Oh Deer!

Twice now we have looked out the window and were surprised to see three young deer in our backyard. They eat a little from the tomatoes, a few leaves from the apple trees, and then just walk around aimlessly.

This one is looking at the tomatoes.

This one is leaving the apple tree.

I wonder if they lost their mother who should still be guiding them. You can still see their spots and they seem lost.

The funniest thing about their tour of the yard is that both times they have been very curious about the chickens. They stare at the coop and the chickens inside with puzzled looks.

They don't seem to be afraid of anything except when the chickens flap their wings. Both times the deer walked around a bit and then disappeared into the woods. They don't seem to be eating much from the garden.

I just hope they don't come back in the spring and eat everything! They are magnificent animals. For now we are content to just watch them when they come. Next spring will be another story!

Repelling Raccoons - 3 ways to keep raccoons out of your corn!

We have many raccoons that frequent our yard and garden. They eat the leftover cat food on the back deck just waiting until that magical night when the sweet corn is ready!

Then they party until every last kernel is gone!

So what can I do to repel those rascally raccoons? There are three ways for me and you to rid raccoons from our gardens.

1. Erect an electric fence. An electric fence is the only sure way to keep raccoons out, but that involves too much work and expense for me.

2. Use a "floppy fence". Last year I began creating this, but didn't finish in time. I still think it is a good idea though. Basically you fence in your garden or a portion of your garden using your favorite standard fence. I only put the fence around a small corn patch last year. The trick to the "floppy fence" as outlined in Jeff Cox's 100 Greatest Garden Ideas, is to attach a roll of chicken wire to the top of the fence like this:

 

The chicken wire is fastened only at the bottom to the top of the fence. It stays floppy at the top with no support. When a raccoon attempts to climb it, it folds down on him which essentially dumps him off. Allow me to demonstrate with my daughters stuffed animal:

The raccoon climbs the fence and reaches the chicken wire. When it continues up the chicken wire, its own weight causes the wire to bend down over it.

No corn for that leopard, raccoon! When I wrote about this last year, some readers commented that this would also work to keep cats out of your garden. If cats are your problem, you could use netting instead of chicken wire.

I believe this might work and I love the 100 Greatest Garden Ideas book, but even this strategy is a bit too much work for me this year. Instead, this year I will be trying my 3rd way to repel raccoons, which I learned from another one of my favorite books, Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening. So what's the trick?

Plant a virtual fence with cucumbers! 

 

Dozens of vining cucumber plants will completely surround my corn patch. According to Carrots Love Tomatoes, raccoons can't stand cucumbers. They don't like the smell of them, and they don't like walking across the prickly vines. I'm not sure if it will work but I agree with many other things from that great book. I have started many cucumber plants of five different varieties. Not only will I have an almost infinite supply of cukes, but hopefully I'll also get some of this:

Mmmmmm! I can't wait for Summer eatin' from the garden!

So what do you think? Will this idea work? What about Jeff Cox's floppy fence? Do you have any other ideas for beating those coons this year?

Maybe I should feed them extra cat food!

How can you tell when the corn is ready?

How can you tell when the sweet corn is ready? When the raccoons eat half of it!

First of all, thank you to all who commented on my last post and especially those who voted on which post they would like me to write next. The winners were the potatoes in a garbage can update and the extra high raised bed trial details. Even though there weren't very many votes for my corn efforts, I have to write this one first because it is more timely.

I put up a six foot tall fence around the corn bed and I knew that wouldn't keep the coons out entirely. I was planning to fasten a roll of floppy chicken wire to the top of the fence to keep them from being able to successfully climb over it. I headed out to the corn with my roll of chicken wire only to discover that they had struck the night before:

I was too late. Look at how they diligently ate every kernel! So now, instead of taking the time to put on the chicken wire, we decided to pick the remaining ears of corn.

The raccoons ate over half of the ears but we still got a nice basket full. I'm happy with that especially considering the poor start this corn had.

Look how beautiful they look!

That last closeup doesn't really show the bi-color aspect of this corn. This is the Japanese Bicolor corn - Mirai 301BC. I first wanted to grow this early last year when I wrote a post about this Mirai corn from Park Seed.

