Protecting Your Fruit and Vegetables from Animals and Insects

Whether you’re growing fruit and vegetables on a farm or you have a passion for growing your own produce, certain insects and animals may try to get their hands on your produce before it is ready for you to consume.

While there are a number of noted ways in which you can deter or outright stops animals and insects from making your food theirs, we’ll be listing some noted methods people use.

Bananas and bats

When it comes to bananas, fruit bats have a determined soft spot for them and typically become a notable enemy when your bananas are due to ripen. While many farms manage to protect their crops by netting fields of banana trees, if you only have a couple of banana trees in the backyard, chances are you won’t have such a sophisticated deterrent in place.

Luckily, though, stopping bats usually comes down to simply making the job a little harder for them. If you notice your bananas are close to ripening but it’s still too early to chop them down, what you can do is a wrap some fabric around the bananas. This could be anything from an old bedsheet to an old towel. Just make sure the material is thick enough to make it hard for the bats to get through, but not too heavy that it will damage your bananas.

Rabbits and fencing

If you own rabbits or live in an area where rabbits and hares scavenge for food, they could go towards drops of yours and try to rip them out of the ground. One of the best ways to deter rabbits and hares is to place fencing around your fruit and vegetable crops. You can use something like chicken wire. As long as it makes it difficult for them to burrow underneath the earth or jump over the fencing, it will notably deter them and they’ll move onto another possible food source.

Fencing like this will also deter chickens, cats, dogs and any other land restricted animal that has any thoughts of digging up your fruits or vegetables.

Insects

Insects can be the hardest crop consumers to stop, but you can fight back against them with natural remedies of varying solutions that are listed throughout the internet. Of course, you can use certain pesticides if you want, but keep in mind these can be harmful and, where possible, you should try natural solutions that won’t hurt your crops or present health risks to individuals.

The scarecrow

There is a product you can buy that is essentially a scarecrow water sprayer. It’s designed to deter larger animals (including dogs, cats, birds, possums, etc.) and works on a sensor. When an animal comes within the vicinity of the scarecrow water sprayer, it turns on, shooting water out wildly to scare the animal and cause it run off.

What methods do you use to keep animals and insects away from your fruit and vegetable crops? Share your tips in the comments below.

* Image source: Stoonn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net