Juli Lawrence – Rakish Gardening

May 28th, 2008

Boy I really miss that neighbor with the PIT BULL. They also had a yappy little dog, so it might have been yappy that kept the squirrels away.

This urban living is just one nightmare after another, and it’s days like today when I *really* miss the country. In the country you can have dogs and cats and let them go outside. I guess you can do that with a dog in town, too, but you have to build a really good fence. Plus we don’t have a dog.

The squirrels are killing me. I just didn’t know that squirrels were such a problem until I moved into town. First, in an apartment I briefly lived at, I thought they were adorable and I fed them. Then they moved into the attic and chewed up all the wires and it was horrible.

Now that the neighbor has moved – and taken his dogs – the squirrels have invaded. Maybe it’s two squirrels or two hundred. I really have no idea.

It started last summer with the squirrels stealing tomatoes. I’d never even HEARD of such a thing. I’ve led such a sheltered life! Then I guess they ate all my crocus and tulip bulbs because none came up this spring. That’s just a damn shame because I especially love crocus. AND I was planning on putting in the special kind of crocus that makes saffron, because I love saffron. But what’s the point if I can’t get rid of the squirrels?

Now they’ve just been digging holes everywhere, including in pots. I just read to put lava rocks in pots as a mulch and that keeps them out of those. But I’ve still got to figure out what to do in the gardens.

I called Shake Away, their 800 number, and the young lady was so nice and helpful. I just finished a can (this stuff had worked SO WELL on the rabbits) today. I’m going to do one more can, per her instructions, and if that doesn’t work, I can get a refund (that’s decent – another reason to love Shake Away!) and do plan two.

Plan two will be:

1. Vinyl netting over my seedlings until they get established.

2. There was something else, but now I’ve forgotten.

I’ve read suggestions of moth balls and cotton balls soaked with ammonia. Plus a spray of hot sauce in water, and I may do that on the tomatoes this summer. Will that hurt their taste? Will it wash off? Ick.

I HATE that vinyl bird netting, but it has worked quite well keeping the robins from shearing off my plants. (They shear them off, then steal plant parts for nests. I yell at every robin I see, except the fledglings.) I also yell at the squirrels and they just flounce their cute tails at me.

I have no heart for kill methods. Can’t do it. My uncle hires a nature man to trap groundhogs and other critters, then release them in the woods, but more move in. So I don’t see the point of trapping and releasing. Plus, I’ve read they die when you do that because they don’t know where food stores are.

My final option (and this is controversial) is to just feed them. Peanuts and corn. They love it. If the squirrels would behave, I don’t mind feeding them. But they have to behave.

This is a real problem, and a bb gun is not a solution for me, although quite tempting.

• It’s that time!
• Squirrels again
• Squirrels eating the tomatoes!

Tags: squirrels
Posted in Organic Gardening | No Comments »