Tom's Garden

 This is my friend, Tom's Garden. He lives about three miles from us. He lives in his camper with his dog Max. I should have taken a picture of Max. He has such unusual coloring. When he was a puppy, I was going to steal him because he was so cute. Now he is big and gawky and still cute. He doesn't know how to relax and is a big goof ball.

 Tom's garden puts mine to shame. He bought some wire to make hoops for his entire garden. There are three or four hoops to each patch. He made each plot the same width as the shade cloth to cut down on waste. Then he used pvc pipe on the long sides of the shade cloth and fastened them to the shade cloth with plastic ties.

 Look at all this produce!!!! And he is single!!!!! And he cans his own stuff!!!! He uses a pressure canner.

 You can see in the background how he covers each plot. The milk jugs are protecting the smaller plants. Kind of like having their own green house.

 I am so jealous of his gardening success! Of course he has three years or so more experience gardening out here than I do.

 Argh! I am green with envy!!!!

 Before it gets too hot, Tom goes out and covers each plot each day. In the mornings, he uncovers each one so they can get morning sun. In colder weather, he has plastic to cover the ends. Using the shade cloth, keeps the water from evaporating after he waters.

 This has been a bad year for rabbits. He has fought them like crazy. Yesterday he said he thinks he finally got them all fenced out.

 Potatoes.

 Onions..... mine don't look any where near as good as his.

 Tomatoes. Tom makes his own salsa. I haven't tried any because he likes things HOT and I like mine mild. He gets a little paint brush and pretends like he is a bee and spreads pollen around his tomatoes. He has a lot more patience than I do. But then, I may not get a single tomato because I am not acting like a bee.

 Beans, he will have plenty to can this year.

 Squash, he says most of the blossoms are male and you need female blossoms to make squash.

 He puts mouse traps in his garden just in case they want to munch on his produce.

There, every thing is covered for the afternoon. Doesn't this look professional? He has a small fortune invested in shade cloth. I am waffling back and forth between doing my garden this way or just sticking to enclosed beds next year. I am definitely not going to plant in bags of dirt. Except for three tomatoes, I took everything out of the bags and planted in the ground. I have noticed that the rabbits haven't touched the tomatoes in the bags. Maybe they don't like walking on the plastic.
Another thing Tom does is weave Indian baskets. He was taught by some Western Mono Indian women. He did so well, they gave him an Indian name "Hibece" (Hib-a-chee) which means Old Woman. Next time I am over to his place I will take some picts of them. They are beautiful. He even does bead work on them. I'm talking about beading the entire basket!!! I tried beading some little thing years ago and said this is not for me! Talk about patience! I'm saving up my pennies and will try to talk him into selling me one.
We had a lovely rain last night. Pa connected a barrel to one of the downspouts and it is half full already. I will buy some flashing this week and we can fix the gutters so the other containers can fill up. That will make great water for the garden.