In My Garden: Easy barriers against insects

Spring is upon us and it’s time to be setting up your garden for all your spring planting. We had very little rain until the beginning of February and then a lot of rain in early March. We’re still low on rain at about 7 inches to our normal 10 by the end of the season but hopefully we’ll be getting a little more rain soon. The weather right now feels like spring, absolutely beautiful. As I’ve said in the past, I usually plant everything in flats in my greenhouse but outside planting is good as well.

Even though my garden has a fence around it, I still put barriers around the raised beds to protect my starts from squirrels, skunks and raccoons, the squirrels being the most difficult to work with. I started using a new barrier that’s a light tight-weave plastic screen. I put the screen up for my lettuce and spinach patch and have found I have very little to no insects inside it. I have another lettuce patch next to it that I didn’t put the screen up and I had a lot of problems with aphids and worms. This is quite a revolution for me as a way to protect my plants from not only my squirrel buddies, but from the insects as well, without having to spray.  I’m going to be experimenting more with this type of barrier on all my vegetables this spring and summer and will give an update.

There are a number of vegetables that I had stopped growing because the aphids and worms were difficult to control. Broccoli Raab is one because its difficult to see the insects until it’s to late. Corn is also a problem because moths and butterflies lay their eggs on the corn and worms grow and bore into the corn and destroy the corn. The barriers should make it possible for me not to have to spray and still have some great veggies.