Episode 1543: Seg 1 of S10E9 Protecting the garden from bad bugs & animals - The Gardening with Joey and Holly Radio Show

Before we get in the program, Holly, it's time for this week's joke of the week.

Okay.

So how do you fix a broken tomato?

Broken tomato.

You're on this.

Healed it with fur.

No furlife.

No.

Tomato paste.

Okay.

This is Garden Joke is brought to you by rescue.com.

American made rescue products.

Keep your family home.

And you are protected from pests such as wasps.

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That's R-E-S-C-U-E.com.

I really didn't know.

I didn't look.

So I really didn't know.

I think it had some correlation with like a cucumber or something that would be growing next to.

But okay.

You're thinking too hard.

You got to think less.

Think less.

Well, that's never been a problem for me.

As the gardening season begins to develop, we're going to have problems with animals and insects.

And insects in our garden to some variation.

The realization of, oh, bad bugs in the garden.

The realization is 1 to 3% of all known species are considered harmless pests in your garden.

Or benign.

1 to 3% is considered harmful.

1 to 3% harmful.

Yeah, 97% of them are fine.

Right.

Right.

Or have no effect whatsoever.

Right.

Yeah.

I think it's, I think it's, if I were to be, if I was a new gardener, I would, I would think that's good news because.

Or always taught bad bugs, bad bugs.

So you would think, you know, a new gardener going, well, I've got to fight things off of the flights water because of the way I hear people talk.

Right.

Everything is bad and everything's out to kill my point.

But I think it's like, it's kind of like sometimes when you look at people post reviews online.

You're going to hear from the people who have the problems more than the people.

First of all, you take the review and you take half.

You just, if there's 80 reviews, you just take 40 off the top right away because you know those are fake.

Right.

Well, then also like people will, well, threaten people with reviews.

Oh, yeah.

You know, because they, they don't get this free.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm going to leave a bad review.

And so it's like half of that is, is made up too.

And now there's like people who get paid.

Two.

Yeah.

Well, don't necessarily get paid, but they get given the product.

Influenced.

Yeah.

So, but they won't, they do have to disclose that.

But anyway, people aren't being influenced to have bad bugs.

I hope not.

So, yeah.

There are things in which we can do to, when we say bad bugs, that does not mean that we have to eliminate all the bad bugs that 1 to 3% in our garden.

Most times in most situations on most years, you do not have to do a thing about removal or extermination of bugs in your garden.

It is called an equal balance system, ecosystem that's balanced.

And that's, that's where something like the fact that there is 97% good bugs and maybe 3% of bad bugs.

Because a lot of times those good bugs will keep the bad bugs away.

That's the ladybug.

That's the ladybug.

Eating aphids.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Or, isn't, um, don't pray mantises.

Yeah, pray mantises is a big contributor to, um, uh, uh, extermination.

We don't have pray mantises.

We're too far north.

Yeah.

We're too far north.

Back where I'm from in southern Illinois, it was a very common thing to see praying mantises.

Can you see them?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

They're all weird looking.

They're very, if you don't know what they are, they're going to make you step back and make you probably make three inches.

Three inches, yeah.

They're, uh, they're, they're in great benefit to the giver.

Did you really go?

I don't remember, but they're a very beneficial bug in the insect in the garden.

They are.

Um, so anyway, yeah.

So that's, as you always mentioned, there's ego balancing.

And a lot of times that is something as simple as those good bugs, keeping the bad bugs away.

But then there's also things that you can do.

Or there are some natural things like trap plants.

Right.

Now, there are occasions where you get a overabundance of population of aphids or, uh, stink bugs or whatever the case is that a human influence has to be done.

You have to go in there and do something about it.

Trap plants.

This is something you can do even prior to you planting in the garden.

You plan this out of trap plan is a designated sacrificial plant that is planted in the general area of other plants that will typically or

commonly be attacked by a bad bug, but they will attack and do away with the trap plant and lay their eggs there or infestate it versus the plant in which you are trying to produce for consumption.

Right.

Um, so then we can talk about things that you can do that are not spraying chemicals, um, working with your ecosystem.

Like, for example, uh, tomato hornworm.

Yeah.

So tomato hornworm, they, they live on, they, they eat your tomato plants, they're not your plants.

They will be in the soil and then a moth develops and lays the larva and creates the worm.

And so what we've learned is to feed the birds.

And so this is working with your ecosystem and you're like, what, what is feeding the birds have to do with the tomato hornworm is when you put bird food or peanuts or whatever you have.

And little containers that are eye level with those.

Or just a bird feeder in general inside of the garden inside the perimeter.

Yeah.

But closer to the tomato plants could be more helpful.

Those birds are keen.

They're going to start feeding at the bird feeder and they're keen to see they want the juicy stuff.

They want the, yeah, they want like the meaty bug, right?

So they will eat those tomato hornworms and that they're feeding the birds.

You are keeping the hormones on your garden.

