What motivates you to keep gardening if pests destroyed your last garden?

I am very sympathetic. It is so very heartbreaking to see the plants you have planted and nurtured suddenly destroyed. At least the cows ate it, though. My squirrels mostly seemed to destroy just to destroy. I hope some day you will be able to have another garden that survives.

I did get some apples the first year, and probably would have last year, but our trees didn't pollinate this year.. It would hurt to try..

Or even better, get a dog or cat to prowl around, that scares most creatures away..

So noise really does scare them off? I'll have to try that.

How wonderful that you are giving your little grandson an early gardening education. I got my start because my dad had a 'victory" garden in the first house I remember. We had chickens, fruit trees, berries, and lots of vegetables. It was there that I learned what fruit is supposed to taste like, so that I'm not tempted to by any summer pit fruits in supermarkets. I remember working in that garden as a child, and that made me want to grow at least some vegetables wherever I have lived since. I once wrote a short article on Qondio.com called"Gardening is Caught and Taught," or something like that. This was based on my experiences as a child in Dad's garden.

That is because you buy the dirt to put in the planters and when you put the plants in the garden, there is a good chance to the garden soil already contains the eggs of the cutworms and they grow and there goes the tomato plants. I also buy the tomato plants already started and they were grown iln peat so there was no cutworms there. We have a dog next door and he sometimes gets loose. Luckly he has not touched out tomatoes.

I've had to use a lot of planters this year, too. i've never had a cutworm, fortunately. My friend had a dog she caught eating her tomatoes off the vine. She had no idea dogs liked tomatoes, and she'd had no idea what was eating them until she caught her dog in the act. If the price of food goes up, we will have to be more serious about finding solutions to our pests so that they will leave some of what we grow for us.

You're right about that. My relationship with squirrels began with the tree squirrels in the Capitol Park in Sacramento when I was about six years old. I fed them and they would eat from my hand. I did that in other places, too, and thought they were cute. Now I see them as "the enemy."

Last year they got all the leaves from this same plant and I do mean ALL the leaves, and only left half inch of stem, but this year I started them in a raised planter with a glass retainer all around it and when big enough moved the pot to the side of my shed with the lower leaves pinched off, so the clusters were about 5 feet off the ground. It worked!

Maybe they won't chew through all the stems, but it won't stop them from eating the grapes. Every one of my little green grapes disappeared this year before they turned red.

DEER ME...they are my nemesis! The population (human) on this small Island is somewhat 1000...the deer triplicate that, so they scramble for food and their diets have exponentially expanded. The sad part of that is, for me, I find the meat has an off taste, as in their invasive hunt, they are eating many, many strong flavoured foods! I go to work every morning,(now) just at day break, I travel about 2 miles, and my form of transportation is an E-Bike (electric bike) so it makes no noise...and each day it is a lesson in survival, as I probably pass 30, in that short distance...and did have a horrible collision with one this past June. They seem to be heading for the side of the road, then turn and jump out in front of you. As these deer are so accliminatized to humans...rutting season is about to arrive, and some bucks get very, very aggressive, so must be approached with trepidation! Gardening will go on here, for about another month...and right now I am planting Fall/winter crops. Your chard plants would be history, if you lived here..as they have destroyed my sorrel, sage, rosemary...even lavender..so they arent't DEAR to me! Take care and cheers!

Funny thing you should mention deer. As I was walking past a chard plant in a pot right next to the house, I noticed the edges of the leaves were gone. Maybe I will move the santolina next to it and they will keep away. I don't know if they will then attack the other two chard plants on the other side of the driveway. They've already devoured our complete apple crop this year. My gardening season for all but the herbs is about over for this year, and there's no way I can build a deck. I am, however considering developing a taste for venison. This same few deer visit every evening.