Its almost Garden time

[Johnny]

LOL I had a friend in Down Town Jacksonville, FL where the squirrels
outnumbered people. They were ferocious - - - eating all the plastic
off their cars. My friend got a couple boxes of the CB ammo and a
long barrel pistol and developed a taste for FRIED SQUIRREL !! lol
the neighbors that new about his clandestine hunting thing just turned
their head as long as he never hurt anyone or popped a glass .
The squirrels around my place chew up every thing plastic they can find.
I was told that most plastics have soy oil in them which attracts the squirrels and rats.
My neighbor across the street has a John Deere tractor with a plastic hood
and his horses have eaten most of it up - for the same reason.

Funniest thing I ever saw last year was my wife's first garden and I watched the squirrels
cut the young stalks and quickly drag it up a TREE to enjoy their spoils.
LOL LOL and my wife out there throwing anything she can find at it. Now she has
her own personal CO2 pellet pistol. (but the varmints are safe) LOL


how tall are the pear trees ? can you trim the bottom branches or tie them up
and wrap some aluminum flashing around the base? (higher than the squirrels can jump).

 

[lovedr79]

no varmits in my garden. i have 4' wire fence with an additional 4' of bird mesh on top. so 8' total fencing, the deer we have would have ravaged my garden in about 1 night. i now have a problem with woodpeckers dismantaling my deck after the carpenter bees. was going to start replacing stuff this weekend after spraying all the holes with bee killer, well that has changed as the dang woodpeckers are back.

 

[JMichael]

how tall are the pear trees ? can you trim the bottom branches or tie them up
and wrap some aluminum flashing around the base? (higher than the squirrels can jump).

The trees vary from about 15 to 20 ft tall, but there are enough trees in the area that they can travel from tree to tree and never touch the ground. So blocking ground access wouldn't slow them down in the least.

 

[BigTerp]

Squirrel pot pie is some good eating!!!

 

[JMichael]

Well apparently another coon have moved in to the recently vacated territory that my garden is in. I lost a few more ears of corn last night so it looks like I'll be on night guard duty again tonight. :evil:

 

[Johnny]

Then you need to find an outlet for them.

 

[JMichael]

I asked all my friends and family on facebook if any of them wanted a coonskin cap but got no takers. :lol: I stayed up until a little after midnight watching the garden and the coon never showed. Finally gave up so I could get up at 6 am to go fishing. Luckily, there was no further damage last night so I guess this one doesn't hit this area every night. Might be a challenge to get this one.

 

[lovedr79]

Some of the first harvests

 

[Jim]

First harvest of 2015. I have the skills to pay the bills!

 

[Jim]

:LOL2:

 

[bobberboy]

The squirrels are so bad, they eat every single pear from all 3 trees before the first one is ripe enough to pick. So last year I started a campaign to regain control of her pears. Last year I took out about a dozen squirrels out of her yard. This year I've only gotten 2 so far (missed 3 times today ), but the pears are about half grown right now and there's still about half of them left on the trees so far.

We've had a couple of good threads on here about squirrels. They're worth searching for, especially the links to squirrel launchers.

I take an extremely dim view of squirrels. There just rats with fuzzy tails. Not cute but destructive and breed like there's no tomorrow and no control. If my city was plagued with rats like it is with squirrels the public would be up in arms. As it is there are no predators to keep up with them. Being in the city I can't shoot them. Apparently it is legal to trap them but not transport them. What I've been doing is trap them and then try them out for the Olympic swimming team. You'd think after all these years and all the try-outs I'd have found just one that could swim... :mrgreen:

 

[lovedr79]

we call them tree rats

 

[JMichael]

It's illegal to shoot them here as well. Actually, it's illegal to shoot a gun in town, and that's my reason for using a 22 with CB ammo and making sure the neighbors don't have a problem with me shooting them or staying hid from the ones that do mind. I don't think I've ever heard anything about any restrictions on killing the squirrels other than what would apply from Game & Fish and killing them out of season. But there are laws that allow for taking out nuisance animals. So my total for this year from the pear tress stands at 6 right now, but based on the number of half eaten pears on the ground each day, there are a few more I need to catch up to. If I could stay over there all day for several days in a row I could probably end this problem pretty quickly, but that can't happen.

The hunt for more coons is still ongoing. I've been trying to go out and look around with a spotlight about every 25 minutes or so as long as I'm up. So far no luck and I've even tried some different trapping methods. Looking out the window this morning while making coffee, it appears that at least one may have visited my corn again last night, some time after my last check around 1 AM. I've got a "professional" grade trappers dog proof trap in the mail. I just hope it gets here before the rest of my corn patch is destroyed.

 

[lovedr79]

Todays harvest

 

[Jim]

All that effort and money is finally paying off huge!


That is a cherry tomato

 

[Jim]

Caribbean red habanero! First one so far and 3 fingers long!

 

[VinTin]

Just found this thread!

He's a shot of a part of our garden taken about June 9th, 2015





An earlier photo from May 11, 2015

 

[JMichael]

Yesterday and todays harvest.



11 plants = 63 tomatoes in 2 days and those are not cherry tomatoes. :lol:



Jim, my mouth is burning just looking at the picture of those peppers. :?

That's a whole lot of garden Vintin but it looks really well taken care of and very healthy.

 

[Jim]

wow JMichael! :beer:

Vin Tin, nice setup!

 

[lovedr79]

DANG! yeah my tomatoes are about to start turning red.........