Deer Are Cute...Until They're Not

This was the sight that greeted me when I checked on my vegetable garden this morning. That plant with one leaf at the bottom of the picture is a cauliflower plant. Those empty blocks behind it used to contain cauliflower plants. Beautiful, lush cauliflower plants that I had babied and coddled for the last month. Apparently I didn't coddle them enough.

This is what my cauliflower looked like
last week. Now they're gone.

I can only assume that the deer took my cauliflower from me in the cover of night. What else would eat a whole plant, thick stem and all, right down to the ground? I used to love watching the deer. From my living room, I could see them grazing on the weeds in our back lawn when I worked at home. I felt like Snow White living among the cute, fuzzy animals. Other than losing one bean plant in the spring, they hadn't touched the vegetable garden in months. Now, I have one cauliflower plant left. It's really kind of heartbreaking. If I'm lucky, I might get one crown of cauliflower for all my work. Clearly, Snow White never had a vegetable garden.

You better believe I'm caging my garden now. I built the cage in the spring originally to keep the deer out and to keep the squirrels from digging among my seedlings and disturbing them. When the plants grew too large for the cage, I left it off, and the deer really left my garden alone. When the freeze came last week, I put up a PVC frame with plastic sheeting to protect the cauliflower from frost, and when the plastic came off, I left the frame up for ease of covering when the next freeze hits this weekend. Apparently, I need to remove the frame and replace it with the cage in between freezes. That last cauliflower plant will stay covered at all times.

For now, my last cauliflower plant lives safely under a cage.

The moral of the story: if you have deer in your neighborhood, don't ever let your guard down, especially in the winter time when their natural food supply is more scarce. My cage works fine for my little garden, but I'm not sure what people with larger gardens do. I never had these issues growing up in suburban south Florida. Do you have any suggestions?

What to Do When Your Garden Freezes

The weather has been crazy this month. The temperature this afternoon was 84 degrees. Just last week, we reached a record low for November 14 in Macon: 21 degrees.

Fortunately, I was prepared for the freeze. My husband and I bought more sturdy supplies to cover the vegetable garden. (Our last cover involved bamboo stakes and duct tape.) We created a frame using two 10-foot, 1/2"-diameter PVC pipes and covered it with a 6 mm-thick plastic drop cloth. It didn't keep the summer vegetables (or zinnias) from meeting their inevitable demise, but the fall vegetables were quite happy with the arrangement.

My vegetable garden with PVC framing
for cold protection the day after the first
freeze

The freeze killed all the peppers.

The fall vegetables are loving the cooler temperatures.
Clockwise from top left: onions, lettuce, radish, and
cauliflower

 As for the rest of my garden, the ornamentals had a mixed response. Growing up in south Florida, temperatures just don't ever get to 21 degrees, so I still look at freezing temperatures like a fun science experiment. Like any good science experiment, I carefully documented the results. My hydrangeas looked dead the next day. Fortunately, I know they're cold hardy, so I expect they'll look fine come spring. My hostas also took the cue to start winding down for the winter. My roses didn't notice the difference. Both the rose blooms and leaves looked exactly the same as they had the day before. The pansies, too, were unfazed by the cold.

The hydrangea leaves wilted and blackened from the
freeze. The roses and pansies were unaffected.

With some plants still thriving and others dying back for the winter, you may wonder what you should be doing right now in your garden. The combination of sudden cold snaps and surprisingly warm weather confuses plants and people alike. Here are a few tips for caring for your plants in November:

1. Resist the urge to prune shrubs. You might want to jump in and trim back your pathetic-looking hydrangeas (or other shrubs), but the best thing you can do is leave them alone. Pruning signals to plants that they should branch out, and especially in the warmer weather they are likely to put out a bunch of new growth. Even if a plant is cold-hardy, all that tender new growth will be easily damaged when the next freeze hits. Wait until late in winter, when the plants are good and dormant, to do most of your pruning.

2. Resist the urge to fertilize...almost everything. Just like with pruning, fertilizing encourages tender new growth, which can be damaged by a freeze. Your plants need to be sleeping, not growing. Here in zone 8, we have some exceptions. All of your winter annuals, such as pansies, snapdragons, and ornamental kale, should be kept on a regular feeding schedule to maximize their blooms. They will continue growing quite happily through the winter. Your cold weather vegetables, too, can be fertilized as needed.

