I know that experts on integrated pest managment will probably think this is way too obvious - but I had an epiphany the other day when touring a neighbor's garden. I pointed out hundreds of squash bug eggs and babies on her squash plants, and she wasn't concerned. She said that they always have them but they don't cause any problems. I wondered how this could be, and she said "the birds eat them!" At that moment I paused to listen to my environment and I heard the chattering of several birds, dozens probably, in her gorgeous tree-shaded yard. I noticed the bird bath and the bird houses scattered around. Returning to my garden, I heard.......nothing. For some reasons I don't have any birds in my yard!
Now I want to get birds into my garden, pronto! We do have one tree nearby but we will have to add a few nice homes (different types to attract different birds), places for the birds to rest in the actual garden, and a place or two that will provide them water. We are going to work on that this weekend, and I want to pick up a few bat houses while we're at it.
Of course, then I might have a problem with birds eating my garden, but I guess like everything else I will worry about that later.
Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Lesson learned:)
Some things I've learned about beans, particularly pole beans:
Thin them before they begin to vine!!!!!!! Sure, we probably should've known better - but we're busy and it didn't seem like a big deal until I'd spent four hours of a Saturday gently (read: s-l-o-w-l-y) and methodically unravelling bean vines. Since we hadn't installed the trellising system yet, they had nothing to wrap themselves around except each other. It was painstaking work - but the good news is, since it's been several weeks since this happened, we know it didn't damage any of them. I was worried because some of them broke, and some of them looked very wilted after the whole ordeal. But they bounced back. It was like unraveling a huge ball of delicate chain necklaces that all look exactly the same. I wish I had a picture of how inter-twined the vines were, but I was too focused on the task at hand.
The other thing - stay on top of the weeds. Once we installed the bird netting, we weren't able to weed...and once we took the bird netting off, we prioritized thinning the beans over weeding, for better or worse. Then the beans got too tall to reach in and weed, particularly with the trellising in the way. This is one of the biggest changes I would make next year - I think I would have spent less time weeding overall if I had made more of an effort early on to hoe the small weeds. I would also use bark or grass clippings or some sort of mulch, to suppress the weeds. On the beds we prepared and planted later, we've done this, and it's made a PHENOMENAL difference.
By the way, all of the beans that we thought were bush beans have turned out to be bush beans. This is a relief, since I was worried about trellising in an earlier post. And although I'm irritated that the cannellini beans are bush instead of pole, it hasn't caused any practical problems.
Thin them before they begin to vine!!!!!!! Sure, we probably should've known better - but we're busy and it didn't seem like a big deal until I'd spent four hours of a Saturday gently (read: s-l-o-w-l-y) and methodically unravelling bean vines. Since we hadn't installed the trellising system yet, they had nothing to wrap themselves around except each other. It was painstaking work - but the good news is, since it's been several weeks since this happened, we know it didn't damage any of them. I was worried because some of them broke, and some of them looked very wilted after the whole ordeal. But they bounced back. It was like unraveling a huge ball of delicate chain necklaces that all look exactly the same. I wish I had a picture of how inter-twined the vines were, but I was too focused on the task at hand.
The other thing - stay on top of the weeds. Once we installed the bird netting, we weren't able to weed...and once we took the bird netting off, we prioritized thinning the beans over weeding, for better or worse. Then the beans got too tall to reach in and weed, particularly with the trellising in the way. This is one of the biggest changes I would make next year - I think I would have spent less time weeding overall if I had made more of an effort early on to hoe the small weeds. I would also use bark or grass clippings or some sort of mulch, to suppress the weeds. On the beds we prepared and planted later, we've done this, and it's made a PHENOMENAL difference.
By the way, all of the beans that we thought were bush beans have turned out to be bush beans. This is a relief, since I was worried about trellising in an earlier post. And although I'm irritated that the cannellini beans are bush instead of pole, it hasn't caused any practical problems.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Beans continued
Here are photos of the baby beans, as promised. The first photo is of the dry soup beans, and the second photo is of the green beans.
We ended up putting bird netting around the green beans because I kept seeing crows hanging out in that bed, and when I would run out there it looked like they were pulling plants out just for fun. Jerks. Turns out that if they were the culprits, they were probably just looking for worms. It seems that they moved on to the carrot bed instead.
Anyway, I wanted to use this post also to talk about one of the problems I've encountered with the beans. Not all of the seed packets make it clear whether that variety is a bush type or a pole (vining) type! I wanted to plant the pole types together, of course, so that it will be easier to build the trellising. It has been a few weeks since these photos were taken, and it is clear we planted one bush type in with the pole beans. That is not the end of the world, but it also looks like one of the ones we thought was a bush type is actually a pole type. This would be tricky to cope with. It isn't certain so we're going to wait and see, but it's a frustration that could have been avoided if seed companies labelled their packages more carefully. In the future, I will take this into account when purchasing my bean seeds.
We ended up putting bird netting around the green beans because I kept seeing crows hanging out in that bed, and when I would run out there it looked like they were pulling plants out just for fun. Jerks. Turns out that if they were the culprits, they were probably just looking for worms. It seems that they moved on to the carrot bed instead.
Anyway, I wanted to use this post also to talk about one of the problems I've encountered with the beans. Not all of the seed packets make it clear whether that variety is a bush type or a pole (vining) type! I wanted to plant the pole types together, of course, so that it will be easier to build the trellising. It has been a few weeks since these photos were taken, and it is clear we planted one bush type in with the pole beans. That is not the end of the world, but it also looks like one of the ones we thought was a bush type is actually a pole type. This would be tricky to cope with. It isn't certain so we're going to wait and see, but it's a frustration that could have been avoided if seed companies labelled their packages more carefully. In the future, I will take this into account when purchasing my bean seeds.
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