My Dog Gardens + Podcast

Subscribe, listen to, and share Happiness Between Tails Podcast on most any platform; from Spotify and Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts and Breaker, to Pocket Casts and RadioPublic and Castbox, plus many more and an RSS feed. The full list of 50+ places is H-E-R-E.

What do medium-to-large-sized dogs have to do with gardening?

My gardening skills lie within the black-thumb spectrum, but they’ve improved drastically, thanks to canine assistance! I gladly shared the bounty with Los Angeles’ urban wildlife — but I drew the line when birds and rats didn’t leave anything for my family.

The dogs I’ve cared for greet fertilizer as candy, so I barely use it. Nor do I use pesticides for that, and myriad environmental reasons. All 3 of the wonder doggies I’ve had (a still-missed brother and sister, and now K-D girlie) have helped chase away vermin! K-D challenges everything from squirrels, mice, and rats, to possums, raccoons, and coyotes. Birds, too, get barked at enough to leave off nibbling more than a little of the tasty fruit and veggies.

That’s not all. Once I added dogs to our household, the hoards of snails dwindled. Ditto for legions of jumbo grasshoppers. Fortunately, beneficials such as ladybugs and pollinating non-aggressive bees and wasps aren’t bothered.

Pretty green flying beetles used to ruin the figs before they got a chance to ripen. With a dog or more to lunge and chomp at them, they’ve flow elsewhere. By the way, keeping grass short and clearing leaves also reduces fig beetles.

I’m on my own when it comes to spiders, the ones that stunted many tomato plants with their desiccating webs of red powder. Another tip: watering tomato plants only at their roots staves off mold and some bugs.

Wait — back to birds and squirrels — some were extra persistent. Finally, using leftover window screen material did the trick.

Voila! It lets in sunlight and air. Plus it’s light enough to snip with scissors, then wrap around plants. Clothes pins keep the malleable cages snug.

Sure, home-grown tomatoes surpass grocery store ones. Gardening teaches me to be resourceful and optimistic. It’s also shown me that dogs are more amazing that I thought!

Is your pet a gardener?