This is a better picture of the bi-color aspect:

I have to say, Park delivered on its promise. This might very well be the best sweet corn I have ever eaten. Next year I hope to find a spot far enough in the yard to grow another variety (probably Silver Queen) along with Mirai for a true taste test.

As for this year, the Mirai was delicious but I failed in part in my battle against the coons. Before I leave you, let me at least show you how I wanted to keep them out but was too slow. First of all, I was going to aim my Scarecrow at the corn. The scarecrow was on the night of the attack, but it was guarding the beans against a groundhog attack.

Secondly, I was going to use the chicken wire like I mentioned earlier. I went ahead and fastened a portion of the wire to better show you what I had planned. This is what it would look like:

The chicken wire is fastened only at the bottom to the top of the fence. It stays floppy at the top with no support so when a raccoon attempts to climb it, it folds down on him which essentially dumps him off. Allow me to demonstrate with my daughters stuffed animal:

The leopard raccoon climbs the fence and reaches the chicken wire. When it continues up the chicken wire, its own weight causes the wire to bend down over it.

Not this time Ricky!

I'm pretty sure this would work well but I'll have to wait until next year to confirm it. I hope this idea can still benefit someone else this year.

I will soon be writing the raised bed post, a rainbow of cherry tomatoes post, and I will soon be dumping over the potato can to see how well that worked. Stay tuned and thanks for your patience.

Contech Scarecrow; many uses in the garden!

My previous post was partly about all of the animal pest problems I have here in rural Kentucky. Although I didn't know it yet, as I was writing that post my newest animal problem was beginning. Squirrels are stealing my apples! I surprised one sitting in the apple tree and while running away, he dropped this apple from his mouth:

My previous post was also partly about my new garden gadget, the Scarecrow from Contech. This got me thinking that I remember seeing something on their website called SquirrelStop. Contech has many neat products but SquirrelStop is a bird feeder that spins rapidly when a Squirrel hangs from it. It would be pretty funny to see a surprised and dizzy squirrel get spun off of a bird feeder. In my case the Squirrel Stop would not help. How could I keep the squirrels from eating my apples?

Of course my answer was right in front of me. I was going to wait and use the Scarecrow water sprayer to defend my corn but why not try it out on the Squirrels first? They had already eaten almost all of the apples in the tree closest to the woods, but they haven't touched the next tree yet. I set up the Contech Scarecrow next to that tree but couldn't wait to see if it worked. My daughters were picking tomatoes in the garden so I called them over to the apple tree.

It works!

This is a fun gadget. The apple tree limbs blowing in the breeze do not set it off so I guess it isn't a simple motion detector. It seems to only go off if a living thing approaches. It nearly knocked a poor sparrow to the ground! The range of the detector is pretty far as well. It "saw" me working in the garden 50 feet away. The spray doesn't shoot that far but the noise would probably scare animals away even before they get wet. You can also set the radius on how much it sprays. I've got it trained just on the apple trees, but you could make it spray nearly 360 degrees. If I got one more of these I could probably guard my whole garden. Cool!

Defending the Strawberries!

When it comes to the garden plants, my cat isn't the only animal that I need to be worried about. Outside there are raccoons, groundhogs, skunks, opossums, foxes, deer, and many birds that are watching my garden to see what is ripe and ready for the taking! Last year, the critters ate a lot of my garden! The first major front that needs defending this year are the strawberries. It looks like it is going to be a great crop!

We planted these strawberries last year using the hill method. The hill method for strawberries is not mounding up the dirt, or planting on top of small hills. We planted one long row of strawberry plants and then meticulously cut the runners back as the plants sent them out. We didn't let any daughter plants form like you would in a matted row system. So much energy stays in the main plant that the plant grows twice as big as they would with the matted row method. The plants grow to be two feet tall! Since there is only a single row of plants, the plant "looks like" a hill, which is why it is called the hill method.

