I caught a squirrel climbing down my plum tree last week, munching a plum. I charged toward him, he dropped it, and bolted up a maple tree. I like to think he crapped in fear as he scurried up his tree. But that doesn’t get my plum back.

My suburban backyard is either dreadfully or delightfully full of creatures, take your pick. I found a baby box turtle meandering through last week — a baby box turtle! — and my neighbor claims to have seen deer sauntering through the lawns. These sitings expand the long list of residents, including birds, squirrels, possums, snakes, mice, moles and rabbits. Something is eating the chard. Cabbage loopers skeletonized a plant. 

And while a certain gray furry “natural predator” is taking a nap so profound it qualifies as a coma, the chipmunks are leaping through the air, performing flying high-fives on their way to my cucumbers. It looks like a scene from frakin’ Willard back there in the mornings.

So I hunted up the garden journal I kept back in my post-hippie, professional garden days to find the exact proportions for The Lethal Brew. It’s simple, but it used to work.

The Lethal Brew
Grate a couple of tablespoons of Ivory soap into 1 to 2 cups of water. Gotta be Ivory — the other bars on the market are detergent. Detergent harms plant foliage. Ivory is the last real soap, except for the handmade artisan types.

Throw in a couple of inches of a cheap cigar or a plug of chewing tobacco the size of a half-dollar

Add a hot pepper pod at least 2 inches long, or a spoonful of red pepper flakes

Let the brew soak for at l east 12 hours. Strain it and add enough water to give it a sprayable consistency. Spray it on plant leaves, tomatoes, apples every couple of days.

It still works — on some things. It stopped the cabbage worms and tarnished plant bugs (which suck the green out of bean leaves until the leaves look bronze).  It isn’t vile enough to keep the squirrels from eating the apples. Or rather, taking one bite of an unripe apple and then dropping it. And then doing the same thing the next day — how stupid are squirrels? And it doesn’t keep the rabbits (or some creature) from eating the chard. If you have a solution — besides a fence — I’m game to try anything.

Partly it was the 12 deliveries of kale involved in last year’s CSA, and partly it just seems like the thing everyone is doing. Must be  zeitgeist.  But mostly it’s because I’m writing a cookbook called the All New Square Foot Gardening Cookbook. This year, if all goes as planned, I’ll be growing my own in my Square Foot Garden.

It was fate, I believe. In November or December we decided not to sign up for a share from a local organic farm. Just not enough of what we like (broccoli, green beans, fennel, carrots) and lots of vegetables that make the family grimace. I like okra, but they don’t. I like the occasional eggplant, and the family will eat it once a year, which left about 10 more to deal with. Etcetera with squash, kale, and more. Every Tuesday night was a cooking marathon to make room in the fridge for the next delivery. Every dinner time was a power struggle to get even a bite or two past the lips of Sweet Cheeks. I know, I’m a bad parent. Pass the margaritas. And hand me that lighter.

In February, the garden spot — there’s only one in my shady yard — was plowed up. In mid-March I was days away from starting a row of lettuces when I was approached about writing a cookbook to follow the zillion-selling All New Square Foot Gardening. Was I familiar with the book? You bet — I had a job at a Waldenbooks in the mid-1980s, and we sold a lot of SFG in its previous edition.

Since I’m writing a book about gardening, I need to walk the talk. I built garden boxes from patio bricks that were pulled up last year for our master bedroom addition. Most people build wooden boxes, but I’m going for decorative as well as functional. Plus, I can’t build stuff. If I’d been a pioneer on the prairie, I’d have frozen to death before I got a cabin built.

Because I can’t build stuff, the most daunting task was building the uprights. The author of All New Square Foot Gardening, Mel Bartholomew, is a genius (more about him in another post) and developed a method of growing vine crops vertically. It’s incredible — cantaloupes hanging 4 feet in the air. They develop a hugely thick stem to support themselves. Anyway, Mel’s frame design is simple enough for most people, but I’m an idiot if the task involves more than a drill and a screwdriver. I didn’t have to decide for several weeks, thank goodness, because the winter squash and cucumber plants sulked in the cool, overcast and rainy days.

Finally, though, the rain stopped and the sun returned, and the day of reckoning came. I had to build the supports for the upward-training of the cukes and squash. And hey! It went exactly like the directions said: just a screwdriver and maybe a hacksaw.

The first cucumber is one inch long. The first five arugula salads have been eaten. So far, so good. I’ll be writing about the garden this summer, probably every 10 days or so. Drop by again soon — I’ll have something for you.