I like squirrels. They’re cute and fun to watch as they scamper all over the yard. They annoyed me a little bit when they followed me around the yard as I planted beans, digging up the seeds as soon as I had turned my back. When they chewed open several plastic Easter eggs and a toy baseball it was just a minor inconvenience. But eating my radishes out from under me was more than I could take.

A week or so ago I pulled a handful of radishes from the garden right before watering. I rinsed them off and set them on the ground while I watered. I walked across the yard, watered a 10 foot section of pole beans and walked back. In that short time a squirrel had taken a big bite of my lunch. I think the word disgruntled might describe how I felt.

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After lunch I started looking into squirrel control. Here’s the rundown if you want to remove squirrels from your property (either killing or live trapping).

Minnesota DNR Rules Concerning Nuisance Animals

The Minnesota DNR’s website on taking nuisance animals says you can take mink, squirrels, rabbit, hare, raccoon, lynx, bobcat, fox, muskrat, opossum,  beaver and unprotected birds including the English sparrow, starling, and common pigeon if they are causing damage.

If you do take (kill) or trap one of those animals, you need to notify a Conservation Officer within 24 hours. If you are relocating the animal you will need to take them at least 15 miles away to drop them off, or they could come right back.

If you’re in Fridley or elsewhere in Anoka county, your Conservation Officer is Lisa Kruse at 651-430-1189. For Conservation Officers elsewhere in Minnesota please see the DNR phone directory.

The last caveat is that you need to also obey local rules and regulations.

Fridley Ordinances Concerning Trapping Squirrels

For all things animal control related, we’ll now turn to the Fridley City Code, section 101, Animal Control, subsection .02, Wild Animals and Birds. Squirrels are rodents, so this section applies “Nothing in this section, however, shall prevent property owners or their agents from eradicating rodents on their property through the use of traps, poisons or other such lawful means…”.

So if it’s squirrels you’re after, go for it. Just don’t forget to call the DNR afterwards, obey animal cruelty laws as well as gun laws.

Fridley Ordinances Concerning Rabbits and Other Anti-Garden Forces

If you wish to trap a non-rodent nuisance animal (such as rabbits), get ready for some leg work. Fridley requires a permit to take nuisance animals, but no one I spoke to could remember having issued such a permit. The permit requires a letter of indemnification to the city, a site plan, a list of how many animals will be removed and of what kind, how you will dispose of them, ID of the persons taking the animals, method to “secure the property from public intrusion”…

The long list of requirements started to make sense when a police officer I talked to explained that it had been illegal to trap/kill any animals in Fridley until a few years ago when there were too many deer causing problems near the dam. Deer sized traps would possibly be dangerous to people, and people trying to approach a trapped dear really could get seriously hurt.

After talking to the help desk , the department of public works, the department of community development, the help desk and the planning department someone named Julie knew what was going on. (Despite getting passed around, everyone was very friendly. It just took a bit to find who I needed to talk to.) She said that the position that had been in charge of that was gone, and she though that the police were now handling it. Since she wasn’t sure, she took my number and said she or they would be in touch. 20 minutes later I was talking to Police Captain Robert Rewitzer who confirmed that he was the man to talk to.

He explained what I would need to do to get the permit, and that it would go through him. He was also the one who explained that the code was put in place with deer management in mind. Captain Rewitzer said that trapping squirrels is OK but that if a rabbit got caught no one would probably mind, as long as that was not the primary intention.

Between his description of the permit process and his suggestion that no one would mind it sounded like he was implying that if someone had rabbit problems they should just take take care of them without a permit. Of course he wouldn’t actually suggest technically breaking the law, and if someone reported you I’m sure he would have a duty to charge them with a misdemeanor per city code section 101.20.

Action Time?

So, how much of a nuisance and how much damage justifies trapping and killing squirrels or rabbits? Does it matter that I’m raising food for my family, and not just flowers for enjoyment? I did put up a rabbit fence around the main garden, but that doesn’t keep out the squirrels. I’m pretty sure that they’re the main reason my green beans didn’t come up. I saw them back in that corner consistently after I planted. Now though, there aren’t any more seeds for them to dig up in the garden,  but they do continue to make divots in the lawn.

