A garden update so soon? There’s been a lot of activity in the garden – by squirrels! See that empty strip down the center of the bed? Lettuce was there. The squirrels at it all in one day! Man, we’ve got some scruffy, half-tailed, one-eared squirrels in South Philly, and these badass squirrels have a palate for salad. They bounded over the fence, flung all one pound of their mangy asses on the bird netting until it collapsed, and then feasted. They crawled though the cracks, too. If I weren’t so nonchalant about life, I’d join the old-geezer-with-shotgun gang.
So, we just planted some more lettuce. And rigged the bird netting in a more secure fashion.
Running out of room! Out with superfluous beauty; in with utilitarian foodstuff.
It’s been so warm lately that it’s easy to grab up some tomatoes and peppers, forgetting that the last frost date is in May. Professionally, I’m being a good person and holding off on warm-weather plants for my clients (having hundreds of dollars of plants die is no fun), but, for myself, I can do what I want.
With the replacement lettuce, we also planted tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos. Still kicking and going strong from the first planting are snap peas, celery, cilantro, spinach, arugula, and mizuna. Yeah, our squirrels don’t like spinach, arugula, and mizuna – just lettuce!
After the planting this weekend, we enjoyed our first salad from the garden (greens only) with a side of Jerusalem artichoke pickles.
Guess what? While I was messing around with scrapers and not posting about food, the squirrels ate the lettuce again – all of it! Lettuce performed so well for us last year. This year, no dice. C’est la vie.
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