Alden managed to harvest some potatoes that were growing over by the shed he was taking down. 🙂
It looks like a deer busted through the garden netting a couple nights ago. Thankfully, the only plant damage was a small amount of beans and kale. Heather and I stitched the netting back together and reattached it to the T-posts.
The impact of the gopher on our garden has been horrible this year. A tomato plant was taken out this week, and the dry beans have been about 50% devoured. It looks like the gopher is also feeding on the roots of the plum and pear trees.
I bought Heather a bunch of garlic for her birthday. I picked a ten-foot-long spot in the middle of row 4 in the garden, dug out a few inches of soil, and lined it with some chicken wire we had lying around and hardware cloth we got from ReStore. We planted about 120 garlic cloves there. Heather also planted a similar amount in the mushroom area. Both of those spots are Siberian hard neck garlic. I also bought her four heads of Music hard neck garlic that she will plan in front of the house, inside the French drain perimeter. We’ll see what happens. We feel like the threats against our garden are so serious that we’re not sure what the future will hold.
On the bright side, I guess: while digging the row in the garden to prepare for garlic planting, I came across an underground pile of potatoes that had been cached by the gopher. They came spilling out when I hit the spot with my shovel. I’m glad we were able to stumble across those potatoes, but it’s maddening what the gopher has done.