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Creatures of the night
Mobile Press- Register that tomatoes evolved in the high plains of Mexico. Tomatoes, he said, want cool nights and warm days. I figured I'd have that if I set out those plants in early March. "You'd better cover those tomatoes when it looks like frost." That's what I was warned as I picked out the tray with the most robust looking tomato seedlings. The plants didn't need a hot pad, or even a bucket inverted over them on the frosty nights of late March and early April. Unfolded sheets of the editorial pages of that Mobile paper provided enough heat to get the plants to survive. What a bonus I got. I was sharing beautiful, perfectly formed tomatoes with my neighbor while his plants were just starting to grow. I even had tomatoes for payback to my friend down in Gainestown who shares muscadines with us in the Do Nothing Club. Besides the cool nights, there was another important condition that provoked the success of my tomatoes: it was so cool between sunset and sunrise that the creatures of the night had not ventured out. An early Spring Garden can escape the hassle of slugs and bugs. Mid May brought the sultry nights, the daytime visits by the local air conditioning guy, and the night time visits by the local creatures that wander up from the Nethermost. Look. I allow tall grass to grow for bovines down in the bottom. Even more, I broadcast turnip green seeds through that lowland. Turnip greens are loaded with calcium, just perfect for growing antlers. These plants are fully mature in May. Yet, on the first warm nights, I found hoof prints around the chewed off hibiscus, amaryllis, and snowpeas up here on the edge. Are the local deer so sophisticated that they prefer that much variety in their diets? I don't know if raccoons stay in their dens when the nights are chilly. I do know they don't in May. At about nine o'clock one night, I caught one sitting on top of the bird feeder, and that feeder itself sits on top of a five foot tall Teflon pole. All this creature harassment caused my gardens to change in May. I planted prickly leafed okra, what one son calls imprisoned pepper plants, and what my father used to call pole beans but I call caged beans. I can put up with deer, and raccoons, and even coyotes coming to harvest my figs. I consider it a contest to see who is smarter, those mammals or this mammal. There are these other creatures of the night with brains smaller than a pea, if they have one at all. They devour my hopes for a Fall Garden. I know they are there. I know they are there for I bought some strong looking broccoli plants and lettuce sprouts from the feed and seed across the street. I carefully put these into the ground, putting a cage around the broccoli to support the strong branching when the plants are maturing near Thanksgiving. I cleaned debris from the rows, even raked the soil so that I could spot any foot prints. What did I find the next morning? Each leaf was torn and riddled with holes just like some of my favorite tee-shirts. The newly sprouted chard and beets were decimated. The irritating thing was that there were conical holes bored all up and down the middles of my clean, carefully raked rows. After talking with my garden advisor across the street, I knew some possible solutions. Get a dog to keep the deer away; run down to Jackson for a six pack in which to drown the slugs; and import bigger spiders to catch the grasshoppers. Additionally, one of my good friends told me that his wife handles their armadillo problem with a six shooter. A dog, a beer, and a hired gun: maybe that'll take care of the creatures of the night that crawl up out of the Nethermost when this otherwise mild mannered gardener is dreaming up his next strategy.
Jim Herod is a retired Georgia Tech professor coping with nature on the edge of the Nethermost on the southside of Grove Hill.
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