I saw the deer IN the vegetable garden where my freshly sprouted sweet corn is starting to look like corn. I am making excellent use of all the seeds you sent me Chuck!
Actually the deer was in the wildflower end of the vegetable garden. Possibly, maybe, one of the leaves on the sugar snap peas had been eaten, but otherwise nothing had been touched, disturbed or even jostled. So what, is my produce not good enough for this deer?
I plan on eating my first yellow squash in the next day or two to go with a three kind lettuce and two kind spinach salad. The tomatoes are tomming, the cucumbers are cuking, the slow ass sugar snap peas are finally blooming. There is food a commin' and this deer eats the weeds?
I noticed on the way to town today that nobody up here has their roadside vegetable gardens fenced in any way. They are all totally open, only possibly surrounded in some way by a locust post, barbwire fence around the cow pastures. These fences hardly look capable of keeping the cows in. They certainly won't keep a deer out at between four and five feet high.
The rumor is that deer love Hosta. The resident gardeners have said that in all their years up here they have had next to no deer damage and the deer have never eaten any of the hundreds of Hosta. They have seen herds of deer on this mountain. Given a choice of food and they most certainly are on this mountaintop garden, the deer eat the wild things.
Country deer apparently don't know what city garden food is. Good. I hope. Please, pretty please let that be true.
We have to enjoy the Eremurus now while they are blooming. The word out on the Rant is that their long term presence in the east is doubtful. I am in the western mountains of a state. We have been declared to be in a drought. The well drained ground drops precipitously right behind them and I don't give them any additional water. Just maybe they will thrive here.
If not there are other things to enjoy.
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8 comments:
Excellent news, all around.
Honestly, I cannot imagine what possessed me to buy that corn. Like I have room to grow corn!
I chalk it up to winter-related desperation.
My vegetable gardening teacher says to sow corn in squares (4' x 4', minimum) because corn is wind-pollinated... So, if rows give you little, next year try squares.
Don't give up on your Foxtail Lilies. Here they die back every summer after blooming and then they miraculously come up the next year. They have even skipped a year so maybe it was too droughty for them but they reappeared the following year. Strange plants yet beautiful.
Lisa, the Foxtail Lilies summer disappearance is why it is critical to remember where they are, right. Hopefully they will do fine here.
Chuck I know when and how to have sex with the corn. In rows, the ends are the most likely to feel lonely and in need of an extra caress.
It's fun to see corn from California being grown in North Carolina by someone whose garden experience was mainly in Hawaii. It's so American-fusion!
Once those deer realize corn is food they might not be so shy and polite, Christopher... hope they stay uninformed.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
Ha! I am afraid that your deer is just lulling you into a false sense of security, Christopher. (But I hope that you're right and he doesn't like your produce!)
And I'm giggling... but not about to touch your comment back to chuck b. *grin*
I have my fingers majorly crossed Annie. It is a bit hard to believe the deer will only eat the wild things. I know they like False Solomon's Seal. I can see where they have eaten that.
And if the deer don't eat the corn, the raccoons can still get it, right before it is ready, and that was the last time the resident gardeners grew corn. Never again.
The good thing Kim is so far it is only one deer. The other good thing is I see the coyote tracks in the same area more often. Maybe the coyote is pissing on my vegetables.
Um, I commented too soon about the varmints! :) I'm with Annie, I hope the deer stay ignorant to the culinary delights you're growing. I bet those coyotes do help with that...maybe they'll keep the raccoons away, too.
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