Squirrels, gophers and rats

These are all pests I suspect to be frequenting my garden.  I'm not sure if I have squirrels or gophers or both, but there is definitely a tunneling mammal swiping my root crops.  So today I spent a back breaking afternoon in the garden burying the bottom 12'' of my fence.  Hopefully this will at least deter them.  One fellow gardener said that he had buried his 2 ft and the little boogers still mananged to get in.  I should at least win against the rats.  They live in the brush under the cactus right next to the back half of my plot.  I think they used to slip under the fence, but hopefully burying it helped. Unless they can climb. Or fit through the holes.. meh.

haha

moar humorous pics

Seedlings!

I have started seeds indoors!

So far I have peppers (orange and red), one tomato, marigolds, garlic chives and basil seedlings. Still waiting on the rest of the tomatoes, purple and hot peppers, poppies and calendula to come up. My system is kinda ghetto. I have Spongebob paper cups with dirt under two desklamps. Overall it seems to work pretty well. Two things for next year: 1. garden soil and potting soil are not the same- get the potting soil. 2. Paper cups rot- get plastic. This may not be a problem if I get sterile potting soil though. Anyway, here are the pics:

Its almost spring!

Things are starting to come alive out in the garden! The tulips are almost blooming:



The rosemary is blooming:


And the pansies finally decided to bloom after like 4 months:



And just for fun, a picture of my hanging planters that have baby spinach and lettuce plants in them!

Happy Early Valentines to me!

Garden Harvest

This weekend I ate something out of my garden for the first time: a carrot. It was pretty small but very tasty! If anyone in Davis likes Roma tomatoes let me know b/c I will have tons in a week or two and Derrick and I aren't big fans. I'm not actually sure why I planted them- I guess I wasn't completely convinced that they would grow and produce a harvest.

The Invisable Enemy

About a week ago I started getting these red itchy bites under my sports bra and other warm undesirable areas. This also coincided with the time I started clearing the back part of my garden. So I went out there looking for the culprit but the only thing I could find was lots of spiders and ants. I figured I would probably notice if I had spiders crawling all over me so it must be ants. But then I noticed that new bites would show up even without going into my garden. hm...
Derrick suggested that maybe it was chiggers and I do believe he is right. According to my internet research, they are basically invisible- explaining why I never saw anything crawling on me, inhabit overgrown grass, weeds, etc but the larvaa hop on animal hosts (ie, me), dissolve some of my cells with enzyme and have a feast until they are big enough to survive on plants. yay!
So in conclusion, I have a new least-favorite-garden-inhabitant: chiggers!!