I would like to plant some nut trees, such as hazelnuts(filberts) and pecans.
Since we have quite a few squirrels, I am concerned that they will eat all those nuts. We have a hickory tree and we barely see unbroken hickory nuts on the ground.
Is this, first, an indication that the nut trees that we are thinking about planting, are not going to provide us with nuts.
Second, can something be done about squirrels.
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I've just about given up in my fight with squirrels. If my lot were open in the back and wife was not an animal lover I would pop them with low velocity (low noise) 22 rounds. I've trapped many of them in my Hav-A-Hart and a few have demised in a large rat trap but I never get a nut from my English walnuts. I do better with my Chinese chestnuts because squirrels will not bother them until hulls open. Then I have to pick up nuts twice a day and also fight off the rats with hooves. Frank
I have heard that some success has been achieved by putting a net around the base of walnut trees....like a funnel. It seems the squirrels don't like it and at the same time the net collects the nuts. It may be worth a try. Gary Fort Langley BC Canada To reply please remove yoursocks...
I don't think there is a season on rats, but I don't think that their meat is very appetizing.
Dave(snip)
From the Remington website:Squirrel Brunswick Stew
2 squirrels
1 tablespoon salt
1 onion, minced
2 cups lima beans
6 ears of corn, kernels only
1/2 pound of salt pork, cubed
6 potatoes, cubed
1 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons sugar
4 cups sliced tomatoes
1/4 pound butter flour
2 slices lemon
Cut squirrel in pieces as for fricassee. Add the salt to 4 quarts water and bring to boil; add onion, beans, corn, pork, potatoes, pepper and squirrel pieces. Cover tightly and simmer 2 hours. Add sugar and tomatoes, and simmer 1 hour more. Ten minutes before removing stew from stove, add butter cut into walnut-size pieces and rolled in flour. Boil up, adding salt or pepper if needed. Pour into tureen and garnish with lemon. Serves 4. Enjoy. If you are swimming in squirrels, get that barn cat there, he will eat some and scare away most of the others.-Jitney
snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (jitney) in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:
especially after the rat's have become tolerant of anti-coagulants.
fricassee sounds like a joke word ("care for some froggi frigazzee, monsieur?"), similar to 'freedom fries'. so i never knew there was such a thing until someone recently described a (greasy) recipe such as
When I read the subject line, I thought, "...go together like Christmas and carols." :-) Pecans are grown here, and squirrels grow themselves -- and get a lot of the pecans. However, a big, healthy pecan tree will produce enough that humans get some of the nuts, too. No experience with filberts.
I had a sweetheart apricot that had an edible pit, squirrels cut them all off while they were still green.
My dad had a walnut tree that he kept a bunch of metal around the trunk and the squirrels would jump up and over it and they would use anything semin close to launch themselves up the tree.
Unless you have a LOT of area to plant (in hope of getting a nut or two) with lots of nuts, or you live far enough from town with a vacant area between you and the neighbors. and so, basically, get a heard of maine coon cats to patrol the area, some squirrel catching hawks, and if shooting is allowed post guards with rifles, LOL Or save yourself a lot of aggravation and high blood pressure, buy your nuts, and plant something that squirrels don't care too much about... although.. I've been finding that they've been behaving oddly and doing things they've not done in the previous two decades.. like no birds bothered my grapes for 15 years, then suddenly..they started in!! Until one year, I didn't get them pruned, and they had an exceptionally heavy crop, and they ripened late... that meant that generation of young birds were not taught to eat my grapes that year. As such, the following year, I didn't have birds eating my grapes! But, the squirrels have taken up grape eating! I'd never had squirrels eat fruit before, except in the case of early ripening peaches, EVERYTHING ate them, finches peck them to the pits, squirrels knock them off the tree.
Squirrels are annoying to gardeners who want to grow nuts or small fruits. They pick my strawberries, dig in the planters, they will undoubtedly pick my raspberries when they ripen if they can reach them. They went from annoying .. to EVIL when one was living in my attic, and she decided that my wiring was a danger to her young and was grabbing onto it and just started whaling away .. jerking and bouncing it up and down. I could hear the wire slapping up and down on the floor of a section of the attic that *had* a floor, and we had to evict her an her young, and then took #10 institutional sized cans and opened top and bottoms, cut down the seam with tin snips and a friend molded the metal around the eaves to close off the squirrels access into my attic!!
There is no winning in our town with squirrels if you kill one .. fifteen try to move into its territory, seriously, so you can't kill them all. Plus if you try and a squirrel feeding nutty neighbor finds out they'll turn you in, and that's what happened with my Dad, so he cut the walnut tree down! He'd tried every other way to keep them out of the tree and it was just not worth the effort. Although, he didn't make the collar that would be like the top of a funnel .. in shape to keep them from jumping up into the limbs..it's cost prohibitive to most folks to have stuff like that fabricated. I'm poor, and dad wasn't rich either.
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