My ugly Fort Knox garden

An old  friend of mine was visiting me last week from South Carolina. We were walking around my yard and she said

“What is that?  You have a chicken coop?”

“Um, no, it is my garden.”

So I took her over to look at it, and she said “what are these tomato’s ending up costing you? $60 a pound?”

I said “pretty much!”

See, I had always imagined having a cute little garden surrounded by a white picket fence   I found a perfect spot in my yard, and created my dream garden.  I knew we had squirrels so I put a perimeter concrete footing 6″ down to keep them from coming in.  To keep the rabbits out, I put chicken wire all along the inside.  These pictures are from 1999,  sorry for the poor quality.

Cute huh?  I even planted those daisy’s around the outside of the garden to ward off bugs (something my brother told me to do)  Boy, was ever naive to the creatures of  the wild.  Duh!  Squirrels can climb over a short little white picket fence!  Oh and don’t forget about the gazillion birds we have flying around. Did I mention we have a family of racoons that like to romp in my garden?  Yeah, they like fresh vegetables.  So after many years of dealing with all the different animals that were munching on my garden, it now looks like this.

What I call my Fort Knox garden. I have spent a fortune over the years on keeping creatures out.  Gave up pretty for ugly just to grow some vegetables.  Look how you can hardly see my cute little white picket fence, not what I had envisioned.

I have the ugly green plastic around the whole perimeter to keep the squirrels and other animals out, and then I had to put smaller black netting in front of that to keep the birds out.  {there are small birds around here that could fit through those green holes!}  Then to top it off, I had to put more netting on the top for the bigger birds!

This is not the picture I had in mind when I decided I wanted a garden.  Last year I added the raised garden beds because I have a bad back.  It was killing me to bend over and weed and pick my vegetables.  Plus I was having an issue with snails.

Yeah, well, snails don’t just slither on the ground, they can go up the sides of a box.  Oh well, at least it is easier on my back.  This whole gardening thing is starting to get old.  After giving up my dream design, and adding all that ugly netting, in hopes of having a fruitful garden, I still have issues.  Bug and worm issues.

Last night I found 8 of these gross tomato worms!  I caught this one in the act…

Let’s just say he didn’t last long… But seriously?  What in the {bleep} more can one person do just to grow a couple of vegetables?  It is wearing me and my pocketbook out.  How in the world do farmers do it?

So far my other vegetables are doing well.  This year I scaled back and only planted tomatoes, summer lettuce and two varieties of cucumbers…

It looks like it is going to be another up hill battle this summer keeping up with those worms.  I just hope I get a tomato or two out of this whole mess, there isn’t anything better than bruchetta with a fresh home grown tomato.  Any one have any suggestions on what they do to combat these tomato worms?  I am open to all suggestions and tricks you might have!