How To Protect Tomatoes From Rodent

Ground mice or rodents is one of popular raised garden vegetables pests in American culture. Today, other regions and countries that grow vegetables in raised garden might have similar problem. They can be an aggressive presence in gardens, feeding on fruits like tomatoes as well as chewing stems and consuming young plants. Unlike mice, who are much more frequently found in homes, though they may also wander the garden, voles stay outside all year, living in burrows? Protecting your tomatoes from either of these rodents requires an integrated approach for best success. Follow these instructions to create the best-protected raised garden.
•Stake or cage your tomatoes to prevent fruit from lying on the ground. Remove any low limbs that might provide rodents access to an easy meal. Clean up any debris around the garden, such as high weeds, extra thick layers of mulch or anything else rodents could use that as a hiding spot from predators.
•Exclude voles from your garden by installing a 2-foot-tall section of hardware cloth or other fine mesh over an existing fence or on fence posts. Bury the bottom 10 inches underground to prevent digging underneath and attach the fence securely, without any gaps. Maintain a weed-free barrier of at least 4 feet around the fence for best effect.
•Place unset mousetraps around your tomato plants while wearing gloves and leave them alone for several days. After 3 to 4 days, bait the traps with a peanut butter and oatmeal mixture and place them throughout the garden and in any obvious vole paths. Check the traps each morning and remove any rodents you find, resetting the traps immediately.
Staking is necessary not only to prevent the tomatoes from lying down, but also to support the plants to hold up all the fruits when they reach the most productive phase. Alternatively, you can use hardware wire during the soil preparation by means of excavating the soil in the raised bed. This is how you can protect the raised garden regardless what vegetable you are raising with metal stake and hardware cloth and wiring.
•Cover the soil in the excavated area with hardware cloth, including the sides. If the border of the raised bed is constructed of a rigid material, such as concrete blocks or wood, the hardware cloth should extend 6 inches up the inside of the border
•Pound a metal stake into the ground every 6 inches along the seams to prevent the rodents from squeezing through.
•Return the soil to the raised bed, making sure no soil gets between the hardware cloth and the border of the bed. Spread soil along the edges first, using the weight of the soil to push the hardware cloth against the border material. After the soil has been returned, the bed can be planted.