Protecting Our Garden This Year

Creating our first line of defense

We’ve learned that it’s always wise to anticipate the problems we’re going to face at the beginning of the garden year so that we can ensure better success with the vegetable garden. We started this year by evaluating the problems we faced last year.

During the past year, we have had many issues with various insects, wildlife, and livestock (chickens) that have been wreaking havoc on our vegetable garden.

Critters in the Garden

Last year, we kept the chickens in their pen for most of the day and only let them out for a couple of hours per day to eat insects and weed seeds throughout most of the yard. I physically had to keep them out of the garden areas and away from the newly planted and germinated vegetables until the plants were big enough to fend for themselves.

We also had problems with deer in our sweet potato bed. Sweet potatoes seem to be a go-to food for deer. Every morning, I chased a doe out of the sweet potato bed, but sadly, we didn’t have any that survived. Fortunately, one of the local growers at the farmer’s market had sweet potatoes to sell so we got our sweet potato fix after all.

Another big problem we had in our garden last year were raccoons in our corn. I got a few ears to eat, but the raccoons ate the bulk of them.

Finally, we had problems with squash bugs. We tried the usual soap and water treatment, but it didn’t keep the bugs out and we didn’t get any cucumbers, squash, or pumpkins from our garden last year.

First Line of Defense

This year, I talked my husband into helping me put up a fence. Even though we both knew that the fence was necessary, he still tried to talk me into not purchasing the fence. I shook my head, pulled out my credit card, and paid the price for the fence. The fence we bought was a five-foot-tall woven wire fence big enough to fit around all of our current garden beds. This will take care of the wildlife and the chickens, but not the insects.

Nothing for Them to Eat This Year

We have a different plan for the squash bugs this year. We’re not ones to poison our garden just so we can have a few squash and cucumbers so we decided to take a different approach. Those bugs were so bad last year that we decided not to grow any member of the cucumber family this year. I have heard that if you leave your beds fallow with these vegetables for a year, the squash bugs will go somewhere else the next year. That’s our strategy for this year. No cucumbers, squash, or pumpkins. Also, this will give us more room to plant other types of vegetables that we haven’t had enough room to grow during the past few years. Besides, why plant them if you can’t get them to grow?

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