Thursday, April 5, 2012

Almost Ready To Throw in the Trowel

I am at my wit's end. Everything I have planted this year has been destroyed by wild boars. Strawberries, potatoes, lettuce (twice), carrots (twice), onions, peas, fava beans, spinach (twice)..... Every single carefully sown crop has been rooted up by the hundreds of boars roaming around. They have rooted up the yard to within a meter or two of where the dog is. Fences don't work. Traps are illegal (and didn't work). Japanese boar hunters are less than worthless. I don't think I can plant a garden this year. Only the square foot garden by the house. But I think the boars will get that too, they are just waiting for me to get my hopes up. The only thing that is getting my hopes up is this guy and his awesome 80 pound draw longbow made of PVC pipe!  I hear that burying a radioactive boar in your garden by the full moon is excellent fertilizer. Hopefully, I can tell you if that is true or not in a few weeks...

Also, I found out that radioactive rainwater ran off our roof and contaminated the soil below our eaves at more than 10 times (in places 20x) the level of open spaces. So I am busy scraping off the top 5 cm, putting it in sandbags, which I place in plastic bags, then bury and cover with 30cm of subsoil. Around our house has that muddy moonscape look that is so attractive.
Before- full of old leaves and mulch 0.4 microsieverts/hour

After- bare subsoil. 0.18 microsieverts/hour


Ok, enough whining. Sorry about that. In good news, our geiger counter is registering much lower numbers, the Japanese plums finally bloomed. We are still waiting for peaches, cherries, apricots, etc....

6 comments:

  1. Bad boars! I am sorry to hear that. I thought I had it bad with all the bunnies around here. They delight in chewing off the tops of the fresh and tender hostas.

    But YAY! Plums, peaches, cherries, apricots!

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    1. And persimmons, figs, raspberries, apples, Japanese pears, pears, kiwis, and some others that I am forgetting. (I like fruit)

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  2. I'm so sorry! It's heartbreaking when wildlife eats your garden with such a vengeance. Maybe you'll have to bite the bullet and fence?

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  3. Thanks everyone for the condolences. Now that it is sunny again, I can safely say that I will not give up. But I think that a 1.5m split bamboo fence is in order. But the time spent making it! All that time I could be weeding and tending... What must be done, must be done.

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  4. Dude! That is seriously sucky. I suppose electric fence is impractical/pointless? They sound like a plague. Kindly don't send any our way :)

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    1. I'll try not to. Thinking of maybe using concrete reinforcing mesh as improvised cattle panels...

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