And so It Begins, the Inevitable Destruction of Tomatoes by Bird and Wildlife

Something took its head off.

And there is the missing piece.

Ack! Three tomato plants have met their end. Two had their stems nipped with the top of the plants laying close by, I am assuming birds those vile plant destroying creatures. The third plant's top was missing, perhaps eaten or carried off somewhere.

But who is to say that birds are actually the culprit? While looking over the aftermath of plant destruction I saw a rabbit run across the next door neighbor's yard, a healthy robust wild brown rabbit. Although it seems more likely for a rabbit to eat little plants from the top down, instead of nipping at stems close to the ground. That's what I get for leaving tomatoes uncovered while running to the store.

Since it is supposed to be warm the next couple of days the plants are spending time under lightweight Agribon 15 row covers. On cold nights they will be covered with clear plastic cups.

And those little pellets on the ground are Sluggo, an organic method of slug control.

Trying Floating Row Covers this Year

Last year was an ongoing struggle against the local bird population who became a tremendous pest in the vegetable garden. A mild winter combined with a record hot summer left a large bird population. Early on the birds consumed 27 of the 52 baby tomato plants set out whiling topping the rest, the okra starts suffered a similar fate to the tomatoes, and the first planted beans and squash seeds were eaten. Bird netting and fencing stopped the larger of the birds but the smaller ones were still able to get into the garden. The garden never truly recovered from the onslaught.

This year I plan on taking a different tactic. Rather than netting the whole garden against birds, I am going to use floating row covers to protect the plants the vile creatures seem to favor. The floating row cover is said to have the added benefit of excluding vine borer moths, Japanese beetles, cucumber beetles, squash bugs, and flea beetles as long as the critters aren’t already overwintering in the soil. I went ahead and purchased a 25 x 10 feet length of Agribon 15 floating row cover from Ebay. Agribon 15 is said to have a 90% light transmittance and holds heat in very minimally which is useful since I am only planning to use it for pest control rather than frost protection.

This gives me hope for the summer squash and zucchini which I tend to lose early to vine borers and squash bugs. Many people swear by floating row covers as the only surefire method of protecting eggplants from flea beetles and their insatiable appetite for the plants' leaves. Hopefully I will only have to use the covers in the spring to give the plants a head start, otherwise it could be some trouble keeping the garden watered and weeded.

Marauding Birds are Definitely Eating My Tomato Plants

It was definitely marauding birds dead set on their evil plans to destroy and consume all the vegetable seedlings in the garden. Those vile devils went back and ate even more of my tomato plants, there are twenty-five tomato seedlings left out of fifty-two tomato plants with eight of those just consisting of lower leaves since their growing tips were nipped by sharp little beaks. I'm leaving the ones with nipped growing tips in the ground partly from frustration and partly to see if they'll sprout new growing tips at the joint where the lower leaves meet the stem. More than half of my tomato plants were eaten. So now not only a fence is surrounding the garden but I have bird netting stretched over the fencing.

I was ready to give up on the garden this year but my husband insisted rather stridently that all that work and effort to till and get the garden going was not going to waste, no matter how much more money we had to spend on it, even if we had to go out and buy expensive store bought seedlings.

It was a really warm winter with only one snowfall that wasn't even hard enough to stick around on the ground, which is probably why there are so many birds. Usually after the winter we find a few dead birds around the woody area probably from starvation and exposure, but this year there are birds everywhere and their calls and voices are deafening. Also our neighbor who had four dogs has moved away and the dogs were probably keeping the birds at bay. Plus it has been a very dry year so the birds have probably turned to eating plants to get water. Bastards.

It's late in the season to be starting tomato plants but I went ahead and planted more tomato seeds. While at it, I started five different varieties of summer squash/zucchini, cucumbers, bitter melon, and luffa in peat pellets because the weather temperatures have been very volatile and things aren't sprouting in the garden yet or maybe the birds have already eaten them.

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.)