Grow-it-yourself dilemma

The boubou is singing from the boughs of the bougainvillea and the double-collared sunbird sips from the scarlet bottlebrush. But at my feet I survey the devastation caused by a visit from the guinea fowl. It has pecked away at every leaf on the spinach I planted last week, and scratched away at the soil around the neat rows of seedlings waiting to establish themselves. It is probably a partner in crime with the porcupine, who helped himself to my spinach a while back. That is growing back apace, but all can be whipped away in the night without warning. The mole is causing even more devastation, although currently favouring tunnelling under the fence between us and the neighbour, leaving caverns beneath a thin layer of grass into which I regularly fall up to my knees. It's only a matter of time before the baboon troops return, although they are currently in limbo without the alpha males which have been 'culled' as a restraining measure - how foolish Man is to selfishly destroy anything that irks him. An isolated visit from two pregnant females recently must have been out of desperation.
Many of us want to make ourselves less reliant on the foods that are produced commercially by growing our own vegetables and fruits, and a great deal of time, money and effort goes into setting up a vegetable patch or orchard. These are a magnet for the local wildlife, particularly after the severe drought of last summer and what may be an ongoing situation here in the Cape, with weather patterns entering unknown territory. Frequent wildfires, often deliberately set, have destroyed most of their natural foraging, and for those of us who live on the urban fringe, there is very little that can be done to deter them.
A number of wooden planters on my balcony have meanwhile solved the problem of growing herbs and gooseberries without snails, caterpillars and assorted pests having easy access, and even the hadedah has visited a few times to peck out the grubs that live in the soil - that at least can be classed as natural pest control!