Jurassic Garden

Once the renovation was complete, my focus turned back to the outdoors. There was the matter of the vegetable garden, protected by Jurassic era fencing of four different kinds and heights.  It dated to the early 1990's.  Every time Bill and I had another type of critter get in--a baby rabbit or a woodchuck, for example, we'd slap another layer of fencing on it. Stock fencing, two layers, chicken wire,  and black nylon deer netting, which made up the original enclosure until we realized everything small could get through that. It was horrible, and impossible to weed, too, with the grass and weeds all coming up between those layers of fence. Frankly, it was in shambles. The wood had long since rotted and fallen apart.  Somehow, it still kept the rabbits out, but barely.

The view from inside, late in the fall of 2024:

and the ramshackle fencing and warped door and rotted planks dating to 1994 or so. Ugggh. 

 Because there was so very much to do in the next three months (by now it was April, for a July wedding), I kept telling myself nobody would mind that I had a shabby vegetable garden, but I knew it wasn’t true. I minded, very much. It was time to demolish this monstrosity and make something better. It's funny what you can overlook and get used to until you know you're going to throw a wedding on your place. Yes, you can take that as a warning, if you're considering doing something crazy like throwing a wedding on your place.

And so in April 2025, I asked my friend Donnie Schott to design something beautiful for me. First we talked about raised beds within an enclosure, but I was loath to give up even a square inch of growing space to mulched paths between high, isolated raised beds. I laugh now to think of trying to grow my German Pink tomato plants (about 7' tall) and sprawling grape tomatoes in those neat galvanized containers I was looking at. 

Nope. It wouldn't work for my style of gardening. I wanted complete freedom to plant huge plants, and to plant my peas and string beans in the long rows I'm used to. 

So Donnie came up with a critter-proof enclosure that is quite ingenious.

                                

I never dreamt that the thing would go up in only one day! I thought I'd have time to get the soil delivered before it was finished. Nope! As I watched them moving at warp speed, I had to call Greenleaf Landscaping and scramble the mushroom compost I wanted to dump in there the very morning they started work, because we had to get it dumped and spread out before the last side went on. Three inches of mushroom compost--that ought to do it! 

They spread it out nicely with the backhoe!

Before the rebar reinforcers went up on top, and before the netting went up, this is how it looked at the end of Day 1.

We re-used the deer netting from the old garden. Pretty impressive that it's held up since the early 1990's! It keeps the deer out, but has enough softness and give so that it doesn’t kill any bird that happens to fly into it. You definitely can't say that about wire mesh fencing. Winning! 

No mammal has gotten into this garden--not even a chipmunk. Well, the cardinals fly down into it to macerate my snap peas, but that doesn't really count. I expect that every year. :) Donnie built me a citadel to vegetables! 

I asked him to stand next to it for a photo, as he is rightly proud of his elegant design.

I was absolutely racing to get the garden finished and the peas planted before I left for an April bird festival in Arizona. When I got back they were well up, and I had to do a thing backward. I had always intended to line the sides of the garden wall with foam, to protect them from moisture and to keep any wood preservatives from leaching into the garden soil. Well, thanks to the same-morning delivery of the soil, I didn't have time to do that before I had to leave for the festival, so I settled for getting the peas planted and figured I'd deal with it when I got back. Oh my, what a tedious job it was to do it after the peas were up.

I had to dig deep but careful trenches next to the already growing peas, apologizing as I went. It was a two day job. 

Then I cut the foam to fit, cutting around Curtis, who found the big foam sheets to be a wonderful place to sleep and collect kisses.

Next, I slid the foam down into the trenches and filled around it. My poacher's spade, with its straight rectangular blade, was a great help in all this.

When it was done, you could see the green foam edge all around. It makes me feel better about using preserved wood for the enclosure. It should make the wood last longer since it won't be in direct contact with damp soil, too. 

  Donnie built a citadel for tomatoes, tuberoses and beans, a glorious enclosure that would keep the deer and chipmunks and rabbits out of my food, replacing a monstrosity with an elegant, additive structure. 

Being me, I let the volunteer Grandpa Ott morning glories, who thought all that soil disturbance was their call to arms, clamber all up the netting. Oh, they were so beautiful. But they were a bit too enthusiastic, and they set seed with a vengeance. And they cut a lot of sun from the tomatoes and beans! 

Obviously, they loved the manure in the mushroom compost! Ut-oh. 

So when they were done blooming and quickly going to seed I spent a huge day ripping all the vines out of the netting by hand. In the process the dried up vines dropped approximately 1.6 million seeds into the garden, and around it too. (There were still 8.2 million seeds in the vines, so I had to dry them out in trash cans set in the sun, and then burn them.) The precautions I took in June, mulching with newspaper and soil all around the outside of the citadel, will likely not keep them from coming up next year. And they're going to come up like gangbusters in the garden proper. Well, you live and learn. I will be weeding nonstop come spring. But at least I won't be weeding grass coming in from the sides!

Speaking of living and learning...the day after I ripped the vines down there were a zillion morning glory seeds all over the bare ground around the outside perimeter of the structure. I was thinking I would vacuum them up to save weeding next spring. I came out to take another look at the situation and found a chipmunk, stretched out dead with not a mark on her, right on the bare soil. I looked at her tracks, and could see the circular tracks and bare soil where she had snarfed up a bunch of seeds. They were missing from all around where she lay. Gathering those seeds would be her last act. Morning glory seeds are both hallucinogenic and deadly poisonous. I hope she saw some wild visions before she checked out. Another reason not to let morning glories take over my vegetable garden! No fair to the naive animals (and maybe birds) that might eat the seeds.

Here's the enclosure as it looks now, in September, with tuberoses blooming their heads off, and beans telling me they need to be picked, and tomatoes telling me it's time to can, and gobs of basil telling me it's time to make the pesto! There is no rest for the weary.

Suffice it to say I was proud for our wedding guests to see it, and very, very glad I'd pulled the trigger on getting it built! Many thanks to Donnie Schott, D & L Backhoe and Construction and the wonderful crew for this modern-day barn-raising! You have made me so happy.

D & L Backhoe and Construction's next target: the rotting raised wooden deck behind the house. The spiffier the house became, the worse that old deck was looking...