Chipmunks & Rabbits & Deer, Oh My!

I can't tell you how many questions I get about keeping animals out of the kitchen garden. You guys are really stingy with your vegetables, and you don't want other animals eating them (fair).

So let's get into my top ways to prevent animals from sneaking into your garden and stealing your fruits and veggies. We're focusing on larger pests like deer and squirrels, so head over to this article if your main problem is insect pests.

Here are my suggestions for keeping animals out of your vegetable garden.

Add a Physical Barrier Around Your Garden

The internet has a thousand solutions to pest control in your garden, everything from sticking a fork in the ground to putting cayenne pepper on your tomatoes. I've tried all of them, and believe me, nothing has worked as well as using simple protective covers and cages. Keeping the problem out in the first place works 100% of the time as long as your barrier is secure.

Let's look at three different types of physical barriers you could use in your garden space.

I. Hardware Cloth to Go Under Your Raised Beds

If you're gardening somewhere where underground rodents—gophers, moles, voles—are an issue, protection might be needed for the bottom of your beds.

Put hardware cloth under your beds at the time of installation to keep the pests from coming from below and digging into your beds from the bottom. Hardware cloth is metal sheeting that looks like mesh. You can find rolls of hardware cloth in the fencing section of most big box stores. It can be stapled to the bottom of your raised beds before you add soil and plants. 

II. Mesh Covers to Go Over Your Raised Beds

This is the easiest type of barrier to add, but it's actually quite effective at keeping insect pests and smaller animals like rabbits and squirrels out of the garden. You need a mesh fabric like tulle or agfabric from the garden center or floating row covers that fit your beds. Drape the fabric over some garden hoops and then secure it in place with some landscaping pins.

The tiny holes in the mesh let in water, sunlight, and air, but prevent moths and other flying pests from entering the space to lay their eggs. (Read more about using mesh as organic pest control.)

Honestly, there are so many sprays and guerrilla tactics for battling pests out there, but this simple physical barrier has brought me a ton of success.

III. A 4- to 5-Sided Structure to Enclose Your Raised Beds

If you need next-level pest protection, you might consider building cages around your raised beds or even a fence to surround your entire garden.

When I had a problem with squirrels eating my tomatoes in my Houston garden, I built a wooden and metal cage that went over the entire garden bed to keep squirrels out. This is only a solution for larger pests since moths and other small pests would obviously still be able to enter through the caging material.

The best material to use for caging is hardware cloth, the same stuff you can use under your raised beds.

If deer are your problem, you might need to use wood posts and hardware cloth to construct a deer fence at least 8 feet tall.

Invite a Predator into Your Garden

Every animal great or small that wants to eat from your garden has a larger animal that wants to eat it. This is the food chain. You remember it from 3rd grade science, right?

Think about what wildlife would naturally eat the animal that's giving you grief and welcome that predator into your garden, if you dare. This might sound scary, but it's really no different than planting lots of flowers to attract ladybugs if you have an aphid problem.

Let's say you have an issue with slugs, snails, and caterpillars. What eats these little creepy crawlies? Birds. Attract birds to your garden space with bird fountains, bird feeders, and bird houses. Make your garden an inviting place for birds to come and nest.

For bigger pests, like squirrels and chipmunks, you need bigger birds, like owls. To attract owls, you could install an owl box on a tall tree. We did this with great success in our Houston home. A squirrel actually inhabited this box first, but sure enough, an owl came along and booted that squirrel right out. Owls are fantastic predators for many of the small creatures that eat from your garden.

Suggest the Presence of a Predator

If you're not willing or able to introduce the actual presence of a predator in your garden, all you really have to do is suggest the presence of that predator. Let me explain.

Shortly after I started gardening, I faced my first pest problem. I'd waited about 9,000 months for these 9 little tomatoes to start ripening on my plants, and I stepped outside one morning so excited to finally harvest my first red tomato... and they were all gone. My husband and I kept close watch on our garden at dawn and dusk, and just when the next set of tomatoes was ripening, we finally caught it in the act. A raccoon!

This raccoon was cherry picking the ripest tomatoes and taking them for himself. I marched to the nearest garden center and explained my problem.

"Ma'am, you need some coyote urine."

"Come again?" I said.

"Raccoons are terrified of coyotes," the employee explained with a straight face. "So you get the urine to hint to the raccoon that there are coyotes around. Then he won't go anywhere near your tomatoes."

Before I could ask how the coyote urine was obtained, he added: "Or you could feed your husband a steak and let him pee on your garden."

I didn't buy the coyote pee and I didn't ask my husband to mark his territory around the tomatoes (wouldn't that have been a sight for the neighbors!). But I did learn an important lesson.

Find ways to imitate the behavior of the predator in a way that tells the pray something dangerous is nearby and ready to pounce should the prey even think about stepping inside your garden bed.

Rabbits, squirrels, and other small creatures fear coyotes, wolves, and even dogs. I suggest you let your dog run free and lift his leg in the garden. Even if he's a smaller dog, his scent suggests that bigger dogs could be there, as well.

Dogs can also be useful for deer, the largest of garden pests. I've even heard of people who don't own dogs asking groomers for some dog hair to tuck around their garden. Remember, all you have to do is suggest to the deer that larger animals could be around.

Other things that might help with squirrels could be rubber snakes and plastic owls. But keep in mind that squirrels aren't completely stupid. They've survived in the wild for a long time (I wouldn't make it two days). Buy the most realistic "predator" you can find and move it around the garden space regularly.

Signaling that dangerous animals might be living in your garden space can be really powerful.

Surround Your Garden with a Native Plant Space

This one is a combination of the other suggestions—you basically want to surround your entire garden area with a barrier that suggests other wildlife is nearby.

My kitchen garden here in Nashville, for example, is surrounded by a 3-foot-wide native plant and pollinator garden space. Meanwhile, my neighbor right next door, John, has his vegetable garden out in the open. Both of our backyards are unfenced and face a wooded area. We regularly see deer behind our houses, and guess whose garden they're eating from?

John's.

John recently told me, "Nicole, if the deer eat from my garden again this summer, I'm going to protest. I've got five tomato plants, and you have like 50. Why do they want mine over yours?"

I think the answer is that the deer prefer to be in wide-open spaces so they can see everything around them. In my garden, they might wonder if something's hiding in the grasses and tall plants next to them. That keeps them from boldly venturing into my garden space. They just can't be sure there's not a predator around the corner.

The same goes for squirrels. Squirrels were a much bigger issue in my Nashville garden before I added my native plant space. Squirrels don't like being low to the ground so close to places where predators could attack them. They like nice, wide open spaces.

No Animals Allowed (Except Dogs & Humans)

Add physical barriers. Invite predators or suggest the presence of predators. Surround your garden with plants. If you do all these things, does that guarantee you won't have pests?

No, of course not. You'll still find leaves with holes in them or baby plants that have been disappeared overnight.

What it does mean is you might stress a little less about pests in your garden. When you see signs that squirrels or bunnies have visited your garden, just ask yourself what you can do to make your garden a place they don't want to hang out in anymore. Could you suggest a predator is right around the corner? Could you add a barrier?

Here's the thing: Animal pests are not scared of you. But they are scared of birds and dogs and coyotes. So make them think that their predator is on its way to get them. That way, they'll skip your garden and go eat your neighbor's vegetables instead. (I love you, John. I hope the deer don't eat your tomatoes this year.)

Thanks for being here and making the garden ordinary again. Here's to more harvests for you and a few less for the raccoons!