A Dozen Garden Pests Tactics for the Truly Lazy Green Gardeners

The family cat prowling the garden will control its population of chipmunks, mice, and young rabbits.

Cut plastic gallon milk jugs in half lengthwise. Punch a hole in the bottom to let out rain. Set ripening melons in these contraptions. They help prevent rot and keep mice and shrews from nibbling on the melons.

Are rodents feasting on your tulip bulbs? Plant daffodils instead. Their bulbs are bitter, so mice and chipmunks won’t eat them.

If you’re determined to have tulips, interplant with Frittilaria imperialis bulbs. The two- to three-foot tall plants have pendulous red, orange, or yellow blooms. They exude a skunk-like odor that repels rodents and moles.

Birdhouse plan

Why should you do all the hard work of getting rid of unwanted insects? Get some help on the job. Make a few birdhouses like this one, place them near the garden, and the birds will pitch in hungrily.

A house wren feeds 500 bugs and caterpillars to her babies in one afternoon; a brown thrasher consumes thousands of bugs a day. Spot some simple bird baths here and there in your garden as enticement to feathered helpers. Fill large terra cotta saucers, the ones made for placing under flower pots, with water, and set on logs turned on end.

Save fur from brushing and grooming your dog. Scatter it in the garden. It deters nibblers and also adds nitrogen to the soil as it decomposes. No dog? Ask the local pet-grooming operation to save fur for you, or try human hair from the barbershop.

Birds are welcome if they’re eating the bugs, but do you want them to snitch your berries? Actually, I think it’s rather fun to share my raspberries. I enjoy having the catbird perch atop a bean pole, tail switching, emitting scolding sounds as I pick her red jewels. There are always enough berries left for me. If your generosity doesn’t match mine, cover your berry bushes and strawberry beds with used tobacco netting as the fruit begins to ripen. It can be easily lifted when you want to harvest.

A clever gardener replaces the windows in her portable cold frames with screens and sets them over ripening strawberry plants to keep out the birds.

Plant for the birds, and they’ll be less likely to raid cultivated berries. They prefer the tartness of wild fruit, so nurture red and black chokeberry, barberry, wild honeysuckle, autumn olive, Russian olive, mountain ash, staghorn sumac, and mulberry

“One year, the birds took one peck out of each ripening tomato and then it would rot. It infuriated me,” explains a Massachusetts gardener who now takes some time to “foil” the birds. She and her husband have drilled a hole through the top of each six-foot high tomato stake, and after the stakes are in the ground, they thread twine loosely from stake to stake. Halfway between stakes, they hang four-inch diameter aluminum pie plates. The pie plates must be put up at the same time the tomatoes are planted, not after the birds start eating.

Keep ravenous crows from pulling up newly planted corn. Scatter crow repellent, available at feed stores, on the bed, or mulch loosely with hay after seeding.

Or take a tip from Jim Brady. He realized that his corn growing was for the birds — they got every seedling that came up. This year he’s tried something different. He laid down a three-foot wide strip of black plastic, cut holes in it, then planted the corn through the holes. The birds stayed away from the corn. “They just didn’t like walking on that plastic,” is his explanation. He’s getting a couple of other benefits from the plastic. The soil is warmer, which speeds the growth of the corn, and there’s no weeding, which he misses not one bit.

Coons and Corn

Raccoons have an unmatched affinity for ripening corn. I talked with only one gardener who had no problem with raccoon-ravaged sweet corn. His garden is bordered by a pasture. The cows keep the grass cropped and coons and woodchucks won’t cross the large, open expanse to raid the corn.

Most of us aren’t that lucky. We don’t feel like lazy gardeners when all of our work goes to feeding raccoons, squirrels, and woodchucks. Maybe one, or a combination of, these antidotes for varmints in the corn patch will work for you:

• Put a strand or two of electric fencing around the garden, one six inches above the ground, the other fifteen inches high.
• Cover almost-ripe ears with a paper bag and secure with a twistem.

Keep a transistor radio playing at night in the corn patch. Stick it in a plastic bag as protection against rain.

Interplant corn with large-leaved pumpkins and squash. Sup‑
posedly raccoons and squirrels don’t like to walk on the leaves.

Surround early corn with a double row of late corn. Hope the raccoons will think none of the patch is yet ripe, while you feast on the early harvest.

Add a floppy overhang of chicken wire, about two feet wide, to the top of your garden fence. It won’t support the weight of animals that try to climb over.

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