The disappearing garden

If this was going to be a big part of our summer food supply, we'd be hooped.  It's the remains of a lettuce seedling, an apparent favourite of whatever is feasting on our newly planted vegetable garden. Photo by John Denniston. 

And this is the remains of their second-favourite, a celery seedling. I don't think there will be any celery from the garden this summer. Photo by John Denniston.

It's hard to tell what this once was, but the photo gives an idea of how some seedlings have been nipped off nearly to the roots by whatever critters have discovered our new garden. Photo by John Denniston. 

Hopeful beginnings: This is what the garden first looked like when I'd planted all the seedlings. The bare space against the wire support was left vacant for tomatoes.

This is what the garden looks like now. The devastation began in the upper left and is now nearly halfway along. The other half of the garden, on the right side of the board path, has (so far) been mostly left alone. 

As a farm kid, watching my parents deal with the uncertainties of drought, insect infestations, early frosts and late snows, I learned early that to plant anything is to open yourself up to forces beyond your control. It’s a lesson I’m relearning now, thanks to the little pandemic garden we’ve built by the back fence of our very urban yard.

Soon after I greened up the newly dug soil with a splattering of lettuce, bok choy, onion, kale, celery and Swiss chard seedlings, I began to notice. . . less green. One by one, little knobby lumps appeared where hopeful young seedlings had been. Something was eating my plants, beginning at one end of the garden and methodically working its way, row by row, toward the other.

At first, I didn’t take it seriously. One or two plants? Critters must eat too. And they must be quite restrained critters, since they didn’t eat the whole garden in one go. As the lettuce slowly disappeared and everything else went untouched, I told myself that our visitors must be quite fastidious as well. Once their favoured lettuce was gone, they’d go too. There was also the fact that they focused intensively on one section of the garden; maybe some mysterious barrier was preventing them from roving further.

Alas, all these theories flopped nearly as fast as they were invented. While it's true that only a few plants disappeared every night, in a small garden that was significant, and a big empty patch soon opened up. Nor was the thief all that fastidious; once the lettuce was gone, the celery seedlings quickly followed. As for the mysterious barrier, it’s moving quickly down the garden bed – the only geographic restriction may be the end of the dining material.

Finding solutions – wire plant-cages? – would be easier if we knew what we were fighting, but nobody’s giving us any clues. If our visitors are slugs and snails, they’re not leaving their usual slime trails. If they’re bigger critters – and our neighbourhood has mice, rats, squirrels, skunks, raccoons and coyotes to choose from – they’re not leaving any footprints, just neatly severed leaves and stems hinting at a fine pair of small sharp teeth. Whatever creatures are eating my plants, I think I’m being told something quite clearly: Whoever is in control of this garden, it’s not me.

A closer view of the now-empty left side of the garden. The beans have been planted since the other plants disappeared, and so far don't seem to be of interest to my hungry guests. I've also planted pea seeds in the vacant area.

Happy bok choy survives at the very end of the ill-fated left-hand bed. It's flourishing now, but every morning I expect it to have disappeared overnight.

The right-hand bed, which has lots of kale, onions and Swiss chard, has so far been left mostly alone. Perhaps these plants are as distasteful to my uninvited guests as they are to many children.