I’m learning that EVERY YEAR IS DIFFERENT, especially at high elevation. Gardens here present more challenges than those at lower elevation: variable and cold weather, short seasons, new pests & old ones, personal health issues, as well as other factors such as COVID-19 in 2020, which affected seed & garden supply shortages. Fortunately, I had ordered all my seeds prior to the shortages, and I generally have all the other supplies I need on hand.
I’m learning to accept disappointing harvests with an attitude of knowing I’m fortunate to have whatever I’m able to harvest, and it’s a lot more than many other folks who don’t put out the effort. I shrug my shoulders and smile, knowing that what disappoints in one year may produce an abundant harvest the next.
2020 was by far the most challenging weather, and our first year to battle with mice & pack rats.
2019 I was still recovering from my hip injury in the spring, but together we planted a full garden. Somehow I did not remember to write a recap of what the garden produced in 2019, but I know there was a bumper crop of potatoes!
2018 I broke my hip in late August and was unable to finish out the garden harvest & winter preparation. (Tim did everything I asked!)
2017 was our first full garden year, with many new things to learn about growing at high elevation.
From now on, each year will be presented in review with weather highlights, pest challenges, new vegetables grown, new varieties tried, and other new things I’ve learned.
Early in May, we began to see evidence of chewing on some of the freshly transplanted seedlings, particularly things like the broccoli, cabbage & cauliflower planted in the beds around the perimeter. We’d always known mice would be able to fit in through the stucco netting which surrounds the garden perimeter beds, but we hadn’t experienced problems with them previously. This year they came with a vengeance. We put out bait stations as well as snap traps, and began catching 1-4 mice each night. Eventually there weren’t as many caught, and after the plants were larger, the mice didn’t seem to gnaw on them as much. But, almost nightly we reset the traps and each morning went out to check them, unsnap them, and retrieve any dead mice.
The first inkling that we may have pack rats was May 30th, when I discovered this neatly laid pile of onions next to the onion bed, and these potato stems and cabbage leaves dismembered from their plants. (Fortunately these plants all survived!) I didn’t think that the mice would be able to do this, and the only thing I could think of was that it may be pack rats, known to be in our area. Below are photos of some of the damage found that day.
In addition to the damaged plants, the four bait stations we’d left out for the mice were gone! Not just the bait, the whole plastic bait station. Gone! Clearly, this had to be a pack rat family.
Eventually, Tim found a DIY rat bait station idea online. He made a couple of these, put them out, and the first night the PR’s got into them and ate all 5 blocks of the bait out of each one. It’s large enough for the pack rats to get in, but not the cat, dog, or ducks. The bait blocks are suspended from the top on a rod or wire, each one falling to the bottom as the bottom one is eaten. After the first two were successful, Tim made about four more, and they are scattered all around out property. At this point, we seem to have taken care of the problem.
What about the cat, you ask? She does catch mice, but is locked inside each night (either the RV or a shed) to keep her from becoming coyote bait. We had been keeping her in our RV at night to keep the mice away, and it worked great….until she got bored and started tearing up the edge of the sofa. Now she’s in the shed at night. After moving the cat out of the RV, the pack rats found a new cozy home inside. We discovered they’d gotten in to the kitchen cabinets under the sink. After cleaning it all up & removing all the kitchen wares, Tim put another big trap out by the side of the RV, and they haven’t been in there since. Or else, they’re really neat and don’t poop or leave weeds laying around.
We had plenty of warning and had planned as best we could to harvest whatever could be harvested and protect any thing else that might be saved. Some things will be lost. I’m hopeful that the remaining brassicas, lettuces, spinach, and root vegetables will be okay and may even produce more growth. The potatoes, tucked underground, will be fine, but I doubt that the plants will grow any more. A couple of cauliflower were planted in July and were still small–I will be interested to see if they survived. Obviously the zucchini pictured here did not survive.
This is the first year we’ve ever experienced a problem with mice in the garden. We always knew that mice would be the only thing that might get through our defenses..it just hadn’t happened. On May 5 I went out to discover that 2 cabbages and 2 broccoli had all been chewed pretty well. Guessing it may have been mice, we put out a trap the next night we didn’t catch one, but the trap had been sprung. The third broccoli in that bed, and the two cauliflower were chewed. The following night sure enough, one squashed mouse was found in the morning. We began setting two traps nightly and set out some D-Con bait traps as well. I cut out the bottoms of some plastic bottles and began setting them over the plants at night. The mice also ate some lettuce & bok choy, but not the spinach or the chinese cabbage. Surprisingly, one morning I found that they’d eaten several onions in another area at the far side of the garden. I’d read that mice did not like onions–not so! At this time, traps are still set nightly with an occasional casualty, and the D-Con seems to have sent a few mice to our ducks’ pool looking for a drink of water and finding a watery drowning instead. It appears that the cabbage and broccoli survived their torture; however, the two cauliflower were too well chewed to come back. Now, for all things transplanted to the perimeter beds, they are covered with bottles, which seems to work well both to keep out the mice and the cold.
As you can see, this lighting program has worked, and ducks are now laying. With our “Duckagon” I am able to open up the top each morning to reach in and grab eggs. If the eggs are on the far side, I have my nifty claw to shove them over.
Now we look forward to getting 5 eggs in a day, to know that all the girls are in full swing! The ducks are now kept in their paddock until 9-10 am just to be sure we’ve gotten all the eggs. Normally eggs are laid before I get out to feed them, but occasionally there’s a late layer. Sometimes, after they’ve been let out to roam (they are free-range, after all) we find eggs in strange places: under trees or bushes, usually. This year, Tim tried crafting a next box for them to see if they’d like to put their eggs there. No eggs in that box yet (they’ve always been in the house early) but we have seen ducks take turns sitting in that box for a bit!
I recently got the 
