Relearning and New Challenges

So I had spent most of my time gardening in zone 9/10 around the Temecula area. Three years ago I became an itinerant and sometimes absent gardener due to becoming a renter and many moves. I have landed as a roommate in a 5 acre ranch in N San Diego County - Warner Springs.

And boy is it different. First of all, frost is a guarantee, not a maybe. Plus snow although there was none this year. And VARMINTS! Ayayay.

As far as the climate, I can work with that. It is still milder than a New England, where I am from, but tricky. I am looking to create some sort of greenhouse for the upcoming season. Possibly individual bed hoop houses. The challenge there is the wind. In the meantime I have planted the usual fall crops - brassicas and spinach and spring onions. Will put in some garlic soon.

I purposely built table tops with critters in mind and for all of them it works - except for squirrels and chickens. The chickens are easy enough to discourage but the squirrels have made me create a veggie Attica to keep them out. And it prevents me from doing what I have to do very easily. I finally bought traps and soon realized I had no way to humanely kill the squirrels so I relocated them in the woods with no gardens in sight. Or houses for that matter. I relocated about a dozen of them and it has made all of the difference. Now I know to start this process every spring.

Since March I have had almost no harvest but I am finally seeing some things get all the way to maturity. I tried three times with pumpkins, corn and watermelon and finally have something to show for it. Woohoo! 


Pumpkin on a trellis. Also have decent looking watermelon. We thought we could do one pumpkin per grandkid - now we are hoping for one per family.


Celery - always the slowest grower.


Lone pepper plant in an otherwise decimated bed. I used bagged MM for this and it never thrived. Later purchases were fine but not these. After I added some homemade compost this plant took off. It was too late for the others.


Tada.


Getting small ears of corn but this is the third try and the first to survive more than 6" growth.


Spinach planting


The strawberries are coming in now very nicely.

Guaranteed snow in San Diego, of all places? You must be at quite a height. I didn't know there was that kind of height there.

Nice looking pepper. Lotta water spots. Is that from rain, or do you overhead water?

Good luck with the critter invasions. Those guys can cause a lot of garden heartbreak.

Harvest the squirrels with an air rifle  , they make a grand dish when skinned & gutted straight away , oiled and roasted in a roasting bag & eaten with veg out your garden .

Plantoid - Oh, wait! I ate squirrel, once.

Chopper, One way tickets to the woods. Nice way to get rid of the critters

Congrats on your successes! I don't know your budget, but it would be nice to have a totally enclosed garden area, top side also. Enter through a door way or two that close tight, and tall enough for you and the corn to stand up.

I just started remodeling the PVC bed frames for winter protection. I'm changing to gable ends, since they stand the wind without taking flight. (Reduced air lift or accelerated air speed across a domed top or how ever it is explained.

Marc Iverson wrote:Guaranteed snow in San Diego, of all places?  You must be at quite a height.  I didn't know there was that kind of height there.

Nice looking pepper. Lotta water spots.  Is that from rain, or do you overhead water?

Good luck with the critter invasions.  Those guys can cause a lot of garden heartbreak.

The water spots are from hard water - from the well. 4200'

sanderson wrote:Plantoid -   Oh, wait!  I ate squirrel, once.

Chopper,  One way tickets to the woods. Nice way to get rid of the critters

Congrats on your successes!     I don't know your budget, but it would be nice to have a totally enclosed garden area, top side also.  Enter through a door way or two that close tight, and tall enough for you and the corn to stand up.

I just started remodeling the PVC bed frames for winter protection.  I'm changing to gable ends, since they stand the wind without taking flight.  (Reduced air lift or accelerated air speed across a domed top or how ever it is explained.

Bit by bit I am getting there. My roommate (and the homeowner) has a carporty cover for her now sold boat. We are thinking of repurposing that. We do get pretty mighty winds and I have been wondering about the best way of handling that.