Pests

Apparently every garden has them.  At my parents’ place, we always have domestic ducks wandering around the yard for 4-H projects and our general amusement because ducks are some of the happiest and most entertaining animals alive (except maybe otters).  One summer, we had no bean harvest because this group of ducks would get in a line and walk up and down our rows of bean plants, picking the beans off.  The no-till garden had a rabbit issue, which is another story altogether.  And my container garden has a puppy problem.

Meet Leonidas.  He is a 10-month-old Lab-ish mutt that I adopted from an unwanted litter at a cattle ranch in NW Minnesota this past fall.  He is the apple of my eye, but he is also frequently a devil child, as most puppies that age are.  I knew he was going to be a challenge when I started the garden.  So far, he has discovered that potting soil is delicious, and it is loads of fun to pick the plant labels out of the dirt and run around the apartment with them.  Later I heard the sound of his collar jingling in the kitchen and found him systematically pulling the leaves off the pepper plant.  (Like I said in the previous post, he has identity crises sometimes, and right now he thinks he’s a grazing animal.)  He only got about half of them off before I found them, so I’m hoping that I don’t need to replace that plant already.  He also shoveled out the zuke with his nose, and it looks like I will have to replace that one because the roots look pretty torn up.  I’m going to give it a couple days first, so fingers crossed!