Feral pigs can be incredibly destructive of gardens. The Big Island gardening discussion threads are full of pig complaints....but today my worry is my OWN dogs.
I have no idea why they will leave a garden alone for weeks, even months, and then spend an evening digging up my seedlings.
My husband and I went through some options:
1) taller and stronger fence (but won't they just dig under it?)
2) shoot them (I wouldn't, but boy, am I mad this morning)
3) set the kids in shifts all night to watch the garden (instead of homework? They might go for that....)
My dogs are so well behaved most of the time, and mostly when someone is home/awake to watch them, but once every four or five months, they get the yen to dig up my garden. Last night, at least one of them actually knocked over the fence and dug up the beets and radish. It wasn't much of a fence...but still.
I used to think it was because they liked to dig where I have been digging, but it's been two weeks since I last really did heavy work in that particular set of garden beds. So, now, I haven't the faintest idea what was the trigger, nor which of the three was the culprit (the family has differing opinions on the matter). I am now going out to try to repair the situation and pull a bunch of taro. Maybe I will work off my urge to put a "Free Dogs" add on craigslist.
4 comments:
I'm so sorry! LOL! I know EXACTLY how you feel. My dog did the same thing to me last summer. I went to the back door with my morning cup of coffee looked out towards my garden, to see that she rotatilled my zucchini mounds, my pumpkins, and carrots. I was seeing RED! LOL!
Aloha e Renee (hey, it rhymes!) Welcome to the blog. I just checked out yours, and I am seriously jealous of your cow and calf lol. I want a milk animal in the worst way - the sheep, although lactating, are a bust. I might have to wait for future generations....It is nice to "meet" someone with four kids, too (mine are bit older....)
I am still mad at the dogs, and it has been several hours....and I made a huge spinach lasagne to take my mind off it. I need to shake it off :D.
It's really irritating when dogs start digging. I have a mountain of sand I use for building, and ever so often they dig and dig and create a mess.
To prevent wild boars digging under my fence I build concrete slabs along the bottom of the fence. I wrote about it in an earlier post.
Grandpa, I saw how you repair and pig-proof your fences. I am really lucky that the pigs so far have left my land alone. I guess I can thank my dogs for that, although not for digging my garden! A pig would have done more damage than my dogs.
I asked one of the teachers at my kids' school if the school garden had any sweet potato slips he could give me. He told me the pigs leveled their sweet potato population over night. Truly a scourge. I guess I should just be grateful for my dogs instead of harboring a grudge - but I do need to figure out how to keep them out.
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