The Secret to Protecting Your Garden Without a Fence

Foreign. Vegetable garden in the middle of your backyard, and then boom, the pests show up and it is complete chaos. But what if I told you the problem isn't the pests? It's the fact that your garden in the middle of your yard is basically an all you can eat organic buffet. Today I want to show you how to build a feature fence around your garden. But not a normal fence. This is a fence made with plants, native and pollinator friendly plants that will protect your garden from pests and create a habitat for local wildlife. So here's the thing. Your backyard used to be a complete ecosystem, but now it's just grass, which isn't food for anyone. So when you set up a vegetable garden in the middle of your backyard, the wildlife goes crazy. Crazy because they haven't had anything to eat for quite some time. Everyone shows up for dinner. We've got rabbits, we got squirrels, we've got deer. They're not rude, they're just hungry. And they're assuming that you created this beautiful garden for them. So what we've got to do is create a buffet outside of our vegetable garden that's made for them with plants that they love to eat so that they stay full and satisfied. And leave your tomatoes alone. When I started my first garden, I was kind of completely shocked that the raccoons and squirrels and deer wanted to eat from my garden as much as I did. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Because where my house and backyard now stood used to be covered with trees and creeks and prairies. All that wildlife had lost their home so that I could have one on that same plot. So of course it made sense that they wanted to eat a little bit of my garden, too. After so many seasons of being completely frustrated and wanting to catch every squirrel in my entire neighborhood, I finally figured out a way to garden and work with the wildlife instead of fighting against them. And that's this concept of a living fence. If you think about it, all the wildlife we're trying to keep from our garden, they don't naturally eat things that we're growing in our garden. Their typical diet isn't made up of tomatoes and peppers and watermelon and basil. Instead, they're usually eating in the wild from plants that grow naturally there. So the trick is providing that exact food source right near your vegetable garden so that the wildlife have something great to eat that they're used to eating before they see anything inside your vegetable patch. Native plants are what local wildlife have actually evolved to love to eat. Things like goldenrod and milkweed, elderberry, rudbeckia, coneflower. These plants are packed with nuts and seeds and berries and nectar, all of the food sources that your wildlife are looking for. Over the years, I've compiled a list of my favorite native plants to put around my kitchen garden. And you can get that list right below this video so you know what to plant around your garden too. Now, the squirrels, sure they like to take a bite of your tomato, but have you ever noticed they never eat the entire thing? That's because they're not used to eating tomatoes. They're looking for berries from native plants. Birds. They might take a little peck at some of your fruit or pull from a couple of your plants, but really they're looking for things like seeds from coneflowers or little berries on holly. They're searching for native plants, and when they can't find them, they come to your vegetable garden instead. Now here's where the magic really kicks in. Because a living fence full of native plants and pollinator friendly plants, it doesn't just feed wildlife so that they're too full to eat from your garden. And it does at least three other things. First, as these plants grow up, they create a block for the sight line to your vegetable garden. So when wildlife are looking on, they see the native plant space, not all your vegetables. Next, it provides a place to attract pollinators. And pollinators are the good guys when it comes to your garden. They're the wildlife that you definitely want to be playing around all around your vegetable plants. You want to have all those critters circling around your garden at all times. And having native plants and pollinator friendly plants will ensure that they show up and stay for a good long while. Finally, all these tall plants in the living fence, they create a habitat, they create shade, they create little pockets of water, and they create places where wildlife can raise their young. So for smaller predators that come into your garden, things like rabbits and squirrels, squirrels that would otherwise see your garden as a free for all, they now see your garden as a place where predators might be lurking. They have no idea if the animals that would feed on them might be nesting or hiding around the living fence. So they're going to be less likely to just run and jump into your garden space because they have no idea if something might be hiding and ready to eat them as soon as they head into your garden. So to set up your living fence is so simple. Simple. A living fence is going to be planted directly in the ground. You want to add 3 to 4ft right on the perimeter of your vegetable kitchen garden space and you're just going to plant directly in the ground surrounding your vegetable garden. Now, the hardest part is picking out the plants that are native to your region. Don't forget I have a list for that right below this video. And you want to divide them into sizes, large, medium and small. Then I use a ratio of one to three to six, one large plant to three medium sized plants to six small plants. And I literally pack these plants into the living fence space in the same way that I would in my kitchen garden, put them in the ground and let them do their thing. They really don't need irrigation or any special fertilization. They're going to grow well because they're native to your area and they're going to provide food for the wildlife so that they get full there and don't head into your garden space. I love a living fence because one it's beautiful, it makes the kitchen garden feel more complete. But two it also gives me a little peace of mind to know that I'm feeding all the wildlife and taking care of them as I also take care of me and my family. Living fence is protection, pollination and peace all at once. So tell me in the comments what native plant you're going to put into your living fence first. And if you want to learn more about my organic ways to get take care of your garden and protect it from pests, you can watch this video next. 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