We have had trouble the last few years with the local possums eating the veggies that we planted. And before this it was a bush turkey scratching everything up so he could build his lady love one fine nest.

The bush turkey has finally gotten the hint that he is not welcome and moved on. I reinforce this by raking up all leaf matter and kept wire over the top of the veggie gardens so he couldn’t steal the mulch. But then this little possum appeared. She/he is terribly cute and likes to appear when we are outside at night and check out what we are doing. But every time something started growing it would be nibbled down to a nub overnight without even a chance of growing.

I tried draping shade cloth over the garden bed and growing plants that possums aren’t meant to like. That didn’t work. Finally I bought bird netting, and Tim took some planks of wood leftover from the cubby house and attached them to the garden bed to hold the netting up.

This worked for a few nights, then the possum worked out how to lift it up and go underneath. I went out one night to see a little possum happily sitting in the garden bed chowing down on parsley. So then I had to add more spare blocks of wood and bricks to weight down the edges. This has worked as long as I remember to check at night that they’re all still on there and haven’t been removed.

So after months of growing, possum nibbles, more growing, we finally have…

Tiny tomatoes. I chose to grow cherry tomatoes and mini Roma tomatoes this year as they only come at the shops in plastic punnets and I thought it would be a way of minimising our plastics use. The fact that it has taken three months to get any at all means that this plan hasn’t been successful but finally getting any tomatoes at all is exciting. So far they’ve all been eaten seconds after being picked.