The gophers ate EVERYTHING I planted except a few turnips, and my onions and garlic. And my strawberries. I did get a few tomatoes from my crop, but not enough to can everything I wanted.
So, I'm fighting back this year. I decided to put hardware cloth under a raised bed of bricks. There are exactly 114 bricks in this bed and next time I think I will use wood. But, I love the look of this since it's right out in the open area.
My chickens loved helping me flatten it out and look for bugs as the same time. You can see my soil quality isn't that good so a raised bed takes care of that problem as well. Although I have not had gophers in this exact spot...I don't put it past them to find my goodies after they are planted.
I used 3 of these sections of wire since I couldn't find any length of it anywhere in my area. The bed ended up being just a bit wider than 4 feet and about 13 feet long. I have pretty long arms and I will be able to reach in from either side to plant, weed, till, or harvest.
You can also see my new cold frame in the back left of these photos. I'm excited to get moving on this in 2017!
Here is the bed almost finished. I think I had to pick up the last of the blocks, I put some old straw in the bottom to help hold in moisture and provide a bit of composting action too.
I have been going to my neighbor's farm and picking up compost from his barn. (He gives it away, I'm not stealing it.)
As soon as it is all filled I am going to plant a few things in there for spring. I may end up having to lay a piece of wire across the bed to keep deer from eating all my greens, but we will see.
What are you planning to garden for 2017??
No comments:
Post a Comment