So now that last year's work is paying off and I have many green strawberries ready to ripen, there is no way I'm going to let the animals have them! Tonight, as it was getting dark I gathered up some scrap wood, a hammer and nails, the roll of flexible fence that I recently bought, and the garden shears (for clipping back the runners) and got to work.

I built a little wood trellis down the center of the strawberry bed.

I then stapled the flexible fence to the landscape timbers on one side and stretched the fencing up over the wood trellis. On the other side I stapled the fence to removable scrap boards. This formed a little temporary A-frame fence.

I attached the fence in three foot sections, overlapping the sections as I went along. The removable boards can be lifted up a section at a time to reach in for harvesting.

I'm pretty sure this will keep the animals out. The only thing left to be concerned with are slugs. I haven't seen any on the strawberries yet but I have found some on the lettuce. I plan to put out saucers of beer to attract the slugs when the berries ripen.

It is crazy how defensive you have to be with food gardening. I am looking into what it would take to put an electric fence around the entire perimeter of the garden. That would take care of everything but the deer. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself with this though. Tonight, I can sleep a little easier knowing that my strawberries can now ripen in peace. I can hardly wait.

I'm off to bed to dream about....Strawberry Shortcake!
mmmmmmmm!

Organic Gardening Techniques Don't Always Work

I have not written about garden insects much this year like I did last year. Largely it is because last year's menaces did not repeat this year. I guess the Tomato Hornworms really were killed by the braconid wasps and the Blister Beetles really were chased away by their dislike of the horseradish plants. In both cases nature ran its course and I benefited from natural organic remedies without using any unnatural chemicals or poisons.

I really do believe in gardening organically. There is no room in my garden for chemical pesticides or fertilizers - Period. However, I'm not one to preach about it and I don't pretend that if you stay organic you will never have any problems. Sometimes it is quite the opposite and you have to be willing to lose an entire crop at times. That was the story this year with my broccoli.

Cabbage worms by the dozens destroyed all of my Spring broccoli, and it looks like my Fall broccoli will suffer the same fate. We only planted two plants this spring since we had so much last year that we couldn't eat it all. Since there were only two plants, I thought I could control the worms by hand-picking every day. After all, if you've ever looked up what to do about insects in an organic gardening book, most of the time it says to simply had pick them and destroy. This seemed easy at first because many of the worms are large and easy to see.

Of course, hand picking them all is easier said than done! The problem is that they start out so small and grow so fast. They are also very good at hiding right in front of you. Here's an example; how many cabbage worms do you think are on these two plants?

Would you believe 15? I know that it is too hard to tell from a little picture so lets zoom in and look at only 1 plant.

Now how many do you see? Seven, right? Does this help you see them?

And this picture was taken after I had already removed five or six worms! I thought I was finished until I looked closer.

Notice that I'm counting one that I already squashed on the raised bed wood on the lower left. I know it is a bit gross to discuss, but it was very interesting to see what happened when I distingished the worms in this way. As soon as I would kill a worm on the wood, an ant would come along and take the body.

It was fascinating to watch. Every cabbage worm carcass was dutifully carried away, each by a single ant.

That is a good illustration as to why I don't want to spray poisons on the plants to kill the pest insects. In this case, the spray would have killed these ants too. Chemical pesticides are not only bad for us to consume, but they kill or drive away earthworms and beneficial insects. To me, even though I lost this battle and got no fresh broccoli, it is worth it to maintain a safe and healthy soil and micro-climate.

As for the Fall broccoli, they too are infested with cabbage worms. Usually Fall broccoli is safe from the cabbage butterfly and worm but this year it is still hot in October - a record high 90 degrees as I write this! Next year I will cover all of my brassicas with poly-spun row covers to keep out the butterflies. This year I will continue to fight a losing battle and keep hand-picking the worms. At least it feeds the ants I guess.

It's really too bad that I have to kill these worms. They are actually kind of cute.

What am I saying?! They are garden pests and they are killing MY organic broccoli! That is a punishable offense indeed.

Now it's personal; Waging war on the groundhog!

