SQUIRRELS!

[DSavona777]

I'm very angry right now. My ripening tomatoes (about six) have been chomped by squirrels. The little buggers are rampaging through my garden.

My garden center recommended a liberal dosing of dried blood (supposed to scare them away). Any other ideas of what i can do to protect my surviving tomatoes from these little demons?

I have a slingshot that I'm seriously considering using, but with my poor aim I'll probably end up shooting down the rest of my veggies. Any thoughts?

[westocast73]

What I find odd is my squirrels keep eating my only hot pepper ( Hot Portugal ) and havent touched anything else other then the usual hazelnuts. I am totally ok with this though as my hot pepper has gone nuts and has about 30 peppers on it and I only use maybe one a week at most so doesnt bother me that I am being left with very few.

As for control nothing really works. They are incredibly smart and will figure out most things over time. Even scents of predators will not fool them for too long when they notice said predator is never around. I use to hear spraying really hot diluted pepper sauce on your plants worked though but I would highly doubt it now considering my own experiences.

Dried Blood I assume would have the same results as anything else. Over time they would adjust and figure it out plus any rain/watering would wash it away immediately. If though you just need to keep them away for a week it might work. I know the hot pepper sauce was suppose to irritate their noses and eyes and I assume the blood is suppose to make them think their is a predator around. I find irritants tend to work better though ( havent tried the hot pepper though ). Irritants remain irritating while predatory things lose there fear factor with time.

Just my thoughts.

[chilhuacle]

Squirrel + Nut = zero tomato damage.

[DSavona777]

I think I'm going out there with the slingshot....

[dcarch]

Originally Posted by kctomato

+

Works great for Chipmunk also.

Must have! Must have!

dcarch

[DSavona777]

Uh, what do you do with the captured squirrels?

[chilhuacle]

SQUIRREL RECIPES

http://www.backwoodsbound.com/zsquir.html

[landarc]

Take them for a long drive. At least across town.

[Worth1]

I like the nut idea myself.

Or fried with all of the fixins.

Worth

[rsg2001]

I have a lot of squirrels around here. Mainly they leave the tomatoes alone, although they love the apple tree, unfortunately. One year they were really annoying, digging out the transplants after I planted them. I used two things. A "cat scat mat" that I got from Gardeners Supply Catalog, which has plastic spikes sticking up that seem to discourage them. The other is finely diced cayenne peppers. The only thing is I hate using my cayennes for that!

[tjg911]

Wow! That's an interesting observation I never considered!

Last year and this my tomatoes are being eaten by something. I suspect squirrels. Last year there was 1 or 2 apple trees shading the garden way too much so I cut them down, pruning just was not working plus other trees were also creating shade.

I wonder if it is squirrels, were they eating apples and ignoring the tomatoes!

Tom

[duajones]

I have 2 squirrel feeders along with a platform that I put peanuts out for them occasionally. I keep the feeders full of sunflower seed and havent had a squirrel problem, they love the stuff

[cthomato]

Well, I finally went and bought a Havahart trap and I couldn't be happier with the results. For a couple of days before I bought the trap I 'prepped' them with unsalted peanuts. I baited the trap with the same nuts. It took all of ten minutes to catch the first one. The second one came two days later. I haven't seen another one since. For both cases I drove them to a local park about 4 miles away and let them out by some bushes. I have removed the chicken wire from my plants and haven't noticed any new damage. Why didn't I do this years ago? I also found out that squirrels growl (I guess I would too).

[Granny]

rsg, you can get dried, ground hot NM chile in 1 pound bags over the net. Have you tried laying down a line of that instead of using your cayenne?

[garnetmoth]

weve got an unfixed outdoor female dog next door, so we have roaming male dogs on a regular basis. due to the frequent dog traffic, we havent had much trouble with squirrels or rabbits.

One thing that I stared doing against rabbits was sprinkling trimmings of juniper bushes around my peas to keep them away....