Newbie vegetable gardener - protecting from animals/birds

[Anonymous]

Despite my bug aversion, I'm trying to do some vegetable gardening this year. Last year I planted tomatoes and peppers in my yard and was I'll prepared to deal with the numerous bunnies and squirrels that ate the tomatoes (they left the peppers alone - they were semi-spicy). I'm doing a container garden on my deck this year so I can control the quality of the soil as most of our yard is clay.

How do I protect my veggies from creatures? For the tomatoes, since I will have a wire tomato cage, I could use a mesh wrap around it, right? But what about my other veggies that don't require a cage? Or should I just cage them all up? I'm thinking peppers again, maybe some okra, eggplant, cucumbers, and various herbs.

On a side note, can someone please recommend a website that I can refer to to look up plant issues without being bombarded by large graphics of bugs? I have a real aversion To bugs but need figure out why my cilantro plant leaves are sticky and have little yellow spots on the backs of ye he leaves. I'm guessing aphids but can't stand to look at pictures to figure it out.

Thanks for any advice!

[Anonymous]

^* ill prepared
^* back of the leaves

[Anonymous]

Years ago I used the washington post gardening section ( they had discussions where you could submit questions I Adrian Higgins and get answers). Not sure it's still there but you can check online and this would give you info specific to this region. They're also some books in gardening for the mid Atlantic region that I found very helpful (of course 4 years and 2 kids later and I haven't stepped foot in the yard)!!

[Anonymous]

Depending on how high your deck is the squirrels won't bother containers. Our deck is about 4 feet off the ground and while birds eat seeds, once the plants are established the four legged friends don't come up.

For the in ground garden we use deer fencing.

[Anonymous]

There are some great ideas on this thread:

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/379440.page

Including a salad table which might be perfect for your deck.

[Anonymous]

Home depot sells chicken wire for $20 and long plastic stakes. My farmer father in law showed me how easy it is. The stakes can actually be weaved in/out through the holes of the chicken wire a couple times before you push it into the ground (rather than having to figure out how to tie the stake to the wire like I envisioned). He did 1 stake each of 4 corners, plus 1 stake in the middle of each long side side. Soon I am buying 4 yards of nylon fabric at the fabric store to put over my garden if birds start invading. Hope this helps!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Depending on how high your deck is the squirrels won't bother containers. Our deck is about 4 feet off the ground and while birds eat seeds, once the plants are established the four legged friends don't come up.

For the in ground garden we use deer fencing.

You are lucky! We have a rooftop deck 3 stories up and planted tomatoes there that were decimated by squirrels and birds. We gave up after 2 seasons with only grape tomatoes surviving the onslaught.

[Anonymous]

row covers