Don't Fence Me In

A never-ending menace to gardening is the plethora of feral free-loaders who wait in the wings to invade and behave as if it is their royal right to consume your hard-fought edibles for themselves. Everything and anything from insects (far too many varieties to even attempt to enumerate) to rabbits to deer to voles to fungi to nematodes to bacteria, have competed with us for vegetable harvests. It can be a frustrating experience dealing with all these thieves.

I've written before on this blog about how we try to live with these many menaces, without going toxic and poisoning them (and ourselves a little, to boot). There's a certain degree of vegetable damage that we've learned to accept—sort of like a tax grudgingly paid to the government. There are also many nonviolent methods a gardener can use, to discourage purloiners or to lessen their damage. A gardener can never let down the guard, however, as some of these critters can quickly multiply and overwhelm you.

Of the larger-size thieves, deer have blessedly been one of our minor problems. Unlike our neighbors, we've not had to install tall fences, or electric shock mechanisms, or implement other major defenses. I believe that our free-roaming dogs who love to chase deer are our biggest deterrent. Luckily we live in a very rural location in which our dogs can roam without infringing on neighbors.

Now and then an invader gets the upper hand, however, and we struggle to control the damage. This year the beets and Swiss chard—just as they were at a succulent two-inch height—got nipped off at soil level by some critter bigger than a beetle, yet was too small to leave behind telltale tracks. Rabbit? Chipmunk? Weasel? Couldn't be voles—they sneak in from underground and drag the plant down into their subterranean lair, to chow down at their leisure. We lost our first round of chard and beet plantings to the mystery thief.

Later on, while picking beans, my wife discovered the identity of our invader. And what an audacious little critter! Hunkered down in the bean patch mulch was a rabbit's nest, from which momma and three babies made a dash for safety! Attracted by the uproar, our dog went on the chase. He caught one baby, and we flinched at its squeals, feeling bad about its death, while at the same time recognizing that the dog was just following nature's urge. We'd rather repel critters than kill them, but when they cross a certain line, more drastic measures may be in order.

We soon retired for the night, leaving the dog on night patrol around the garden, hoping that what remained of the rabbit family was still heading over the far ridge. (My major ire was directed at our cat, who is supposed to take on night patrol duties, fending off rabbits and their rodent cousins. What's he been doing all night—dancing to the light of the moon?)

Just after dawn the next morning, we heard occasional canine yips coming from the direction of the garden. Was the dog fending off a threatened return of the rabbits? Was he celebrating another catch? His insistent yipping drew me from my cozy bed. Shuffling through the morning dew toward the garden, I saw him trapped inside the garden fence. He’d been calling to us (all night!) to free him. 

How had he managed to trap himself inside, with the gate closed, when we were sure he was outside? Did the rabbits push the gate shut behind him, and then from outside, tease him? Had he gotten so excited about catching more rabbits that he managed to leap the fence to get at the nest? I could find no other place of entry and I doubt that he managed to latch the gate behind himself. How many times I have wished he could speak English and explain himself... he'd have another hilarious story to tell!

Living With Pests—Part 3: Pest Martial Arts

Last time I wrote about studying one’s pestilent adversary. The greatest benefit of doing this is that by learning its ways, the adversary may be disarmed, with no need for battle. That’s the wisdom of the martial artist: with knowledge and skill, the problem may be defused, before it erupts into violence.

How does this martial process play out with garden pests? In one way, it may simply mean learning to live with the pest, while preventing it from multiplying and taking over. Life on the homestead can be a lot more mellow if you allow a little damage, while insuring that things are kept in check. This can often be achieved by making one’s Eden a little less attractive to the nuisances. Let me give a couple of examples. I described in the previous post how dog hair in a vole’s tunnel creates a vole’s worst nightmare: dogs had somehow invaded the tunnels. Run!

Ants can be another formidable foe. Life may seem to be relatively pest free, until one day you find a couple of ants on the kitchen counter. Where there are two ants, there are two thousand. Once inside the house, it may be too late; some form of chemical warfare may be necessary. We have found that they can often be kept outside by sprinkling dried pennyroyal around the door or other possible entry points. Shortly after we moved here, we discovered pennyroyal growing wild. A little investigation informed us that it was an excellent ant repellent. And it is!

The complexities of raising a garden present many excellent opportunities to practice pest martial arts. The garden attracts a jillion kinds of invaders, like worms, insects, beetles, slugs, and leaf rot. My spouse has become a graduate student of ways to combat garden pests. The result is a five-pronged program: (1) use minimal organic insecticides, and only when necessary, (2) plant veggies at different times and places each year (keeping the bugs guessing where dinner is), (3) keep the garden reasonably clean (don’t encourage nesting places or allow egg masses to overwinter), (4) distribute things that bugs detest (e.g., eggshells for cutworms), and (5) go after them by hand. The last technique can be the most effective, but is the bloodiest. Once you learn the lifecycle of a given insect pest, you can severely limit their numbers by performing early morning patrols, when you find them slowly stumbling from sleep. It is then quite easy to quash them (or their eggs) between thumb and forefinger.

Another approach is to learn that there are numerous beneficial insects that will go after your pests. Lady beetles like aphids. The praying mantis eats many bugs. Tachinid flies and parasitic wasps will lay eggs on the caterpillars of certain nasty moths and butterflies. Various solitary hornets and wasps go after bugs. Spiders do a great job of insect predation. These lovely critters can get killed by insecticides, along with the nasty ones. The beneficials are attracted by certain plants—some of them native “weeds” that we once pulled out (but no longer!), some of them certain types of flowers, some by keeping a good mulch layer down. There’s so much to learn!

