This was not a good vegetable gardening year for me. I have been continually out-smarted by a groundhog who ate everything - peas, beets, lettuce, chard, kale, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes... he even climbed into my peach tree. He's huge!
I'm in the process of repairing my fencing and, in the meantime, I'm doing my fall gardening in containers near the house. I can't grow as much as I'd like, but I'll eek out a snack or two. Don't let this breezy season go to waste. There are plenty of vegetables you can grow in the fall.
Photo: © Marie Iannotti
Comments
I feel your pain. It’s hard for me to imagine that an animal with a brain the size of a walnut could outsmart me so regularly. Last year, I felt as if I was reliving the Caddyshack movie.
The problem is that there isn’t usually just one living nearby. With an elaborate fencing system, one step short of electrifying it, around my vegetable garden and a Havaheart trap, I was able to deter the varmint. They have a voracious appetite and if it’s organic, they feel as if they are dining at the Whole Foods buffet. I tried everything a google search would reveal for 5 years – fox urine, sonic blasters, setting the radio on an all talk station near its home, etc. I finally hit upon using deer fencing that flapped slightly over the wire fencing, sort of like an arbor. Every time the whistle pig, got to the flap it fell backwards out of the veg garden because the deer fence wasn’t sturdy enough to hold its weight. Bringing the plants close to the house won’t help. I’ve had them walk up my back steps to eat broccoli.
I use the flap idea too. One year the groundhog fell into the garden and crushed several plants before eating his way out.
My problem right now is I didn’t bury the fence deep enough. That’s on the schedule for this month.
I think I have a front yard groundhog and a back yard one. A trapper told me that groundhogs tend to be solitary animals, but if you get rid of one, another one will move into the tunnel. And they will visit your yard for a while, move on to a neighbor who has more things growing and then come back to yours, when your plants grow back. They really are hard to combat.