I was feeling sorry for the groundhog because of the drought and heatwave that we are suffering with. There is very little water or food available in the wild. I had almost even forgiven him for eating all of our bean leaves, all of the cucumber leaves, some tomatoes and zucchini and all of the zucchini leaves. But now he has gone too far. He has crossed the line! He has begun eating my beautiful pumpkin plants!

Come on Mr. Woodchuck, at least let a man grow some big pumpkins for his children to enjoy at Halloween. I haven't even gotten around to putting a post on about the pumpkins.

I purposely started them late so they wouldn't get too big too soon. They are at the end of the garden and I am letting them grow out onto old carpet and tarps.

Things were growing along great and we had a dozen or so baby pumpkins.

Many of them had grown much bigger that that photo, but now Mr. Groundhog has eaten them and some of the leaves! It's time to declare war. My Have-a-heart trap was loaned to my in laws and I am getting it back tomorrow night. At the rate the groundhog is going though, that's too long to wait.

Sometimes a gardener has got to do what a gardener has got to do. I must sit out in the garden all night and all day tomorrow and make sure the groundhog doesn't eat anything else!

Of course I can't really do that, so my daughters and I whipped up a quick likeness of me, set it next to the pumpkins with a 24-hour-a-day talk radio station loudly playing. My wife added soap to the scarecrow to add more "human smell". I hope it works.

Tomorrow night we will set the Have-a-heart trap and hopefully on Sunday Mr. Groundhog and I will take a nice long drive to his new home.

Get ready Mr. Hog, soon it will be moving day!

More Garden Destruction; The Culprit?

More and more of my beloved veggies have disappeared! The beans, sweet potatoes and cucumbers have lost ALL of their leaves. Tomatoes and zucchinis have been munched, along with all of the watermelons and cantaloupe. The only thing that hasn't been eaten is the squash from my last post!

I correctly blamed the melon destruction on the raccoons, but now I know that THIS is who ate the rest!

In this picture, he is eating clover but I can safely say that a groundhog's favorite food is anything from the vegetable garden! From the looks of the one we saw in our garden, they can get pretty fat on veggies!

This weekend we were making more salsa and needed a few more tomatoes to finish the batch. So my daughter and I walked up to the garden to pick some where we saw the fattest groundhog of all time finishing off the last of the bean leaves.

"Hey! What are you doing? Get out of here!" I yelled at him. He seemed to understand me perfectly and ran as fast as his little legs could take his big fat body in to the woods.

I don't usually talk to (or yell at) animals like this. Groundhogs are easy to talk to I guess. Now I understand the post that Kenny from Veggie Gardening Tips wrote about his groundhog. It is titled Conversations with a Woodchuck, and is one of the funniest bit of writing I've seen in a while.

Kenny caught his culprit. I hope I can do the same!

No More Melon Worries and Lots of Salsa!

I no longer have to worry about my cantaloupe being eaten by the animals, but not because I've put up a fence or done anything to stop them. I don't have to worry about them because there are NONE LEFT! Last night the raccoons ate ALL OF THEM!

I know it was raccoons this time by they way the melons were eaten. The flesh of the melons were scooped out. I could see their claw prints on the insides. One of them just had a small hole in the outside, but the entire inside was scooped out.

I bet that took some time to eat. It was left about 20 yards away from where it was grown. I can just imagine that there were several raccoons that did this and one raccoon managed to "pick" this one off the vine and drug it to the middle of the yard so he could have it all to himself while the others devoured them right on the vine. They didn't seem to care if the melons weren't even close to being ripe. They ruined EVERY one, even the smaller ones.

Why did the raccoons do this? Last year we got to enjoy our sweet Ambrosia melons. I think the raccoons left the cantaloupe alone last year because they were too busy eating my corn. I had planned to put up a fence around the corn this year but since I didn't find the time to do so, I didn't plant any corn.

Now it is obvious that a tall fence or an electric fence is in order to be built around the entire garden! More on that later.

As for now, we are focusing on what we do have from the garden. Last night we made 17 and a half pints of garden fresh salsa!

We had enough tomatoes for that many jars because we replaced the tomatoes that were lost from the forest animal party buy buying some extra tomatoes at the farmer's market. I guess now we will have to buy cantaloupe there too!