How Does Your - Intruder alert

Garden Grow?

Something dug through my veggie containers at the office.

I repeat, something has been digging through my vegetables. All hands on deck, this is not a drill. Though he didn’t leave any obvious evidence at the scene of the crime I have my suspicions that our suspect is likely feline in nature.

I feel so violated. Doesn’t that little creep know the hours of hard work and humiliation that I’ve had to endure at my own hands for those tiny sprouts to be here? Doesn’t he know the number of gnats that we’ve all swallowed and the bags of soil I’ve had to haul from Fourmen’s to make this happen? For shame.

Thankfully none of the plants in the three containers that he desecrated succumbed to his mauling, but that leaves me with little comfort as I’m sure he will be back. I can’t possibly be expected to work on anything else until I’ve come up with a solution that will keep our little babies safe.

And just so you know, I love cats. I have an unhealthy obsession with my own cat and we also have two others, but I have limits, I have boundaries. This isn’t personal. It’s business.

So what shall we do about this little deviant? I don’t think I want to spend a bunch of money putting up a fence or making some sort of barrier as I’m sure this cat has more time and energy than I do to figure out a way in. Chemicals it is.

Now I don’t want to hurt the little guy. Like I said, I love cats and I realize he’s only doing what’s in his nature to do. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I read that they don’t like coffee grounds or strong citrus scents, so I sprinkled coffee grounds on the top of the soil in every other container until I can collect some more. I also had some lemon essential oil at home and put a little dollop around the perimeter of the containers. We’ll see how that works before we up the ante. Short of a stakeout with a squirt gun my options are pretty limited.

The audacity. I did manage to get my container garden in at home over the weekend. I planted several variations of peppers, bell peppers, celery, cauliflower, iceberg lettuce, water- I made this bee watering station and one more just like it to live outside by our container garden. When making a bee watering station, it’s important to be sure that the bees have something safe to stand on.

melons, cilantro, and a couple kinds of tomatoes. I also planted my hanging baskets and my mom gave me a couple of citronella plants which I put in by my front door to see if we can deter the mosquitos. I have plans to get some cucumbers in the dirt by this coming weekend, but all in all I’m excited to have some things growing at home.

Our chickens and guineas are healthy and everyone is happy to have a nice big lot to explore and dig for bugs. I’m starting to think that we have three hens and three roosters. As they’ve gotten older I noticed that I have a few that are a bit more dominant than the others and their combs are twice as large. One of them is really aggressive with the other birds and I’m not very happy about that. I wouldn’t mind having one rooster if he’s going to be a gentleman, but we’re not about to tolerate a lack of manners. I plan to keep observing them before selecting two to re-home, whatever that might look like.

My hubby and I have been brainstorming ways to allow the guinea fowl to roam around the property to hunt bugs during the day while also keeping them safe at night. The chickens aren’t free-range, so giving the guineas the opportunity to roost in the poultry pantry would be more of a hassle than it’s likely worth. But what if I got another bird door and trained them to go into my goat’s pen at nighttime? That way they could have the run of the property but roost in the trees in the goat’s pen which just seems safer to me. I can definitely see my goats trying to get through the bird door so we’ll have to baby-proof it from the I planted bachelor button blue boys and zinnias in our beds out front in between bursts of rain on Tuesday. We should see sprouts coming up in the next two weeks. Before we know it, the front of the Star News will be flooded with colorful blossoms.

tweedles, but we think that’s the direction we’re going to head.

My wonderful coworker, Julie Chaplinski, told me that I needed to be careful because my guineas will fly away if we don’t clip their wings. By the look on her face it seemed like she was speaking from personal experience. Now I’m torn about this one. On one hand I would be really irritated if I came home and the birds that I had spent a lot of time and money raising had literally flown the coop. But on the other hand, I’m already stressed about keeping them safe from predators where we live back in the sticks and if they can’t fly they might be sitting ducks. This one is going to require contemplation.

This week I’m planting green beans at the office and I might even have two tiny little strawberry sprouts left over from the batch that croaked on me a couple of weeks ago.

I’m also going to be looking at plants and other things I can be doing to support pollinators which will in turn help with plant reproduction. Wisconsin natives like purple coneflower, black-eyed Susans, and prairie phlox are great ways to support pollinators. I even made a bunch of little watering stations for thirsty bees out back at the office and at home. This consisted of a shallow dish of water with lots of places for the bees to land and drink safely. I used rocks and bottle caps as perches for the bees. In addition I’m looking into making a bee hotel which would provide a nesting area for solitary bees.

Two bars and a hotel. I better add a church before these bees get too rowdy.

Mandee Ellis is a reporter at The Star News. Contact her at Mandee@centralwinews.com.