Gardening isn't for the faint of heart.

I love my garden it brings me joy and peace. I don't mind the hard work. There are times when I'm so frustrated.  This year has really tested my resolve.  I have run into one problem after another.  I started the spring growing season with gophers getting into all of my unprotected raised beds. So with help from my kids we made the beds hugle beets put hardwire cloth on the bottom of the beds.
The weather was very challenging. It stayed cool much longer than normal for us.  Then once it warmed up we had record breaking heat for most of the summer.  Late summer I noticed holes in some of my raised beds, rats.  I think  I'm still dealing with them?  When I tried to start fall veggies critters, probably squirrels ate all the seeds and seedlings.  I built a chicken wire top for my seed starting bench.  I have covered the few seedlings I have planted with wire baskets.  I planted a bunch of seeds in a tall raised bed that has never been bothered before. It was full of lettuce, and spinach, carrots, pac choy, and a couple of nappa cabbage, a pansey, and parsley.  All the seedlings were about an inch tall and looking very healthy. This evening I checked to see if they needed to be watered. Besides the pansey and parsley everything is gone. One of the nappa cabbage is a stem.  The soil doesn't look disturbed in any way, so maybe birds? I don't know, but I'm so sad and frustrated.  Do I have to put a cage around everything I grow? I will not give up, I love it too much, but if I didn't, I would be throwing in the towel about now.

That sounds frustrating, I'm sorry that is happening.  I think setbacks like that are really hard.  I'm figuring out how to work around difficulties of a different sort.  Lack of enough sun/forested balcony tree cover.  They did trim the trees a couple o days ago and I can tell it will allow a little bit more sun in, but still its going to be rough for sun-loving vegitibles, while foresty plants will grow happily.  I'm going to experiment with the growlights for now just to see what they do and all, and then begin gardening in earnest again come Feb. or March.

I don't blame you for not wanting to cover all of your beds with mesh or anything else.  I know some people use storebought garden raised beds so gofers can't get in, but that can be expensive.

My condolences as well! This has happened to me so many times. Wheat and rye are impossible; corn is iffy; peas are inconceivable. A great many ordinary garden plants are infeasible here such that I can list only a few that are truly suitable and vital here, many of them root vegetables: most brassicas, daikon, parsnips (wild), garlic, chives, garlic chives, potato, runner bean, ground cherry (the native perennial kind), squash (they love it here), Jerusalem artichoke (wild), millet (sometimes; the wild kind is fine though), lamb’s quarters (also native), amaranth, sorghum (if they mature in time), cornsalad, rhubarb, Polystachya yam. I’m probably forgetting quite a few. Maybe it does look a little like a list of forage plants and cover crops, but when I look at the list it seems pleasingly lengthy.

Do you have a similar list of plants, ones that you can leave and not worry too much about? I think that sometimes we can interpret predation as Nature attacking or warring against us, but it’s equally possible to see it as guiding us towards crops that the land wants to grow, even if it feels like ninety percent of the plants we try don’t work out, if we try enough then we will find something that works.

That is a tough experience to have, I feel like the different pressures on our garden changes year to year.

It sounds like to me the local wildlife is finding your garden to be an easy area to forage in. I'm not sure of the space you have on your property but you might want to look into planting something like a native/bait area away from your garden to entice critters away from your veggies.

I've had luck with making a pollinator garden but mix in some easy available goodness that wildlife might be interested in. Oats/Borage/Turnip/Beet/Black eyed susan is the majority of what I've grown a few hundred feet AWAY from my planned garden and had good success.

I rid myself of squirrel/deer pressure by growing that and putting up a chicken wire fence around my garden spaces. I have had the occasional gopher but they seem intent on eating my flower bulbs these days then go after my raised beds.

Birds, in the spring, are my current nemesis. I sometimes think they like plucking out my seedlings for fun. Strangely enough, I observed my local robins took up an interest in the pieces of twine that were left over tied on my trellises and kept tugging on them instead of my seedlings. After a while they left that particular bed alone. Frustration? I'm unsure.  

Jen Fulkerson wrote:I love my garden it brings me joy and peace. I don't mind the hard work. There are times when I'm so frustrated.  This year has really tested my resolve.  I have run into one problem after another.

Bummer, but hang in there! Gardening is a long game, every ecosystem is different, the key is to get the balance of power in each ecosystem right.

I can offer some tips for thought.

