It’s the first part of May here in the Rockies, the weather is warming up, and it seems like time to get out planting! Note the key words, “seems like.” It sure does seem like it should be the right time, but it just isn’t. The weather is so unpredictable here this time of year, that although the forecast currently looks warm enough for the next 10 days, you just never know what may happen. Last year (2022) we received about 28” of snow between May 20-24, other years we’ve had snow in June, and it can happen any year, even after several very warm days.
In our earlier years of gardening here, we did everything we could to get an early start. We were successful at keeping plants alive, but it was a lot of extra work. We made hoops for our raised beds to allow covering them with plastic, frost cloth or shade cloth as needed. We started several plants under our grow lights and in the greenhouse to give them a good start, then transplanted the cold-tolerant plants out as early as the first or second week of May. All said and done, those plants did not die and produced nice, edible veggies.
But truth be told it was a lot of work covering things nightly and other plants of the same variety planted out just 2-3 weeks later when the weather was more consistently above freezing caught up quickly to the first group. In many cases the second group produced healthier, larger, better produce. Think broccoli, cabbage, other brassicas, lettuce or spinach.
Over the years I have become less prone to race out to the garden, and this year I am even more relaxed. Yes, I have a small number of those plants growing in the greenhouse for a good start, but I am not in a hurry to transplant them outside. By waiting just one or two additional weeks, I know they will do well and grow fast once outside, and I won’t have to worry so much about covering them every night, uncovering them in the mornings, or running out to be sure they’re protected from hail.
While I wait for the right time to plant, there is plenty of other work to do getting the raised beds ready by adding compost & amendments to the soil, starting seeds indoors, pruning & removing greenhouse plants to add to our composter, & tending the greenhouse plants that soon be transplanted.
I’m also reviewing all my old garden notes and putting them into a new format on the computer so they’ll be easier to access and keep up to date.
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.
