Organic Ways to Control Pests in the Garden

How do I keep animals out of my garden? That's the question we're going to answer in today's episode. Welcome back to the Grow youw Self podcast. I got a ton of DMS on my Instagram yesterday. I put out a call, I said, hey, I want to answer your questions. So give me some questions I can answer on the Grow youw Self podcast. And you guys delivered. I mean, look at these questions. And I've already tried to answer about 10 of them, and you just keep coming. So let me tell you, can you guess what the most common theme that showed up in these questions was? It was all about the animals. You guys are really stingy with your vegetables and you don't want any other animals to eat them. So we've got. Let's see. What do you do to protect your garden from gophers? How do I keep animals away from the herbs and the veggies? What do you do about animal pests? Do you cover your beds? Can you help me to deal with pests in my garden? How do you deal with deer? What do I do about snails? How do I keep deer from eating all my garden? How do I deal with vine borers and flea beetles? I am not kidding you. I'm pretty sure one out of every four questions questions on here was about animals and not letting them get into your garden. So today I can't get into all of the things, but I'm going to tell you one of my top, top, top, top tips about dealing with pests. And it is comes to you straight from Nashville. Actually, back in the day, way back when I was first starting my garden, we had a pest problem, too. So we were finally growing tomatoes. We'd waited, oh, about, I don't know, 9,000 months for the tomatoes to start ripening. And I went out the next morning. I was so excited. I was going to get my first red tomato. And they were gone. Like, eaten off of the vine. My husband and I started looking at the plants a little bit more carefully in the nighttime when we were heading to bed because they would look like they were just about ripe. And then in the morning when we head out to finally harvest, they were gone. So something was happening in those late nights in the garden. We were early birds. We would go to bed so early because we had, like, four tiny kids. So we stayed up, looked through our window, and we saw this thing, this thing crawling around our tomato cage in the dusk. Dusk is at night, right? Yeah, around dusk, all the way into the dark. And it was this masked Animal. A raccoon. This raccoon was all around our tomato plants each and every night and literally cherry picking. Seriously, Cherry picking the ripest tomatoes, taking them for himself. He was definitely a dude. And then not leaving us any. So I marched myself downtown to this wonderful store called Gardens of Babylon. Shout out to you guys. And this was a long time ago. It was like 2011, I think. And I was like, I gotta do something about these raccoons eating my tomatoes. And this guy's like, ma', am, you need some coyote urine. And I was like, come again? And so he says, ma', am, you need some coyote urine. It's right over here. And I said, first of all, how did you get that? You know what I mean? Like, urine from a coyote. Please explain the process. And then number two, why? Why would this help? I was expecting him to have a cage or, I don't know, some kind of special spray, but not urine from a coyote. He says, well, you know, raccoons are scared of coyotes. So if there's any hint that a coyote might be anywhere near your tomatoes, then the raccoon's not going to come around. Well, I don't remember the price point of the coyote urine, but let's just say it was more than I had in my pocket. And he said, well, here's another option. Feed your husband. Not kidding, direct quotation here. Feed your husband a steak and let him pee on your garden. I was like, now that would be a sight. I mean, the neighbors already knew we were weird, but that would have been next level, so there would be none of that. We did not do that. But this sweet man at the Gardens of Babylon, he taught me a lesson, which was that everything that preys on our garden has a prey. And so this is what I call the predator tactic. And you want to think about whatever it is that's coming into your garden space, whatever it is you're worried about, whether it's deer or snails, something tiny like a snail or a slug or really big like a deer, Everything in between. And you want to ask yourself, what is its predator? Because it's wanting to come and eat from your garden. But what preys on it? What is the thing it's afraid of? And then you want to design your garden. You want to let your garden feel like it could be a place where it, that thing, that predator could live, could hang out, might be right around the corner. That's what you want to suggest to the prey that's coming after your food. So we'll start with really small, and then we'll work our way up, right? So tiny little slug. I don't know. Does it even have eyes? I don't think so, but I guess slugs have eyes, but they're not going to be noticing a coyote's urine, I'm pretty sure. But you do want to think about, say, birds, right? And so you either want to have the suggestion that there's birds there, but for a slug, in that case, you just want to have birds in your garden. So you want it to be possible, one, for birds to nest around your garden, to raise their young, and to have access to your garden space, because they're going to get the slugs out. They like to eat slugs. They like to eat little caterpillars. They like little bugs. And so having birds in your garden space is such a healthy way to keep your garden clean of little tiny pests. Then you can move up the ladder, let's say, go from something like a slug and a caterpillar to something a little bit bigger, let's say a squirrel. And so I've had loads of squirrels in my garden