My peas and spinach are starting to come up (and my radishes are doing well too!) I'm very excited.

There isn't a whole lot to report from my end this past weekend because I was busy as a bee with other things. *cough*

What I did get done was a lot of weeding. (Thank you ridiculously toasty spring for the weeds.) Both of the farm peas and the peas in my own back yard look fantastic.
I've been hesitant to get more stuff in the ground though because... it's still early April! This spring has been so bizarre. Either way, here in about two more weeks I'm going to start planting a whole lot of goodness.

So far nothing on the summer squash or bell peppers.

Peppers take a long time to come up. Usually 2-3 weeks, sometimes even 4. So be patient with those.

ETA: Oh! We did pick our first asparagus and loose leaf lettuce last night! Spring veggie munching has begun.

Out of nowhere my summer squash erupted from the ground (well...planters) like a volcano! All of my stuff is coming up nicely, except for the oregano (which had a drowning incident...now it's kinda struggling) and the aforementioned peppers, but if it takes 2-3-4 weeks, I guess that's to be expected.

In an unrelated area of discussion I mowed my front lawn today and was stunned to discover that moles, which inhabited a small part of the lawn the past few years, have spread all over the place. Almost a third of my lawn has mole holes in it and the ground is becoming borderline treacherous. I don't want to hurt the things...truth be told I've not even seen one, but I don't want to break my ankle either. Any suggestions?

Almost a third of my lawn has mole holes in it and the ground is becoming borderline treacherous. I don't want to hurt the things...truth be told I've not even seen one, but I don't want to break my ankle either. Any suggestions?

Last year we had serious issues with moles and gophers eating things that killed a lot of plants. So this is what we're trying out this year at the recommendation of our local gardening center....
http://www.acehardwareoutlet.com/produc ... ku=7122435
It's working well so far. (We've only been putting it around our baby grapes, fruit trees, and garden. )

Shadowlander, I've consulted my handy-dandy-gardening book, and it has the following recipe:

8 TBSP castor oil
1 Gal water
1 TBSP liquid soap.

Dig into their tunnels and dump this concoction down into it, and the moles will find other places to dig. I'm assuming that you continue doing this until you "shoo" the moles into your neighbours yard. . . at which point it's their problem

The book says that you can also try placing garlic cloves (peeled and crushed) into their holes. Moles have an incredibly powerful sense of smell (since they are almost blind, this is one of the only senses that work underground) and the smell of the garlic is overpowering to them.

The castor oil recipe is more or less the homemade version of the one I linked above, so that's good to know I can make it myself. I'll have to price Castor Oil.

But the garlic is very intriguing. I wonder if the dogs on the farm would leave it alone if I buried it in a mole hole.

DiGs, does your book say anything about gophers? We have worse trouble with them than moles.

I've also heard that placing pinwheels ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinwheel_%28toy%29 ) in the ground will drive moles away. Apparently the vibrations caused by the wind blowing the blades repels them. My grandmother did this a few years back when she had a mole problem. I believe it worked pretty well.

It's got four suggestions for gallumping those gophers

1. Stuff ammonia soaked rags into their tunnels

2. Plant living barriers of oleanders and "gopher purge" around areas to be protected

3. Create raised beds and line the bottoms with hardware cloth (heavy gauge wire mesh sold in hardware stores)

4. Protect special plantingsd with half inch mesh fencing two feet below the ground, and two feed above the ground.

Eli, I've never tried the pinwheels on moles (because we don't have a problem with them in our garden. . . just our yard), but we tried it on deer, and it was a hopeless failure

Interesting about the pinwheels, shastastwin.

"gallumping those gophers" Digs.

Okay, Shadow, how's this? When my parents had problems with moles, the local garden centre said to chew about ten sticks Juicy Fruit gum just until they develop into a wad (yes, it has to be Juicy Fruit), then stick it down the mole hole or mole run. The little critters will be attracted to it, but apparently it really 'gums up' their digestive tracts, and causes their unfortunate demise. From what has been said, Juicy Fruit gum does to moles what Kryptonite does to Superman.

