Ants in My Pants! Among Many Other Insects....

In my very short and limited experience as a gardener I have made one astute observation, humans are not the only species that LOVE corn!! I was the happiest man on the planet the day my 8 corn plants sprouted and since then they have been eaten alive by bugs. Speaking of being eaten alive, I need to buy a classification book on insect bites just so I can put a name to the multitude of marks currently on my body. And since when did mosquitos evolve to use local anesthesia? I can't feel them until there half full and hanging off of me.

Anyhow, a rough day in the garden is better than a great day at work right? So how do we address the issue of bugs eating the crops? How do we also address severe weather such as heavy rain or frost at the same time? Our solution was to build a couple of enclosures that could be coated with either a plastic tarp or insect cloth or both. Using PVC pipe, cement glue, and chicken wire, along with a ton of tie wraps, here is what we came up with:

Prototype 1 - The Wagon Cover

Strengths:

• Sloping arch for rain water to run off when covered with tarp.
• Lightweight and can be removed with one hand.
• Bottom four posts are notched so that they fit into holes we drilled into the garden frame. We were thinking that this along with the edges of the chicken wire would be enough to deter ground vermin. (hehe, or varmint depending on where you are from)

Weaknesses:

• The biggest would be that we totally forgot about the trellis!! Now our most prized harvest is hanging out in the air waiting to be eaten, soaked, frozen etc.
• The enclosure is not tall enough to hold fully grown and hopefully insect free corn.

Prototype 2 - THE CAGE

I haven't watched wrestling in a very long time but doesn't this remind you of something you would see on Monday Night Raw? So much that it gave me the perfect name, THE CAGE! Only time will tell if it is big and tough enough to keep out bugs and the elements.

Strengths:

• Encloses the ENTIRE square foot garden with room to spare on the trellis side. That way if we actually get vertical hanging plants to fruit they will have plenty of room.
• Sloped for rain water to easily run off.
• Tall enough to house an entire row of fully grown corn along with pole beans, watermelons, and cucumbers on the trellis side.

Weaknesses:

•  It is big!! Too big for one person to lift so a lot of the watering has to be done from 4 feet in the air. This can disturb new sprouts and make it tough to get water to the roots of plants with big leaves.
• It's not finished yet! As of right now the top is wide open so we need to decide whether to wrap it with chicken wire or just coat it with insect cloth when it comes in. TBD

So the jury is still out on our two prototype enclosures. I am going to order insect cloth this week so hopefully this weekend we will have pictures of the finished products. Here is one last pic of the two enclosures together:

If you want more details on how we built either one just let me know!