How to Keep Birds and Varmints Out of Your Organic Garden

After pouring your heart and soul into creating your organic garden and nurturing each plant like it was your child, the prospect of feeding the local animals instead of harvesting the bounty yourself is extremely upsetting. The effort you put into this garden is comparable to an artist painstakingly creating his art, so the disrespect and disregard of disrupting this process must be stopped. You can of course go the distance and substantial expense and inconvenience of building a screen frame over and around your garden, install automatic sensors that detect any movement and turn on lights, sprinklers or alarms, or an eight-foot steel mesh fence with barbed wire such as you'd find on a prison. But the obvious thing is to consider a plan that is simple, easy, inexpensive, and that you can do yourself-or else raise a couple of large outdoor dogs to guard your garden the old fashioned but highly effective way.

Things You'll Need

• 4-foot metal stakes
• Coil of stainless steel wire
• Rabbit fencing (3-foot)
• Battery or AC outlet with heavy extension cord
• Electric fence regulator
• Wooden poles (8 to 10-foot)
• Plastic wire fittings
• Bird netting
• Holographic ribbon (1 roll)
• Capsicum spray (nontoxic)
• Large plastic tub
• Small piece of plywood
• Cement blocks (half dozen)
• Small sledge
• Screwdriver
• Twist ties (garden variety)
• Wire cutters
• Half-inch wire clamps
• 10-foot length of half-inch rebar cut in half
• 6 10-inch aluminum pie pans
• Ball of kite string (or stronger)

Instructions

Decide

1. Make a conscious decision to protect your garden and assess which breeds of wildlife are creating the problems. More than likely you will have a deer problem almost anywhere in the United States, and they are probably the worst. Burrowing animals aren't usually a concern if you've planned and prepared your garden properly. Most people underestimate the squirrel problem, and birds often take the rap for squirrels. Depending on the produce you are growing, birds, especially crows, can be a problem you need to address. Rabbits are also prevalent, but easy to contain.

2. Decide whether you will attempt to power your electric fence with a battery or AC power cord. The battery is always safer and probably the only practical choice unless your garden is really close to a power outlet and you are willing to have a live power line running across your yard all summer. The disadvantage of using a battery-operated system is that you will have to charge the battery every couple of weeks if you run the system only at night, so you should probably plan on purchasing a battery charger as well.

3. Purchase the supply list from your favorite garden store. Usually you can find everything in one place. All the electric fence supplies should definitely be purchased in the same store.

4. First, install the electric fence. This is absolutely necessary to keep deer out of your garden. Hammer in the metal stakes every eight feet, making sure that they are at least a foot deep in the soil. Place two of the stakes about 3½ feet apart to serve as a gate. Save the plastic wire knobs for a little later.

5. Unwrap the rabbit fence and set the open end against one of the metal stakes making up the gate. Securely tie the fence in 3 places onto the stake using 4 to 6-inch lengths of the stainless steel wire. Make sure the fence tightly snugs the ground at every point all around the garden. Cut the fence so that it extends 1 to 2 feet past the far stake at the gateway. The extra length can be curled around the far stake and used as a gate when needed.

6. Decide where you will place the regulator and then place the blocks with the hollow openings to the side to form a platform. Lay the piece of plywood flat on top of this platform (cut the plywood to fit approximately). Place the regulator on top of the wood in the middle (with the battery beside it if you are using a battery to power it).

7. Pound each of the 2 pieces of rebar deep into the ground about 10 feet from each other with only about 1 foot left above the ground. Choose a low spot for optimal ground moisture, but make it convenient to the regulator because you will be running a ground wire from each of them back to the regulator, and you need to route them so that animals and people don't trip over the wires. Use the wire clamps on the rebar to secure the wire.

8. Install the plastic wire fittings on every stake with 2 fittings on the stake closest to the regulator. Then run wire from the regulator through the fittings all around the garden in one direction, terminating it on the second fitting on the stake closest to the regulator without completing the circuit. This will complete the electrical fence installation and serve to prevent deer from entering your garden better than anything else you can do economically.

9. Place the plastic tub upside down over the regulator to protect it from sun, dust and rain with a cement block on top to hold it in place during storms and gusty days.

10. Measure or determine the length and width of the netting you have purchased and then pound the long wooden poles into the garden soil at each corner of the area you wish to protect. You may also need to install more poles midway between the corners depending on how long your dimensions are in your garden. A stake every 10 feet is more than enough. Now attach the netting to the top of the poles using the twist ties to form a cover over your plants. You can also add walls the same way, but you probably don't need these and you will find them to be quite inconvenient, especially in terms of the risk effort ratio since birds don't generally cause as much of a problem as many people think.

11. Tie the holographic ribbon to the top of one of the tall posts, then run the ribbon the length of the garden to a post positioned at the opposite end. As you walk, turn the ribbon the same way you twist streamers for party decorations. Tie the other end so that there is only a very slight dip at the lowest point of the ribbon between the posts. Tie as many lengths of ribbon as you dare-the more the better. But one per row is sufficient. You want to create as much visual energy as possible to birds flying over, but it needs to be manageable and easy to take down.

12. Pound 6 of the metal stakes (can be more or less depending on the size of the garden) into the ground as far from plants and fence as possible. Cut lengths of string that won't reach from the top of the stake to the ground or any plant, fence or other post. Now punch a small hole near one edge of each pie pan. Push one end of the string through the hole and tie it to itself around the edge of the pan. Tie (or tape) the other end to the top of the stake. The hanging pie plates will pick up any breeze or light and will scare crows and other birds away. Also, they make noise that bothers any animal when they bang against the stake. If the string is too long, the pie pans will end up wound around whatever they can reach. You will probably still need to unwind them from around the stake occasionally.

13. Spray any sweet vegetable, especially, and possibly, only tomatoes, liberally with the pepper spray. Do not be concerned that it will spoil the taste because it washes off easily and doesn't leave a bad taste. The good news is that squirrels simply cannot tolerate it. Spray both the fruit and the foliage regularly-at least once per week, though subsequent spray applications can be less thorough. Be sure to cover the tomatoes all around, bottom and top.

Tips & Warnings

• Set up your anti-animal measures early in the season before any of the plants begin to bear. Preventing an animal from forming a feeding pattern is much easier than changing it, especially if they really like the pay-off.

• At the end of the growing season, remove all animal deterrents promptly so that the animals won't become accustomed to them during the off season.