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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…