Garden beds filled with fresh produce can become quickly compromised by four-legged invaders. However, there are numerous strategies available to you for protecting your garden and minimizing damage from these intruders.
To quickly identify culprits, watch for telltale signs of damage: deer leave hoofmarks and clean cuts on herbaceous plants; rabbits make sharp cuts on the ground; and groundhogs dig and destroy. To deter them, repellent sprays that taste or smell foul may help deter their presence.
Fences
Fencing is an effective and popular solution to protect vegetable gardens from animals. Fencing not only keeps out unwanted visitors, but it can also protect plants from wind and ensure delicate vegetables like carrots and tomatoes receive enough sunlight. When selecting and maintaining a fence for your garden it is crucial that the appropriate type is selected – otherwise your carefully-cultivated veggies could become sustenance for local wildlife!
Wooden split rail fences make an excellent choice for smaller gardens. Their natural aesthetic can easily be tailored to suit individual requirements, and provide a clear boundary where your veggies begin and end. If your garden is larger, metal options such as chain link fencing and metal mesh fencing could provide more durable options that provide an appealing barrier around it – however these can be more expensive to install and maintain than alternative fencing types.
An electric fence is another excellent way to keep deer out of large gardens, as well as protecting ripening fruits from birds or other pests. Surround it with other barriers for maximum effect! An electric fence not only keeps out deer and other animals but can also protect ripening fruits against deer nibbling them!
Other barriers that can complement a fence include plant covers, chicken wire and netting. This combination is especially effective if your garden contains tall plants that deer and other predators find hard to access.
Finally, adding smelly barriers that deter animals is often beneficial. This could involve anything from placing pots of cayenne pepper in the garden to hanging drawstring pouches filled with Irish Spring bar soap that are bound to deter mice, rabbits, and other small critters from nibbling your vegetables.
Maintaining your vegetable garden fence means regularly inspecting it for signs of wear-and-tear, making repairs as needed, to extend its lifespan and keep its aesthetic appearance for years. Doing this will help prolong its life while keeping its beautiful looks.
Pesticides
If fences and other noninvasive methods fail to keep out pests from your garden, pesticides may be necessary. Since the term “pesticide” refers to such an array of products, understanding their function before choosing an effective one for yourself will help ensure the greatest success.
Pesticides are designed to kill plants and insects by interfering with their normal functioning. Common examples include insecticidal soap, fungicides, herbicides and rodenticides – you can buy commercial versions at gardening stores or online; homemade ones using kitchen staples like vinegar, salt and pepper may also work effectively.
Before using any pesticide, it’s essential to read and adhere to its label instructions precisely. Also, rubber gloves must always be worn when handling these substances and they must remain away from children and animals. In addition, many pesticides are harmful to the environment so proper disposal is also paramount.
Remind yourself, however, that gardens are dynamic ecosystems; animals will be drawn to them for various reasons. Rabbits and squirrels tend to cause nibble damage while birds can cause structural harm by digging holes and pecking at flowers and vegetables plants.
Make other types of food more readily available to deter these animals, like setting up a bird feeder near your vegetable garden to entice mice and small mammals away from eating the vegetables you’ve planted; hang drawstring pouches filled with Irish Spring bar soap around your garden as a deterrent against rabbits, chipmunks and other vermin.
Though it’s possible to create an organic garden, the process may take years and still be susceptible to wildlife interference. To overcome this hurdle, be patient and learn how to fend off wildlife intrusion – over time you’ll figure out ways to defend it effectively from pests that threaten it!
Slugs and snails
Even though slugs and snails may not seem like serious garden pests, they can pose considerable danger to vegetable gardens. These slimy creatures feed by devouring leaves and stems – damaging young seedlings while depriving vegetables of essential nutrition. Slugs can also cause extensive damage to garden containers and pots by leaving holes and dragging their file-like mouthparts across surfaces, leaving holes or damaging surfaces with their bite marks. There are 30 native slug species in the UK; most do no harm and prefer feeding on dead matter rather than living plants. Some species are more harmful than others; for instance, large black garden snails can be especially destructive to vegetable plants while common garden slugs and smaller hornet-shaped garden snails often only target soft leafy vegetables. Maintaining an ideal garden ecosystem is key to managing slugs and snails successfully, with natural predators such as birds, toads, frogs, toads and amphibians acting as natural controls for pests like snails. Provide ponds or bird feeders in order to entice more wildlife into your garden ecosystem and manage its pest population effectively. Make sure that piles of stones, overturned flower pots and other debris are kept out of cultivated areas where they provide hiding spaces for slugs and snails, to minimize their numbers and facilitate ground beetles, earwigs and hedgehogs in doing their job of controlling pest populations.
Keep animals away from your vegetable garden by planting plants that they find repellant, like deer. Barberry, winterberry holly, coral bells and abelia all provide repellent plants which can serve as barriers around your vegetable patch.
An effective and economical method for protecting your vegetable garden from animals, setting slug-traps is one of the easiest and least costly ways of doing so. All it requires is setting up an improvised trap near the plants you wish to shield with an appropriate-sized flat board (12 by 15 inches is optimal) placed atop 1-by-1-inch runners with gaps left along each side – this way slugs and snails have somewhere safe to crawl under during daylight hours; then periodically checking traps (ideally every morning) in order to quickly discard any found.
As part of their defense against slug and snail attacks, other ways to prevent attacks include spreading out grit, wool pellets or plastic bottle cloches over vulnerable plants. You may also purchase proprietary slug and snail control products from garden centres or mail order suppliers.
Groundhogs
At first glance, watching a groundhog munching away at a freshly planted vegetable garden may seem humorous; but if it happens in your own garden it can quickly turn serious. These burrowing mammal known as whistle-pigs have the ability to feast upon up to 1.5 pounds of vegetation each day! They’re common suburban nuisances; you’ll know they are present by nibble marks left on plants or large mounds of dirt near their burrow entrances.
An effective solution to groundhog attacks on your vegetables is a sturdy 3-foot-high enclosure made of poultry wire or 2-inch woven mesh and buried 12 inches deep in the ground. Dig a 12-inch trench around its perimeter and set up your fence so it sinks beneath it – or consider bending its bottom six inches up into an L shape that will also deter digging underneath it.
Other types of fencing may work, but won’t be as effective against groundhogs. When planting vegetables and flowers that may be vulnerable to groundhog damage – like tender young plants – special measures must be taken when placing them near wildlife, such as planting in sunny spots using wire cages or hoop houses for extra protection.
Hunging drawstring pouches of Irish Spring bar soap may work to deter certain animals, including rabbits, mice, chipmunks and squirrels. Their scent can be quite repellent to them while its drawstring makes application of the repellent easier – giving you complete control of where and how much is applied as repellent.
Groundhogs can be challenging to deal with in your garden because they graze on anything they come across, devouring everything they see. Garlic and pepper are powerful weapons against groundhogs; their scent will scare them off quickly. Sprinkle crushed garlic or pepper around groundhog holes, along the edge of your garden or soil around plants to repel groundhogs and keep them at bay. Alternatively, mix equal parts vinegar to water for an insect-repelling spray that covers plants with an anti-groundhog solution that saturates them both with repelling solution that repels groundhogs as well as insects.