Growing a vegetable garden is a delightful experience for the senses: the sight of green leaves, the yellows, oranges, and blacks of the fruit, the feel of warm soil or a sun warmed tomato just picked, the smell of soil and plants, and best of all, the taste of the vegetables.

At the height of the growing season, I quickly run out to the garden to pick fresh lettuce or tomatoes to add to the lunchtime sandwiches. Perhaps tonight’s pasta needs some pesto for a sauce, so I’m out to the herb garden to harvest some basil. Ah, and what could be better than corn on the cob, freshly picked and popped into a pot of boiling water?

Then comes winter, when the garden is covered with snow. But down in the freezer are bags of green beans and containers of homemade tomato sauce, seasoned with garlic, basil, parsley and tomatoes, all grown in my garden. Yes, growing a vegetable garden is a sensuous and worthwhile pursuit.

Sadly, gardening isn’t all harvesting, eating and enjoying. It’s also battling the parts of the natural world that enjoy the garden as much as I do.

As many people know, raccoons are very clever creatures that love corn. They come a couple of weeks before the ears are ripe and test a few. Based on this exam, they know when to return to find the corn at perfection.

The night before I plan to harvest the first ears, the coons come and eat their fill. They pull and trample the stalks and eat all the ripe ears. They taste a few immature kernels to gauge when they will be ready for the coons’ next visit. In the morning, I face worse than a mess. I must bear the disappointment of knowing I won’t be having fresh corn on the cob for dinner this evening.

A wise gardener told me to add a floppy fence. Here’s how I did it. First I erected a solid wire fence, set down into the soil so the thieves can’t crawl under. Then along the top I added a floppy chicken wire fence, two feet high. I wired it onto the other fencing so there were no openings for the raccoons to crawl through. It seems they don’t like floppy fences the lack of stability makes them uncomfortable, so they turn around and leave. Using this method has saved me many a crop of corn.

Another mammal pest is that cute little chipmunk. Who couldn’t love these adorable wee creatures? Try liking one when you see it sitting on a rock, chomping away on one of your tomatoes! Then go into the garden and see where he’s sampled several before finding one he likes and carrying it away. The fences just don’t work with this guy he tunnels under or squeezes through. He always gets his ‘mato.

Having the vegetable garden within the dogs’ yard has been a big help. The chippies never know when the dogs will come out to chase so they tend now to leave the tomatoes more or less alone.

Last summer I had a different problem one that remains an unsolved mystery. Something was stealing my carrots. One day, a carrot would be growing there, its shoulders barely visible above the ground. The next day I'd find an empty hole. This was a neat hole, making it clear that the carrot had been pulled straight up and out. Gone. What could have done this? I have no idea. Everything else nearby, including the corn, was untouched. Whatever it was, I’ve been hoping it doesn’t come back.

Of them all, the worst offender I’ve encountered is the woodchuck. Because it tunnels underground, I’ve never been able to erect a fence to keep it out. At our last house, the woodchuck visited the garden regularly and ate everything it liked, right down to the ground. Things would grow up again and back it would come. Once again, devastation.

I walked around the garden on hands and knees, but I never found the hole where it got in. I checked the fence, held down snugly against the ground with large, heavy stones no opening, no weak spot, no way it could have gotten in, but there it was the evidence. Sometimes I’d even see the thief, but I never found out how it got in or out.

One of the great joys of this garden has been the lack of woodchucks in this area. So you can imagine how I felt this noontime. We were just sitting down to lunch when someone asked, “What’s that?”

There, just outside the window, moseying toward the daylily bed, in all its brown furry glory, was a woodchuck.

“Oh, no!” I cried. “There goes the garden!”

By: Susan M. Poirier, Master Gardener