My zucchinis are getting eaten - HELP!

[elaine amj]

This year, DH got the gardening bug and decided to plant a bunch of herbs, a couple of berry plants, and a couple of zucchini plants. One of the zucchini plants was immediately eaten by some garden critter. The other one flourished and he's been diligent about caring for his garden daily. We got a ginormous zucchini out of it and a couple of other smaller ones so far. Then, over the last couple of weeks, some annoying critter has eaten THREE of our zucchinis. We have 3 more growing right now (they are tiny) and really want to protect them.

A few days ago, we found some mesh and I wrapped it around the base of the plant where the zucchinis are (was hesitant to cover up too much because DH said bees need access to pollinate the plant and I was worried about the plant having access to enough sunlight). We thought about building a chicken wire cage but don't really want to spend too much on this (DH pointed out that $20-$30 can go towards buying a LOT of zucchini!)

Any ideas?

[bobechs]

Stay up all night with a BB gun and a flashlight.

When the evildoer shows up, dispatch it and have its liver with a nice chianti and some fava beans.

[elaine amj]

Stay up all night with a BB gun and a flashlight.

When the evildoer shows up, dispatch it and have its liver with a nice chianti and some fava beans.

LOVE this!! :)

[Axecleaver]

It's probably a woodchuck. My Mom had one dig/squeeze under the deer fencing she had put up,  and build his home right under her biggest zucchini plant this year, lol. Fortunately she had planted 6x what she needed, so we accepted our losses this year.

Your options are accept it, shoot them, trap them, gas them out of their homes, or exclude them with fences (sometimes).

[elaine amj]

*sigh* ours is already in a raised flower box so fencing is unlikely to work. Guess we should plan to plant at least a half dozen plants next year so we can feed the critters too! (Just wish they wouldn't take a single bite out of each zucchini - how un-mustachian!)


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[englyn]

Can you get chicken wire for free/really cheap from a local secondhand website or salvage yard?

[Fresh Bread]

Yes, I was about to comment, I made a make-shift cage for a capsicum plant from a free bit of wire. Where I am we have freecycle and various facebook pages where you can advertise a want and you might find people have a bit left over or lying around that you can have.

[elaine amj]

Will go hunting. I have another fenced in veggie garden that we are planning to plant next year. But unless I cage the top too, whatever critter is getting my zucchinis in my raised flower box will likely get whatever we plant in the fenced in garden.

If I get my hands on chicken wire, would you suggest attempting to build some kind of basket/wire cage to go over the top of my zucchini? Hmmm...now I am kicking myself for not picking up the $3 wire basket I saw in Target's dollar section last night. That might have done the trick. Or not - that zucchini plant is pretty big!

Or would my zucchini grow ok if I use the mesh I have now and cut it up to create mesh bags and tie it around each zucchini as it grows? We are very new at gardening. And the darn birds already ate every single cherry on my cherry tree (which produced edible fruit for the first time after living here for over 10 years!). I only got to eat a few half-ripe ones :( Would be sad to lose our zucchini crop too.

[Tjat]

How raised is your bed? I wouldn't expect it to stop any critter in the least. We have a garden with a raised bed, surrounded by a fence, which i bottom half is wrapped with chicken wire. We also chicken wired the area on the ground between the raised bed and fence. Now no more critters.... Though we did have a bird eat some corn....

[Axecleaver]

You could bag the fruit. Once the fruit forms, get a cloth bag about a foot long, pick the blossom (zucchini blossoms are great, can eat them raw or breaded and fried), and tie the bag loosely around the stem. Make sure to harvest before it splits the bag :). It doesn't take too long.

Birds and squirrels both love cherries. You can invest in bird netting, but it's a hassle to keep it neat, and stuff tends to get tangled up in it pretty easily. Again, the best solution I've found is overproduction.

[elaine amj]

How raised is your bed? I wouldn't expect it to stop any critter in the least. We have a garden with a raised bed, surrounded by a fence, which i bottom half is wrapped with chicken wire. We also chicken wired the area on the ground between the raised bed and fence. Now no more critters.... Though we did have a bird eat some corn....

Well, ours is waist-high. It's really a 10ft x 2ft flower box that we re-purposed because we can access it easily. Plus our big veggie garden was just too much for us to take on and maintain this year.

Not sure if I will ever get to eat cherries - our (quite big) tree was covered completely in cherries. Then one day I looked out and practically every single cherry was gone.