Feeding the wildlife (aka Gardening in the Bush)

Hobbies, a particularly relevant thing in the era of COVID-19.....  

I spend my time puttering about in a couple of gardens, which poke along with varying degrees of success. 

So what is this you may ask ????  

We have 2 main areas where gardens have been attempted.  The first was a raised bed type that we installed by the solar panels when they were located at the lake edge.  The idea at that time was to plant raspberry bushes to soften the appearance of the panels if one was on the lake in a boat.  

Plus, who does not like raspberries ??

Our first step was to build the frame that would support the soil for the bed.  This was straightforward as we had plenty of left-over used cedar from the cottage build.  Next was to fill it with soil.  For this we headed off to our local sand and gravel guy (no idea why we did that rather than go to a garden center, but I digress).  

I have never really had a garden outside of a few plants in the backyard in the city, so while we were admiring a pile of what looked like rich dark earth, the owner assured us that this was not, in fact, what we wanted.  Instead he offered to mix us up the local version of triple mix, telling us that this mix was what the local guys were using to grow weed in the bush.  

Hey – what better recommendation than that could there possibly be ??

So off we went with a trailer load full of black gold which was promptly dumped into the raised bed frames.  Then off to get raspberry bushes. All went well at first.  We got a few raspberries and the plants grew well.  Then, towards the end of the season I headed down to the area where this bed was and – not plant to be seen.  Not a nibbled off stock, not a left over root, nothing.  
Well – I had not pulled it out, and my husband had not pulled it out – so what the heck?  
Ultimately we put it to deer, or if not deer then some other creature of the forest.  
Odd, and kind of annoying.

Over the years since then I have tried random vegetables (including the infamous miniature vegetable year) with the greatest success last year.  

However – there is something about the results from that bed, whether it is the out of sight location, or the wind off the lake, or more likely, the general ineptitude of the gardener that in no way reflects the effort it take.  Here is last year's effort, again with minimal success.

This year I decided was to be the last and weakest attempt, again trying a few berry bushes and a few tomato plants.  

And, you guessed it – they disappeared  😕

Luckily the local food store has a more than sufficient supply of vegetables.  However, we had speculated this year, that with the virus charging around the world, that we have the perfect little safe bunker – if we could just feed ourselves.  Need to learn to fish I guess.

The other "garden" is an odd assortment of wildflowers and perennials that lives atop our septic bed.

This garden started with a wild flower seed mix designed to go directly on the sand for the septic bed (no soil to be added) and while that worked well at first, it was soon overcome with thorny wild roses (which did not really bloom). These needed to be burned off, and I spent a year attacking anything thorny. 

There were Black Eyed Susans in the wild flower mix, and remarkably they made it through all my attacks and continued to reappear.

My next effort was to try and move a few local wildflowers from their original homes and find them new places to live over the septic bed.  That effort proved to be slightly comical with the flowers coming up again the next year, but in entirely new locations, and they continue to choose new locations each year.  Guess I know who the boss is.

In recent years I have started adding in some perennials, but most do not do so well.  This is extremely poor soil (pure sand actually) and it is shady and dry.  I have narrowed in on a few that seem to thrive and am gradually adding more, but the base of the garden is still wild.

One of the few plants that did thrive were hostas – and I do love hostas.  Added a ton of these in a sort of rock area and I totally loved how they looked.  They also seemed to be fine with my less is more attitude to garden maintenance.

Unfortunately in late 2019 the local deer population discovered my hostas, and it turns out they loved them even more than I did.  Now garden centers in the area do warn about this, but I was lucky enough to go several years with no deer finding the buffet at our place.  But then it happened.  Every one of those beautiful plants were eaten, one by one.  The darned deer did not even seem particularly bothered by my attempts to shoo them away.  

Going...

Going ...

Gone

Admitting defeat, 2020 is about replacing these plants with ones the deer do not like – oh well.

I am no gardener but frankly I am having a ball.  Nothing more fun than moving plants around (or shopping at the garden center……)