Lessons Learned

SO, this has been a year of experimenting and getting to know our property. You never really know how much is involved until you take on 5 acres. It's a lot, but all in all, we love it. As we learn, we are taking notes about how to handle the seasons and the elements for next year.

Our goals are still in place to beautify the property. For example we want more tropical foilage, flowers and eventually full landscaping. This is going to have to manifest in stages, perhaps over the next 5 years or so. (That's a lot of blogging, eh?) Our biggest obstacles are obviously the rabbits, squirrels and weeds...but we also experience high winds, long bouts of heat and weird things like giant flying ants (don't ask).

As far as the rabbits and squirrels go (plus our sweet doggie who likes to dig holes) we are going to install some low voltage electrical fencing around our flower beds. When next season rolls around (early spring) we are going to put out bait to cut down the squirrel population, and net all of our fruit trees. The owls will probably be in place as well. Hopefully this will allow us to harvest some fruit from our grove and plant some flowers and plants around the house.

We are also noting that the rabbits will eat (or destroy) almost anything when summer hits, simply because they are desperate and the population is high after the spring breeding season (although they breed all year long...sigh). The plants they are NOT touching are lavenders, that weird ground-cover stuff I put out front, the white stinky flowers, and the light green garlics. So there is SOME hope of plant-life.

SO, our planning time-line goes something like this:

October - install electric fencing
November - drip irrigation to flower beds
December - planting (ground cover, garlics, fan palms, lavender, etc...)
January/February - rainy season, sit tight, work on garage and interior of house
March - Spray for weeds, put our squirrel bait, more planting
April - bud break for grape vines, net fruit trees
May - spray for weeds again, plant grape vines
June - mow down the weeds that grew anyway

By this time next year I hope to have the flower beds healthy and in full bloom. The grape vines may have a few grape clusters, if not then probably the year after that. Then we will have a whole new list of things we have learned. lol