandma, we planted the seeds far apart so they won’t steal water from each other, right?” Always thinking!
As a parent, grand parent and teacher, I can tell you that there is no downside to gardening with children. As long as you do not make it seem like a chore, and as long as they get to eat what they grow, it’s all upside. When my daughter was too little to help in the garden, I introduced her to vegetables in the supermarket. While she sat in the seat in the shopping cart, we went into the produce department. You know how people say, “If you are good, I’ll let you pick out a candy to take home?” Well, I did that in the produce department. “You can pick one, but only one. So be sure it’s something you really want!” Sneaky, right? When she was old enough for pre-school, I discovered that snack time was crackers and the like. I started letting her select a vegetable to take for snack. Sometimes, we cut up zucchini or carrots into coins and sent along a tub of cheese spread for dipping. The teachers were shocked that the kids gobbled them down, and asked for more. No one had told them yet that vegetables were “yucky”.
Let kids pick a new kind of veggie or fruit from the store, farmers’ market or garden. Let them plant what they want. They will develop a taste for them and be more adventurous in their eating habits. They will enjoy the taste of fresh fruit and vegetables, and not need to fry them or drown them in unhealthy sauces. My grandsons prefer raw fruit and vegetables to cooked ones. As you may have read in the press or online, there is a movement afoot to promote eating “real” food. Non-processed, non-adulterated, unpackaged food has become a movement. How bizarre is that? It’s a shame that it is necessary, but what a fabulous idea. Let’s make it cool to grow, buy, and eat real live fruit and vegetables. Let’s start with the kids.
Until next time,
Elizabeth
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Early yesterday morning, instead of going to the local mall to walk, I went to Lowe’s. There I could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I knew it was open, and figured it would be pretty empty. It was. I walked up and down the aisles at a pretty good clip and window shopped, without windows or other customers in the way. I think I only saw two or three in the whole store. When I had walked about a mile, I headed for the garden section and looked for bird netting to prevent the local song birds from damaging my crops. Zip. I did pick up another Hampton deck box for the large tomato plant I bought last week and a smaller matching container for a yellow straight necked squash transplant I picked up at the same time. The planter came with a saucer, so I didn’t need anything else.
Then it was off to Green Thumb, where I knew I would find the bird netting I needed. I bumped into a helpful employee who showed me where I could find the netting, but then recommended something more convenient. How did he know I’m in to doing things the easy way? Maybe he is too. He pointed out a display of several rolls of “bird scare tape”. It looks like it is made of Mylar, like the birthday balloons you can buy at the florist. It’s red on one side and silver on the other. It’s almost an inch wide, and the roll is one hundred and fifty feet long. Wow. That should last for years in my small condo garden.
Late this winter, I bought several plastic covered stakes to secure fabric in my garden to protect my new plants from wind and driving rain. I still have them, of course. They will last forever. Now that my plants are getting more sun, partially because I moved them to the sunny side of the building, but mostly because it has turned into summer around here, I am expecting the green tomatoes on my plants to turn red soon. Birds have found my third floor condo garden and will definitely notice bright red tomatoes.
In a day or two when the temperature outside lets up a bit, (it was over ninety here yesterday), I’ll go out and place stakes in several pots in my garden. Then I’ll cut strips of the reflective tape and tie them to the stakes at various levels. As the wind blows through the breezeway, the tape will move in the wind and scare the birds away. I don’t know if it’s the bright sunlight bouncing off the two different colored surfaces of the tape, or the movement of the tape itself that keeps them away. I don’t really care. It’s inexpensive and non-toxic. Best of all, it’s easy to find, easy to set up and easy to use.
Until next time,
Elizabeth
