h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Once beans sprout, it's amazing how fast they advance to the point where little buds form. I expect blossoms by Sunday, and maybe little green beans big enough to pick within a week after that.

I have little pots with zucchini seedlings inside on my porch. Tomorrow I need to dig up some ground, add a couple bags of garden soil and topsoil and fertilizer, and plop the little seedlings into it. The big challenge will be keeping the local rabbits from chewing off the leaves. I've seen a rabbit on my lawn or my neighbor's lawn twice in the last few days. I made a lot of noise to scare it away.

Strangely enough, it hasn't bothered the beets that are growing near my beans.

http://www.almanac.com/content/rabbits

Smaller mesh chicken wire keeps out smaller pests.

I'm skeptical of the advice in that link. If rabbits don't like summer squash, then why would they bother my zucchini?

Give it up, paulh. Have you learned nothing from watching Bugs and Elmer Fud all these years?

I bought one of those self watering styro foam boxes this year and now have one chili and three plants, some dill and chives.

But I placed the box too close to the fence so the local started using it as a bypass into my neighbours backyard. Not good for my plants!

But now I've built an of pallets in the middle of my backyard and it seems to w*rk very well

My daughter-in-law is very proud of her "tower garden" with lettuces, courgettes and basil. It's all they can fit into the balcony of their tiny Silicon Valley flat, with the littl'un's sandpit and a table and chairs already taking up space there.

Here is a generic picture of one - she has several on her blog.

http://colebrooknursery.com/tower-garden.html

"Have you learned nothing from watching Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd all these years? [Pierce]

I'm learning things all the time. Sometimes I learn the right lessons, and sometimes the wrong ones. Take carrots. I've raised them in two different places, and not so much as a leaf was ever molested. The link that ITIWBS gave specified that rabbits do *not* like summer squash, which zucchini represents. But maybe rabbits don't all have the same tastes. Or maybe, although the rabbit is the most visible of critters, it isn't to blame here. Or maybe last year was a freak occasion; what if rabbits were so desperate for food that they ate things they ordinarily wouldn't?

Summer squash: http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/growing-squash/growing-summer-squash-zm0z12jjzkon.aspx

The patty-pan squash illustrated in this link is the one most frequently meant by the term 'summer squash'.

Oñ rabbits and their tastes, the desert hare, same species I have locally, one hundred miles from here, in the Perris Valley, is easily kept at bay by a row of giant chollas in six inch flowerpots, there being so much more succulent greenery available there than here.

Here, they chew the same giant cholla cactus to the ground for the water in it, despite the spines.

Onions usually work well for repelling small mammalian (and avian) pests, nothing likes getting sprayed in the eyes with onion juice.

So do things like marigolds that merely give them an upset stomach.

The proof's in the pudding, nothing succeeds like success.

If you're growing things in flowerpots, that helps elimiinate adverse effects from nearby competing plants.

Special tip on squashes generally: they are very strongly saprophytic, grow better if they have some rich organic material in their soil, whether unwanted kitchen leftovers or that sand skate caught fishing off the pier you didn't know quite what to do with planted directly under their roots when a prestart in planted out.

The stuff doesn't have to be composted first, works better if it isn't.

Thanks for the tip on organic matter. I bought a bag of compost a couple weeks ago at Whole Foods, but I've been using it up on other things I've planted since then. I looked for another bag yesterday, and there were none to be found.

I've had good luck giving pumpkins and squash some Vigoro all-purpose fertilizer granules. If I can't find compost anywhere else, Vigoro will have to do.

Squashes like theirs well, but recently, cooked if vegetable and don't mind it raw if animal.