Shims
All tomatoes are planted – only 18 plants this year, less than half of the previous year – but with a little extra care and diligence I could end up reaping the same harvest. We shall see.
I lost one tomato to a cutworm, another to a raccoon. To fend off more cutworms, I decided to make collars for the smallest of the tomato plants, and absolutely all of the peppers. I also hot-capped half of the peppers with 10-litre water jugs, while the other half got the “shim and can” treatment – not pretty, but undeniably effective.
I read about this treatment in an old tomato handbook I had found in the basement. The growers were anticipating cool nights and potential frost while going on vacation one spring, so they walled each plant on two sides (north-ish). I tried this last year when I severely shocked my tomatoes at transplant time, so I grabbed whatever I could find – in this case, leftover wood shingles from our gazebo roof – and shoved them into the ground on two sides of every plant. Within a few days, the plants had bounced back with a vengeance. The shingles offered some wind protection while they were still spindly, and trapped some heat next to each plant, giving them a boost while they were getting established. The difference this year is that I couldn’t find enough shingles, so I took the cans that had held the seedlings, inverted them and sunk them in the soil next to each plant. Yes, the garden looks like a recycling wasteland, but it’s only for a week or two, then they’ll get boxed and stored until next year.
As for the raccoon, it looks like he dug up the other tomato plant to get to the egg shells underneath. The tin cans were a bit of an attraction too and some of them had been knocked over, while others had been carefully relocated to a different part of the garden. (Those little hands can do so many miraculous things.) But when I saw that two of my corn seeds had been dug up, I got out my ultrasonic device. This little green box saved half my corn patch last year. Just half, though; the other half succumbed because I was a little slow to the draw, and then even slower to change the batteries.
So, all is well, thus far. Although, one of the rabbits is back. I hadn’t seen him or his buddy in several weeks, and I figured they had become part of the food chain, but I found one of them climbing into my pepper bed a couple of days ago. That explains why my spinach leaves are half as long as they should be. Oh well. The plants have started to bolt anyway, in this hot weather, so I say, let them eat green, baby!
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