Prognosis 2016

The garden may be reduced this year. I broke my arm last fall when doing some yard work (non-displaced fracture), and it isn't fully healed, so it hurts when I use the hoe with any significant enthusiasm. Which makes sense, since I broke the arm by hitting a rock with the hoe. I'm struggling, though, to accept the latest limitation.

I've cleared the asparagus bed a bit, and transplanted a few of the Russian garlic plants (rounds that grew from seed planted in the fall of 2014), and some errant strawberry plants.

There are, if I remember correctly, about 72 German garlic heads growing, 32 Russian (after starting three falls ago with just one head!) and another 42 of the Russian rounds that were seeded two years ago, grew into rounds last year and then were transplanted in the fall.

I'm planning to do the usual green beans, butternut squash and yellow squash. And onions, except from the local nursery, and probably fewer than in previous years. I'll skip the zukes, because I have some shredded in the freezer, enough for two big batches of zuke bread, and that's pretty much all I ever do with zukes. And I'll cut back on the tomatoes and peppers. Maybe just do cherry tomatoes, which produce better for me anyway. I hate to cut back on peppers, though, so maybe I'll manage my usual 30 or so (24 Ace and 6 banana). But I'll have to find a source for Ace, because the kind I got last year from the local nursery were disappointing.

Rain and rabbits

There hasn't been anything to blog about, because all we've got in the garden these days is rain and rabbits.

I definitely can't do anything about the rain, and the rabbits,well, the rain is limiting me there too.

The organic (and non-lethal) ways of dealing with rabbits basically consist of sprinkling the edible plants with stuff that the rabbits won't want more than a single nibble of, like hot pepper, or surrounding the plants with scary stuff, like blood meal. Except for these things to work, the distastesful stuff needs to stay on the leaves or on the surface of the ground, and not be washed away in the chronic, daily downpours.

So -- rain and rabbits. All I can say is that they're a lesson in recovering the ability to accept the things that can't be changed.