November 23, 2017

Good morning, a small observation that atests to how warm our "fall" has been. Deb and I took a walk down to the mail box to collect the mail. Mountainside Drive is about 1/2 mile long and about every 60 feet there is an active (at the end of November) harvester ant nest. Usually due to cool weather they are underground and by all apperances dormant this time of year.

I mention this because of another observation regarding harvester ants in the garden. I am well aware of locations of all the nests  in the garden. This is because I have been on the busines end of these criters on several pcassion. We have a truce and besides there are several horny toads (sadly hibernating like the ants should be) that reside inside the garden enclosure.

It was a few years back that I noticed after sowing a seed bed , the seeds were"harvested" by a nearby ant nest. After the use of an explicative, I resowed the seed bed. This time I buried the fabric around the seed bed. This allowed  the seeds to germinate and thus no longer of  intrest to the ants.

Being on autopilot is not usually a smart thing to do when sowing seeds. I seeded my bulb onion seed bed this fall at the beginniing of November. This insures onion plants to be less than 1/4 inch when transplanted in the spring. It was a cool day and the ants were inactive. Noting that the entrance had collapsed as they do going through the winter. I was thinking that the coast was clear I could just lay the fabric over the top of the onion seeds..

Well given time the weather usually changes and the temps were back up to pushing 80 and there were the ants. They were diligently harvesting my onion seeds. Expicative deleted. not directed at the ants but at me for being complacent.

I then covered the bed and buried the fabric crossing my fingers that the whole bed was not harvested. Once the onions were up I noticed that the seeds closet to the nest were gone, maybe 3 or 4 seedlings left. There were  some distinct gaps on the other side of the bed.

In a normal year I would say shucks gosh darn and then order plants in the spring. This year as noted above is anything but normal, so I ordered some more onion seeds. When they arrive I WILL bury the fabric around the edges.

Ah yes I am sure this will be an interesting year.

this year I will be able to make Fridaty deliveries if they are needed.