The birds

How I used to feel in my spring garden.

This spring has been different in one very substantive way...I have not had to fight either the wind, the birds, or the insects in my garden. Right now there are potatoes, carrots, lots of lettuce and some spinach growing, which will mean a bountiful harvest until about June I would guess.

It's been so lovely to pass by the lettuce section of the produce department every time I visit the grocery store without needing to purchase any, after a couple of years of frustration in trying to grow it.

This year, it's different.

The trick, it turns out, is shade cloth. I will fully admit stealing my inspiration for this new addition from my friend Beth, who showed me her garden last year nestled under its white canopy of shade cloth. Seemingly free of insects and certainly not damaged by wind or birds, all her crops looked beautiful and I got a serious case of crop envy.

And so this year, I installed the row cover supports and put everything except the potatoes and onions under wraps. And it worked. 

Munched! A lapse of judgement -- no shade cloth -- quickly rectified.

I know all this made a difference because this morning, with a rainstorm coming in, I put in some spinach transplants, and figured a couple of hours without a cloth cover wouldn't make much difference in bad weather. The birds wouldn't be out and about, right? I was wrong. When I went back out the winged criminals were fleeing the scene, after picking apart one spinach transplant completely, and probably getting ready to move onto the others. And so, in the middle of the rain, I covered the rest of the spinach and left the birds to find forage in our pasture.

It may have taken me five years to figure out, but I think I finally understand the rules to growing here: grow it under wraps.