The 2020 garden postmortem

 Per usual I planted my tomato seeds just before St. Patrick's Day, and then all hell broke loose.

The garden was unharmed by the Wuhu Flu, as near as I could tell, but it just as well could have been. It was definitely a down year, maybe the worst since moving here 15 years ago.

It endured three minor hailstorms but then got walloped good by the fourth. A good start on the zucchini season was wiped out as most of the foliage was stripped. The cucumbers bounced back okay, as did the green and hot peppers. Though both would've done better without.

The hail certainly didn't help the tomatoes, lots of broken stems and fruits knocked off; but mostly they suffered from a lack of rain. I maintain you can water to your heart's content, but tomatoes need the nutrients from the sky to really have a banner year. The best tomatoes I had were in containers on my deck that were best protected from the hail.

Then there were the rabbits. They bred like, well, rabbits last spring and held family reunions every weekend in my back yard. My garden is fenced in, but the fencing is 12-15 years old, so they squeezed through and under every nook and cranny they could find to mow down my snow peas and beans and lettuce and kale. I got nothing from those crops. I even had fences within fences and they found a way.

It got so bad the dozen deer who traipse through my yard every night didn't even bother joining in the fray.

The dogs did a number on one rabbit nest - inside my garden! It was like a scene from a horror movie with the mayhem and screaming as the baby rabbits met their demise. It was so bad, I actually helped a couple escape out the fence. Don't ask me why. Guess I'm an old softy.

So this fall I tore out the 200 feet of fence and plan to install three-foot-high rabbit fencing this spring. It's not as tall as the current fence, but I'm more concerned now about rabbits than deer. And, besides, the deer could jump over the four-foot fence when they desired. They just seldom desire. My new neighbor planted forty unprotected 2-to-4-foot-tall Ponderosa pine this fall, so I'm guessing those will keep the deer busy for a while.

I ended up drying plenty of herbs - basil, thyme and oregano - as well as plenty of hot peppers. So that wasn't a total loss.

All in all, it was a lot of work for not much fruits of my labor (canned maybe 30 pints of tomatoes compared to the usual 70). But there's always next year!