One Form of Deer Repellent

Friends down the road keep two gardens, a flower garden including tall sunflowers we never see around here because deer snap 'em off leaving four-foot stalks, and a vegetable garden. Both gardens are fenced. That's the only way for hobby gardeners to get homegrown produce to the table, because otherwise all we grow is deer munchies. They bite the tops off tomato plants too, especially during this summer's drought when nothing but gardens got watered. Can't blame them for wanting juicy greenery. Friend's husband found this skull, of a buck with only one antler, in the woods and decided to stake it in the center of his vegetable garden -- even though it has wire fencing. It has golf balls in its eye sockets. I think he means it to strike fear into the hearts of deer, who, if they only turned around, could see plenty of other nice grasses and leaves to rip and pulverize with their amazing one-inch tubular teeth with razor-sharp edges. It's also a form of folk sculpture.

Brown Eggs with Value Added, Part Two

He said when the moon is waning and gives light all night, I can expect the tomatoes I'm raising to ripen faster. I believe him. Farmer Bob, whom I met in December and last posted about in early spring, sits beneath a canopy on the roadside every Wednesday and Saturday next to his 1988 Dodge pickup, selling brown eggs and now summer vegetables in the hellish summer heat. He offers customers a seat in the extra chair he sets out for socializing, and almost always when you drive by there's somebody sitting in it, sometimes me. We've had several conversations on life and gardening.

The eggs are great, although he raised their price to $3.50 because of fuel and feed costs. He knows that's high. He said, "The eggs in the store for 99 cents are okay if you want to bake with 'em. Mine are for if you want to eat 'em." He said he eats eggs and bacon every morning and he's been married four times. I told him I'd phoned a witch and asked her to cast a magic spell for me. He said I didn't have to call a witch, that Jesus was always there to help me.

Waves of Green

Found a lost disk of photos showing Demetrius in his 25x25 foot vegetable garden, summer of 2004. He built bean trellises eight feet tall (he was 6'3"), and those are cantaloupe vines around his feet, and he planted marigolds around the cold frames he built because they are a natural insecticide and cheerful to see. His best tip: Plant clover in between the vegetable rows, and the bunnies will eat the clover, not your vegetables. Landlord told us to stop gardening in 2006. Demetrius grew beans, kale, turnips, tomatoes, red potatoes, squashes (including pattypans because I thought they were cute), eggplant (because I liked it), cantaloupes, bok choy, chard, okra, cabbage, exotic lettuces, gourds, five kinds of basil, carrots (voles ate them from beneath before we got any), you name it, and he ate it all raw, even the potatoes. A great vegetable gardener he was: old enough to remember his mother's victory garden, which she kept up until the record-setting-heat summer of 1956; always reading about organic gardening (the magazine Organic Gardening was not organic enough for him), really happy only when he gardened.

Tomato Growing: Six Tips for Success

1. Gardener or guest, don't ever caress, pluck, fondle, feel up, or otherwise play with a tomato plant's foliage so you can inhale its gorgeous tomato scent. That's how animals locate tomato plants: by scent. Hands off.
2. When staking, wash and dry the stakes first and then use twine, organic preferred. Don't tie it tightly and avoid twist-ties, rope, thread, cloth, clamps or rubber bands which can scar the stem or hold water and cause rot.

3. Spraying or dousing the plant with water encourages fungus and leaf yellowing. Water at the soil level, splashing as little as possible.

Big Boys, July 4th

4. Use freshly-cleaned scissors to clip away "suckers" (upstart leafy growths in the "Vs" of the tomato branches) and THEN use the scissors to clip yellowed leaves from around the bottom of the plant. Clip away only the leaves that are majority-yellow. Do this in the morning so that the scars (and resulting tomato scent) can heal by nightfall, when the raccoons and skunks prowl. Gather the cut foliage and dispose of it far away from the garden.

5. Every other day, water until the bed has standing water.

6. To rid the leaves of "tiny white winged bugs" (thrips), Method 1: Boil a pinch of tobacco in two cups of water  (it stinks) and when cooled, pour this in a circle around the affected plant. Boiling this mixture hard kills any tobacco mosaic virus the tobacco might be harboring. Method 2:  Blast the bugs off the leaves with a brief spray of water. Spray sidewise, not downward toward the soil. Once should do it. This is the only time you break Rule 3.

The tomato is ripe if it's evenly colored and releases easily from the plant. Resist the urge to leave it hanging hoping it'll be growin' a little redder or bigger; that's just asking a critter to come and get it.