Back in November, I had my fall garden planted and growing.
Spinach, beets, onions, lettuce, chard and broccoli.
The broccoli was covered with floating row cover, but eventually it got so big that I removed the row cover. Then something started eating the broccoli leaves…
I thought it was a rabbit eating my garden veggies. In a desperate attempt to keep it out, even temporarily I hastily constructed fences out of old orange fencing in the hopes of keeping it out!
But the critter was still eating my plants!
We even set a trap hoping to catch it humanely.
The trap wan’t working! The critter could get the apple or veggies out of the cage without getting trapped! Frustrating, costly and discouraging.
After looking, thinking, and talking to my neighbor, Bryan we came to the conclusion that it was not a rabbit but a woodrat! What else could climb those fences and planter boxes? What else could eat a tomato 3 feet off the ground? At first I thought it was a bird that had pecked at the tomatoes.
My husband, Ken finally got involved and tried to help. He set big rat traps. But nothing was working! You can see here, there’s broccoli on the plant but the leaves are completely eaten!
All the startup plants had been eaten! So discouraging that I could not go out to the garden for 3 weeks!
Finally I got up the nerve to go out. I thought I’d at least pull out the weeds, and clean up the mess from the frost that had ruined what the rat hadn’t eaten.
So as I’m cleaning up the mess, I happen on to one of the traps. It had been tripped, but not by the rat!
One less bird in our garden!! Oh, so sad. And no rat!
But then I got to wondering… There was another trap.
Bingo! The rat!!! OH!
Thank you Ken! He even came and cleaned up the remains.
So the garden is looking pretty empty now, but a few plants are still trying to grow…
I am sorry about your garden. It’s not easy to protect the garden from pests. Specially from critters, rats, moles and voles. Last winter my garden was totally invaded by moles and voles. They had completely destructed my organic tomato garden. I tried poison and traps to get rid of them, but nothing worked on them. One of my friends told me about rodent prevention expert. I called them. They came to my home and solved my rodent problem. You can read about them here-http://californiarodentcontrol.com/.
I will check it out when I have time. Thanks
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Thank you so much for your good ideas. I will try them all out this spring..
Take care and happy blogging to ya, from Laura ~
Gardening can be so rewarding one day and frustrating the next! Have you tried diatomaceous earth for the slugs? Also I use to catch earwigs by rolling up damp newspaper, set in garden at night, then early in the morning go out and remove the paper. Move out of the garden, unroll and stomp as they fall to the ground. Squirrels require traps, good luck!
I can feel your pain ~ I too try to garden, and everything comes up beautifully, but then the earwigs or slug army arrive to harvest the leaves, until only the stems remain… I tried the beer, but it rained to much ~ watering the beer right down to nothing but water. Then what the critters don’t get the chipmunks and squirrels finish off. But, next spring, I’ll be right back out there with my shaker of salt for the slugs, and my fly swatter for the earwigs.. Happy gardening to ya, from Laura ..