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Pastimes : Gardening and Especially Tomato Growing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MSB who wrote (421)	7/25/1998 12:28:00 AM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3495

Squirrels in the garden... We have red squirrels (small..just a little larger than a chipmunk) that will eat or wreck dozens of tomatoes. They will just sit on a tomato plant and gorge on a big beefsteak tomato until they have almost eaten their way right through the thing. The young ones are very bold and won't run away from me at all. I don't have to worry about them too much anymore because my neighbor's cat is such a good hunter that she keeps them away from the garden. However, I did have a lot of trouble for a couple of years. I invested in a good little Have-A-Heart trap and I use that any time that squirrels become a nuisance around here. It works well and you just about always catch the squirrels immediately. You just have to think of something good to attract them with. Fruit, nuts, peanut butter, etc... are all good. Then it's a nice drive to a release spot a couple of miles from here.... Bye bye squirrels...Gee... too bad the chickens don't like squirrels as much as they like hornworms, eh?... ;-}> Croc

To: MSB who wrote (421)	7/25/1998 1:52:00 AM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3495

MSB, Moths are nocturnal in the sense that you see them at night, attracted to bright lights. That's the theory behind those bug zappers. They do work. I've got one in my backyard, but it's primarily to attract bugs away from my swimming pool. You usually don't see them in the daytime because they're too easy prey for birds and other critters that are higher on the food chain. The marigold thing works better against nematodes (very tiny worm-like creatures found in the soil and infects your tomato plant roots). I also have raised beds (in a blazing desert setting). Tomatoes are tough to grow here. Just as the plants set fruit, the nighttime temperatures get really high, causing fruit drop and scalding. So we can't grow any of the long maturity types like beefsteaks. We have to settle for things like Early Girl, Floramerica, Celebrity and patio or cherry types. There's a new one out called Desert Heat or something like that, but I haven't tried that one yet. It's available only as seeds, not as transplants. We have no desert critter problems, just cats that think the garden soil is a dandy litterbox. I've kind of solved that by giving the cats one very small raised bed under a shady window as theirs. I plant catnip in bowls and set the bowls near the bed that they can have. If they get near my beds, I spray them with the hose. They're smart and they get the message pretty quickly. You might try something similar with the squirrels, such as leaving food they'd like away from your garden, sort of attract 'em away somewhere else. KJC