Many small chores. Little feeling of having accomplished anything

I have at least one small rabbit in the enclosed garden. It has been eating my pole beans.

Baited with a bit of apple with a few small chunks scattered nearby

Two rat-traps were deployed and I hung the netting for the pole beans.

Not a rabbit

I checked them yesterday evening when I put the ducks in jail. Not a rabbit. I rebaited and reset the trap.

I probably need to replant the beans...again.

Opportunistic meso-predators

That is what the smart kids in graduate school call raccoons, 'possum, skunks, coatimundi and monkeys. Most of their calories don't come from meat but they will consume it when they find it.

One characteristic of opportunistic feeders is that unlike obligate carnivores their population does not follow the boom-bust cycle of their prey.

The top of the duck jail had prints on top of it. I had not noticed them before, so I assume they are less than 24 hours old.

It could be either small raccoon or possum. If I had to guess, it was a raccoon that got his paws wet when he checked out the duck's swimming pool and then walked on top of the dewy truck-cap. That means it was an early morning foray.

Raccoon

Possum

It looks like I will be carrying the 20 gauge with me when I go out to open the duck-jail in the morning. I will also be freshening up the bait in the dog-proof raccoon traps; scrambled egg in the trap inside the enclosure and marshmallows in the outside trap. I will fry up the egg fresh this evening.

Burning brush

I was planning to mow but the brush-pile had gotten out of control. We have been cutting bamboo.

So I spent a couple of hours supervising the fire. I did not get around to mowing.

There is a small Carpathian walnut growing in the ashes just outside of the burn area. 

Vines and Thatch

I spent about a half-hour pulling vines out of fruit trees. 

I also spent about fifteen minutes raking the thatch off of the area I set up to capture mulberry seeds. I want to expose as much mineral-dirt as possible. Seeds that land on top of thatch are unlikely to germinate.

Those two tasks will make an interesting set of muscles hurt.

I have a doctor's appointment scheduled for the middle of next week. One of the standard questions is "Do you have any new aches and pains?". I now interpret that question as "Do you have any unexpected pains of unusual intensity?"

Potatoes

I did not add any fertilizer to my potato patch this year. The site had been fallow for at least two years and had heavy vegetation on it.

I hired Kubota to drive the garden tractor over it to smash it down.

Then I shredded it with the push-mower followed by tilling.

So, how is that experiment going?

Glad you asked. In previous years I would fertilize with between 100 and 200 pounds of Nitrogen. The potatoes grew so fast that I had to be Johnny-On-It to get them hilled before they canopied over the space between the rows. I had, perhaps, two weeks between the vines at 6" tall and then sprawled out across the 40" rows.

Photo taken at 6:25 a.m., June 20, 2026. In previous years you would not see any dirt in a photo taken this time of year.

This year...no sprawling. Like nearly all things, there are some good sides to that and some bad sides.

On the good sides, the plot is drying down more quickly than it would be if it was congested with vegetation. Sunlight falling on soil dries it out quickly and, in turn, the humidity of air in the potatoes' canopy drops quickly after a rain or dew. That is good for snail control and for slower leaf disease development. Given how wet this June has been, that is a very good thing.

The downside is that there will be a smaller harvest. Less sunlight is capture by the leaves. Less CO2 is turned into sugar, moved down to the roots (stolons for the nit-picky) and turned into potatoes. Since about 2/3 of the sunlight is falling on dirt, it is reasonable to estimate that my harvest will be somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of what I get when I fertilize.

I am sure I could throw fertilizer around and get a bump in top-growth but I don't anticipate need more potatoes than I am likely to harvest. If I needed to feed people, aka SHTF times, I would fertilize in a heart-beat. 

Shamelessly stolen from Midwest Chick

I think I will pre-print the "My Name is..." stickers for the next family reunion with various "Topics I don't discuss in polite company"