This makes you so mad

[b54red]

The problem with squirrels eating your tomatoes is that once they find them they keep coming back and they start bringing their friends. The only way to stop them for sure is to kill them. If you kill enough of them they might get the message. It took me several years of steady work with the pellet rifle and they finally stopped raiding my garden. I don't know how long it will last since the population seems to have exploded again.

Another thing it could be is a rat. That is even worse because they will come back every night until you kill them. Squirrels are usually more random but rats are dedicated destroyers.

Bill

[Yak54]

Yes Bill, the pellet rifle trick works pretty well for me with the squirrels and the chipmunks too.

Dan

[Bipetual]

Originally Posted by flgatorguy87

This makes me so mad. To have a nice beautiful tomato that is wonderful in shape just waiting for that first blush. Then the next time you check on it the squirrels have decided to mutilate it.



This was a brandywine. Anything I can still do with it?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

You could throw it at the little ba$tard.

Sorry, I do hate when that happens. They have these motion-activated airhorn things to keep pets off counters. I wonder if they would work outdoors? The problem with that for me is I would probably forget it was there and scare the heck out of myself.

[noinwi]

Nothing is currently after my maters but there is some patient little critter eating my strawberries as each one ripens. The green and half ripe ones are untouched. It is a new bed and there are not many fruit on but as each one ripens something is eating it down to the nub at night when the cats are in...I'm thinking it may be a mouse or maybe an opossum. Nothing has been digging in the bed. It's kind of amusing...for now...

[dustdevil]

I'm not so sure I'd eat something that may have been eaten on by a rodent that might be rabid...

[Gerardo]

This does the job nicely.

http://www.amazon.com/Gamo-Hornet-Ri...gamo+air+rifle

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by dustdevil

I'm not so sure I'd eat something that may have been eaten on by a rodent that might be rabid...

Even though it can happen it is very unlikely that a rodent will have rabies.
Dust you might want to read this.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...,d.aWw&cad=rja
It clears up a lot of things people think about rabies.
I was a long time friend with a Vet and he taught me more about rabies than I would have ever known.
There has been no reported cases of anyone getting rabies in the US from a rodent.
And rabies only sheds the virus from its host in the final stages if the infection from the brain to the salivary glands.
You cannot get it from feces urine or the blood.

Worth

[Cole_Robbie]

Squirrels can carry bubonic plague:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/ar...to-die/278154/

[ScottinAtlanta]

I have 100% loss here in Atlanta due to squirrels. They are even eating the small green cherries.

80 plants, countless hours, and not one tomato to eat in 2015. Sigh.

I am trapping them with peanut butter bait. So far, 7 squirrels and two large rats in the traps and one big brown thrasher (Georgia State bird) that had tried to snatch the bait. Still trapping.

[Cole_Robbie]

geez, that stinks, Scott. It sounds like next year you need chicken wire or wildlife netting around everything.

[ScottinAtlanta]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

geez, that stinks, Scott. It sounds like next year you need chicken wire or wildlife netting around everything.

Would be great, but I am doing intensive urban gardening with plants in the flower beds and scattered here and there, so too much space to cover easily.

I might have to go back to the bubble wrap solution, but it is so time consuming.

[Cole_Robbie]

Attempting to occupy more territory than it can defend is typically how empires fail.

You should look into garden structures. Any greenhouse idea can be modified to also hold shade cloth and/or chicken wire to keep out the critters.

[ScottinAtlanta]

Urban farming requires multi use of space - azealia bushes AND tomatoes. Dogwood trees AND containers. Lilies AND peppers. My fate lies not in enclosing spaces, but in killing rodents.

[Cole_Robbie]

here's a feisty idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_%28dog%29

[TNTiger]

Originally Posted by ScottinAtlanta

I have 100% loss here in Atlanta due to squirrels. They are even eating the small green cherries.

80 plants, countless hours, and not one tomato to eat in 2015. Sigh.

I am trapping them with peanut butter bait. So far, 7 squirrels and two large rats in the traps and one big brown thrasher (Georgia State bird) that had tried to snatch the bait. Still trapping.

That's disappointing . . . I had a year like that and I was so frustrated. I finally started cutting slits into different sizes of plastic cups and I'd slide the cup over a small tomato. Sometimes the cup wasn't big enough or it fell off but I did finally get some full sized ripening tomatoes by the end of the summer. My garden looked absurd and the neighbors thought I was a nutcase but I wanted to eat my own tomatoes! The squirrels also figured out how to knock the cups off but it was a lot of work for them so they didn't damage all of my tomatoes.

I also wrapped my whole garden in bird netting. The netting did a very effective job of keeping me out but the squirrels had no trouble getting in and out . . . except the one time that the dogs and I surprised one and he got a little hung up for a few minutes. That whole episode nearly destroyed my entire garden - it took a while but I finally laughed . . . then I bought a high power pellet gun! I also bought the motion detector sprinkler thing - I got sprayed many times but squirrels passed it undetected!