over the years, and one key way to keep the squirrels out is first, just suggestions. So not having a really wide open garden space where there's no chance that something could be hiding. Okay, something could be hiding around the bend that would attack them, I think, for squirrels. I haven't done a ton of research, but I know squirrels don't like snakes, and I know squirrels don't like owls. So having places that suggest there could be snakes nearby. I have a farmer friend. He places rubber snakes around his garden. He moves them from place to place. You have to remember, animals are smart. They're not stupid. Right? I saw one time on Pinterest that we should put plastic forks all around our garden to keep squirrels out. I'm like, they're not idiots, right? I mean, they're alive for a reason. They keep themselves alive in the wild. They're smarter than me. I would last a few days in the wild. They're living their entire life out there. So a plastic snake may not work, but you want to get something that looks as real as possible, move it around an owl. Fake owls, but also real owls. So you could put an owl box in your yard. We've done that. We've put owl boxes at the top of a really tall pine tree. Funny story, a squirrel inhabited it first. We would look up there, and we're like, oh, my gosh, a squirrel is living in our owl box. But sure enough, Some owl came and booted squirrel out because within a couple months, we looked up and there was an owl living in the owl box. So owls are a great predator for so many of the small creatures that eat from our garden. So if squirrels, chipmunks, those tiny little critters that are getting into your garden, you want there to be the suggestion of an owl or an actual owl. Dogs, coyotes, obviously, wolves. So having dogs around your garden often are a suggestion that bigger dogs could be there as well. That can help with rabbits, with squirrels, with other small, small creatures that fear dogs, and then those can also help with deer. So the largest, I think, probably of the pests that get into the garden, you want to either have dogs or have larger animals around the garden space that deer would be afraid of, or you want there to be the suggestion that those kinds of animals could be living in that space. Space. And that's what's really powerful. So one experience I've had with deer. My garden is surrounded by a native plant space. So I have my kitchen garden on the inside, and then I have native plants all around the exterior of the garden. Then my neighbor next door, love them. They have a wide open garden. They have a very generic, like, box, you know, garden. Nothing around it, just vegetable garden. And for years, we've only had a garden here for the summer. One year. And this past year, my neighbor John, he's hilarious. He's like, nicole, if the deer eat from my garden this year, I'm literally going to protest because you've got like 50 tomato plants. I've got 10. Why would they want my garden over yours? And I'm not exaggerating when I say, in the middle of the summer, we drive up, we've been out on an activity with our kids, drive into the driveway, and we see the deer. Okay, I'll have to show this video on Instagram when this goes live. We see the deer in the backyard, and guess whose garden he's eating from? John's. He's eating John's tomato. Meanwhile, I've got way more food right on the other side of my native plants. But what is he preferring? He's preferring a wide open space. When he's in my neighbor's yard, he can see everything behind him. He can see almost everything in front of him. Whereas in my garden, the whole thing has got this wildness around it. It's got all these grasses and plants around the garden. And so he's going to, you know, he doesn't know. Is there something around me? Is there a Coyote hiding in those grasses. Is there something behind that plant? And so that's going to keep him from coming boldly into my garden space because he just doesn't know if there's a predator around the corner. So that mentality has saved me so many times in the garden. Does it mean that I never have to deal with pests? Of course not. Does it mean that I never have leaves with holes in them or things disappear overnight anymore? No, it doesn't mean that at all. But what it means is that I don't stress anymore about pests in the garden. Instead, anytime I walk in and I see, oh, like, the squirrel's definitely been here, taken some tomatoes, or, oh, it looks like a rabbit's here. Whenever I start to notice the signs of pests appearing, I ask the question, what's their predator? And that question opens up all kinds of new possibilities of setting things up in my garden to suggest that either the predator is actually there to show that the predator is actually there, or to suggest that it could be that it could be hiding right around the corner. So there's more to come. This will be the start of a series of how do I keep animals out of my vegetable garden? This is part one, but this is the biggest. I think part of the answer is find the predator. Find the predator for the pests that are coming after your food in the kitchen garden, and find a way to either get that predator to your garden or suggest that the predator could be right around the corner. One of those two things make your pest think that their predator is on its way to get them and it's not you, because clearly they're not that scary scared of you. But they're definitely scared of birds and dogs and coyotes and owls. So we want to suggest that those things are right around the corner so that your pests move on and go eat the neighbor's vegetables and not yours. I love you, John. I really do. This year, I hope the deer don't eat your tomatoes. Thanks so much for listening and watching. 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