Garden Pests: birds and rodents

A lot of garden plots, ours included, have been demolished this winter by garden pests. Bird damage is usually easy to identify- they leave little triangle shaped notches in the edges of leaves, or eat the tender middles of kale leaves. Do your very best to keep birds out of your bird exclusion netting if you have it installed- use many bungee cords, try attaching the bungees to the wire mesh on the bottom of the garden bed, and/or "sew" up the edges with bamboo stakes.





More troublesome are the rodents. A common culprit is the California meadow vole or meadow mouse Microtus californicus. You may have seen these cute, native rodents scurrying across sidewalks. Wikipedia article However, it could be voles, mice, or rats chewing holes in the netting and helping themselves to your tender vegetables. These are frustrating pests- they climb, dig, and chew!!

Meadow vole inside garden bed

check for holes in netting

rodent damage

rodent leavings

Here are a few ways to discourage rodent activity:

Put cloches over the young plants: 

Build yourself some wire mesh cages or line the edge of the box with hardware cloth. 1/4" is the recommended size for mice. These photos are from the Ace Hardware on Clement Street- you want the hardware cloth, not plastic netting or 'chicken wire'. 

 Here's one gardener closing up holes in the netting with hardware cloth:

On our beds at the nursery we've built large and small rodent exclusion cages:

We've also noticed that their favorite foods seem to be peas and members of the broccoli family. They avoid strongly flavored foods (arugula, mustard greens) and don't seem to be as fond of chard and lettuce. So you can selectively protect your plants. Also, try to keep the garden bed tidy so they feel less comfortable there- they like plant cover to hide under. Finally, cultivating the plot regularly- digging up the soil to make sure they aren't creating tunnels and actually living in your garden plot is important. The best news is that they seem to be most problematic in the winter, so let's hope they find other things to eat in the spring!