Keeping fuzzy pests out of your garden
May 27, 2016Fuzzy pests come in all shapes and sizes
Are you plagued by birds, voles, moles, bunnies, squirrels, deer or woodchucks? Do you get to actually get to eat the vegetables from your garden or smell your flowers? No matter what kind of leaf babies you plant there will always be fuzzy pests that want to take a bite of some of them. Here are our top strategies.
Wait. Do you even garden?
With a great garden comes great responsibility. Or are those superpowers, we get confused sometimes. Anyway, we love our garden… a lot… Right now the pests are getting their time in and we’re doing what everybody else does to manage them. Lately, we’ve been thinking about our hobby and what would happen if we had to move to an area where we couldn’t raise veggies or beautiful flowers. No, not like a cave, there’s still stuff that grows in the dark… like mushrooms… We were thinking more of a small footprint city, or townhouse where allotments are hard to come by. We’re lucky to be friends with the team over at 
. Alfrea.com is starting up a new service to help people that don’t have gardens find them, and to help people that have gardens, but not enough time or resources find people to help them. We really can’t wait to see their service launch this June!
Physical barriers
Fences and chicken wire are a great way to keep your veggies safe. We found a great article from Shawna Coronado on Militant Gardening. It’s a great article and you should totally read it. Shawna is a good writer. Her blog is both beautiful an informative. To sum up her article – only you can decide if you want your leafbabies to live in a demilitarized zone.
Predators
Thinking about a big bird carrying off a chipmunk can be a little unsettling, but, it’s the circle of life. Wouldn’t it just be awesome to have your garden or allotment patrolled by squadrons of flying monkeys with burlap sacks ready to scoop up any of those little leaf eating menaces?! Well maybe not that extreme, but a great way to frighten off fuzzy garden pests naturally is by building an owl house. Attracting an owl to your garden is a safe and natural way of controlling the smaller animals, like chipmunks and mice. Garden Know How has a great article on attracting owls to your garden. Failing that, just scatter a few cardboard boxes around and for whatever reason cats will start occupying them.
The nuclear option
We’re not even going to try and figure out the logistics of trying to trap and re-home these things. Honestly, our garden pest control protocol does not include a relocation package. But if one more leafbaby is innocently murdered before its prime…Ahem… Once you’ve tried everything else and the fuzzy pests are still getting you down, there are only a few other options. The bottle most people reach for is a repellent like Liquid fence. Look, it reeks, but, it’s safe and it works. Sure it smells like the zombie apocalypse on a hot June day but what’s worse, cucumbers that smell bad or no cucumbers? A patio that smells like the concentrated morning dew of a hundred mountain lion’s with urinary tract infections or squirrels and chipmunks dumping your planters and digging out your annuals…
Okay okay, it’s not THAT bad (yes it is). The smell does fade after a few hours and washes off in the rain and your sink, so your fruits and veggies won’t taste like that horrific odor belched from the bowels of hell
Or you could just spend some quality time with your leafbabies
Spending time walking around the garden is actually our favorite and most rewarding way to keep the fuzzy pests away. They don’t seem to like people so much and while you’re our enjoying the “fruits” of your labor the fuzzy pests are staying away… Talk about a win win.
