Critter-Proof Vegetable Garden

Our biggest challenge growing vegetables in recent years has been attempting to deter garden pests, namely a woodchuck, some rabbits and turkey vultures.  It's frustrating when you work hard planting and maintaining a garden, only to have it eaten by critters, as you can see in the above photo. However, I think we've finally come up with a way to critter-proof our garden.  

As I said in an earlier post, we had dinner at the home of some friends and were were quite impressed with their raised garden setup.   The base was made up of two rows of cinder blocks topped off with a row of capstones.   We decided to use this method for our own vegetable garden this year.

 

Once the materials were delivered by Home Depot, my husband assembled the cinder block base in the corner of the yard which is closer to the house than the old garden was.  

 He also had 4 cubic yards of 50/50 top soil delivered and added it to the raised bed.  

 

Once the soil was in place, we covered it with weed blocking material.   This will help to cut down on weeding during the season.

 

I was excited when I found Burpee vegetable and herb plants at our local Stop & Shop grocery store for only $1.99 a plant!  We bought tomato, pepper, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini, pumpkin, and cilantro plants. We set the plants where they would be planted in the garden and cut large crosses in the weed block fabric using a utility knife where each plant was to be planted. 

Once the vegetable plants were in the ground, my husband covered the weed block fabric with approximately 1-2 inches of soil.  

 

We then made 4 hoops using 10-foot 1/2 PVC piping by bending them to shape and attached each end to a 1/2 inch PVC stake, before inserting them into the soil.   

 

The final step was to add  bird netting over the hoops.  We secured the netting by inserting the edges underneath the capstones.   

The nice thing about our garden setup is we can replace the netting with clear plastic sheeting and extend the gardening season.  We can also plant early next spring using this method.   

I can't wait to grill fresh vegetables out on the back deck!

My husband also assembled the new compost tumbler.  He's flexing his muscles in the photo with good reason; it was no easy task putting it together.  He is definitely my hero!

Thanks for stopping by!