Would you kill a squirrel or rabbit eating your garden?

One of the grape plants (the Valiant) has a couple of bunches of tiny little grapes. They’re about the size of the head of a round headed pin. I wasn’t expecting to get any grapes this year, so if we do, it’ll be a fun surprise.

The neighbor’s rose bush has been slowly creeping through the fence. We have a few shoots that actually come from the dirt on our side , and several shoots that poke on over from his yard. I have been cutting them as they start to open, and they smell TERRIFIC in the house.

I’m not really a flower guy. I’m not anti-flowers, it’s just that if I’m going to care for a plant,  I want to eat it. Having the few flowers around that can fend for themselves is nice though. We’ve got the lilacs and the roses, and a Gerber Daisy in the front yard.  I don’t water them, don’t weed them, and have only pruned the lilacs once, and they somehow manage to thrive. I wish my tomatoes were more like them!

Despite my excitement about gardening, it turns out I’m still a novice. In fact, I killed off most of the rest of our seedling tomato plants. I had been growing them in the basement under lights, and brought them outside to harden off. Unfortunately I left the lid over the plants while I was at worked, and I ended up with a pile of steamed dead tomato plants.

I’m probably going to have to go buy some pre-grown plants at this point and transplant them.

Dead Blueberry Bush

One of our blueberry bushes didn’t take root. The leaves are almost completely dried up, and it’s not looking too good. All the other blueberries are doing great. I’m not sure what’s up with the one plant. It’s right in the middle of the line, and all that soil had been well mixed before planting.

Strawberry Planting

Our strawberries arrived yesterday! I had already weeded the strawberry patch last weekend so we were all set. A previous owner of our house had put in a two foot wide swath of ugly white landscaping rocks along either side of the driveway, and alongside the walkway to the house. We shoveled and picked those rocks out, and put in some good black dirt / composted manure mix, which I think the strawberries should appreciate.

We got 25 Cavendish, 25 Winona and 50 Annapolis, all from Nourse Farms.

One thing led to another yesterday, and we didn’t start planting in earnest till about 9:45. Our great neighbor lent us a halogen work light and an extension cord, so we just kept working. It took till at least 11:30 to get everything done and cleaned up. (ok, so it wasn’t quite midnight burials, but it sounded ominous.)

If you didn’t know (and I didn’t, till yesterday), strawberry plants can be planted from essentially just the root and a tiny (1 inch!) bit of stem. Thinking back, this makes sense now since strawberry instructions tell you to mow them down in the fall.

We spaced the plants about a foot apart going down the driveway, but then we staggered them between either side of the two foot strip. Hopefully that’s a good enough spacing for them. We might have ordered too many.

The strawberries are one of our most anticipated crops. Since we won’t have a fence up around them, I’m sure the bunnies are excited too.

My plants were very happy with the heat. Most of my bean plants popped right up, and my squash and pumpkins are looking good. The tomato plants, which live in the sunniest part of the garden, are kind of sissies and were looking a little bit floppy.  About 30 minutes after a good soaking they had popped right back up.

Here’s my garden helper, Calvin.

Calvin stood at the garden gate saying “Come in garden? Come in, Daddy?”.  So I let him in.

Last time I let him in he trampled some plants, so I asked if he wanted to help with the hose. He was very excited. We watered together for all of 4 seconds before he insisted on doing it all my himself. A moment after I stood up and stepped back, Calvin discovered how much kick a hose has.

One of his hands lost its grip, and the hose shot back spraying him right in the face! This made him stumble backwards and he tripped on the hose.  I managed to get him picked up and get the hose pointed away from him before he panicked too much.

Of course he still wanted to do it himself, but this time he held on tight and did a good job.

Our apple trees are pretty new. We planted them last fall, and they are probably about 5 feet tall now. We aren’t expecting to get any apples for the first 2-3 years (that’s what the Internet and books I have read say) but these couple of former flower blossoms which are thickening up are making me slightly hopeful that we will get some!

