Weeding The Garden, Cutworms And Building A Box For The Baby Bunnies

Let's start with yesterday. Yesterday I used my stirrup hoe a bit.

This clay soil is really hard to work. We'd gone a couple of days without much rain so things had gotten a chance to dry out a bit. This little bit took me all day. Partly because it was hot out and I kept having to take breaks to cool off. And partly because of the clay soil. Clay soil does loosen up a bit when it's wet so I thought maybe it would be easier to do after a rain. Hubby said I should just use the hose and wet it down first. I was like duh! Why didn't I think of that?

But do you see the plant next to the hoe handle and against the wire trellis? That was a healthy, happy cucumber plant. I say was because it's now dead. In fact, I planted 10 cucumber plants and I'm now down to two plants. I've done some research and I'm pretty sure it's cutworms. The plants are fine one day, and then cut off or chewed part of the way through the stem, about an inch or two above the soil. One of the ways to combat them is to put some kind of collar around the plants. So I'm going to restart my cucumber seeds, again, and then put collars around them when I plant them.

In some other side news, we've lost two of the newest baby bunnies. Not from predators this time. But I think just bad care by the mama. When I put her in the new cage, I expected her to take the hay and hair I'd given her and make a nice nest for the babies. But she didn't. I don't know if that's because she'd been nesting for so long that she was no longer interested. Or if maybe the move bothered her. Either way, no nest.

So instead the babies were crawling all over the cage. To make matters worse, anytime I'd come near the cage, especially to feed her, she would run back and forth in the cage which made the wire floor bounce. This knocked the babies around more. Being all over the cage, they weren't staying as warm as they should be. I also think she was stepping on them. I kept having to reach into the cage, construct some kind of nest in the hair and hay and put the babies all together. But each day since I've put them in there, I've found one dead.

So today I built a small box to keep the babies together. It's just a couple pieces of 1x4s and the box is 1'x1'. No bottom on it since there is already a wire floor. I put some hay and hair in there and snuggled them in, pulling a little bit over them. We shall see if this helps to keep them alive. Once they're big enough to run around the pen with the others, I'll turn the cage upside down and actually attach the box to the cage side and the wire floor.

I'd like to end this post on a positive note so here's a video I took of our pregnant piggies to show how big their bellies are getting.

Take care all and have a good night.