Farming 2019 Miscellany

Here are a few additional notes to complete the Farming Summary for 2019. See this post for photos of my Community Garden Plot.

Critters and Coffee

I was determined to prevent squirrels, chipmunks and other animals from eating my vegetables this year so I went on the offensive with lots of coffee grounds and Irish Spring soap which did a great job! Amazing really. We'll see if they work as well this year as they did last year. Here's a wheelbarrow full of coffee grounds, bags of grounds from Starbucks and an Irish Spring soap bar doing its thing.

Composting

It was a big year for composting, all part of "this farming life." I fenced in an area for a large pile of leaves and coffee grounds to do their thing over the winter. By end of the fall I had three such leaf and coffee piles. I also eventually removed the fencing from the main pile shown in the photo as it served no purpose and only restricted me when mixing up the leaf pile. Notice the leaf mulcher, a very fun toy for composters.

Mulching Madness

I spent a lot of time and effort gathering the mowed grass in the fields surrounding the Community Garden Plots and elsewhere, using it to cover my plot and other places around the house. It was free gold!

Around the House

I had a lot of farming going on around the house in 2019. Here is a good shot of the side garden and the back corner garden area.

Here is a row of beans which started strong, but didn't do well because of inadequate sunlight.

Here are flowers in the front garden, all of which I planted from seed in the Spring. Crazy tall! Did not like! Flower types were Bachelor's Buttons, various Cosmos mixes, Echinacea, Shasta Daisies and Climbing Plants. This year I'm going for nothing but Zinnias. We'll see how that goes.

The Tomato Hornworm

This year was my first encounter with the Tomato Hornworm. Nasty things! And huge!

Gus in the Sun

Gus LOVED his summer of 2019, as I would take him to the Community Plots with me and everyone loved having him around. That's because Gus doesn't really like people and so he didn't bother anyone. He loved the fallow fields the best, sniffing out rabbits, garter snakes and other scented things.