- If your garden beds are the tastiest thing available in your ecosystem, it's going to be on everyone's menu. Offering alternative food sources can help whether it is trap crops, attracting different types of prey, or birdfeeders.
- Row cover is temporary, and can help young plants get started.
- If it's seedlings getting eaten after germination, this is almost always due to slugs.
- Keep the area around beds mowed or mulched, weedy growth is habitat for rodents
- Garlic and spring onions is good pest deterrent.
- Attract bigger predators that eat rodents. Owl boxes, bird perches, food for neighborhood cats, etc.
- Take up varmint hunting and bury your trophies in the garden bed.
- Hot peppers blended and put around the surface of the bed.
- Cayenne pepper
- Chunks of Irish spring soap will deter rats and mice.
- Coarse Sea salt will deter rats and mice
- A single strand of yellow bailing twine as a parameter fence with aluminum pans attached will deter deer.
- Chickens and Ducks sentinels. These dinosaurs are effective at terrifying rodents and slugs and can attract in bigger prey like owls and hawks.
- Plant more. Nature always takes its share. More quantity statistically improves your yields.
- Beer traps and wool make great slug deterrents
- Plant patches of buckwheat to attract beneficials.
- Diversify your garden with perenials. While taking longer to yield than annual vegetables, they make up for it once established. Perennials are more resilient to pests.
- Companion planting. In addition to alliums, herbs and flowers like marigolds, calendula, and daffodils are excellent pest deterrents.

I'm sure there more I'm not covering, but keep up the good efforts. Nature will always find a balance, but it's not always quick.

It's been all out war with pests this year for me also. I've had a fenced in kitchen garden for about ten years now; it's about 40x40 feet. It started with a six foot deer fence, and then I soon needed to add a hardwire cloth fence to keep the bunnies out. That, along with the occasional need to deal with a woodchuck that setup residency on my property--and before he dug his way into my fenced in garden, has served me well until recently.

This growing season I had voles galore setup up shop in my garden, whiteflies attacked my kale ( along with the usual cabbage moth caterpillars and the ilk ), the squash vine borers stooped to new levels of wickedness, chipmunks raiding my tomatoes, cutworms ravishing my seedlings, and I had to deal with five woodchucks. Oh, and something attacked my peach tree with about 30 peaches one night just before they were ripe enough for me to pick them. I'm suspecting racoons; they not only stole all the peaches, they wrecked the tree by breaking the main leader branch.    

I plant a lot of flowers along with my veggies to attract beneficial insects, but the whiteflies were so prolific that they didn't even put a dent in them. Never had a whitefly problem before, and supposedly they don't overwinter, so I'm hopeful that I don't see them next year.  

Back to the vole problem. I have really been giving the voles more and more rope to hang me with over the past few years. Voles don't like to run over open expanses of ground, because their predators are mostly from above; owls, raptors, fox, coyotes, etc... When I first put my garden fence up I mowed the grass close near the fence. The weeds between the deer fence and the shorter ( 3 ft ) rabbit fence were always a problem. So I planted comfrey along the fence on the north side, and that has taken off like a house-a-fire. But this comfrey weed blocker also makes a nice cover for the voles to nest, and make their shallow tunnels under my fence and into my garden. On the south and east side I added a black plastic ground cloth  under and along the fence one foot in and out, and covered it with woodchips. This kept the weeds from growing between the two fences, but made a nice spot for the voles to run under the plastic, as cover from predators. Last year almost all of my wintering over parsnips, and half of my winter larder rutabagas were eaten by said voles. This growing season half of my winter squash was eaten by voles before the squash was ready to pick. So I just finished a huge project of removing the rabbit fence, and then digging an 18 inch trench, by hand, all around my garden right next to the deer fence and then burying a portion the rabbit fence to keep the voles at bay.    

So yes, gardening is not for the faint of heart. Esp. a small kitchen garden where growing more to feed the critters is not necessarily an option. But, keep up the good fight, Jen; it's worth it.

