The Ghost Garden

For years we lived with an awkward space between our house and shop. It is on a hillside and has a dip running down the middle. There are stairs on both sides but there was no way to get across the uneven top to go between the two buildings without going down one set of stairs and up the stairs on the other side.

Finally, a few years ago, we had a sidewalk installed across the top section to solve that problem. Then we spent another two years trying to decide what to do with the rest of it. Landscaper after landscaper came out to tell us their ideas. We finally settled on one who suggested terracing it and making it into our vegetable garden, thus eliminating the need for mowing.

And, so, last winter two workers built three walls dividing the hillside into four sections. Soil was scheduled to be blown into each section. We told the landscaper we’d like to lay hardware cloth before the final load of soil arrived to keep the ground critters out. “Oh, no! You don’t have to do that!” he said. “They’ll never get in there with the stairs and the walls.” Unfortunately, we chose to believe him.

Now, six months later, we have a great vegetable garden full of gopher tunnels. The rosemary is dying off little by little because the roots are being eaten. The sweet potatoes and tomatillos were eaten down to the ground but are recovering.

Castor oil powder covers the tunnels to encourage gophers to move on. Smoke bombs are put into their tunnels a couple times a week. A squirrel trap sits where the peppers used to be. Screen tents cover the plants that seem to be the favorites for being eaten from the top.

The tomatoes were our main concern. My daughter devised an ingenious solution that has kept the deer at bay so far. We’ve had no trouble with them so far (knock on wood!) because she bought 50′ pieces of sun cloth and covers the whole garden every night. A bit labor intensive, but we’ve had midnight visitors in other places, so feel the effort is worth it.

Our project for this fall is hardware cloth under another load of soil but the ghost garden will probably live on!