Low Impact

They're cute, but have an appetite for home-grown vegetables!

Since moving into our new house, one of the first orders of the day has been to establish a vegetable garden. The environmental benefits are pretty clear – I know exactly what pesticides have been used (none!), exactly what artificial fertilisers have been used (none!) and how much fuel was needed to transport them from the soil to my kitchen (none!).

Add to that the fact that after a week at work, getting out into the garden feels positively therapeutic and its a win-win story all round!

Unfortunately, it turns out that I’m not the only one with a taste for organically grown fresh produce. The native Australian possum also appreciates my hard work. Once the sun goes down, they’re out and sampling the smorgasbord that is my garden. I had been warned about this, but thought people were exaggerating – I’ve grown vegetables in other houses before and never had a problem. But the morning I came out to find my previously healthy parsley turned into a collection of stalks, and two of my radishes pulled out and eaten like apples, I decided to take the warnings a little more seriously.

The garden layout is still evolving, so my final possum defences are too. But I’ve put together some possum-proofing for one of my “standalone” garden beds that works quite well.

Not exactly a work of art, but it keeps the possums at bay.

As the picture shows, its a little free-standing “igloo”. When I need to access the garden, I just roll it off. If you had a helper, you could lift it off – its not at all heavy, just cumbersome.

To make it, I bought some cheap, untreated pine from my local hardware store. It was about $4 for 2.5 metres, and I ended up making the igloo about 1.5m x 1 m. This works out to be around 5 linear metres or $8. The wood was just screwed together into a rectangular frame as the base – its a bit rickety, but its not exactly a load bearing structure.

The arches of the igloo are made up of irrigation hose, screwed into the base frame. The hose I chose is flexible enough to bend into a hoop, but stiff enough to form a solid “skeleton”. I can’t remember how much I paid for the pipe – maybe $20, but I only used a small fraction of it. I’ve got enough to make several more of these igloos!

The final step was to run some fencing wire over these hoops. You can secure it to the frame with U-pins, or tie it on with wire. I happened to have some old zip-lock plastic ties I found under the house, so I recycled those!

So far (touching wood), it’s done the job. Currently that garden bed is holding some rocket, some broad beans and some brocolli, and they’ve all remained untouched. The mesh that encloses the igloo is quite coarse, so bees have no problem flying and pollinating the broad bean flowers. And of course the sun and rain can also enter freely.

Anyone else have any success stories (or horror stories) to share about possums in the garden? Feel free to discuss in the comments below.

Possum picture by “wollombi” from Flickr.  Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Categories: DIY, environment, green

Tags: gardening, organic, pests, possums