I have planted my last garden.
Unless, there is a cage around and over it. By this fall, that will happen. A backyard gardener faces many obstacles. A deer can level a garden, decimate it. Likewise a single groundhog. I have had both and no longer have that problem, but I do have squirrels and they can be disruptive and extremely destructive to a garden. This summer, they have picked off my tomatoes one-by-one just as they began to ripen and frequently I will find a discarded green tomato in the yard with one bitemark. They don’t really like tomatoes, the pick them out of meanness. I had 2 watermelons on the vine and they gnawed through one of them. I brake for animals crossing the road, but if I see a squirrel, I will step on the gas, then back up in case I didn’t finish the job.
Another thing they do that screws up my garden comes in spring after I plow, then sew seeds. I have short rows so I try to plan how many plants I may have – like maybe 6 okra plants in a row. But as the seedlings appear, and often before, the damned squirrels dig them up just for the hell of it. That puts new plants several weeks behind if the squirrels don’t dig up the second planting.
I have arranged with our handyman for a completely enclosed garden, top and sides, and reinforced near the bottom so rabbits can’t squeeze through.
Nancy has a cage for her patio garden and whatever the small area produces, we harvest. Except for chipmunks squeezing through the small wire holes and eating her strawberries, we have not lost a single plant or vegetable to squirrels or other animals.
Now that I will have stopped deer, rabbits, squirrels and groundhogs, the only things I have to worry about as a backyard gardener are droughts, beetles, flooding, aphids, plant rot, squash bores and weeds. Unfortunately, there is no fence for that.