As for those freezing temperatures last week, so much of nature is confused, including the maple syrup. My parents always purchase theirs from a syrup farm, and the man there said the trees have produced not even half the maple syrup that is the norm. And of course, because of this, the price/litre went up.

It's always fun reading the gardeners' updates here. DiGs, I love your excitment about your radishes. And how cool about your cherry tree, fk!

because I was busy as a bee with other things. *cough*

Cute.

Spring veggie munching has begun

Love that! Although, up here we never have spring garden munching. Ours doesn't come until July or so.

A few stray leaves of tulips are coming up around our yard, but as the squirrels always get them anyway, we don't plant them anymore. But the grass is sooo green and getting long. In fact, I heard my first lawnmower on the 29th of March, whereas we usually don't hear that sound until later in April. *heads to the back shed to put out the reel mower*

Thanks for the input everyone! Truth be told I'm not sure where I'd find castor oil or how much it costs...I might just go with the stuff that FK posted. And as an idea for a Moot, everyone can bring a stick of Juicy Fruit to my house and stick it in mole holes as a sort of "Welcome to my house" sorta thing.

In case you want to go the castor oil route, they'll sell it at any drug store/pharmacy.

I almost made a catastrophic error this weekend. We were out of town for Easter, and before I left I checked the weather. It was supposed to be really cold Saturday night/Sunday morning (35F) so I knew I wouldn't be able to leave my greenhouse open while I was gone.
Two problems with that, one, when that greenhouse is closed and the sun is hitting it, it gets REALLY hot in there. I've seen it hit 124F with it wide open. Two, while the plants can take that intense heat, they can't do it without a load of water. And guess what I forgot to do before I left? That's right... water.
We rushed home yesterday and surprisingly the vast majority of the baby plants had done pretty well (the peppers looked happy LOL). But the tomato plants in the trays that hadn't been repotted yet were REALLY wilted (too much competition for water). Thankfully tomatoes are the most hardy garden plants I know of and revived after being saturated with water.

So I think if I counted correctly, I have 60 more plants to repot. That is now my top priority and I plan on finishing up today.

I took this week off from work to concentrate on gardening, I think today in addition to repotting the rest of my plants, I'm going to come up with my to-do list and a plan for the rest of the week. Most everything can go in the ground now I think as next week we pass our average 'last freeze date' til the Fall.

Oh, and Home Depot had this crazy sale on their blueberry plants last week, 3 for $12 so my husband and I bought six of them. He wanted enough to make at least one pie.

Wow. . . that would have been tragic, FK! I'm glad that you were able to save them. I too, have enjoyed the dynamic nature of the tomato plant. I know that during hot summers here, those tomato plants will just shrivel up. . . but if you water them, you can almost watch them come back to life.

My garden is doing well, and is surviving the rather chilly nights we've had recently. Nights have been dipping down into the low thirties/upper twenties. My peas are about an inch tall now, and they're looking rather chipper! Might start climbing this week! The spinach is up, but it still just looks like grass. The radishes, however, don't look like they're doing anything right now. I'll have to thin them soon lest we get another warm patch and they burst into growth.

We could use a little rain. The same high pressure system that's keeping us cool, is keeping any precipitation out of the area. I'm pretty sure that that's the reason why nothing is growing.

I'd like to get the rest of my garden tilled this week (or perhaps next week). I haven't been up to the garden centre in a couple of weeks, so they might have some more veggies. I'd love to get some lettuces, and perhaps get my cabbage and broccoli in the ground.

Glad you were able to salvage those tomatoes, fantasia_kitty.

There's a hard freeze warning posted for this area tonight, with temperatures expected to sink below 25F/-4C for an extended period both tonight and tomorrow night. (While this is typical for this time of year, it's amusing to think that last month our nights were almost summerlike in temperature - barely getting down into the upper 50sF). Local gardeners beware the frost of April.

My husband, sister, and I finally finished up repotting my plants last night that I had started from seed.
104 tomatoes, 12 eggplants, 77 peppers, and 5 watermelon = 186 repotted plants in total.

There are so many plants in my greenhouse right now I can't even take a picture of all of them. This was the closest I could get.
I might also note that many of the tomatoes have tiny yellow flowers on them. ...