Cindy's Varmint Panels #6--Construction of the Panels

Construction of the panels is pretty simple.  You need a supply of 1 x 1 wooden garden stakes, hardware cloth, plexiglass and screws.  A power drill/screwdriver is really helpful, and if you have to cut any of the plexiglass, you will need a jigsaw or saber saw to cut it.  We've tried scoring and snapping plexiglass and it just didn't work for us.

The screws we use are zinc #8 3/4 inch self-drilling phil mod truss lath screws; the zinc won't rust and the wider head of this type of screw distributes the pressure over a wider area of the plexiglass and also is wide enough to capture quarter inch hardware cloth.

Panel With Center Support Piece

The number and size of panels you will need will depend on the size and shape of your raised beds.  Our first raised bed was roughly L-shaped and required a lot of carefully tailored panels to enclose it.  

Each panel consists of two upright stakes, two cross stakes to make the bottom and the center of the panel rigid, hardware cloth on the bottom and plexiglass on the top part of the panel.  Measure the distance between the PVC tubes you screwed to the insides of the raised bed to determine how wide each panel should be, or, if you haven't installed the pipes yet, construct the panels and then mark the location of the stakes on the inside of the raised bed so you know where to locate the PVC pipe.  The plexiglass and the hardware cloth must be screwed onto the outside of the stakes, otherwise the varmints can crawl right up the wooden stakes to get into the garden.  The smooth plexiglass on the upper part of the panel prevents them from getting a handhold at the top of the panel, and the hardware cloth below allows air to circulate through the garden.  

Leave about six inches of stake at the bottom of the panel to insert into the PVC tubes secured to the sides of the raised bed, and leave about two inches at the top.  We secure the panels to each other with twist ties at the top of the panel stakes to keep them in place but make them easily removable when we want to get into the bed to tend the plants or harvest the vegetables.

Your panels should be able to slide into the PVC tubes and fit behind the sides of the raised beds closely enough that most of your resident veggie-eating neighborhood critters can't squeeze into gaps and get at your plants and vegetables.  

Constructing these panels takes some work, but it means that you get to harvest the vegetables you've spent time and effort growing.