[CH] The Ground-Hawg's back...
danceswithcarp (dcombs@bloomington.in.us)
Mon, 10 May 1999 22:49:19 -0500 (EST)
The Ground-Hawg is back . Pat and I saw it when we were driving by the
chile patch a weekend ago. He was standing on his haunches in the big
field next to the garden where he lives; He looked like a fair-sized
Beaver standing out there in that red-haired coat in the sunlight. I
think it's a he, anyway. The creature has a good-sized paunch. Hangs over
its belt, it does. I recognize that kind of paunch. It's a man-type
thing. You get them one of two ways, (1) Lots of beer; or (2) Lots of
fresh tomatoes. I haven't been missing any beer, but last year we got
fewer than 10 tomatoes out of that garden. We had over fifty tomato
plants set out. We got less than 10.
Yes, a year later that Ground-Hawg is still wrapped in tomato fat.
But last year wasn't a good chile year here in Bloomington,
Indygbygoshanna. Danged near wiped the chile woman out from so much rain.
We're a couple of miles away and our garden and chile-patch is on a slight
slope, maybe 4 percent. It's not much of a slope, but it's a slope. We
had whole +rows+ of chiles wash out down that slope. Then this weird rot
set in. Literally a couple hundred plants had the leaves suddenly
collapse like the plants were heat stressed except by the rain, but
instead of coming back at night to be standing tall in the morning sun,
the leaves stayed limp for three or four days, and then they fell off and
washed down the little slope in the ruts where rows used to be.
What was really bad was for the first time Erin, The Chile-Lass and Levi,
The Chile-Lad, had demanded a hourly rate to plant all of those peppers.
So I actually PAID for the disaster beforehand. You've surely heard what
people say, "When it rains, it blubbers." I blubbered a lot last year.
Meanwhile, 40 or so miles to the north, Jim Campbell, purveyor of Mild to
Wild's "Ralph's Revenge," the meanest and most firey all-natural sauce
under the sun, had a bumper crop of everything due to dry weather.
But all of that rain was good for the tomatoes. We had Big Pinks, German
Stripes, Big Boys, Better Boys, Big Girls, Pink Girls, Jet Stars, Early
Girls, all sorts of yellows, romas, and plums. Man, we had tomatoes
everywhere and those vines were pumping the rainwater to the fruit almost
as fast as the stuff fell. About halfway through the summer everything
got so bushy and fruity that the stakes the plants were tied to fell over
in the mud and the baskets bent and collapsed on their sides. Over fifty
plants. We are talking SERIOUS TOMATOES.
And I remember the first ripe one; Real tomato--Summer in the mouth. I
went after the second and third and fourth in the days that followed and
each and every one looked so brilliantly ripe from the top, but when I
picked them my fingers got all gooshy from the bottoms being gone from the
tomatoes. All of them, gone. The Ground-Hawg gnawed only the bottoms.
So I thought I'd get the drop on him and I started picking tomatoes when
they just started turning. The tops would go orange/white, and I'd pick
one, and the bottom would be out. So I started picking simple green ones.
We were stunned to say the least: The Ground-Hawg was biting into the
tomatoes from the bottom while they were still green, and the tomatoes
were ripening outwards in a radius from the bite marks. Then he would eat
the ripe bottoms while the visible tops were still green.
No one wants to eat a tomato that's been gnawed on by a Ground-Hawg. So
we just left them on the vine until their bottoms were all ripe. Then the
creature would eat the bottom half, leaving the rest on the vine to ripen
and rot. We got fewer than 10 tomatoes out of the garden last year. The
pepper crop washed away. Like I said, when it rains, it blubbers.
On a bright note, we had a mole porblem before the rains really set in;
moles everywhere. So I took that whole bottle of Dave's Insanity Sauce
that had been mouldering in the refrigerator for the past couple of years,
mixed it in with a couple of five-gallon bucketloads of water and then
bored holes down to the mole tunnels and dumped the mix into the holes.
Between the rains and the Dave's, we didn't have a mole porblem for very
long.
On an even better note this year when we had the garden and chile
patch plowed, the tillers sort of evenly spread all of that Dave's-laced
soil out over the whole patch, and even though that must've diluted it
down some, the garden has been plowed for two weeks now and we haven't
even seen a mole tunnel. The stuff probably blinds them.
However, we +have+ seen the Ground-Hawg with the paunch that hangs over
his belt. He's a Big Brute, and he was on his back haunches eyeing the
tomato patch. Actually, now that I'm thinking of it, he was downwind of
the thing; he was probably sniffing the wind and Blood Hounding the place.
He's a Big One, this Ground-Hawg, wrapped in Tomato Fat. A little bitty
jar of Dave's Insanity Sauce diluted with water got rid of all of the
moles. I'm going to have to think a bit harder on how to get rid of the
Ground-Hawg.
And right now I'm a thinking that I need to build a barrier. So I've got
to ask if anyone knows where you can get DIS by the five-gallon bucket?
He's a big one this Ground-Hawg and most likely claims a wide territory;
it'll probably take a lot of DIS to treat that whole field he was standing
in.
xxx
ooo
carp
ps: Whur'ya'll been?