Our vegetable garden already has a 7-foot-tall fence around it to discourage wandering deer and moose from eating or trampling everything. We have some planting beds that are lined with hardware cloth sides and bottoms to keep voles from tunneling in and eating beloved bulbs and plant roots. Even though the garden looks like Alcatraz – minus the water view – these critters still manage to find a way to eat or destroy many of our plants.
Tomato plants located outside the fence have never been harmed, but this year the deer decided to eat the tops off several of them. So long to my dream of early Sungold and Black Krim tomatoes. We started those plants in February, along with some eggplants that have been systematically chewed off at the roots by voles. Every day another plant bites the dust – or gets bitten. What’s a gardener to do?
There are a lot of home remedies that have been shown to keep deer away. Human hair can be hung around the garden in sachets made from old pantyhose. Add mothballs or peppercorns to the sachets to make them extra repulsive. Dog hair is equally effective and has the added benefit of increasing in potency after a rain. Nothing like the odor of a wet dog to repel deer, rabbits and the in-laws. Some gardeners swear that hanging soap – especially Irish Spring – around the yard or in fruit trees has kept their yards deer-free and fresh smelling. I have successfully used those smelly dryer sheets as a repellant by tying them around the branches of blueberry bushes, hydrangeas, and apple trees at deer nose level. They also don’t need replacing after a rainfall since they smell even stronger when wet.
Voles are another matter. These prolific little burrowing mice eat anything in their paths. It is estimated that one vole eats 20 pounds of plant material a year! One female can have up to 15 litters of one to 10 babies each during her 16-month life span, adding as many as 100 new voles to the garden each year. Populations are cyclical, and after a few years respite, it looks like this year they are on the upswing again.
I have had some luck in the past catching them using mousetraps baited with peanut butter. We place the traps near the entrance to a tunnel and cover it with a black nursery pot. This keeps squirrels, birds and the cat from getting snapped. Our friend Ed swears by Juicy-Fruit gum. He places pieces of it in their holes and says that it kills them by gumming up their insides. Worth a try. Tilling destroys their burrows and runways, but we ditched the tiller long ago when we switched to raised beds.
D-con is supposed to work, but I hesitate to use it in the garden. Hot pepper is said to deter them, so I’m going to sprinkle some cayenne around the remaining eggplants. Maybe the plants will draw some of it up and we’ll have developed the first spicy eggplants! Cats are supposed to be a good vole-deterrent, but our cat is focused on the chipmunks. He must have some kind of agreement with the voles. Ferret odor is said to put the fear of God into small critters. If you have a friend with one of these as a pet see if you can get me some ferret-smelling bedding from them to place around the garden.
If deer and voles aren’t a problem for you just wait, there are other animal pests out there waiting to lunch at the delicious salad bar you have created for them in your backyard.
Raccoons, woodchucks, porcupines, rabbits – we have a flock of turkeys that loves to fly over the fence and take dust baths in the newly seeded beds. This is all part of the fun we call gardening in New Hampshire!
I guess it could be worse, if you lived out west you could be dealing with migrating elk or buffalo, and in Florida you could be up to your asters in alligators!