Critters can ravage a garden

By Bev Johnson | The Daily Journal

Published Saturday, July 5, 2008

Most gardeners will tolerate bugs, but Bugs Bunny makes them practically froth at the mouth. Rabbits trim shrub right down to the soil line in the spring or the snow line in the winter.

They can devastate a vegetable garden. They love peas and beans, but, like kids, leave spinach alone.

They will not usually eat iris, peonies, astilbes, ferns, foxglove or ornamental grasses. They will eat red salvia, but not the blue variety, tall sedum but not the creeping types.

During the winter, a cylinder of one-fourth inch mesh hardware cloth will fence them out of shrubs, vines and small trees. Fencing the garden in the spring will do the same thing.

A Michigan state publication recommends surrounding the garden with 36 inch chicken wire attached to stakes.

Bend the bottom six inches out along the ground to prevent the little monsters from digging under the fence.

If you bend the top 6 inches outward, you can prevent some of the other climbing critters from getting a free lunch.

The University of Minnesota Extension polled a bunch of Master Gardeners on their methods of bunny protection. Here are a few of their suggestions.

Provide alternate feed; corn and sunflower seeds on the ground. They will also eat the sprouted bird seed that falls to the ground.

Silvery hologram pinwheels stuck around the garden. Spun-bonded floating row cover over the crops for a few weeks.

Pepper spray didn't seem to work for many gardeners. Dried blood works but must be applied after each rain.

Keep it off plants as it is 14 percent nitrogen and can burn them.

A roaming cat works, but it also will eat small birds, a no-no for many of us.

One sure fire repellent is used cat litter. Teresa Jaskiewicz at the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center swears by it.

The reason it works is that the pest doesn't know how big that cat really is and cats are predators of most rodents.

The litter doesn't even have to be fresh to work. Just put it at the entrance of the critter's hole in the ground or sprinkle it around the garden or shrub you want to protect.

If you have a pest digging up the plants in pots, buy a bag of chicken grit and sprinkle that on the surface of the pot.

A one-inch layer should do it. It is made from ground granite and consists of very sharp small rocks. This may deter cats using flower beds for a litter box, too.

Large pine cones covering the soil will also send them running. The spines hurt their tender pads. It's not that gardeners hate small animals, we just hate the damage they do.

Now is the time to thin your apples to one to two per bunch and bag them.

Bev Johnson is a master gardener for West Otter Tail County.