Now that the raccoons have finished harvesting off all our sweet corn, the birds have feasted on our seeds and sunflowers, and the squirrels have stripped our fruit trees bare of their bounty, it's time to turn our gardening gaze towards Winter.
I'm looking forward to starting fresh in the garden with this upcoming Autumn, as the critter damage became unbearable at times during the dog days of our brief Summer.
All too frequently, I'd head outside to check on my flowers and veges, and find that the raccoons had turned, aerated and decimated the beds. Not wanting to kill off the grubs, which they were looking for, with insecticides, I learned to live with their nighttime antics. Willing to let the squirrels eat everything above eye level, I could only smile at the thought of a tree bearing fruit that would be harvested by human hands. Watching our bunny eat everything else, I could only laugh and pray for Autumn. Now that it's here, it's time to get busy.
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If you saved your Sweet Pea seeds from this past Spring, now is the time to soak and nick them. Plant them by this weekend, after our Wednesday rain. Chives, lettuce and spinach can be successfully put out now. As a great lover of poppies, I saved their seeds. Now they can be broadcast in the garden, with little worry of excessive heat hampering their growth.
If you have any pumpkins still growing successfully in the garden, my congrats to you! You may want to harvest them now and bring them close to human quarters, just to make sure you have them around for Halloween.
