If you have a garden here in the desert, you know one of the biggest challenges is keeping your plants off the menu of hungry critters such as rabbits, ground squirrels and javelinas.
Tasty flowers and vegetables are most at risk, but even not-so-tender trees and shrubs can be inviting to hungry herbivores when the desert pantry is bare.
The best, and only really effective, way to protect your plants from these uninvited intruders is with fencing. Physical barriers such as chicken wire and other types of wire mesh are very effective. Encircle the entire garden bed or make small cylinders of wire to protect individual plants from the rabbits. The minimum height of the fencing should be 24 inches.
As rabbits like to dig, the fencing should be buried an inch or two into the soil. They also may try pushing the fencing down, so support the wire with stakes placed every 3 feet around a garden bed. A single stake is adequate for individual plant cages.
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The most durable and easiest stakes to install are cut pieces of concrete reinforcing bars. These bars, as well as 2-foot-wide rolls of wire, are available at home supply stores. The wire may also be found at hardware stores.
Chicken wire with 1-inch mesh openings will keep rabbits out, but if your problem is the chipmunklike ground squirrels, use the finer wire mesh of hardware cloth, also called woven wire. It comes in half- and quarter-inch openings. The thicker hardware cloth will stand on its own without staking when circling individual plants.
If invading critters are a problem for your seasonal vegetable beds, try planting in galvanized steel stock tanks. These tanks, designed for holding watering for livestock, have tall, slick steel sides, making it impossible for rabbits, ground squirrels or pocket gophers to get a grip with their claws on the smooth metal sides. They can't dig in through the bottom either.
A drainage hole is built into the sides of these tanks, but you may want to drill a few extra holes in the bottom with a metal drill bit. Make the holes at least a half-inch in diameter. Galvanized stock tanks are available in many sizes at local livestock feed supply stores.
In addition to fencing, many home gardeners use taste repellents to ward off rabbits. Unfortunately, taste repellents are not reliable, although some people have reported success using hot pepper sauce diluted in water and sprayed on the plants. If you want to try this, use a tablespoon per gallon and include a small amount of spreader sticker to keep it on the plant.
Commercial ammonium-based taste repellents also are available from garden centers and nurseries. Again, these provide mixed results; if rabbits are hungry enough, they'll overlook the bad taste.
One product that has been very successful against rabbits is an odor repellent called Liquid Fence, a garlic-based product that is harmless to humans, pets and wildlife, but it does stink. The smell is so foul that you'll need to roll down the windows in your car when taking it home from the garden or hardware store.
Spray Liquid Fence on or around the plants you want to protect. It can be applied directly to garden vegetables without contaminating the fruit. Spray every month or so to maintain the odor barrier. An added bonus: Liquid Fence also repels those pesky javelinas.
Gardening
Advice by John P. Begeman
Next week's topic
"Selecting and Growing Citrus" is the topic for this week's garden demonstrations. They will be presented on Wednesday at 9 a.m. at the Pima County Extension Center, 4210 N. Campbell Ave., and 1 p.m. at the Wilmot Library, 530 N. Wilmot Road; and Friday at 1 p.m. at the Oro Valley Public Library, 1305 W. Naranja Drive.