Ryan and I were looking at the radishes and planning on when to thin them, when I saw some round little heads poking above the soil. Sure enough, a few of the radishes were quicker than the others and were ready to eat! Ryan was VERY excited to get to eat something from the garden.

Ooh. Those look tasty! I don’t think the boys have ever had radishes. Ryan saw them sitting here and asked…

“Are those radishes cherries?”.  Calvin just wanted to eat whatever the rest of us were going to be eating. The radishes were pretty mild — a little less flavor than I like, but perfect for a 4 and 2 year old’s first taste of radish. Just a hint of heat after you had already chewed and swallowed.

Unfortunately neither of the boys liked them this time around. Of course, expecting cherries and getting radishes WOULD be disappointing.

You can see the drool line still connecting his chewed radish bite to his mouth.

Needless to say, I’m very happy that my garden has grown something. Here’s hoping for a bounteous summer and fall full of things the boys will like!

The last intentional planting of the day was the herbs. In the right planting area below we planted Basil, Thyme, Oregano and Cilantro. The Basil will eventually take over the whole plot, but that’s OK. We’ll enjoy the other herbs till it does.

The left planter in this picture is part of what I’m calling The Garden of Misfit Seeds. We had a lot of seeds left over this year. Partly since I didn’t know how many to get, and partly because we wanted a variety of plants and seeds came in minimum sized envelopes which were bigger than the size we needed. Not wanting to waste the seeds if possible, I decided that I would squeeze them around the property, even if I had to put them in locations and soil that was less than ideal. Here’s the nickel tour:

The left planter above got extra Rhubarb, Lettuce and Tomato seeds.

This lovely location was the recipient of some unwanted and unplanned chard. It’s planted on the house side of the bush in gravely rocky dirt. I would’ve planted it on the sunny side except that at planting time I hadn’t removed even that much gravel yet! The chard by the way is coming along great so far. The sprouts are strong and getting taller quickly.

This piece here will look familiar, that’s right, it’s the blueberry patch. The dirt where I dumped about 70 pounds of soil acidifies. Which acidifiers by the way, haven’t kicked in all the way…here’s hoping the blueberries survive. I combined all the tomato and peppers seeds into a single envelope and scattered them along the front area of the blueberry patch. The soil is probably too acidic, but maybe they’ll do something worthwhile.

Then of course there’s the extra strip I dug yesterday…that wasn’t in my original plans. I also planted squash and pumpkins around the outside perimeter of the garden fence where the dirt was sandy and loose from having been turned over when I buried the rabbit fencing.

The final destination for our extra misfit seeds is this poor patch of dirt here. There used to be a huge deck on the back of the house, which we ripped out last summer. Under the deck was sandy poor soil. We sodded over the part around the patio, but this big area is still ugly looking. Since we weren’t going to be buying any more soil this year, and since we weren’t going to buy and sod this year, I decided to plant the remainder of our seeds in it. It’s TERRIBLE sandy, rocky soil, especially along the border by the yard.  We had some big envelopes of mixed flower seeds that we didn’t even know where they had come from. I mixed all the flower seeds together, roughed up the back 4 or 5 feet of dirt/gravel with a rake,  scattered the seeds and raked a thin layer of dirt/gravel back over the top.

When we had extra cauliflower and broccoli seeds, those went in front of the flowers, and now pumpkins, Acorn squash and bush beans have filled out the rest of the area out to the edge. I even broke two shovels prying that ugly lump of shrub from the edge so I could keep a straight line with the last beans.

Incidentally the flowers are coming up pretty well as you can see here! The broccoli and cauliflower were breaking through the soil as of Saturday evening too.

I know that the dirt in these locations is not ideal and that the plants probably won’t do as well as they would have in the garden where they belong. I’m hopeful that I’ll get something though, and if not, well, that’s OK too.

That lead to a very busy and productive Saturday.

After an outing to the Como Zoo with the kids, I stopped by Linders to pick up a couple of Valiant grape plants. They only had one left, so I got it.

