We have a tiny vegetable garden - about 9 X 7. I have it crammed full of things - tomatoes, peas, cabbage, lettuce, peppers, radishes, yellow squash, zucchini. There is no room for anything but a hoe. We have a plastic woven fence around the whole thing in the hopes of keeping deer, rabbit, groundhogs and other critters away.
The tomatoes are in cages, large woven wire. The cages are quite old and the wire very sturdy.
But something had yanked one of the cages completely out of the ground and off a tomato plant, twisted two other cages (and their contents) and mangled a pepper plant.
The ground inside the fence was littered with deer footy prints. Hoof marks everywhere in the mud (I had watered the night before).
So yesterday I put the garden back together as best I could, but the tomatoes look a little sorry now. Several nice green tomatoes were knocked free and then bitten into. Darn it.
I suspect that the culprit was a little buck that hangs around the house. I further suspect that he jumped the fence and got a horn hung up in the tomato cage, resulting in a damaging dance over my little garden space. At least, that is how I envision this carnage taking place.
We used to have a very large garden, but we gave it up about seven years ago. The deer were doing all the eating and we were doing all the work. We resumed this smaller plot three years ago, mostly for tomatoes, but it has gotten a little larger as we miss the good fresh veggies. Of course that means it is attracting more animals.
This year, especially, I've had a difficult time keeping critters at bay. This is a groundhog, heading for his dinner - yeah, in my garden.
heeheehee...annoying to you, cute to me.... :o)
ReplyDeleteThe trick I've heard over and over is to sprinkle red pepper around the garden, but that may just be to keep the cats for pooping there. Couldn't hurt to try, though.
ReplyDeleteWe gave up trying to keep a garden years ago. First it was the watering that no one wanted to do, or if we went away upon return everything was dead, then it was the critters. The last straw was our yellow tomato plants. When I went out to pick that one tomato I had been waiting on I found it with bite marks all over it! It was just too much work for no return so now I stick to herbs in pots which they don't seem to like. I have plenty of fruit trees so the little critters can have their fill on them, although there will be no peaches this year.
ReplyDeleteYour blog is very interesting!
ReplyDeletePlease, send me the photo of your pc desk and the link of your blog.
I'll publish on my blog!.
Thanks Frank
EMAIL: pcdesktop1@gmail.com