This year, pretty much as soon as we had baby plants (peas and spinach), up in the raised beds, the local rodent population rejoiced and sent out invitations for the party season. Early party-goers harvest the majority of the spinach before it had real leaves, and dug up the peas. Argh.
So we thought about it and decided to build a framework out of plumbing pipe and fixtures for the added benefit of being fairly light to handle. Then we had to decide if we want to incorporate a wire cage inside the framework, or cover the framework with a floating row cover. We decided to try floating row covers first. We can always buy wire and make the cages later if the floating row covers don’t thwart the little bastards.
This is the fifth framework laying on the paving stones in the garden, waiting to be glued together.
By this time we have a system going and it doesn’t take a long time to put this together. It’s a lot of sawing and measuring and gluing. The gluing part is fun! It gets all over everything.
Put together and sitting on the raised bed. This one doesn't have anything planted in it yet, so no need to cover it up. The far end of this raised bed is all the extra large strawberry plants I had such high hopes for. The winter did them in. Boo.
Each raised bed requires two frameworks.
Two completed raised beds, covered and protected.
The floating row covers are very lightweight and the wind pulls them out from where they are tucked in under the framework. Not ideal, but since we installed them, the plant predation has ceased. Yay!!!! Humans win a round!
Had we not covered these pea plants, they would have been mowed to the ground.
The onions share the same bed with the peas and they are also enjoying their floating row cover. It all makes watering a wee bit tedious as we have to move the floating row covers out of the way and then tuck them back in again after the watering is done. But at least we have plants that need to be watered!
The gooseberry plant is gigantic and covered with little berries. We will have even more fruit from this plant than last year, and the other gooseberry plant is also putting on a lot of berries.
This was a close up. The berries are very small at the moment. There are just a LOT of them. 🙂
Here are the gooseberry, rhubarb, and josta berry plants all striving for supremacy of space.
We have already picked some rhubarb from the plant and need to harvest a bunch more. The raised bed has the potato plants which are from the seed potatoes we saved out from last fall. They are looking really good.
Red currant fruits are just literally covering all six of the bushes. Last year we got a small amount of fruit; this year will make up for it.
Dan really loves the red currant jam, so this is a good thing to see. Chipmunks love the fruit too, so it will be a contest to see who gets there first.
Dan shows how big the rhubarb plant is.
The bigger of our two cherry trees is behind him and it is also loaded with cherries. The apple tree to the right of the cherry tree is done blooming but we don’t know if it set any fruit yet.
These three josta berry plants are huge. Some of the stems are taller than Dan. And they are absolutely full of fruit. This will be the first real harvest.
We have been waiting for these plants to get with the program, and it looks like this year will be a taste of things to come. Josta berry jam is Dan’s favorite of all the jams I make.
One of four low bush blueberry plants, very covered with blossoms.
The larger blueberry bushes are looking a bit better but they don’t have any where near the number of blossoms. And these low bush blueberry plants are more like the wild blueberries we loved in Alaska out in the bush, flavor wise.
The smaller of our two cherry trees is a bit behind and is just now in full bloom.
It is going to have to fight for space from the josta berry plants next to it.
It’s going to be a very good fruit year, I think.