We spent our first Mother’s Day weekend in quarantine. The only thing I wanted for this holiday was help to set up our yard for gardening. It took two full days! Luckily the early mornings were cool in temperature. It was nice to be outdoors. However, the work was not easy.
It had been two years since the rodents had invaded the yard. A few years ago, more homes were being built about a mile away. Because of the new construction nearby, the mice and rats were displaced from their homes in the fields. They scattered throughout the neighborhoods and found their way into our yard with all the fruits and veggies. They visited every night that year and took at least one bite of everything that was about to ripen. It was yet another disheartening gardening experience that year. Months of work and we weren’t able to enjoy the literal fruits of our labor. We set traps but it was pretty unsuccessful. We only caught one. And I didn’t want to poison them because it would have unintended consequences on the predators (owls, snakes, mountain lions) that eat them. I was so disgusted by their presence I hadn’t wanted to go outside into the yard since then. So I allowed everything to die except the citrus and avocado trees. Thankfully, the rodents eventually left.
When we were first quarantined 8 weeks ago, I was motivated to start growing food again. We don’t know in what specific areas the virus will spread, but undoubtedly it will ultimately affect food supplies. Growing food takes time. I wanted to get started. Luckily we own three binders full of seeds, filed like baseball cards. We started 8 varieties of tomatoes, 3 types of cucumbers, snap peas, snow peas, chinese cabbage, chinese mustard, 4 kinds of basil, dill, cilantro, spicy peppers, bell peppers, dikon, lettuces, strawberries, huckleberry, butternut squash, Italian squash, watermelon, and zucchini. As they sprouted, I moved them into 3×3 rolling planters we had made a few years back. Since we have limited space and sunlight, the rolling planters allow us to easily move plants to maximize sunlight. I tried to squeeze together items that grow up, items that grow down into the soil, and items that spread horizontally. But I started so many plants I knew we would need to face the inevitable — cleaning up the yard.
This weekend, we picked weeds, raked leaves, and made compost piles from all the organic materials around the yard. Then we harvested all the compost from our 3 worm bins filled with 10,000 red wiggler worms and mixed it with all the soil into which we were about to transplant the new sprouts. We pruned and trimmed old growth to make room for new healthy stems and leaves. We scrubbed down an outside sink-table combo I had bought to wash our veggies and rice outside, so we could give the plants extra water. The results were gratifying. In 2-3 months time, we should be seeing some delicious edibles!