3. Plant or transplant shrubs. This is a good time to plant roses, blueberries, azaleas, and other shrubs. The cooler weather gives the roots plenty of time to get established before the summer heat hits. (Even when plants are bare and dormant, their roots are still growing.) This is also a good time to move plants to a new location. One of my hydrangeas looked unhappy every afternoon this summer, so I'll probably dig it up and move it to a shadier location in the next couple of weeks.

4. Keep watering. Just because plants are dormant doesn't mean they don't need water. The harsh wind, especially, can dry plants out fast. They don't need to be watered as often as they do in the summer, but if we go through a dry spell, throw a little water on your sleeping shrubs. If you just planted shrubs, they need  frequent water. If your pansies look wilted after a freeze, throw some water on them and they'll perk right up.

5. Rake leaves. As I mentioned in my post on fungus, fallen leaves make the perfect place for plant diseases to hibernate until they return in the winter. For the health of your plants, you should rake up the leaves and either compost them or haul them to the curb.

Happy gardening!

One Year in My Garden

Fall came early this year. My oakleaf hydrangeas and dogwoods developed some lovely fall hues that weren't there when I took pictures and started my blog around this time last year. We also got an early frost a couple of weeks ago. It snuck up on me, so my husband and I found ourselves at Walmart at eleven o'clock on a Friday night buying drop cloths and duct tape to rig together some quick protection for my vegetables. It actually turned out pretty well, considering my husband put it together at midnight while I held the flashlight for him, shivering in the cold. Here's a picture I snapped the next morning:

We assembled protection from the cold for
my tender vegetable plants from bamboo
stakes, drop cloths, and duct tape.

I have been enjoying this beautiful weather, tackling lots of little projects around my garden. I planted a tiny rose plant I bought from a farmers market for $3, some leftover pansies a friend gave me, red onion sets I picked up on an impulse at Home Depot, and some parsley seeds I'd been wanting to try. I think I accidentally planted onions on top of the spinach because there's something sprouting up all around the onions, and not in the square next to it where I thought I had planted spinach. (Note to self: always label my squares when I plant seeds instead of depending on my faulty memory.) I moved some dying irises to another bed where I thought they would be happier, and replanted broccoli seeds indoors after they failed to sprout outdoors last month.

I planted irises, pansies, and a rose over the weekend.

It's hard to believe I've been working in my little garden (and blogging about it) for over a year. For how little time and money I've actually spent on it, I'm pretty proud of the progress. A year ago, some of my plants were just 4" cuttings given to me by a friend, and they've grown into small shrubs. The bareroot roses I won in a contest looked like sticks when they arrived, but they really filled out and bloomed well this year. I added new flower beds and vegetable beds in areas that were just lawn a year ago. It's not the kind of transformation you see on HGTV, but I haven't spent thousands of dollars on plants and labor, either. None of the plants are looking their best this time of year, but I wanted to take pictures anyway, to track the change from when I started. 

My yard, October 2012

My yard, October 2013

Here's a summary of what I've done to my garden in the past year:

• Removed all of the Indian hawthorn shrubs from the front of the house, and half from the back of the house
• Planted a cottage-garden-style border on the east side of the front door, and half of the border on the west side
• Added a small flower bed next to the sidewalk
• Cleared out some of the ivy next to the patio and planted a shade border
• Added a vegetable garden in a raised bed

There's an adage about new gardens that says plants sleep the first year after they're planted, creep the second year, and leap the third year. They put a lot of energy the first year into just getting established and growing their root system. I think that was somewhat true for my garden. I did enjoy some lovely blooms, but my plants seemed to spend most of their energy just filling out and growing new leaves. I can't wait to see how my garden blooms this next spring.

In the next year, my attention will shift to updating the beds behind the house and creating new beds in the back of the yard, which is mostly lawn and weeds right now. Here are a few spots I hope to improve:

I have made some improvements to the bed
next to my patio, but it still has a long way
to go.

The very back of our yard is a large stretch of weedy
lawn and untapped potential.

Gardening requires a lot of patience. Some people put their creative energy into developing an artistic talent, others into remodeling or decorating their home. For me, my masterpiece will be my garden, and in a few years, all the sweat and waiting will be worth it.