The Town Crier: Garden pests

Published 8:15 am Saturday, April 26, 2025

This part of April is the high season for planting the garden. We’ve already got some things in the ground and a few more ready to go in tiny planting cups as they sprout up, the horticultural equivalent of a little chick poking its head out of the cracked egg as it hatches. The average for the last frost here is April 9, although a man I know and trust about things says April 17 is when he plants with assurance. This year, the sweet spot for planting vegetables is the last two weeks in April. There are calendars online that tell you when what plants should go in the ground. Some of the more cold-hardy plants, like broccoli, cabbage, and collard greens, can be planted in March, but most, like cucumbers, green beans and tomatoes, like warmer weather and do best the last half of April. My grandmother planted by the moon and those dates are also available, either in a Farmer’s Almanac or online. They correspond closely to the weather based calendar. The old ways do just fine when it comes to the garden.

We’ve almost always had what I call a “salad garden”, something I can furrow and plant in one uninterrupted Saturday. I call it a “garden salad” because we plant salad things like tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots. We frequently try a few experiments. Eggplant passed the test so we go with that. I always try watermelons but I don’t think I water them enough. Late in the summer I plant pumpkins hoping they’ll be ready to carve as Jack ‘O Lanterns come October, but I have yet to succeed. This is our second year to have a raised-bed garden plot, so we’re starting to see improvements since the topsoil now goes down about 3 or more feet. There’s no red clay barrier just below the topsoil. I might try corn!

If you’re going to garden, there’s one thing you and every other farmer has to contend with; Pests! You’re probably conjuring up visions of boll weevils, fuzzy worms and plague locusts… I know I do. There are caterpillars, stink bugs, Japanese Beetles, Mexican Bean Beetles (that look like Lady Bugs, the sneaks), and those little white flying bugs that look like tiny snow flakes floating around. And don’t get me started on aphids. While referred to as “green flies”, aphids come in more colors than a pack of Crayola Crayons. There are Black, White, Gray, Brown, Red, Yellow, Green and Pink aphids. Don’t worry if you’re color blind, just get rid of all of ‘em! And, you’ve got to worry about snails and slugs, and there’s even a bug called a “Thrip” that I didn’t even know about, that will eat your flower garden as well as your vegetable garden. But there are other pests to deal with that you can’t just dust away with Sevin-dust. I’m talking about big critters.

Rabbits haven’t been a real issue with our garden because we have dogs and the neighbors have dogs and the rabbits we spot around the house at night in the headlights as we come home always stay on the outskirts so to speak. However, the same dogs that protect the garden from the rabbits can themselves be a challenge when first setting the garden out. My dogs like to “help” me when I’m out doing the yard work. That means when I’m digging up the garden they might start digging as well, only instead of turning the soil over, they hurl it out into the yard. And when it’s time to water the newly planted seeds, they might just take a notion to play in the water and the dirt, making a giant mud puddle. And while we’re working that first day, dogs make no difference between the newly laid out garden and the existing lawn, trotting right over where I’ve planted the delicate vegetable saplings. A dog’s paw versus a sprouting tomato plant is the same as Godzilla versus Bambi.

And speaking of Bambi, a friend of ours had trouble with deer. They had not had a problem before, but once their okra got ripe, here comes Bambi and his buddies. They said the resourceful deer would rise up on their hind legs and slide their front hooves down the plant,  tearing off the okra as they slid, leaving a nice pile to eat at the bottom of the plants. I had not heard of such a thing, and would just imagine them eating the okra off the stem one at a time. I don’t know, maybe they were trying for a gumbo.

Another friend of ours had a problem with rabbits. After losing so much of their harvest to the hungry bunnies, they put up an electric fence around the garden. It was just a couple of wires surrounding the garden, stretched low to create a barrier only about 18 inches high, but it seemed to work. Someone else told us just the buzzing sound the electric fence made would keep animals away once they had gotten “zapped”.  Anyway, once that short electric fence was up, they had no more problems… until. They started finding their watermelons were under attack, one per night. The mystery was that there was a small hole in the watermelon about the size of a tennis ball, but like one of Dracula’s victims, the inside of the watermelon was completely drained. They were hollow to the rind. After this went on for a while, they put out a trail camera to see what was going on. It turns out Mr. Raccoon had figured out how to get over the fence, would claw a hole just big enough to get his paw through and then would scoop out the good part one handful at a time, leaving behind the mystery melon hull. Pests, you got to love ‘em!

Mark Hannah is a Dalton native who works in the film and video industry.