Winter ends most gardening. A few cold weather crops remain in protected areas. Most of the garden is cleared and ready for erecting wildlife defenses.
One thing a rural gardener learns early on is that wildlife is persistent. And numerous. And inventive.
Groundhogs
Four or five groundhogs invaded my garden last season. These herbivores are voracious. Although they have preferences, any vegetables will appear on their menu at some time except mints. But I don’t want to only raise basil, mint, monarda and catmint.
These persistent creatures can climb, but prefer to dig under fences. My wildlife defenses will include old roofing tin dug down along the fence lines.
Deer
Every year I seem to have a deer leaping over the fence. The Jerusalem artichokes and greens disappear. Any tomato showing color disappears.
Last year I put up another layer of fencing so increase the height of my garden fence to six feet. This worked except for the gates.
Putting wire across over the gates worked. It also made garden access difficult.
My wildlife defenses include taking all gates up to four feet tall, putting in tall gateposts and stringing wire across starting six inches over my head. Anyone else can duck.
Squirrels, Chipmunks and Pack Rats
These invaders eat greens and tomatoes and peppers. What they don’t eat, they carry off. Either way, the plants and their fruits disappear.
I don’t mind sharing with any of the animals, but they don’t share. They take every last one.
My wildlife defenses include cold frames over the raised beds to protect the greens. These will have hardware screening for the warm seasons and plastic over the late fall and winter. I’m hoping the screening will discourage small herbivores like cabbage moth caterpillars and grasshoppers as well as the furry ones.
Tomatoes and peppers will need wire cages. This will make harvesting difficult unless I can think of a way to make gate access to each one. That will be left for in the spring.
Weeds
The best weed defense I’ve found is covering every bed with cardboard and mulch. This stops most of the unwanted weeds from getting started over the winter which dead nettle, chickweed and wooly mint do.
Winter will be a busy season this year as I put up my wildlife defenses and smother weeds. The payoff will come next year, I hope. However, the invaders will come up with other plans to thwart.
