5 Ways to STOP Animals EATING or DESTROYING Your Food Garden

[Mandy Onderwater]

What animals tend to run rampage in your garden, and how do you combat them?

My potted garden always fights canetoads and frogs that love to dig into the soil. I 'combat' it by keeping my plants off of the ground when I can. It really minimizes the chances of them digging in my pots.

 

[DThille]

I need to get better at exclusion. Snowshoe hares and whitetail deer are nemesis to me. This year something seems to like the red onions, but not the white nor Spanish. In the city, cottontail rabbits and squirrels are the enemy. Squirrels will take a bite or two out of a green tomato removed from the plant and ruin it...sigh. They also go after peppers...I don't think they came back for a second round of the hot pepper a year or two ago. We do have bird netting over our raised beds in the city - the house sparrows were doing a lot of damage to the lettuce in the spring. My main peeve there is that it makes it very difficult to do something in the garden.

Still working on better solutions for the country. Those predatory bird kites are interesting, but we do like seeing the birds around the country place. Some of them eat mosquitoes so I don't want to scare them off. I think exclusion is our best bet. Some of the birds will go after berries and cherries, but I'm willing to share some of those so long as the entire crop isn't lost.

 

[Mandy Onderwater]

I have heard that deer have a heightened sense of smell and may dislike the scent of certain plants (like garlic and oregano). Perhaps growing "repelling" plants in your garden might help minimize deer damage. Others might suggerst spices or deer nets.

I believe that sprinkling chilli seeds/flakes around the garden can help repel most mammals. Birds (supposedly) don't have a pain receptor to spice so they would still visit.

 

[Jason890]

For me cockatoos give the nut trees a caning
The odd kookaburra pinches a few worms and grubs I think always see them in the patch it doesn’t really bother me that much
Now fruit flies on the other hand are painful

 

[Mandy Onderwater]

For me cockatoos give the nut trees a caning
The odd kookaburra pinches a few worms and grubs I think always see them in the patch it doesn’t really bother me that much
Now fruit flies on the other hand are painful

I'm actually having flies in my indoor plants now... I'm trying to figure out how to fix and avoid that

 

[DThille]

If they are actually fungus gnats rather fruit flies letting the top of the soil of your plants dry out can disrupt their life cycle. Also yellow sticky traps can catch them.

As for deer, I've heard those things too...others have had mixed results and some of those ideas typically require re-application after rainfall. Now, if we take the dog out more often and let him roll around in / near the garden, that would be a big deterrent. We may simply need to decide what we want to protect and put up appropriate fencing. A local cidery uses two strands of electric fencing...that keeps the deer out of their apples and the lower strand deters rabbits too.