Only a matter of time..... gophers.

 Another glorious day for the weather... might have to invest in more poultry wire or baskets or something. Found a hawk feather in the lawn, was afraid someone else would pick it up before I got Rocky upstairs from our walk. But first pictures of the good things.

Good size feather and in good condition, another one for my garden collection. It's almost time to start trimming the cilantro though they don't have the long stems because they're in full sun.  

Bad angle for the lettuce but those leaves are very big and may well cut them and use in a salad with dinner tonight. The lady that lives next to that bed was out cleaning the weeds and trimming damaged leaves off the hibiscus. I didn't feel like stopping and asking if she was the one that cut it back that far. I don't think she owns a pair of clippers heavy duty enough to cut through an almost two inch trunk.

The snails seem to be eating the orange pieces so that's good news. then I noticed a pile of telltale dirt at the front of the bed...near the potatoes. Only a matter of time.

 

The trowel is pushed into the dirt as far as it could go, up to the handle which is about 6 to 8 inches.

I started digging into the area to probe where the tunnel was, noticed another entrance under the other potato.

 Gophers in there means they'll be eating the potatoes. I had hoped that the plants would be toxic to them but nope. New dinner time food for them, I had hoped that they wouldn't go there oh well.

I don't have the money right now to put in a fence liner in the ground and I could use the two pieces from the raised bed that would require digging of course.  No guarantee on that either since they'll just follow it and find where it stops.

Likely not to grow but in the process of probing the soil I found this underground stem from the potatoes. I has a small tuft of roots on it so I decided to plant it at the back of the raised bed. Likely may not grow or if it does, not going to have potatoes until fall. No tubers on it at all so it would have to build from scratch. Gosh darn shoot!

Was really hoping for a good crop of potatoes this year. I saw a way of growing potatoes in a cardboard box but that requires at least a bag of soil. I have a small box I could use but then, where to put it? I suppose I could again use the bed panels for support. The gophers would not get through those and the box I have in mind is about the same size as the potato grow bags and smaller than the panel. I'm good with that.

Hmmm, will have to ruminate on that idea.

In the meantime I took the scrap bucket down and stirred the compost up a bit. Didn't feel like dumping the whole bucket so dug the trowel in as far as possible and just turned things over. Then took a picture of what the shovel looks like trying to deter the gopher.

Note the singular gopher, that's because it's usually only one, even in the spring as the female starts looking for new food and tunnels for nesting.

And finally, the tomatoes. They're leaning because they were in the window yesterday and in the living room last night so I turned the container around to get them to lean the other way. Gave them a quick bath of water to freshen them up.

And that's it for today. Kind of made up for the lack of pictures and posts a few weeks ago I suppose. 

Potato boxes.. hmmm.