The major pests in my garden aren’t insects or diseases, which are mostly kept in check by building biodiversity and other organic methods – they’re animals. Some are native, like possums, parrots and bandicoots, others are introduced, such as hares and rabbits. All have their own appetite for destruction.
Possums wreak havoc in the vegie garden. Silverbeet seems to be a special favourite, but few leafy plants are spared. In some years they even develop a taste for rhubarb, eating it down to the ground despite the fact that’s it’s supposed to be poisonous to mammals. Bandicoots aren’t quite as bad, but if they do get into the vegie patch they dig up seedlings in search of worms.
Parrots are lovely additions to the garden, but some have an insatiable desire to bite chunks out of every piece of ripening fruit they can get their beaks into. King parrots are the worst offenders at my place. They’ve become semi tame and are mostly unafraid of people, even rabid gardeners clapping their hands loudly and yelling threats of taxidermy.
Rabbits and hares are notorious pests for a reason. If they find a way into the vegie patch they’re even more destructive than possums, but it’s the damage they do to young fruit trees that really bothers me. They have a special preference for apples and love to chew the bark, especially during winter when the tree draws sugars back into the trunk.
Do I sound frustrated? Too flipping right I am! For years the garden was mostly pest free. Now, the animals have learnt that if they want a decent feed, it pays to hop or fly over to Thistlebrook – it’s a land overflowing with milk and honey!
If the animals were able to share, then good and well, but as cute as a possum or a rabbit appears, they’re not human-like characters from a children’s picture book and if my family is to eat, they need to be controlled. In this regard I have three options: eradication – killing the animals through various means; removal – trapping and relocating; or exclusion – preventing the animals from accessing the plants in the first place.
Before all the animal rights people get their knickers in a knot, I’m not about to reach for a shotgun. Besides the fact that I’d rather not kill any living entity, native animals are protected by law (for good reason), and I’m not quite hungry enough to kill rabbits and hares just yet. Trapping and relocating is a bit useless. Remove a native animal, create a vacuum, and nature will fill it up again. This leaves exclusion. To me this is the only feasible way of creating some kind of harmony between animals and a food producing gardener.
To some extent, fencing works very well. Our boundary is nearly all fenced in chicken wire, which keeps most of the hares and rabbits out, and the picket fence around the vegie patch does a sound job of keeping the blighters away from my precious crops. I know where some gaps are, however, and I need to make it a priority to block them up. Possums simply use timber fences as a thoroughfare, but netting fences, particularly those that are floppy at the top, tend to discourage them.
Electric fencing is brilliant if you can get it to work properly. I’ve been caught a couple of times where energisers have failed and the pests have simply pushed under what I believed was a hot wire. With better quality gear though, it’s very effective. For small areas, a couple of low wires is sufficient to keep the bunnies at bay.
Birds are a trickier proposition. Netting is one possibility, but it’s simply too difficult to work with nets directly thrown over a tree without some kind of supporting frame. I know of a few gardeners who’ve netted their entire orchard with good success, but this is beyond the budget of many. Exclusion bags are a cheap, effective option. These can be made at home or purchased from a company such as Green Harvest, and come in a range of materials including waxed paper, cloth, gauze, and flyscreen. The lighter materials protect the ripening fruit from fruit fly, but they won’t stop a hungry bird or possum. The heavier materials will.
As for bird scarers, chilli sprays and other home remedies, forget about it. They might work for a while, but animals are creatures of habit – once they get used to something, they’ll simply ignore it. But as my favourite poet Robert Frost wisely wrote, “good fences make good neighbours”. This just as true for our animal friends as it is for people.
First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 10th December 2011. Photo by Doug Beckers via flickr.com
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I’ve recently constructed a raised vegetable garden and my major ‘pests’ are possums, king parrots, and to my dismay native bush rats. I thought I had the birds and possums covered, but living next to the national park I have had unexpected visitors and have to cope with them also. I have netted my garden completely (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dougbeckers/6293599787/in/set-72157628249241791) and I’ll wait until the tomatoes are ripe to see if I have excluded the ravenous birds.