It's a nice ecosystem.

If you've got some old seeds, you know, like old seeds, eight, nine years old, we've all got some of them incorporate dump those in the bird feeder too.

Because they're not going to germinate.

Right.

Absolutely.

I mean, just a few years ago, like a half, almost three quarters of a gallon of old seeds.

Like we would collect, you know, all the pumpkin seeds out of a pumpkin or two or three.

We had, you know, a ziplock bags full of old pumpkin seeds that were past viability that we included into bird seeds.

So that's not mean to do with your old seeds and say that throwing them away or putting them in the compost pile.

Now, let's switch gears here and talk about animals.

There is no 100% way of protecting the garden from specific animals.

We're going to target three today.

Groundhog, rabbit and deer.

Right.

So rabbit, the best thing I think is to use the two foot, at least two foot tall, chicken fencing, poultry fencing, chicken away or whatever you want to call it around the perimeter of your garden.

And you might be like, I don't believe that.

You know, that's an investment.

I don't have to do that.

But plants grow a whole lot better when they're not getting eight down every evening when they come out to feast.

Right.

And that's, and we had to do that.

We've experienced it ourselves.

It works even better if you have like a raised bed that's 12 inches off the ground.

And then you put your raised, your poultry fencing inside the perimeter and then stake it down because if it is puckered out a little bit, the rabbits will slide in between the fencing and the board.

And they will consume whatever's in the raised bed.

Yeah, rabbits are cute, but they like to eat your garden.

So just keep that in mind.

So yeah, so that's one, that's a good one for rabbits.

Now deer, deer or whole other thing.

A lot of people deal with deer, especially if you are in an area that is away from the city, typically, but now these deer, you know, they're getting driven out of their homes.

They're urban nights.

Yes, they are becoming more urban.

So there's a few things you can do, which is a deer fence.

Now deer deer can jump up to eight feet high.

They can run up to 40 miles an hour and they can swim at up to 13 miles an hour.

So keeping them out of your garden is a challenge, especially in, like you said, suburban rule areas.

You want, you can do two things.

You can one fence the garden in, which that can be an extremely expensive proposition.

Two, there are sprays in which you can spray around the perimeter or on certain plants to keep them away.

You can do what is called a double fence or use fishing, fishing string in order to create an invisible fence where they will walk up to it and they'll touch it and they don't know what it is and they'll back away.

Downside to that is if you've got a whole herd of deer, I mean, three or four, and they're just coming at your garden.

They don't care what's in the way.

They can't see it.

They're just going to be a tangled mess and now you've got wildlife tangled up in fishing line, fishing line, dragging it through whatever, catching on everything else.

Now we have herd of people and we don't know how effective this is, but doing things where they take like pie plates and hang them up and then the noise here is a deer.

I think in certain instances that could work, it just really depends on...

If the deer is consistently accustomed to that noise, every time I stand here I hear that, but I don't see anybody, I'm going to go devour the piece.

It's kind of like a house pat, you have a cat, and at the same time of day this noise makes something makes a noise that your cat eventually is going to ignore.

Right.

Additionally, what you can do is put things around the perimeter of the garden like rose bushes or Mexican sunflowers.

Things in which deer are not likely to consume and it creates kind of a barrier in which you're preventing them from getting the candy.

Yeah, keep the deer candy away.

So things like tomatoes, peppers, the really high value, green beans, items that deer want and then put the things like Jay mentioned, rose bushes, Mexican sunflowers, Mexican sunflowers have like a rough texture and the deer don't like that on their tongue or their mouth or whatever.

So you do have options and you can always try different options.

Motion sensor sprinklers is another one. Now if you prevent, if you take a little bit from all of these different how to prevent the deer from getting there are way the deer is going to go somewhere else.

They're going to go to their neighbors. They're not going to continue to fight to get in if they're consistently on edge, thinking that something going to attack them or they can't get out of where they're getting into.

They're going to go somewhere more relaxed or more safe for them.

So you just have to be able to cheer them enough to get them to go to your neighbors and you have to cheer them more than your neighbor to tears them.

Groundhogs, there are sprays in which you can apply in order to keep them away.

There are fencing in which you can bury beneath the perimeter of your property. That's a whole nother investment.

And or if you see them on your property, you can continue to fill the holes in or there are, if you want to go a chemical way, there are ways of poisoning them to rid them of your property.

No, some people like my friend's mom, she plans just like twice as much because she has so many groundhogs and then she just lets the groundhogs eat whatever.

And it's just she's a lot nicer than I would be.

And that's okay. But you know, it's her mom like friends parents are retired. They're not trying to necessarily feed an entire family.

They kind of just garden because they can and it's relaxing or whatever to them. So and she just is like, well, just plan some extra carrots or whatever the groundhogs like and then she just kind of deals with it.

So that's an option too. If you maybe you want to live peacefully with the groundhogs, they are cute.

Yeah, until they destroy it.

Exactly.