Putting Up Walls

May 31, 2013

So I alluded to critter issues here.

Months ago, my garden team leader person mentioned in an email about filling woodchuck holes.  I honestly thought nothing of it.

Then around the first of June, I was in the garden and saw a very large woodchuck meandering across the back (my plot is towards the front) and exiting out a hole.  I was a little freaked out.  I thought they were small.  But they are not.  From a distance, to me, it looked like a beaver.

Over the last few weeks I have had some loss of plants due to something eating them.  While I am not sure it was woodchucks, I decided to follow suite of some of the more seasoned community gardeners.

I put up a fence.

Now for several reasons, I did not want this to happen.  First, it actually shrinks my already very small plot down by about 6" on all sides.  That sucks!  Second, it's a hassle.  It's fine to get in and out of but watering is going to get tricky when my tomato plants grow taller.  An amendment will likely need to be made to the current design.  And third, it's an added expense for a new hobby that has no guarantees of actually producing anything edible.

But about half the plots have some sort of fence system in place.  And my theory, albeit not exactly super neighborly, is that if we can't keep critters out of the garden totally, perhaps they will avoid my little allotment in favor of an easier to get to, non-fenced in allotment.  (read: go eat someone else's stuff)

Since putting it up, I've actually had at least one more cauliflower causality.  It was my last little plant that I started from seed the first week in March.  MARCH.  I tended those plants for three months.  And in one night....chop chop it was over.  So the fence is not fool-proof.  But it's up so let's hope my un-neighborly theory pans out.