Has anyone successfully had raised planter beds who also has a dog? My fear is that we'll plant all sorts of wonderful veggies, only to have our dog walk by and eat it all! This is a dog who eats carpet and sprinklers, so she's not very particular. She's also a German Shepherd, so she's tall.
chicken wire would be the answer....but go 4' tall....otherwise the dog will jump over it.
We have 2 tall 80lb dogs. I want a garden, & am trying to convince my family of its importance. Hasn't happened yet....:)
Yep, but we fenced it off!
We just put veggie plants in a pre-established raised bed in our yard and YES, it can be done, but will take some work and training!
First, we put up a 3' high chicken wire fence all the way around (about 2 weeks before the plants went in). The big dog was still jumping in, so we installed a few more posts (they stick out about 6 inches at the top) and I stuck pointy pieces of bamboo up there to ward him off. We also recently built a dog run on the opposite side of the yard to keep him contained when we're at work. I'm not sure how they'll do when the veggies start growing (I'm hoping they're both trained to stay out by then), but my original concern was digging and squashing all the plants!
Now the training comes in--because BOTH dogs love to pee all over the rr ties that make up the raised bed! GROSS! We just constantly shove the dogs away from there, or gently lead them to a place where you would like for them to pee/poo and give them treats when they do the right thing! I also plan to try soaking the area with a vinegar/water spray hoping that it will get rid of some of the smell and ward off the dogs.
Good luck!
We had this problem with our Golden, he would eat all the tomatoes off the plants, even when they were still green! We sort of just gave up. I hope you get some good solutions here.
definatley fence it off.. we had one my dog never ate anything in there but he would walk through it step on things and sometimes poop in there .. youd be surprised my dog will eat anything (blankets,paper plates.. he ate a piece of deoderant the other day out of the garbage) but not veggies or anything plain.. if u have chips he turns his head away but if u have them with dip hes all over them... try giving him a carrot he refuses to go near it .. put some ranch dressing on it and its a different story.. so u may be surprised she may not eat them but only a fence will stop her from walking through it constantly
I don't know about eating the veggies, but will probably do his/her business on them! My mother used to let my sister and her hubby keep their dog in her backyard when they were in town. That dog would jump up on the raiser planter beds just to do his business in them.
I would spray some sort of pet deterrent around it and then not so sure I would eat the veggies!
Based on your dog's chew/eating/oral fixation I am going to say - NO. Now if you want to build an enclosure around it, then YES!
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We don't have raised beds, but we do have a large flower garden. It is surrounded by moss rock, but our dogs (Labs and Goldens) don't let that stop them. They think the nice soil is wonderful for digging to China. We finally put wire fencing up - the decorative kind you can buy in sections. The garden would look better without it but, considering that there would be no flowers without it, It looks pretty good. Much of this type of fencing is just inches high (meant as a border), but we found three-foot-tall fence pieces, and that keeps the four-footies where they should be... most of the time.
Ha. Mine (chocolate lab) eats socksn and paper and duraflame logs.
We've got 4 raised beds. The ONLY things my dog goes after are the blueberries (elsewhere), sweet potatoes (also elsewhere), and some select herbs. not enough to make it so I need to cage up my garden, though, except the blueberries. Those things need to go under lock and key. He'd lip them alll off the bushes given half a chance. The birds would get the rest. So I net them.
He DOES help us turn them over every spring (loves loves loves digging), but once we plant them, he leaves them alone.
My dog had a fixation on our raised beds when I first made them. So did cats. I laid chicken wire down on top of the dirt and staked it down so it wouldn't roll up. My dog got up on it a couple of times and didn't like walking on the chicken wire. After a week or so, he just left it alone and stayed off. A friend's dog gave him more trouble and was more persistant, so he put barbed wire on top of the fencing and the dog stayed off real quick.
Its psychology. Like Pavlov's dog. A conditioned response. A farmer fenced his cattle in with an electric fence. The first time the cows touched the electric fence with their wet nose, they stayed away from it. After about two weeks, the farmer turned off the electricity and the cows still stayed away.
I told my kids to stay away from the electric fence, and for sure don't pee on it. Well, anyone with an imagination knows what my sons had to do. One would dare the other until one of them . . . and went wee wee wee all the way home. ;~))
Good luck to you and yours.
