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Stings, snakes slow Tillers & Toilers

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By LAURA CONE

THE SUN

Published: October 28, 2009

Wearing gloves and boots, Paula Simenson takes precautions when she gardens in her Tillers & Toilers plot - even though the much dreaded snakes are less likely to visit as the temperatures dip.

In contrast to the reptiles, many of her fellow gardeners become more active in October when they start their fall crops. Simenson said the Tillers & Toilers now meet for coffee Thursdays at 9 a.m. at the Pavilion at the entrance to their community garden off Del Webb Boulevard. She wasn't sure where the snakes have their meetings.

"We have to be cautious of snakes," said Simenson, who was recently planting broccoli, cabbage and eggplant. "We have had bad snakes - cottonmouths, pigmy rattlesnakes and coral snakes. We wear big boots and take protective measures and stay out of their way."

She grows pole beans and peas on a trellis to give snakes fewer hiding places. One of her fellow gardeners killed a pigmy rattlesnake that was venturing toward another gardener. But they don't harm the harmless snakes - and they don't tell tales about them, either.

Don Schenk of SCC, who has had a plot for more than a decade, said a fellow gardener once found a cottonmouth so big that he skinned it to make a belt. Schenk keeps a "pet" coral snake with red, yellow and black banding. Lucky for him and others, it's only plastic. But he is cautious of real snakes when opening up his tool shed since he has come across snakes warming themselves on the tools.

"If you don't bother them, they don't bother you," he said. He laughed about the fact his plastic coral snake has gotten a few beatings from unsuspecting gardeners who maybe remember the rhyme, "Red on yellow, kills a fellow."

Fellow gardener Wayne Koch started with only a half lot, but decided to manage a second lot this year. He is using one for vegetables and the other for berries.

He said snakes are attracted to the mice that eat the berries.

"I ran into a 36-inch cottonmouth in a rock pile and I tried to run it over with my car," he said. "I watched it for a while and it went into the woods."

Snakes are more common at the community garden in part because the plots are near both water and a wooded area. Most snakes in Florida brumate - sort of a quasi-hibernation - from late October through March, giving gardeners a reprieve.

Koch said he had a different nuisance to deal with when he was cleaning up his lot for fall gardening.

"I almost got stung by yellow jackets," he said.

The gardeners plan to sell their produce to the public in December before taking a winter break. They harvest again in the late spring.

Editor Laura Cone may be reached at lcone@mediageneral.com.

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