Thursday 6 June 2013

Keeping the cats out of the veg beds.

Summer is well and truly here now, yipeee. I've been in the garden all day, mainly trimming hedges. I had a borrow of Barry's electric hedge trimmer, so I was able to get through them a lot more quickly than with my hand shears. I have shaved quite a lot off, so hopefully they won't need doing again until the end of the year.
An update on the veggie situation. Everything was off to a slow start and at one point I wondered if I should bother at all. But things are happening now, so I should at least get some food from my garden. This is a washing up bowl with salad leaves grown from seed. They should be ready for picking in a few days time.

Baby sunflowers update. They are growing quite well, and will need repotting soon. I am not going to eat them :o)
I have three raised beds with potatoes planted. They are growing well. All the paraphenalia on the top is to keep the cats off. It will have to be re arranged, and then moved, when the tops need more room.
In here are the broad beans. The bigger plants have the canes for support, those on the other side have a £1 plastic trellis over them, again to keep the cats off. Soon the plants underneath will need more room to grow so the trellis will come off and I will put sticks and any wood I have, in between the plants.
In this bed I scattered radishes, carrots, and parsnip seeds. Not sure what crops I will get from them. Radishes and carrots usually do ok.
This probably looks a bit odd, but this is what I have to do to stop the cats doing their whoopsies amongst my vegetables. In the centre of these two beds are courgette plants. I have to confess I have  cheated with these, I bought three plants for £1 from the allotment stand on Saturday at the fete. When they grow bigger I will remove the trellis, and spread the blue plastic trays out a bit as the leaves need more room.
No I haven't gone completely mad and put curtains up to make the garden look pretty. Old net curtains are ideal to clip onto the four corner uprights, and also clip round the bottom, to keep the cats off the runner beans. I will leave this on the whole time the beans are in there.
I have a few more runner beans and broad beans to go in. The first lot of courgette seeds were a disaster, but some of the second lot have germinated. Goodness knows where I'm going to put them though if they grow to full size. Will find a space somewhere. I might have courgettes coming out of my ears later on in the year.
My veggie beds will provide enough for me, I am not prepared to spend time faffing around trying to grow more. There's enough here for quite a lot of dinners, which will cut down on the shopping trips, even if I do have to eat beans every day for a while. How are your veggies doing? Will you have enough, or too much?
Catch you tomorrow. Toodle pip.

14 comments:

  1. Glad to see your animal barriers on your garden. I fence mine to keep the cat and dog out of it.
    I only have my peas up but our summer has been much farther behind yours. I haven't even put my tomatoes or cukes out due to frost this week.

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  2. I fence off our veg patch but luckily the dogs keep the cats away! It's a very brave cat that ventures into our garden!

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  3. We don't have to worry about cats...deer,rabbits and groundhogs are our veggy patch visitor. We gave up on growing corn after raccoons raided the corn patch! Your veggies look great!
    Jane x

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  4. Along with Marjorie, we can't put our plants out quite yet. I'm hoping it warms up this week. I've started tomatoes and peppers that need to be planted soon. Beans and zucchini will go straight into the ground. With our cold Spring, the onions, lettuces and garlic are thriving!

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  5. It's looking good, slightly messy (but then all serious veggie growers care more for their plants than the aesthetics) but really good. The main thing is all the lovely homegrown organic food you will be getting to eat over the next couple of months.

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  6. My veg bed seems to be the local cats public lav and Ive spent years trying various things (however my barriers have never been as substancial as yours). This year I have been using citrus peel (a tip from Superscrimpers!) and its been working a treat. :o)

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  7. Wow, you'll soon be able to set up your own vegetable stand....your seedlings are doing great. The salad greens look quite tempting....enjoy.

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  8. All that hard work is going to pay off very soon. I love the washing up bowl idea Ilona. Your salad leaves look really healthy. - and thank you Kiwijo for reminding me about citrus peel.

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  9. Have you ever tried butternut Ilona. They sound exotic but we used to grow them and they are easy, they grow fast and supply at least 5 butternuts per plant. The good thing is that you can store them for months.
    Just a suggestion.
    Briony
    x

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  10. Loved seeing your garden. Looks like you'll have a nice variety of veggies soon. Last year, our veggie garden didn't seem to do so good. I don't know what was wrong. This year, we planted tomatoes, lettuce, eggplants and zucchini (courgettes?) and some peppers. Some animal ate all the pepper plants last year right down to the roots. This year so far, they are all growing nicely. We've had too much rain so the plants need time to adjust and grow a little. I hope we get some good veggies out of all this work. I have a problem with squirrels taking bites out of our tomatoes. We'll see how it goes this year. I think we should have put chicken wire fences around the garden (and made a roof too) because of the small animals around here. We also saw a groundhog lately and they love gardens! I also have herbs (parsley, rosemary and basil) in window boxes outside my kitchen windows. They are thriving and I've already been able to use quite a lot of them. The rosemary actually survived the winter and is growing nicely already. Good luck with your garden. It will be nice for you to have fresh veggies and know where they came from. No weird chemicals sprayed on them!

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  11. I'm so behind this year. Planting beans and courgettes out tomorrow. Bedding plants grown from seed only just gone in today. Looking forward to some tasty harvests.

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  12. Very jealous of your veggies Ilona :-0

    I don't have a garden at the moment so can't grow anything.

    Look forward to seeing more of your veggies :-)

    Toni

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  13. Cats also dislike lemon thyme, a variety of thyme with a lemon-y scent and taste. Like regular thyme, lemon thyme needs full sun to do well in your garden. Plant it near other herbs to protect them from an overly curious feline. As an added benefit, you can use lemon thyme in cooking!

    Thanks
    Andrew John

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