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.
Rodents – from mice to rabbits – are serious garden pests due to the damage they cause and the diseases and parasites they carry.
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.
Photo Credit: ©2002 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
Snails, slugs and other mollusks eat foliage by night and hide by day in dark, moist areas.
Photo Credit: ©2002 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
Protect your fruit from berry hungry birds. (They can dine on insects instead.)
Photo Credit: ©2002 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard
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.
If these techniques aren’t your first methods of choice, there are other control approaches you can try, including scaring them away with environmentally friendly deterrents, planting pest-resistant plants and avoiding the use of certain products known to attract rodents.
Here’s a quick chart of some common animal-pest symptoms, causes and cures that might help solve (or at least reduce) your problem:
Symptom: Ripe and half-ripened fruit and berries bear numerous cuts and holes. Partially eaten produce covers the ground, accompanied by bird droppings.
Cause: Birds. (Look for songbirds, crows and other fruit-eating species that forage on or near the ground.)
Remedies: Mount silver-foil streamers over vegetables and berries. Cover beds with floating row covers or netting as fruit and berries begin to ripen. Hang – and frequently move – owl and hawk silhouette decoys.
Symptom: Uprooted plants. Foliage eaten to ground level. Bulbs and roots eaten, leaving dying stalks and leaves.
Cause: Deer and rodents. (Look for hoof and paw prints, burrows, mounds and/or tunnels.)
Remedies: Plant resistant plants. Avoid using products that contain bonemeal and fish emulsion. Don’t add oils, fats or protein (including meat, bones, pasta, rice or dairy products) to the compost pile. Try motion-activated deterrents. Install fence barriers or cages when planting, including beneath-soil barriers. Trap and remove rodents.
Symptom: Chewed leaves and blossoms; silvery mucus trails.
Cause: Slugs and snails. (After dark, look for shelled and unshelled mollusks on foliage and/or soil.)
Remedies: Remove leaf litter, which is used as a mollusk hiding place. Handpick pests after dark. Use copper foil barriers around beds or containers. Dust with diatomaceous earth. Use beer-filled traps. Try nontoxic baits that contain iron phosphate, or use bait gel.
