great thread! I just moved to a new house with 24 large oaks on a .33 acre... Did you say SQUIRREL problem?? YEEE-HAWWW! It's a squirrel party at my house! They've eaten grill covers, pots, plants, the deck, the house, the camper, the boat cover, etc. And what really ticks me off is they aren't EATING it at all - it's as if they're just bored and 'ho hum, let's chew this lovely plastic children's toy!" Once I saw one struggling down my driveway with a jar of Jiffy Peanutbutter in his mouth! Now that you folks are saying the 'disturbed' ground is something I have found as well. Although right now they seem busier or maybe full of acorns or something than they are in the spring. I've planted 500 daffs and 100+ tulips (I know I'm chancing it with tulips) with very little 'digging up'... but in the spring - they're digging and pulling things up. The worst were my large planters - I have many of them around the yard and I had to replace the flowers in them at least 5 times each. They roll around in them, tossing my precious beauties (and the potting soil) on the ground completely ruined. But... chicken wire - check, bloodmeal - check, rocks, check (I'm taking notes)! Wish me luck with my 100 tulips. Tom-

This city is infested by grey squirrels. They use the city's electricity cables as a highway. Houses are densely built and there are some tall trees. Needless to say, we can't use any physical barriers as they can easily hop onto a tree, a fence or cables and just jump off to wherever they please. In my case, the worst is my front yard flower bed (I also have two five-storey high maple trees, so they feel right at home). I don't know why, but every time they make holes in the ground, they do it around the root balls. I wonder if it is because they want to munch on the roots (so far, they don't seem to actually have damaged the roots). They keep poking holes around my lavenders, and it really messes with my head, beause every time I feel happy that the lavenders are finally firmly rooted, they pull the earth up around them, and I have to keep patching it all up. They also bury and dig in the lawn, and I am quite puzzled at this, as the soil under my grass is rock hard (there is much softer soil nearby that they won't even touch). They never touched the crocus I planted in the same lawn, just under the trunk of the maple tree they live in. Go figure. The squirrels have stolen my watermelons (and left the carcasses all shredded up all over my plot). What really bugs me about this is that they don't actually eat the melons. They just tear them up into little chunks and then they leave. I find neat little piles of shredded melon. They have also eaten cukes, but not off the vine, though. They eat the cukes I leave out to dry them for seed. They seem to leave tomatoes alone. At first, I used the Havahart traps and I relocated them to a nearby park. I soon got fed up with that as they start really becoming numerous and quite motivated starting in midsummer. I just can't keep up with them and the trips to the park take up a lot of my time. There are also some super squirrels each year that seem to be smarter than the lot of them and that seem to want to simply destroy my garden just for the heck of it instead of just feeding, breeding and burying. So, I have started drowning them. Yes, I know, it is quite drastic, but that is the only efficient method I found, and honestly, in my neighbourhood, the squirrel population really needs to be controlled, and people add to that by feeding them for fun. Yes, I know, they just act according to their instincts and they have no bad intentions. But I am not going to live on a barren plot just so they can have their way. Besides, did I mention the entire city is infested by them? My family used to judge me for drowning cute little squirrels, but once they started seeing the damage, their disapproval melted away and all that was left was admiration for being tough enough to hold them under the water until they die (which, by the way, is quite quick and the squirrels don't even have time to panic as they die within a few seconds). For the flower bed, I am considering laying chicken wire disks around plants and covering that with the usual pine needle mulch I use. I will simply cut a foot square piece of chicken wire, cut into it up to the center and make a hole about twice the size of the plant's stem or trunk in the middle. Nobody would see them, but the squirrels would be stopped dead in their tracks. As for melons, next year, I will simply put the little melons in plastic cherry tomato boxes: they have little holes and let the sunshine in, and they are big enough that the melons can become large enough for the squirrel to find them too large to mess with before I need to remove the boxes. We'll see. I read that chicken manure supposedly keeps the squirrels away. I will start testing that as I have some pelleted chicken manure fertilizer left. I also read somewhere that daffodils are toxic to them, and sure enough, they don't ever go near my daffodils, so interplanting tulips and crocus with daffodils may be a good idea. I would gladly use a rifle, but living in Canada, that is not a possibility. So, I will mainly just keep drowning them until the city implements their squirrel control policy, which better be soon.

After years of losing the battle against squirrels, I finally have a full harvest from my 2 espaliered apple trees, unmolested by the furry-tailed terrorists. Here's a recounting of my failures and ultimate success: Squirrel Defense Year 1: ziplock bags on each apple once they were quarter-sized. This kept the coddling moths at bay, but the squirrels just laughed and thanked me for packing their lunch. I found the torn and empty bags and partially eaten apples all around my yard. FAILURE. Squirrel Defense Year 2: put cloth cotton drawstring bags on each apple once they were quarter-sized. Where possible, I even tied the drawstrings to branches. The squirrels still stripped a majority of apples from the tree leaving the bagged apples around the yard, or left with broken stems hanging by the bag drawstrings from branches. FAILURE. Squirrel Defense Year 3: covered the entire espalier with 22% white shade netting in early summer. The squirrels had already begun filching the very unripened apples even before I put up the netting, and because I wasn't vigilant about sealing the perimeter, they occasionally got inside the netting and took about half the apples. PARTIAL SUCCESS. Squirrel Defense Year 4: as soon as the apples were quarter sized, I covered the entire espalier with the 22% shade netting, sealing the netting perimeter with clothespins every 12". Squirrels didn't bother. VICTORY! A couple notes: I put a narrow strip of chicken wire on top of the espalier to discourage squirrels from running along the top (which they had been doing before) and tearing up the netting. I'm still bagging apples, not for squirrel protection but against coddling moths and other insect invaders. I soaked the bags first in a Surround kaolin clay slurry and somewhere between 90 - 95% of my apples are unblemished. Next year, I'm going to use try-on footies instead of cloth bags for better sunlight penetration. Even with the combination of 22% shade cloth and cotton bags, however, the apples still had a lot of red color.

Right after Sultry posted this a light bulb went off in my head. My mini-scheffelera plants in pots on the ground were getting nibbled a little each night- to the point of de-leafing some stems. Because I have a bunny rabbit nursery here, I decided they must be the culprits so I put those pots up on shelves off the ground. Sure enough, no more nibbling. It's the bunnies out there trying new plants. Sultry, you probably have more bunnies than you ever see. Mine hide until after dark so I don't see them unless I scare them out during the day. And surprisingly the kitties and new rescue dog don't seem to bother them. The dog smells them and is curious but I'm training her to "leave it".