I Smell a Rat! 🐀 Intervention: Elevate and Lubricate!
This is an update of sorts, though I never got a chance to show you the first post. Hints of Potato Tower II are mentioned here too.
On the left, (above) you have the one of the few pictures of my cabbage plant. On the right, you have the Potato Tower II that I am working on starting. I have tended to post more interesting plants before getting the the carrots, spinach, and cabbage plants. I guess I waited too long.
Here is a picture from a month ago when I bought new pots - huge ones to accommodate my cabbage plant and my new potato tower. I will show you how big these new pots are toward the end of the post. Let's talk about potatoes that never grow and the incredible shrinking cabbage plant first. I think there is a thief that visits my patio. He was here last year until he moved on.
Here we have my smaller cabbage plant. This one was the first to be attacked. So I built a fence to protect its leaves from being eaten. I remove the cap from the top when the sun is out. This one is only six inches in diameter, though it was a bit bigger before...
Left, the smaller one before the attack. Right, taken today, with the protective fence.
This morning, I went out to water the plants and notice a hole that was dug inside the new potato tower pot, and when I turned to water the cabbage plant, there were bits of leaves everywhere. This is what the big one looks like now. I have my arm in the shot to show you how large the pot is and this plant had leaves that were hanging over the edges.
You might be able to see a ring shape in the dirt, I had had a protective mesh around this one too, but I had forgotten to replace the cap at the end of the day last night. Again, I smell a rat. I have elevated both of these large pots on a metal stand.
I am not sure what the climbing capabilities are of the squirrel, rat, mouse or whatever it is, but I do know that slippery steel rods are not easily scaled...
All paths to the top (unless it is a feathered friend) have bearing grease on the steel legs. They are covered in such a way that I will see that something was trying to climb them.
It is crazy what you have to do to keep your produce. If it is good climber, it may be slowing the progress of my original potato tower. I had started at least five layers of "eyes" on the second potato tower and none have grown as of yet. I am wondering how long this thief has been active on my patio. Either way, I do not want to kill it, whatever it is.
I will just have to use ingenuity to defeat its plans.
Some of the photos in this post were not intended for posting, but they are the only ones I had in order to show the "before" pictures of the cabbage plants. Please excuse the mess.
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