Fab Five In My Garden It

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Fab Five in the Garden
It's not often, if ever, you get to watch five young coyotes frolicking in the garden. I was fortunate this past June and spotted the little coyotes down by the ramada. At first I thought there were three, then I saw four together, and finally one late afternoon, there were five. The parents showed up, too. I was given the opportunity to watch the rambunctious wildlife off and on over a seven day period. Usually I only saw one or two at a time. I wasn't much good at identifying them because they didn't sit still long enough to become well acquainted.

For an entire week coyote pups visited the garden causing general pandemonium.
After a hot day of play any shady, damp spot was perfect for a brief nap.
Fortunately this SUV wasn't moving but the coyote pup's life expectancy has to be short.

The playful pups chewed on garden plants, ate emitters off my drip system and chased anything that moved. Then as quickly as they arrived they were gone. Since I live in a area of houses, cars and people I'm sure many of the pups will never make it to adulthood. Here are a few additional photographs I managed to capture over the one week period: coyote pups.

Greenhouse Drama
In the summer it's a gardening pleasure to grow a few plants in a cooled greenhouse environment where the humidity is higher and the temperature much cooler than what you'll find in the normal Tucson garden in June. It's a joy until something goes wrong and you have to act quickly to fix the cooling system before all the plants succumb to the heat.

I added an inexpensive evaporative cooler to my greenhouse a year or two ago so I could grow a few plants in the summer that have a tough time in the Tucson heat. Most evaporative coolers are fairly easy to maintain if you change the pads regularly and keep pumps and motors lubricated.

The cooler I added to my greenhouse wasn't a typical cooler. It had a small direct drive motor (no fan belt), odd sized (had to make my own) pads that were difficult to change and a design that made the cooler incredibly difficult to work on. I found that out quickly when I tried to fix it when the motor stopped working one hot morning in June. I was so desperate to get it fixed I called a friend of mine, who I pay by the hour for help, to work on the cooler while I moved some of the plants from the greenhouse to a shady area, added a temporary fan, and constantly misted the remaining plants to try and keep them cooled.

As the sun settled behind the Tucson Mountains a new cooler, with a few custom modifications, had been installed. The new cooler was one I could easily get parts for and quickly make most repairs. Once installed the new evaporative cooler actually cooled the greenhouse better than the previous model.

Next time I won't be in such a hurry to purchase an item if it can't be fixed easily, quickly and economically.

Greenhouse Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, Parsleyworms, Blood Sucking Conenose and a Stray Cat
One of the things I grew in the cooled greenhouse in June was container tomatoes. They'd done fairly well in hanging baskets, five gallon and fifteen gallon pots but by the end of June they looked a bit sickly. The plants had also attracted an abundance of whiteflies that I tried to keep under control with insecticidal soap.

A couple of indeterminate cherry tomato plants grew so large they blocked much of the sunlight once they reached the greenhouse ceiling. I finally had to pick the ripe tomatoes and send all the plants with the remaining whiteflies to the compost bin.

After cleaning out the greenhouse, spraying for ants and rearranging plants things looked fairly good. The bell peppers I grew in pots in the greenhouse weren't producing tons on peppers but the ones on the plants were large and healthy looking.

By the middle of June the greenhouse tomatoes had to go. Too many bugs and too much growth in the small greenhouse.
The greenhouse bells didn't produce prolifically but the peppers were safe from the local wildlife and most insect pests.

The colorful parsleyworms I found in my vegetable garden last month never made it to adulthood. Birds discovered them and the nice collection of worms quickly disappeared and I added the flowering parsley to the compost.

I also found an unusual number of kissing bugs or the blood sucking conenose in June in both my garden and house. Far more than I usually see. I found two in the house and three outside within a two week period. Being allergic to their night time bite I started doing a nightly patrol of the house before heading for bed. I grew tired of the nightly patrol and figured they bugs would probably go after my wife since she's a much sweeter person than myself.

I'd hoped for a few new butterflies in my garden but the birds made the colorful parsleyworms quickly disappear.
By mid June I wasn't too anxious to pick another cherry tomato but the birds were. Yellow pear, Juliet and Sweet 100's produced an abundant supply.

I also started seeing a young stray cat around the vegetable garden which was probably trying to catch some of the lizards and countless birds, and round tail squirrels that had found the seemingly endless supply of tomatoes a summer smorgasbord. The cat looked pretty young, was wary of humans and would probably have a pretty short life expectancy in the wild. The little stray disappeared from the garden as suddenly as the coyote pups mentioned above.

June Wasn't So Bad
The June temperatures were hot but not as hot as some summers seem to offer. What seemed more troublesome were the hot drying winds that had a way of sucking the moisture from containers and soil. Hopefully July will differ from recent years past and offer not only high humidity, but substantial and much needed rain as well.

Hot muggy days don't make for enjoyable gardening. The plants will like the moist air and Tucson gardeners will be the ones to wilt in July. Play it smart and keep your gardening activity to a minimum.

The Tucson Gardener
July, 2004