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New England Gardening

Squirrels ate all my tomatoes!!!

16 years ago

This has been a rough year for rodents as there are no acorns or beech nuts in my neighborhood.

Last year's bumper crop of nuts made the little critters think life was great and they produced many offspring. I stopped feeing my birds as I couldn't keep them away from the feeders. They have dug hundreds of holes all over looking for any forgotten acorns.

Well, my husband and I go away for a week and come home to find NO tomatoes on my twelve plants! We had some earlier in the season, (and a few saved in the fridge) but they ate EVERY green tomato in sight!!! I have a few the size of peas coming along.

My husband really loved the Purple Cherokee. Now I have to buy them at our local organic farm. I've never seen it this bad. :o(

Anyone else have this problem?

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Comments (4)

chazparas
16 years ago
It's miserable up here with them as well. They've been diggin up all my globemaster alliums and I may have one or two muscari left, they've eaten 40 or 50 of them so far! Planted them last year and no problems, this year they are going crazy searching for food. I have a couple of mourning doves that I've been feeding but I have to stay out there while they eat to keep the darned squirrels away. They even ate some pods off of my datura, think it got them stoned as they spent an hour rolling around the backyard and leaping in the air at nothing! If I weren't such a city boy, I'd probably shoot them they are causing so much damage!
prairiemoon2 z6b MA
16 years ago
The squirrels aren't too bad here this year. We have a feeder for the birds that they completely ignore. Two tubes of safflower seed and one tube of thistle. Doves and chickadees, cardinals, gold finches etc...all love that feeder but the squirrels turn their nose up at it. We have two small squirrel proof feeders with sunflower seed and they tried for awhile to get into it and seem to have given up and satisfy themselves with the droppings under those two feeders. They are the cage over the feeder type. I used to have the spring loaded feeder, but they just weren't lasting long. The spring would give out before the feeder was that old.

But, today I went out and found they had disturbed 4 small transplanted hosta seedlings that I had winter sown and just potted up a few days ago, plus I just ordered new iris rhizomes and went to the trouble to follow exact directions to get them all prepared and potted up early in the week. They had pulled them out of the pots, chewed them all up, left 2 of them on the ground and took off with the rest.
*sigh*

I really wonder if it was the squirrels that ate green tomatoes though. Are you sure it is not a woodchuck?
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hostasz6a
Original Author
16 years ago
I saw a squirrel with a green plum tomato in his paws one time. My husband sees them climbing all over the plants looking for more juicy tomatoes. I may rip them out of the ground soon, unless I want to protect the small pea sized fruits growing.
prairiemoon2 z6b MA
16 years ago
We live in a neighborhood with maples and not oaks or beech trees, so I guess they must live off the bird feeders around?
We really don't see that many. I haven't had them touch our tomatoes yet. Brother! I have no idea what to suggest. What about spraying the tomatoes with red pepper spray so they don't like the taste of them?

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