Dealing with Animals in Your Organic Garden - Garden Pest Tip

by Mort Mather

A neighbor stopped by last week to ask if I knew a herd of deer crossed the road coming out of my garden every morning about 2 AM when he was getting home from work. I said yes, they had been trampling my garden. After a bit of thought I asked how recently he had seen them. Just last night, half a dozen of them.

That was news because there haven't been any fresh tracks in the garden since I put up the electric fence.

I need to go back a bit. First, I believe that wild animals can be trained but my experimentation has been limited. I can never be sure that what I do has made the difference or if the animal changed its pattern for some other reason. Deer have annual patterns, it seems. It took them years to find my asparagus patch, for example, but once they found it late in my harvest season fortunately, they came back every year about the same time. Every fall I can count on them to raise havoc with whatever is growing after the first frost-lettuce, kale, Brussels sprouts, cabbage. Last year I anticipated their interest and put up an electric fence at deer-nose-height. No damage last fall.