Living with pests is a balancing act. You never win the war—especially if you choose to make it a war. These pests have been around far longer than we humans and will likely be here after we’ve departed this planet. We like to believe that we are in charge, that we dominate, that we are the inheritors of the earth. That type of thinking is a recipe for failure. We can get along so much more compatibly if we listen and learn, if we let go some of our hubris and learn to live with the pests.

Living With Pests—Part 2: A Pest Education

Our culture offers us quick and facile answers to most of our problems. A physical discomfort is readily overcome by a miraculous medication—so the pharmaceutical industry would have us believe. The typical garden catalog or magazine is filled with ads for products that will rid your vegetable patch of any pest. They’d have you believe it’s assured and final. You don’t need to understand your garden opponent, just identify the critter and buy the antidote.

These quick fixes, however, come with a price: they’re expensive, as well as often toxic and temporary. In fact, the chemical “cure” can be worse than the disease. One can naively poison the soil, or upset the balance of nature (say, by also destroying good bugs), or pave the way for a future counterattack, as your nemesis returns in a more formidable form (some chemicals breed super bugs).

There is a nonviolent, more effective approach to dealing with pests, but it requires time and effort. It begins by reducing one’s ignorance of the adversary. As any martial artist knows, the first step to dealing with an opponent is to study him. The more you know about your antagonist, the more intelligent your response will be.

In reality, every critter that threatens the garden is Mother Nature’s work of art. That’s a good place to begin. It may not be a form of art that I appreciate, when I survey the damage, but that pest has exquisitely evolved to occupy its niche. It deserves to be respected and appreciated for what it is—not reviled as some worthless creature. It helps to begin by shifting one’s attitude and coming to see your opponent as a worthy one.

Once this appreciative mind-set begins to sink in, you can begin to conceive of more sane approaches. The critter I regard as a pest has possibly come to be one because I have upset nature’s balance. Rather than rush to kill it, there may be a way to restore the equilibrium. For example, every bug has its predator. Maybe I simply need to help the predator flourish. I may even have naively eliminated that predator by some previous rash action.

As I begin to understand my garden adversary (oh, the books I have purchased and the Internet searches I have launched!), much more effective responses are discovered. Some of the most effective actions have come to me as I read a minor tidbit about the pest—such as something that it abhors.

An example: Voles used to run through the tunnels that moles built under our garden. They would stop beneath a lush veggie and chew the roots off (later we’d watch the plant shrivel), and sometimes even draw the rest of the young plant into the tunnel below, dining on it at leisure. After months of frustration (and shamelessly attempting some fairly lethal but futile assaults), I read that voles are terrified of dogs and other such carnivores, and that they possess an excellent sense of smell. Aha! Taking that cue, I combed hair from our dog and stuffed bits into all the garden tunnels I could find. Within a couple of weeks all voles had vacated the veggie patch!

More on pest martial arts next time…

Living With Pests—Part 1: The Problem

The closer I get to nature and the more I become aware of its qualities, the more I become in awe of it. But there’s a downside to rubbing shoulders with Ma Nature: dealing with pests. The natural world abounds with fierce competition between species. Only the fittest thrive and survive in this aggressive environment. And humans are the fiercest creatures of all; we have come to occupy and control virtually every corner of the globe. But our dominance is constantly being challenged by all kinds of pests. It’s a never-ending struggle. That’s evolution!

When we humans choose to live in secure urban enclaves, we are rarely face the challenge of directly competing with pests. The pest control folks usually take care of the job for us. They’ve either already swept the area clean or a quick call to them brings in their high-tech weapons. In rural environments, however, we usually face the confrontation on our own—especially when we are trying to garden and grow our own food. The problem is aggravated when you are a neophyte—as we were a couple of decades ago. When starting to garden, you can become overwhelmed by the pesky invaders.

Our move to the woods saw us inhabiting on a plot of land that had contained rather scrawny shrubs and trees. It was healthy, but no flourishing Garden of Eden. We cleared an area for a homesite and a garden, worked hard to enrich the soil, and planted vegetables, flowers, shrubs, and fruit trees. In a couple of years we were on the way towards transforming the sparse patch of land into our version of a luxuriant Eden. Was it any surprise that oodles of critters wanted to join us? I remember being amazed when cucumber beetles, squash bugs, and cabbage moths so quickly zeroed in on our garden. We thought we were so isolated. Where the hell did they come from?

Home-grown tomatoes, beans, corn, and other veggies have been our sustenance and joy over the years, but they are also favored by all sorts of pests—insects, worms, beetles, chewing mammals, molds & mildews, etc. We’ve contended with countless of these nuisances over the years. Some battles we’ve won, some we’ve surrendered, and some are ongoing—with periods of truce, followed by the critters launching and relaunching their assaults, just when we thought we’d prevailed.

We’ve experienced two general types of pests: the irritating and the sinister. The former might be insects that moderately harass a vegetable or may even devastate a less crucial vegetable, such as eggplants. The sinister pest might be deer, who can nibble off damned near the entire garden’s tender young plants, or the bugs that clean out all of the squash. You can afford to be flexible and a little forgivable when irritating pests do damage. But when the sinister invaders attack, your back is against the wall. You have to draw a line in the homestead sand or you may end up famished and fruitless.

The challenge to effective pest resistance is discerning how threatening the invader is and then selecting an appropriate response. Easy answers are rare—despite the ads that chemical companies and high-tech outfitters place in garden catalogs. We’ve found that the best long-term approach is to educate yourself as best you can on the vagaries of your varmint. That’s the topic next time.