Garden Pests

Our garden is coming along beautifully. The radishes are through. I have to admit I left them in the ground to get too big. I really haven't developed a taste for radishes. But everything else is growing like crazy.
However, we are now visited by our most bothersome garden pests. No, not insects, but 4-legged pests.

For the past couple of years, deer have been a huge problem in our garden. They ate all of our Southern peas last year: pintos, Christmas beans, butter beans. This year they are celebrating the early opening of the "All you can eat deer buffet" and have consumed the end of the lettuce and are now after my snap peas. Here's a photo of the nibbled tips of my pea plants. They are pruning the tops of all the other beans and peas out there as well.
We put up a faux fence of twine with bright pink flags on it, but that won't fool them for long. A real fence is in order - I am voting for an electric fence. Easy to install and very effective.






Yesterday afternoon James and I met in the garden - our common after-work get-together during the growing season. He told me feral hogs had gotten into the garden and destroyed the corn. Wild hogs are a huge problem around here. We have been lucky to be outside their preferred range as they can tear up a large area in one night.

After viewing the damage myself I recognized it was not hogs. They would have dug up everything in a huge area. This was the work of armadillos, our worst pest at the nursery. Last year we were relatively successful trapping and relocating armadillos. I think we caught 9 in all. But there are many more in the area. I don't think an electric fence will keep them out.