In this case, my enemy is a varmint. ...

[tjwash]

Nothing like spring in SO-CAL...beautiful birds, sunny weather, just enough rain this winter to make the ground soft, and the digging up chore pretty damn easy, and....about 3 or 4 brand new fresh gopher holes, right where I am getting ready to lay my new seed beds. :freak:

I just got the last three, and another one has just moved in...so, as much as I was trying to avoid it, I need to bust out the "gopher-frustraters" this year in my seed beds:


Oy...my aching back. I'm definitely not as young as I used to be.
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Try to get through THAT you little bugger
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If there is one thing I do love me in this life, it's a nice steamy pile of compost, manure, and just good old dirt.
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Fill it up to the top, and add the bleeder line
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About a month later... I also have 2 of these seed beds now with strawberries, and green beans, melons, rows of corn, garlic, onions pickling cukes, tomatoes, squash, strawberries.

I am already looking forward to canning and pickling this year! :thumbsup:

[beac]

1. Jealous of how far along you already are!*

I'm not even planting my tomatoes until early May this year. I'm sure we'll have a frost or two yet, despite the current mid-summer temperatures. Hoping my new dog is a good ground hog deterent b/c nothing else worked last year.


(*And that view! Gorgeous.)

[tjwash]

2. So cal has a very looooong growing season fortunately

We can start early in march out here, because the frost danger is usually past. The tomatoes can go in April, because the nights start staying in the 50's pretty consistently. I can usually get Broccoli, Cauliflower, and cabbage going all through the winter, but this year I just got the triple-whammy invasion of skunks, gophers and rats that gobbled them all up as fast as I could plant them. I finally got rid of them, but DAYUM...that was the worst in years.

The down side here is water...it get bone-dry here in the summer, and even with everything on drip and bleeder line, it costs me a pretty penny to irrigate. And...the county just jacked our rates up here again :grr:

Oh, and thanks...I forget how awesome the view is and how lucky I am to have our house where it is.