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Vegetable Gardening

What ate my Swiss Chard, Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts?

15 years ago

I have 2 gardens, one is completely fenced in and the other is a couple of raised beds. I started some broccoli and brussel sprouts in the fenced in garden and the raised beds a long while back. They were all doing well (for weeks and weeks) and then one day, they were gone! Eaten. Pulled up an eaten!

I tried to replant the broccoli along with some Swiss Chard in the fenced in section of the garden. The next morning, half of what I planted was gone! I sprayed the rest with "Liquid Fence" but a week later, everything was gone!

Even my onion plants look like they've been sampled.

I just remembered I also planted lettuce and spinach with the broccoli, and the only thing left is the spinach. So something has eaten all my Swiss Chard, Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, and Lettuce but has left my Spinach alone.

What could be doing this? I didn't see any deer tracks in the fenced in garden, but I certainly have them in the area. I also have rabbits, ground hogs and moles and voles.

Needless to say, I'm frustrated and depressed. Most of those plants were started from seed so I had quite a bit of time invested and I'd like to figure out how to keep this from happening next year.

Anyone have any similar experiences? What was it? How did you fix the problem?

Thanks!

Bart

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Comments (7)

midnightgardener
15 years ago
If you are not seeing any tracks in the dirt then the moles or voles got them. That's a bummer after all the harde work you put into it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Watch me grow a giant pumpkin
gumby_ct
15 years ago
something ate my broccoli seedlings overnight

Here is a link that might be useful: something ate my broccoli seedlings overnight
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These were not just a few aphids! They were covering the plants and down into the leaves of the buds! Yuk! I sprayed before pulling because there were so many and I didn't want to shake them (live) all over the rest of the garden! I think they've already hit my new broccoli. I've never HAD aphids in the 6-7 years I've been vege gardening. What I have now is chard, some snow peas, some late green beans, I'm just pulling up the tomatoes, some broccoli and I have lettuce and beets ready to plant. Do aphids bother any of these, or should I shut down the garden for the winter?
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I like the chard but sadly the deer like it even better than I do......it draws them like a magnet BR, have you tried hanging a few bars of soap in the garden? They say Irish Spring has the strongest scent, and deer don't like having their sense of scent messed with, blocks their ability to smell danger. My father-in-law in Okeechobee had to put up an electric fence every year as the deer were decimating his garden, until I suggested he try this. Now all he does is hang a bar of soap on each end of the garden and has had no deer problems since doing this for the last three years. Tom
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glorygrown
15 years ago
If you've been having the same week-long rain we've had in PA after several weeks of having good rain, consider slugs as your pests. They can eat something down to a stump in a night and will also blast major holes in onion greens. Gardens Alive makes an organic slug bait that makes them stop eating.
glib
15 years ago
If you can see the craters of pulled up plants, obviously it won't be slugs. At any rate, just going through the garden at 10pm with a flashlight will give you an exact count of your slugs (their mucus makes them shiny, and very easy to spot on the ground and in the foliage).

Given the level of destruction, and lack of tracks, I vote for groundhogs. Remediation:

1) check around the perimeter for entry points at the base of the fence. My fence never really worked until I put down chainlink horizontally, 2 inches deep, and tied to the vertical fence. I was getting rabbits under the fence.

2) for those who try to go over the fence (including deer), electric fence a few inches below the top is the only solution. You only need to keep it up a few days. They will remember for the rest of their life. Search the site about electric fences.
rendezvous
15 years ago
I don't know much about animals eating veggies (luckily), but could it be cutworms? They ate all my broccoli. See pic.

Here is a link that might be useful: eaten broccoli
bart1
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks everybody. I don't think it's cutworms or slugs. It happen long before the 40 days and 40 nights of rain that we're in the middle of, and there were no "cut" plants on the ground. There were no plants at all! Maybe a stem or two, but no plants. The onions only looked eaten on the top, not the bottom or sides.

The ground hog seems likely. I did battle with a bunch of them in the last two years. Last year I traped at least 6 of them early in the season wasn't bothered again. Perhaps they came back.

Anyhow, thanks for tips!
Bart
glorygrown
15 years ago
If it is a groundhog, or several, I recommend a BB gun. It doesn't kill them since they are too darned thick-skinned, but they really don't like it.

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