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Showing posts with the label companion planting

Pesky Critters In The Garden

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So I have been diligently planting away in the garden. I planted several cabbages (10 to be exact) not including 2 red cabbages. I am now down to 1 red cabbage and 3 round dutch cabbages. I have searched and searched and there is not a trace of an insect presence. Then a couple days ago I see a furry little guy racing to get to the main fence line. Oh he made it this time, but the battle between me and Mr. Chipmunk is now on. I have waited years literally to have a decent asparagus harvest, and could not figure out why I was getting little to no shoots. Well, now I know... This little guy and his or her family will be fat fatties if they keep consuming produce at the speed of my plantings. If they just preferred one type of vegetable I would be fine, but the fact that they are sampling or totally devouring baby cabbages and even an jalapeƱo plant almost before my eyes.....Oh I'm almost speechless!  This lead me to click on  a link about getting rid of most common garden pests. Ther

Who are our fuzzy friends with a lisp? Garden Pollinators

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Creating the infrastructure for and expanding the beauty of our garden was the first goal I had for the growing season. Towards the middle of spring I started to focus on the little helpers seen and unseen that helped our garden flourish. Those little helpers or Beneficial Insects as they're known in the gardening/scientific world included my top three which are bees, lady bugs, and praying mantis. We loved watching the mantis hatchlings scurry around their little make shift nest we hung around the window sill. I will write more about lady bugs and praying mantis in future posts but today I want to focus on the cute little fuzzy guys that lift an astounding amount of weight on such tiny little wings... Bees .  The first thing I decided to do when researching how to attract bees was to find out what kinds I could attract in my area which is Zone 4. I thought I would have the time to make a home to attract mason bees but ran out of the time and the drill I needed to make a cute li