Luck ran out

May be some other critter. In the past rabbits might get in my garden but were never a big problem. Deer can decimate a garden but are hard to repel. Any scent will confuse them at first but they get used to it and return. A friend was sold fox urine and I told her it would not work but she said it worked great for a week or two but deer later returned.

r a week or two but deer later re turned.

Borrow the fox from her and when the deer return, they will have the surprise of their lifetime!

Dear and rabbits are good eating too

i've never seen hawks do much for the rabbits here. we have a lot of rabbits. if i liked to hunt and eat game we'd be set for meat between all the various creatures around us.

if you knew it was deer these are supposed to work:

i haven't tried them yet as i just spent a lot of money on fencing and will continue to do that as i can talk Mom into putting up more.

as for rabbits, the good fencing is helping with those too. i need a few more nice days to get back to putting it up more as i have another 100ft roll to use.

i'm doing a pretty good job this year now that i have my air rifle sighted in and better fence. the rabbits that do make it into the yard rarely get away. the groundhogs will be next as soon as i can get back to the fencing tasks i have left. the deer, well, those are going to be around forever until i can get the whole yard enclosed... but what i have done so far for fencing has cut down on some of their traffic.

chippies, i'd need a very fine mesh and an electric charger with a hot wire run partway up the fence to discourage them enough. not a cheap thing to do... i've considered it for a small area where i could grow some edamame soybeans. otherwise they'll eat them as fast as i can plant them.

songbird

Frank wrote: ...

uprooted plants may be raccoons that smell the fertilizers used in the potting soil of many plant starts for gardens (do not use fish emulsion fertilizer). they smell that stuff and think there's food down there...

deer, if they're hungry enough won't be deterred short of shooting or shocking or fence.

songbird

We've had a problem recently with a woodchuck (ground hog) eating my wife's hot pepper plants and the hostas she planted around the oak out front. I b ought a gopher bomb and threw it down the burrow this afternoon. We'll see if it works. I have some fox urine spray to put out there tomorrow; I bough t it to put around the traps when I had coyote problems last year. Didn't w ork.

Paul

Paul

The videos are kind of funny too

I have a Hav-a-hart trap for ground hogs. I have caught several in it including raccoons, squirrels and skunks. I advise a trap big enough for larger raccoons as the bigger ones do not fit in the ground hog sized trap and escape when the door falls and fails to lock because of their size. Peanut butter attracts all these critters.

Years ago when I was working in the lab a guy advised me to dump a bottle of chloroform down the ground hog hole. He said the heavy vapor would stay for a while and put the ground hog to sleep permanently. I did it once and it appeared to work as I later filled the holes and did not see him again.

Don't I know it? I quit hunting a couple of years ago and it drove me nuts to come home empty handed after a days hunt to see deer standing in my front yard. I saw as many as 17 in my back yard once and one day sitting down for lunch saw 4 bucks in velvet. Houses too close to allow hunting but one year I shot 6 in the butt with my pellet gun to keep them away from my chestnut trees. Fire crackers would not keep them away but that pain in the butt did.

Pavel314 wrote: ...

hostas are edible so any herbivore will enjoy them. groundhogs only eat the tender tops off most plants here. i can tolerate their damage as usually the plant can survive and still produce something.

the smoke bomb may have got them out of the burrow but if you don't plug the hole up well they'll be back. i have a persistent problem with them because of the many large ditches here. in order to keep them from redigging their burrow out i had to pound metal and wood stakes in the ground after i filled the burrow back in. this would take them long enough to try to dig back out that i finally could hunt the adults so they were removed ( :( ). that does not mean a new family won't try to move in.

to keep the new ones from making new burrows i would have to fence the entire edge of the ditch, which is not easy to do with my legs the past year so i keep the air rifle handy and have kept them on the run any time they show up in the yard on this side of the fence. if you can get rid of the young ones (they're not too smart when young) when they show up you can keep them mostly in check.

in a live trap for bait the black oil sunflower seeds work pretty well. i close up the trap near dusk because otherwise i'd have a new raccoon in the trap each morning. i've given up on trapping and relocating anything. if i trap a groundhog it's dead. i tried using the trap a few weeks ago and ended up trapping a semi-feral or feral kitty. it was pretty healthy so i just let it go again. i haven't reset the trap. i think the adult groundhogs are too smart, but we'll see how this season goes.

songbird

for a week or two but deer later  returned.

Chuckle. A clear pain ball would would work too. Not leave much of a mess either if you missed

fe's hot pepper plants and the hostas she planted around the oak out front. I bought a gopher bomb and threw it down the burrow this afternoon. We'll see if it works. I have some fox urine spray to put out there tomorrow; I b ought it to put around the traps when I had coyote problems last year. Didn 't work.

I put a second gopher bomb down the hole this morning; couldn't find any ot her openings so maybe it's a new hole. I filled it with rocks and dirt. Als o put two large have-a-heart traps out by my wife's pepper plants, which ha ve had the top leaves eaten off in the last few days. I'll take the .22 or

Paul

Pavel314 wrote: ...

they seem to be active not in the real early morning and later in the day. i don't see them often in the middle of the day.

sometimes they will sun themselves on top of a flat surface so you can provide them with a place to perch it makes hunting them much easier. chipmunks are also perchers at times so they will pose for a shot.

groundhogs can run pretty quickly if needed.

the problem here at present is that they have a lot of places they can hide when i try to get them so i need to remove those hiding places and i plan to do it, but it will take me a year or two for that to happen...

good luck!

songbird

White tail deer almost made me give up on gardening. But since I put the fance up, they are only a vegitable problem when I forget to close the gate. They still eat all the flowers.

But about all we have are deer, rabbits, gray squirrels and skunks. Pretty sure it is the rabbits this time.

That might be the case here, I suppose. I've never had that problem with the tomatoes, but I plant them very deep, to get extra root growth.

Drew Lawson wrote: ...raccoon uprooting...

i only had this happen with onion starts from the greenhouse that had some potting soil they were growing in when we planted them outside the fence.

after a few times we switched to planting them inside the fence and the raccoons mostly stay out of there (we don't plant sweet corn or other things they seem to find attractive).

the tomatoes i plant are also down pretty deep and they've never been bothered by raccoons.

songbird

Thank you. I think I'll skip the fertilizer (bone & blood meal) in the hole step with the shallow plantings for the next year or two. I've never seen any sign of the raccoons climbing the fence, but I suppose they can get under the loose spots the bunnies go through.

Still pretty sure the brassicas chewed to the nubs was rabbit work.

The good news is that time and rain shows that about half of them are alive. Harvest will be later than expected, but they may produce.

Still need to get the carrots and beats (turnips?) seeded, when the rain breaks.

Drew Lawson wrote: ...

i've never seen a raccoon liking them, but there may also be a first... :)

i recently heard of some crows taking a liking to some leafy things like kale of all things. a lady had her garden shredded by a family of crows.

i need to survey things today after the recent rains/storms. i think most of the gardens are ok with perhaps just a few plants knocked over.

turnips, beets and carrots are more cooler weather sprouting crops so you may not be impressed with the results. radishes too.. i have used them as cover crops because seeds for turnips and radishes are very inexpensive but most of the crop isn't food for us. oh, but i have heard of people who like turnip greens (and i like radish sprouts - i usually eat them when i'm thinning).

you might do ok with succession plantings of beans.

songbird