[Ben E Lou]

LIABILITIES

I am not without challenges.

VARMINTS--Here's a quick rundown of the animal/insect issues I ran across this year.

• Groundhogs or rabbits (both have been spotted in the back yard numerous times) wreaked havoc on my squash, zucchini, and cucumber leaves early in the season, though I'm happy to report that all the plants attacked did come back and produce, despite nearly all their leaves beating eaten. A cocktail of granulated garlic and ground cayenne seemed to do the trick in keeping them at bay for the rest of the season.
• Because I knew the kids would love them, I planted a dozen mammoth sunflowers--the ones that grow to 10-12 feet tall--along the fenceline, and effin' birds ate every single seedling when they were just 3-4 inches high. I planted a second round of these and covered them with bird netting until they were around 6 inches high, and some of them grew to full height and bloom, except...
• ...the ones that stood a little too close to the fence had their entire tops eaten by squirrels perched on the fence, so several of them grew to 8-10 feet tall but with no bloom in the middle.
• Either squirrels or rabbits (I'm thinking squirrels, as they seemed to ignore the garlic/cayenne smell in other places in the yard as well) ate my cilantro over and over. We were never able to harvest any of it at all.
  
• From what I've gathered from talking to a couple of experts here, as well as from what of the classes I've taken, insects are particularly problematic for organic gardening in the NC Piedmont. We had both squash bugs and squash vine borers do some damage this year.

HOT DRY SUMMERS--I've never lived in a climate like this. The temperatures are similar to what I experienced in GA and SC, but the frequent summer thunderstorms we had in those states aren't really a thing in this neck of the woods. We got very little rain this year at the time the seeds needed to be watered daily, and had multiple periods of little/no rain for over a week during the summer. I'm hoping the drip irrigation from the rain barrel will be a much better solution to this than the copious use of the sprinkler this summer.

SURROUNDED BY A WEED-Y YARD--Combine a back yard as large as ours, most of which is in direct sunlight 10-12 hours every day, with long periods of little/no rain, it's no surprise that grass is extremely difficult to grow there. At some point, I intend to install a full irrigation system back there, but until I can do that, it's folly to even try to grow grass; its simply too much effort and cost to water it as much as it needs. (I tried one year. Ugh.) Even the lawn service guy who looked at it said something along the lines of, "we can treat it, overseed it, and fertilize it, but you're gonna have to water the HELL out of it to get it to grow and maintain. You need to know that before you hire us." So the back yard, though green in color most of the time, is, oh, 95-99% weeds. Even though I tilled the garden area last year, weeds galore grew there. I'm sure there were tons of seeds in the soil, and plenty of others flying around from the rest of the yard.


LONG FAMILY VACATION--We typically take a 10ish-day trip every summer. This year our great neighbors vacationed at the same time, so they couldn't help us out, either. I hired a middle school girl who lives nearby to pick some stuff and water it a couple of times, but it's not the same.