I wanted and have been planning on two grape plants in our yard, and I didn’t want to just hope that they’d get another Valiant in at some point. So I started looking for another plant to take home.

The reason I had chosen Valiant in the first place is because it’s 1) Cold Hardy — no taking this bad boy off the trellis and covering it with stray, 2) A good eating grape and 3) Good for jam. Those were still my priorities so I ended up with a Catawba which I had never heard of before. The plant looked healthy, and it’s rated for zone 4, so I’m cautiously optimistic.

With the grapes in the ground, it was time to tackle the transplants. I have been hardening off the first round of tomatoes, lettuce, peppers and eggplants which had been sprouting in the basement. Here’s a picture of me watering them thoughtfully after everything else was planted.

The next big project was the pole beans. When I trimmed the overgrown lilacs this spring I saved all the big sticks. Some became fence posts, but the skinny ones were in a disgraceful pile at the back of the garden. Today they finally realized their purpose, and got together to make this

It looks like a jumble, and it is to some extent, but from the side you can tell that the intent was to have two intersecting triangle rows with a bar across the top. There is about a foot between each pole with is going to make for tight quarters picking beans from the middle plants. It’ll be worth it though, especially if we get a bumper crop.

With the bean trellis (can you even call that a trellis?) up I of course planted the beans. I planted one half Kentucky Blue and one half of something purple — I forget the exact type.

The pole beans took up more room than I had anticipated, and the bush beans got squeezed out of the garden. There just wasn’t anywhere else to plant them. So what do you do when you run out of garden? Dig up the yard of course! So I grabbed the shovel, cut some sod out, did some double digging while mixing in some homemade compost (last years raking is looking and smelling great about now!).

After the beans were in, I planted the summer squash, pumpkins, zucchini, acorn squash and spaghetti squash.

It was a lot of work today! More than I could possibly have handled on my own. Luckily our friends Erik and Liz were visiting this weekend from Missouri, and were happy to help. In this picture they are pretending not to be happy, à la American Gothic. Erik helped with manual labor while Liz helped with our kids and with identifying the flowers we have in our front yard. Thanks guys!

A lot of what we got done at the end of the day isn’t mentioned here. Mainly because it was getting too dark to take good pictures. Next up on the Fridley Farmer: Herb Garden, Flowers, and the garden of misfit seeds.

We planted a row of blueberries. Three North Blues and two Chippewas.

Two lingonberry plants.

Ryan helped plant the raspberries. We got 6 Autumn Britten raspberries plants and 6 Caroline raspberry plants.

All in all a very successful evening. Made all the more successful because our friend Erik is in town visiting and entertained the boys while I was getting the blueberries planted.

We ordered everything from http://www.hartmannsplantcompany.com/. Their service was great, with fast and knowledgeable e-mail responses each time I had questions.

So, racing against dusk we planted the peas in the garden. We planted three kinds. Garden Pea Maestro, Snow Pea Oregon Sugar Pod II and  Thomas Laxton, all from Burpee. Ryan had a really good time helping. He wanted to rake the dirt, hoe it, plant the seeds and water it all himself. His enthusiasm exceeds his ability however, so we let him help a little bit with each task then corrected his over exuberance. Had we let him plant the peas himself, for example, they would have either ended up allover the garden or in a single big pile.

By the time we were done it was too dark for pictures, so that’ll have to wait for another day.

Once we got Ryan in bed Caroline and I filled the rest of our indoor planters. Here’s Caroline holding a seed packet. Even though she had a C-section just a few weeks ago she was out in the garden doing everything right along with me!

I mixed up potting soil and water in the 5 gallon bucket till it was nice and muddy and filled the trays. Then we laid the envelopes out over the tray sections they were going in. As I planted the seeds Caroline used a sharpie and plastic straws to make markers so we would know what we planted where.

Hey look, dirt and seeds!

The average last day of frost for Minneapolis (May 21). As you can see below, the weather is trying hard to make that date. Wish our garden luck!

Garden plots are available to request starting two days ago (March 23) and I assume till they run out.

http://www.ci.fridley.mn.us/community-gardens

From description on the community gardens page, looks like this is the place.