Arrived at big veggie garden to find the the marmot, who had only nibbled on a few lettuce plants before, had stripped the broccoli,
trimmed nearly all the lettuce, chewed up most of the radish leaves, and sampled the beet greens
!
I have had conflicts with marmots in the past but, somehow, had this idea that it takes some time for one to venture into a new diet. The most I have ever lost was a few heads of cabbage. That does NOT mean that I tolerate their presence. Last week, I saw Marty Marmot on the neighbor's stack of railroad ties. The neighbor doesn't want a confrontation with his little Dachshund again with another trip to the vet so I felt doubly motivated to confront Marty. Moving several ties, I determined where he was and poked a stick aggressively into the hole I found. He raced away on the opposite side of the stack. I came close, throwing the stick at him, but missed. Today, I returned to the garden to find that he must not have been in the least deterred from more visits.
It occurred to me as I was leaving several hours later that I should move every tire in a stack of tires
once used for surrounding tomatoes on my gardening neighbor's property. Just doing that may compromise Marty's complacency at visiting the garden.
The soil in the garden was dry. A hoped-for rain fell hard & briefly at home. It didn't look like
any fell in the distant garden.
Ssoooo, it was a quick cultivation of part of a bed for Summer-sown (!) green beans, set up a teepee trellis for the climbing rattlesnake beans, harvesting a bit of this & that, and turn on the water. Marty will have a couple of days then I will be back to disrupt his environment. Hopefully, I won't actually
lose any plant before then.
Steve
www.canr.msu.edu