I finally got a few things planted. It's quite late, but it's only just started to cool off. So  hopefully will be ok. The peas will be fine if the critters don't get to them. The lettuce should germinate. We will see if the other veggies will germinate.   I've built a few different covers. I used some wire baskets I bought at the dollar store, some hardwire cloth baskets I made to plant plants in the ground and haven't used yet. A few I made for this purpose. Some wood and chicken wire, and just chicken wire.  I buy cut to fit filters, and they are packed with a plastic grid. I made some baskets with that.  I do know rodents can chew through plastic, but they can chew through chicken wire too. My hope is the critters with find easier food.  If it's mice, I've waisted my time, because they can probably squeeze through.  Time will tell.  It's the best I can do with the time, and money I have.
My hope is once the seedlings are larger I will be able to remove the covers.  I have lots growing in the garden that haven't been  eaten.
I also wanted to say even with all the difficulties I have dealt with this year I was still lucky enough to get a lot of fruit, veggies, herbs and flowers.  I was sad and frustrated when I wrote this post, but I love it, and I will just keep trying to figure it out.  Sometimes I will, and sometimes I won't , but it's still totally worth it.
Thanks for all your support and great advice.

Well done for not giving up! I think i would have with that many predators.
Grow grexes and save the seeds from the survivors, resist to eat the winners. If you have many lettuce varieties, i grow about a hundred from colleages who do similar the survivors will cross and you'll get a superadapted modern landrace in time.

Have you tried perennial kales? Their extensive established root system permits them to outwait attacks.

I doubt they'll devour medicinal herbs that can safe you money to use for veggies from elsewhere.

More bitter localized varieties might help too then these juicy fresh veggies. Like Endives and a more bitter lettuce. You've gotto adapt your taste buds and cooking style to that, which can be hard, but maybe less hard than this incredible fight against horrible critters.

Good luck!

Hugo I grow purple tree kale. It planted in the ground, and is more a ground cover at this point because it's spread so far.  It hardly gets watered, the gophers don't seem to bother it, not much pest problems as bugs or critters.  I don't enjoy it in the summer, way to bitter, but the chickens always like it. It wonderful in the cooler seasons.  It would be awesome if everything was as easy as my tree kale.

My garden looks like everything is in jail, but at least I'm getting veggies in the ground. Will it work? I don't know, but it's worth a try.
I'm using the obelisk I made as a trellis for the peas. It's not very good, it had a lot flaws, then it dried and really became wonky. It will probably fall apart, but it was my first try.  I like the way it looks, so I will probably try again in the future.
My peas that were planted by seed with the chicken wire tent were looking good, but today I noticed it looks like they are being munched on.  I noticed a little gap in the wire. It's got to be mice, or maybe slugs?  If it's not one thing it's another.

I'm finally getting my fall/winter garden planted. It will be less veggies than originally planned, but considering I didn't grow one last year at all, it feels good to get something in the garden.  I'm not in the clear yet, but so far so good.  
I got all my peas planted, and used the top for my seed starting table in one of my raised beds. It was a bit short, but otherwise fits well, especially since it's sheer luck it fits at all.

Glad you're in a zone where you can grow things year 'round.  Supposedly I can too in zone 8, but when I tried it last year, things just sort of went into stasis, they didn't _grow, so I had some lettuce and raddishes to eat in March, but I'm not sure it was worth having to keep looking after them all winter since there wasn't really much growth to speak of.  They say kale is hearty enough, but somehow my red Russian kale seeds went missing out of my seedbox so couldn't try that.  I, for some reason, have lettuce experiments going again, but I doubt they'll be very lucrative, although at least the trees got trimmed so we get a bit more sunlight.

I hope the gofers calm down in winter for you Jen.

Riona I don't know a lot about your zone, but the one of the challenging things about the fall/ winter garden is you have to start the veggies in August when it's still hot to get a harvest before cold weather comes in.  With all my critter problems mine were started much later, so most will do exactly what you said. Once it's cold enough most of the veggies just hang out until it warms up. Kale and Swiss Chard grow year round for me, and maybe for you too. Plant them in the spring, and you can enjoy them next fall and winter with little effort (at least for me). It tastes the best in the cool seasons.  
At the moment the only things producing in the garden are tree collards,(planted  3? years ago) Swiss chard, and nappa cabbage. (Planted this fall) The lettuce and spinach still seem to be growing, so I hope to be eating them soon.
My critter problems continue to plague me. I have what I think are rat holes in two beds that didn't have them.  I put down cayenne pepper all over the place. I will have to dig them out now.  A couple of beds I haven't done anything with yet. I plan to lay chicken wire over the top when I clean them up to keep the critters out.  I really don't want to cage all my beds, but if things continue this way it may be what I have to do.