As a gardener there’s always something that wants to eat your veggies. My friend, LeAna, has experience with just about everything. Over the years shes matched wits with deer (lots of them), raccoons, skunks, pheasants (eating sprouted corn), turkeys and her husband is a champion pocket gopher getter. This year its birds.

Before the corn was fully ripe, blackbirds flew in in large flocks and started hitting the ears. As a remedy, she covered 150 ears of corn with baggies. Now thats dedication! That also demonstrates how much we cherish our fresh sweet corn in Montana. It worked, though. She said after she covered the corn, the birds left it alone.

Kids Tearing Up the Garden

I think this time of year we all become a little more possessive of the crops weve worked so hard to keep alive during the summer. A few weeks ago we had our first instance of vandalism in one of the community gardens. It was a group of 8-11 year old boys who were snapping off corn, smashing squash, pulling carrots that sort of thing. One of our gardeners caught the boys green-handed, and followed them home. She called the police who filed a report, and did his best to explain the situation to the boys and their parents.

It was a volatile situation for awhile I had some gardeners calling for a public flogging while another wanted to listen to their feelings and give them a lollipop. Since there are consequences to their actions, without bringing out the cane, I talked to the parents, and they agreed to have their boys (and maybe a few of the others who were simply lucky enough not to be caught on this particular evening) help with the fall cleanup and apologize to those they hurt.

Preventing Birds and other Vandals in the Garden

The problem is what to do about it in the future. We offered the parents to have the kids join us next season in a plot of their own. I figured we could team them up with a couple of Master Gardeners, and maybe by having a bit of ownership in the project there would be fewer problems.

Several people requested we erect a fence around the garden. I dont think this is a possibility at this time due to the size of the garden and subsequent cost of the fence. Plus, I dont know whether it would help. If someone with nefarious intent wants to smash some pumpkins, I doubt if itll keep them out without extreme measures (such as razor wire).

I would love to set up the game camera if I knew there was a way we could secure it without having someone tear it up or take it. I think this is going to be a continual challenge for us, and so were going to have to be creative on how to deal with it. Hmmm. I know a guy whos working on a laser fence to deter deer I wonder how that works on children!