Potato Cages and Hay Mites

Potato cages first…as I mentioned a few days ago, hindsight would suggest that initially planting my potato seedlings in a mound was probably not a great idea. They need to be hilled up a few times as the foliage grows, and after the first time that I hoed dirt up around the already-existing mounds, I kind of ended up with pyramids and nowhere else for dirt to go for the second mounding. My solution was to build these “potato cages”, just some retaining walls around the potato mounds that would allow me to hill up some more dirt around the foliage. I think that this should do them. I used two kinds – cardboard boxes, because I happened to have a few from a recent shipment that were the right size. That made four, but I needed 11. So I built a few short cages out of leftover rabbit guard, and lined them with black landscape fabric so that the dirt wouldn’t fall out of the openings in the wire grid. I don’t know if it’ll work, but at the moment I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t.

As for the hay mites….after weeks of procrastinating, I finally got some hay. My reasons for procrastinating were various: the place where I knew I could get it (which wasn’t, in the end, where I got it) is not on any of my usual routes; I drive a small compact car; and perhaps most of all there was the sense of unease at doing something unfamiliar. Well, enough of all that. I finally bucked up and got serious this morning, and went in search of the hay.

I drove out to the out-of-the-way place where I’ve seen bales of hay for sale, and no one was there. It was about 9:15 in the morning – too early, apparently. So I made a huge loop back towards the house, with the idea of stopping at the couple of country road nurseries not too far from my house (I’m in a pretty rural area) to see if they sold hay. I’d been to the first nursery a number of times and never seen hay, but today as I pulled into the lot, lo and behold a guy was walking out towards the parking lot carrying a big bale of hay!

I asked him if he could get me some hay, and he looked at my car, and then back at me, doubtfully.

“In that?”

“I can put some in the trunk,” I told him. I opened the trunk and he peered inside. “Could I get two bales in there?”

“You might be able to get one in there.”

“I can put some in the front seat too,” I said. And some in the back.”

“With a child in there?”

“Well just in the front seat then. One in the front and one in the trunk.”

“In your car?”

“Yes.”

“Sure, if you want to. If you want to get mites in your car, I’ll put it in there for you. You know hay has mites it in it. You’ll get mites all over your car.”

Hmmmn. Mites???

“Well, just give me one then. Put it in the trunk.”

So he went and got the bale of hay for the dumb blond, and I picked up some slow release organic tomato food (something else I’ve been avoiding doing) and a few yellow crookneck squash plants and headed home, thinking all the time about mites.

I appreciated the information, but gosh, he could have been a little nicer about it.

Well, let me tell you something – when I got home and pulled that bale of hay out of my trunk, I was astonished at the mess. Boy am I glad I didn’t fill my car up with hay. I doubt I’ll ever get all that out of the trunk of my car. Geesh.

It didn’t do much for my sinuses either…or maybe I just have mites up my nose.

So here’s the lesson learned for anyone else that’s new to hay and contemplating the exotic – unless you have a pickup truck – have it delivered!