Believe it or not, I do. We live on a small canyon. I have seen rats, possums and raccoons. We have tried several times to grow vegetables and failed. Something was eating them. I even had a habanero pepper plant that I was convinced whatever it was would stay away from. I don’t even eat those because they are so hot. The critter ate the peppers off. Then it came back for more, again and again. I couldn’t believe it. It even ate the flowers off my marigolds. It does not like rosemary or lavender but ate my sunflower seelings down to the ground. Picky eater.
So when we moved back to La Jolla from Hong Kong, we searched for a solution because I really, really at the very least, wanted a sizeable herb garden. I hate running to the store at the last minute to buy fresh herbs and to top it off, they are expensive and the remainder often spoil unused. Plus, La Jolla Girl loves gardening.
I searched and searched. I tried fox urine granules. That worked, but they don’t last forever and if you forget to reapply, then whatever it is you’re trying to save winds up eaten the second the scent disappears. I even read about using your husband’s sweaty shirt to ward off critters. No way was I going to have that grossness on display. Yuck.
I landed on the Gardeners Supply website and bought a Large Pop-Up Net, but La Jolla Dad calls it “the raccoon tent”. I wanted raised veggie beds anyway. It fits perfectly over a 3′x3′ Grow Bed. We put some herbs and a tomato plant inside the raccoon tent and let them grow. I have no idea what kind of tomato plant I put in there because before I knew it, the entire garden bed was full. I swear it happened in a matter of days. See the photo above. It began busting through the seams, literally, and I’ve had to prune it back several times.
The moral of the story, however, is this. If you use something like this you have to be very mindfull of mould and other diseases. This tomato plant was so dense inside this tent that it caught a white fungus that I didn’t see until it got to the outer leaves. By that time it was too late and then it spread to my prized dahlias. See my dahlia posts here and here. I’ve been fighting it with an organic fungucide, and it’s been a total pain. I suspect it could be from moisture or whatever being trapped in such a dense area. When in doubt, I clip off a leaf, put it in a ziploc bag and take it to the local nursery for diagnosis.
I love this tent but next year I will plant smaller things like peppers and herbs in it. No more tomatos for now, however, this crop is delicious. I used exactly the soil mix that is recommended on the Gardeners Supply Company site.
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