Defending My Plants from Freeloading Wildlife
This time of year is always exciting as things are blooming, plants seem to be growing exponentially in size, and “food” starts to appear. However, year after year, I’ve been disappointed as my defenseless garden succumbs to the whims of the neighborhood wildlife. I become a version of Chevy Chase in Caddyshack, battling pesky groundhogs and other animals with a passion and vengeance that is downright embarrassing. This year, I stepped up my game and got serious about trying to deter or block the wildlife from stealing my crops. I love that the deer, fox, squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, birds, and random neighborhood cats surround the garden, but I’ve lost so much over the years to these animals who do not seem to respect my boundaries. I’ve tried all the “hot” garden tips to naturally deter them from hot pepper flakes and cayenne to trying to “trick” squirrels with shiny Christmas balls in my tomato beds.
I approached this year’s season by adding a combination of structures to try to keep them all out of my business. Or, as my neighbor likes to say, I put my plants in prison. LOL. I got “cages” for two of my raised beds, “fencing” (technically a structure for dogs) for 4 of my raised beds, and chicken wire to add to the fencing for two of the beds that have tomatoes (‘cause…squirrels). To say that I’m sick of losing my hard-earned crops to animals is a massive understatement. So far so good. Admittedly, this is a $$ investment that I’ve been putting off, but I reached my boiling point, so here we are…
What’s growing in the garden this year?
Lettuce (just finished up what was growing and just planted more)
Sugar snap peas
Swiss chard
Mystery Squash (see the video for explanation)
Emerite Green Beans
Nine different kinds of tomatoes
Four different kinds of peppers
Three different kinds of eggplant
Three different kinds of onions
Loads of herbs
Blueberries
Lots of beneficial flowers
This year, I didn’t grow seedlings for my plant sale like I normally do. I had other obligations and travel that would have really made that difficult. In the end, it worked out because it allowed me to focus more on what I really needed to try to make this a successful year in my own garden. I’ll be back next year with the seedlings in spring.
I hope you enjoy the video tour of the garden and a few photos of what’s growing. The video gives more of an explanation of what’s going on. I hope your garden is growing and thriving!
Video was filmed on June 23rd. See what’s growing (and what’s not).
New “fencing”
“Cages” that house my peppers and eggplant
Long Day onions
Mystery squash
Just pinched off this pepper plant
This pepper plant was pinched off about 1 1/2 weeks ago and is starting to grow in more fully.
Sugar Snap peas. I picked close to a pound of these today.
