I encourage gardeners with animal problems to put a fence around the garden. Nothing beats a secure fence for keeping out rabbits, woodchucks, raccoons, dogs, and cats. It even helps to control the traffic of neighborhood kids scooting through the yard.
Get your fence up early, before animal pests make their first forays. Once they get a taste of what’s in your garden they are determined to get back in for extra helpings.
I use fences made of 3-foot-high chicken wire (1- or 11/2-inch mesh), topped by a single strand of electric wire 1 inch above the top. An electric fence is the best way to keep raccoons out of the corn patch. The jolt a raccoon gets when he grabs the electric wire convinces him to try a garden somewhere else. The only time I hitch up the battery and energize the wire is before and during the corn harvest. I run it from late afternoon until early morning.
I like gates that are at least 5 feet wide. It’s easy to get my big work cart through one. And if I ever want to get a vehicle of some kind into the garden, I have an entrance that’s wide enough.
A fence is expensive, but it’s a wise investment. Just think of how much food money you save from a productive garden. It’s easy to grow $500 or more worth of food from a 30 by 40-foot garden. Isn’t the value of a garden worth protecting? If you use good materials and build your fence solidly, it should easily last 10 or 20 years with only a little upkeep each season.
Early spring is a good time for fence-mending. Check around the base of the fence for open spaces where animals can sneak under. Sometimes the freezing and thawing of the ground will raise a few fence posts and open gaps. Drive the posts back into the ground. As the season passes, cut the grass and weeds around the fence. If you let some get tall they can short out the wire strand on top and allow animals a free pass into your garden.
What I’ve learned about animal pests and how to stop them
Rabbit: Black pepper or bloodmeal may chase them out
If you have rabbits in your neighborhood, you have lots of rabbits. They mate several times a year and each litter can have six or seven young ones. You don’t need a calculator to figure that the possibilities are tremendous.
Rabbits like to feed at twilight, but they have no rules. I’ve watched them feeding at dawn and in the middle of the day. They’ll seek out a garden in the spring when their normal food supplies aren’t as plentiful. Rabbit damage can be rough in spring. Just a few bites into your broccoli, lettuce, cabbage, or cauliflower transplants can set them back. And if they nibble the center bud, the plants won’t ever produce. They can do a number on young beans, too.
There are only a few defenses if you don’t have a fence. In a small garden, sprinkle black pepper on your transplants in the evening. Rabbits sniff everything and after a sneezing fit they’ll move on. If you can find their path to the garden, you can scatter some moth crystals along it. Don’t use mothballs; they are dangerous and kids think they are candy. Some folks say if you sprinkle bloodmeal at the edge of the garden and on some plants, rabbits will avoid your garden. I guess if they smell blood they think someone means business. If you tie a dog near the garden, you can usually keep rabbits at bay.
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