April 11, 2012

Twenty-One Tomato Plants Eaten by Birds or Dogs

So I peered out into the garden and saw a horrible sight. Holes dug here and there. And twenty-one tomato plants eaten. A few still had their little stems stuck in the ground. Four little okra plants had been gnawed on as well.

Upset would be a mild word but my husband volunteered to spend the day putting up a short wire fence around the garden. He does spend an awful lot of time helping me with my hobby. Tomorrow he's going to make two gates for the fence.

The tomato plants were moved around and consolidated into the beds that were left. It's doubtful that cutworms are to blame since they tend to cut down stems at ground level. There's been birds hanging out in the garden so they might be eating tomato plants. Then again, last year dogs were caught in the garden and dog footprints were found at eaten tomato plants. Ugh, only 31 tomato plants are left counting the extra seedlings that I went ahead and planted out. Two toothpicks were pushed into the ground around all the stems to protect against cutworms in case they were the culprit, and then cups were placed over the plants with soil mounded around the bottoms to protect them from the birds.

(The white thing out in the garden is a 10 foot length (3.05 meters) of PVC pipe being used as a straight edge for planting.)

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