Kem Ormond’s vegetable garden: How to keep things pest and predator free

Always check under your silverbeet leaves for slugs or snails who will feast on your produce. Photo / Warren Buckland

Kem Ormond is a features writer for NZME community newspapers and The Country. She’s also a keen gardener. This week, she’s offering advice on how to keep pests and predators out of your vegetable garden.

OPINION

Years ago, I wrote an article about the terrible time I was having with uninvited visitors devouring my vegetable and flower garden.

I had wild turkeys raiding my crab apple tree, and visits from a feral goat that found my stile extremely helpful to climb over for a free-for-all in my vegetable garden.

I had pūkeko who would dig out every annual I planted but luckily never found my vegetable garden, and then there were the rabbits, chooks, birds and the occasional sheep who learned to jump the cattle stop.

Luckily, I never saw wild pigs or deer, but I have seen the damage they have done to other gardens.

I once visited a friend who lived on the outskirts of town in a developed park-like area.

There was a lovely well-manicured pond and beautiful homes with stunning gardens, all with no fences – it looked like something from the pages of a home magazine.

That was until a few wild boars came down from the hills and spent a night excavating all the lawns, one home after another.

It was devastating!

Over the years I learned numerous ways of living in harmony with some of these animals and I have learned a lot about protecting my vegetable garden at the same time.

If you have free-range chooks, they inevitably navigate their way to the vegetable garden.

I learned to cover the seedlings when small with cloches, but once the seedlings were large enough, the chooks seemed to ignore them, and they were happy just scratching under the plants for worms.

They were fantastic at keeping the weeds at bay over winter until the ground warmed up and I could begin planting. Then over the heat of summer, they just relaxed underneath all the vegetation.

I grew a Buxus hedge around the garden and this seemed to keep the rabbits at bay, they would rather eat fresh grass than navigate a way through the hedge.

Free-range chooks will always make their way to your vegetable garden. Photo / 123rf

I now have raised vegetable gardens which makes an enormous difference, as you can easily add metal arches to your beds and drape insect cloth over the top.

I have seen some wonderful fully enclosed structures around vegetable gardens, mostly made from wood with netting, which is fantastic, especially if you grow a lot of berries.

But in the vegetable garden, it can be the smallest of insects that can cause the most damage.

For instance, the tomato-potato psyllid (Bactericera cockerelli) is a small sap-sucking insect usually about the size of an aphid or a baby cicada.

They will damage your tomato or potato crop and tamarillo trees in no time.

They can also affect capsicum, eggplant, chillies and kumara.

This is where raised vegetable gardens can be so versatile.

I have this insect-proof house, which can be easily moved on to another of my raised beds for crop rotation.

It is presently having a repair, having been up for about 10 years, so I’m just reinforcing the centre seam.

No psyllid can get in here, and as you can see from the photo of last year’s crop, the tomatoes are happy as!

An insect-proof house is a worthwhile investment. Photo / Phil Thomsen

Then you have slugs, snails, caterpillars and white butterflies – and don’t forget cats and dogs.

Plus whiteflies, scale, aphids, ants, carrot rust flies, mites, codling moths – the list goes on.

Oh, I haven’t even mentioned possums or rats!

While all sorts of products are available to combat many of these pests, as well as a few old wives’ tales that I have tried, I now work on the theory of having healthy and well-composted soil and feeding my plants regularly, so they are in the healthiest condition they can be.

Yes, I may lose a few from the odd caterpillar, but my plants are healthy and left to do their own thing.

I dispose of any plants that look suspect into my green wheelie bin, leaving my compost free of any nasty spores that can be transmitted.

Always choose plant varieties naturally resistant to pests, plant your seedlings in the right conditions, plant beneficial plants that will encourage the good insects, rotate your crops, water wisely, and cover vulnerable seedings where and when necessary.

Remember that having a few pests is a natural part of gardening.

It reminds you that you want to work with nature rather than against it.