Two Rivers Garden

The Saga Of The Phantom Pooper, Or How To Keep Cats Out Of Your Beans We've had a lot of rain up here in northern California, and I was noticing with great pleasure that my raised beds were draining beautifully -- they were holding water quite well, too, but while the ground around the raised beds was the same muddy slushy mess that comprises the rest of my backyard, the raised beds were keeping the new seedling plants from getting wet feet (so to speak) as they sprouted. And then I started discovering holes in the garden, like the above picture. And I started discovering unpleasant, stinky surprises in those holes. And on one sunny day between rains, I discovered that the area where I'd planted bush bean seeds (specifically Tendergreen, Blue Lake, and Royal Burgundy varieties) had a whole cloud of little bugs hovering over it, a big hole with an unpleasant surprise, and young sprouted seed scattered all over the place. We have a lot of feral cats in the area, and so it w...

Bed layout and Planting Little by little, I'm getting this garden into shape. At this point, all of the beds are filled and the irrigation is installed on each. Now it's time for planting. The complication: I'm trying not to spend lots of $$$ on new seed or live plants. I wanted SOME young plants to transplant, so I got a few, but I didn't get seeds started early enough; right now the only seeds that have successfully been prestarted are eight varieties of tomatoes and one small eggplant. I'm working off of older seeds (some as old as 6 years since packing), so while I expect some germination, I don't expect every single seed to sprout. We'll see how it works out. In the meantime, allow me to show you what's in the ground so far, and lay out a rough idea of some of the plants I'm direct-sowing.., Redbor kale is so pretty, isn't it? Little curly purple leaves! For that matter, Prism kale is also very pretty; a beautif...