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Photo Credit: ©2002 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard

Bambi may be cute – but not in your yard. Large mammals can cause massive damage in a single evening.

The most serious concerns for a vegetable garden usually occur as a result of insect or animal pests eating, damaging or trampling fruit or foliage. Fortunately, over 90 percent of the insects you may see on vegetable plants are either harmless or beneficial – predators that attack harmful insects, other bugs or their eggs. In a similar fashion, animal pests are few, and most can be excluded from the garden by erecting fences, caging vegetables or blocking plants from possible damage.

Mammals – especially those on the larger side, such as deer, opossums, raccoons and rabbits – are capable of inflicting serious damage on your garden and its plants. They’re attracted to tender young vegetables and can strip plants bare or browse them to the ground in a single evening. Meanwhile, rodents eat your berries, corn and many types of fruit. Gophers dine on succulent roots, and moles uproot plants as they seek burrowing insects to eat. Birds are especially fond of tender shoots and ripening berries, while mollusks (slugs and snails) devour and score sufficient foliage to denude plants to their branches.

There are two approaches that are generally successful for controlling animal pests: exclusion and trapping. Fences are best for larger animals. For deer, either a single fence that’s 8 feet tall (or higher) or two 6-foot-tall perimeter fences set 3 feet apart is effective. (A few large deer may be able to hurdle a single tall fence, but all become uncertain when faced with two shorter fences and a long horizontal distance.) For smaller mammals, fencing each individual bed may be sufficient.

In gardens that are prone to burrowing animals, set wire cages below your plantings and bury perimeter fences at least 18 inches deep in the soil. Or try trapping. A variety of humane and live traps is available for both burrowing and aboveground pests. You can even use traps to attract snails and slugs, using beer as the bait. Once caught in a low saucer of beer, the mollusks drown or can be collected and destroyed.