Last year, the garden was a place devastation and heart-break. But this didn’t matter as much as it might have, because I spent most of July in Avignon, France, where my play was being shown at the theater festival. After an experience like that, it’s hard to get very upset over the loss of your tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, peppers, lettuce, spinach, and potatoes to a bunch of rodents. Though I did my best.
Ten years ago I built a garden to suit my location. I built 8 to 16 foot long boxes from half-inch plywood. The boxes had hardware cloth (metal netting) on the bottom, so gophers could not get into them. (Early lesson: gophers can go right through chicken wire. It has to be hardware cloth). Chicken wire was secured between the boxes, to keep squirrels from digging in. The sides, and the top, of the entire garden area, were all enclosed in chicken wire. The only critters that could get in were little birds, lizards, frogs, and, occasionally, snakes. But that was all. I used my sheep manure for fertilizer, and grew masses of very green vegetables with great delight and enjoyment.
Then, last year, squirrels, rabbits, and packrats all found their way into the garden. The packrats were first. They have built a nest just outside, in the jungle of volunteer blackberry vines, so I can’t get to it. We put up a camera, and sure enough, little packrats go through the wire like it’s not there. But they didn’t eat everything. They shared tomatoes, they did not eat them all.
No, that was the squirrels. When the squirrels got in, (and I caught two or three at a time in a squirrelinator trap), they ate everything. Not just the cucumbers, but the leaves as well. We never saw another ripe tomato. It was heartbreaking. To a degree.
And I could not find where they were getting in! If they just get in one way, they should leave a path. If there’s a hole, ditto. I finally found where they had chewed their way through the side of the box and in. I closed that up. But they still get in.
The mistake I made was in using the sides of the boxes as part of the external barrier. After ten years of being watered down all summer, the wood has rotted. You can poke your finger through it, if you try.
I am abandoning the old garden, with its holes, and the voracious blackberry plants, and the packrat nest, and building a new one further along the fence. (By further along the fence I mean 30 yards away. One of the many joys of a two-acre yard.) A tree fell down by the corner a couple years ago, so now it will be in full sun all summer long.
I dug four postholes today, for my four corners. Tomorrow I will cement in the posts. They stand eight feet high. My garden will be about sixty square feet. There is lots to be done. I have boxes to build, and lengths and lengths chicken wire to string and wire together But it is satisfying work.
I’m looking ahead to a lot of leafy green vegetables.