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Nose for News by Sarah Stultz

OK, I admit it. I’m getting spring fever.

I know it’s still February, but March is right around the corner, the snow is melting and temperatures Tuesday were near 50. Who can’t get a little excited to see that?

When my brain starts thinking about spring, the next thing I start thinking about is my garden.

Already I’m plotting out where I’m going to have my garden, what I’m going to plant, how many of each plant I will have, etc. Then I always recommit to staying more on top of my garden this year than last year.

Last year was a rough one for me — probably my worst garden in the history of my gardens. It was one bad thing after another — the deer, the fence situation, the squash bugs and then of course the rain and the out-of-control weeds.

And once you get behind on weeds, it’s difficult to get caught back up.

Because of how bad some of these things were, I am considering moving from the Brookside community gardens to a different location — or possibly moving one garden to a different location while we still have one at the site.

As time has gone on, I have had an incredibly difficult time growing anything in the squash family — pumpkins, zucchini, spaghetti squash, etc.

The cause: squash bugs.

While squash bugs are easy to identify at all stages, even when I stayed on top of the treatment for them before they became adults, it wasn’t a guarantee my plants would pull through. In fact, my plants didn’t pull through at all last year. Out of all the plants I had in the squash family, none survived, and thus I had no zucchini, pumpkins or squash.

I recognize it’s difficult in community gardens to keep some of these things at bay, but boy is it frustrating!

I’d love to hear if anyone has any ideas of things to do that work and that will conquer these devastating bugs.

I am considering moving all of the squash-related plants to the Spark Avenue gardens. I don’t recall the bugs being a problem when I was there previously, so we’ll see how it works out.

After that, the biggest culprit that remains is the deer.

We tried for a while to go without a fence at Brookside, but ended up putting up a fence after the deer treated my garden like it was a buffet. The fence ended up being its own challenge though. Once my dad and I got it up, the deer still seemed to get inside even though it was probably seven feet tall. And it was a little more challenging to get in and out of the garden through the fence and to water through the fence.

These are all things I’m thinking about and would love to hear if anyone has any tried and true solutions, particularly for the squash bugs and deer. It’ll be here before we know it!

Sarah Stultz is the managing editor of the Tribune. Her column appears every Wednesday.