Grapevine winter restructuring

I've been working to try and re-direct the grapevine away from my garden boxes into two seperate directions. One leads over the alley into a neighbors yard and the other goes towards the north end of the alley. This is an attempt to help expose more sun to my garden boxes and help tame the beast.

I've tried to tangle and weave them together to make one giant vine that crosses the alley like a bridge or trellis. The hopes is one day I'll be able to remove the support wood and it'll stand on its own. Something tells me that might be a while.

The 2nd support beam to the right is made of an old sunflower I grew 2 years ago. Still working strong as a garden tool. Recycle right. Somehow I don't think this alley will look this green in the heart of summer.

Tried something different here. I took all the very long leads of the vines and arranged them into a giant hoop or circle. In hopes of it holding its form into a weird unnatural shape. Here's hoping it works.

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Pest Control. My methods of extermination.(Gophers mainly)

So if you've seen some of my past posts you know that I've had encounters with possums and raccoons in my backyard garden. I've trapped 3 raccoons and eliminated 2 possums but gophers had been a problem in the past I wasn't really willing to tackle. At least until recently. The gophers in my backyard alley were ruining plants and soil everywhere. I'd had enough. So after some serious research I chose my weapon. A Victor Black Box Gopher trap. The amazon reviews were great and it was under $15. Now as you see the trap here it's set and ready to go. You would just point that end (the open end) towards an open tunnel. It works like a reverse mouse trap, instead of pinning a rodent down it pulls them up and pins them to the roof of the trap. The trigger is that coat hanger looking metal piece in the middle. It packs quite a punch when triggered. Now you can't just look for an open hole and stick it in front of it. I watched YouTube for about an ho...

Tomatillo stages

Just a few shots of my juvenile tomatillo plants. Above is what the tiny tomatillo starts out like. It will quickly grow and expand out. It's good to have some kind of netting, fencing or string because the stalks of the tomatillos tend to weaken with the rising weight of ripening tomatillos. I used some clothesline to help guide my young plant towards my fence in hopes that I can weave branches for structure. I think the smaller plant may be a purple tomatillo plant. It would be a welcomed color change from all the greens and yellows.

Quinoa, I still don't know what I am doing...

So after seeing some cool photos of Quinoa looked like when grown I bought some seeds and decided to give it a shot. Know I don't think I have ever eaten any Quinoa (knowingly) nor have I seen it grown. Looks pretty cool by the way. And supposedly you can eat the leaves as well. I've grown a few plants and a few got to the point where I could harvest the tiny pasty like grains. I have since dried them in my kitchen and I am in the midst of learning about how to further harvest them from the plant itself. What I found so far was quite labor intensive and seemed to involve water soaking the quinoa to remove chaff and other debris. I watched a few youtube videos and I don't know if I really want to put that much effort into that little of a harvest. They are said to be delicious but just seems to be a lot of work. If you doubt me google harvesting Quinoa.

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