as usual, the phantom blogger makes a quick run thru and calls it a season.....  well really, its just that i get focused elsewhere and as i get older i realize time is what i am truly short of.

however, blah, blah, blah..... i can say that my fishing days are down too, so this blog isnt the only thing thats not getting proper attention.  the upside?  my oldest son is nearing completion of his eagle scout rank and i did get this project done this summer:

drum roll please.....  i lined all of my raised beds (12 of them) with a heavy metal fabric to keep out gophers and moles.

many of you may know that california is in a severe drought.  my county issued a voluntary 30% reduction in water usage, in hopes that mandatory controls can be avoided.  i have 12 raised beds and the soil is the nice fluffy kind one can buy in bulk.  it doesnt hold water like a clay soil will and as a result i use quite a bit of water for my vegetables.

i did not want to lose my turf, my nice front yard maples or 50 or so fruit trees.  so i made the supreme sacrifice and decided to forgo the 2014 vegetable garden and take advantage of the fallow year and line the beds to keep out the gophers.

i did cut back on water to the fruit trees by abut 25%, followed the mandated turf watering days and had an audit by the irrigation district - based upon the water meter, i exceeded the 30% by a wide margin.  although the lawn took a beating, its at least not brown.  i also discovered that my fruit trees are doing fine on 25% less water, so i can save there going forward, might even be able to reduce there more.

believe me, my 16 year old son did not appreciate being tapped for the dig-out-the-dirt task, but he survived.

as you can see, i overlapped the metal fabric and stitched it together with wire and also provided a tack strip up under the keister boards which locked in the wire to the beds.  and as of 9/5, i have one bed left to complete (out of 12) and plan to have #12 completed on 9/6.  my hope is there is not a hole large enough to let in a critter to munch on my vege's - i can tell you, however, if they do find thier way in, they can have what they want, they earned it......

as for my gardening in 2015 - if the drought is still on, and chances are it will be, i do plan on planting 4 tomato plants:  sun gold, cherokee purple, black zebra and super fantastic.  this will cover my bare necessities and leave the other beds fallow.  this may be the future of my vegetable gardening, at least until mother nature decides to send us the water we need.