buy some live traps from your local hardware store, visit farmers market or your friends and ask where is the best place to deliver your furry friends after you trap them. you need to go at least 20 miles from your home or they will make it back. to get rid of our ground-hog infestation under the porch we resorted to some drastic measures. put some lye around and down their little holes to chase them out. have not seen any since

I use it for 2 years and it works! "I have used a similar solution for years. (We have 30-40 deer every night feeding on the field next to us and some adventuresome deer always manage to sneak in under the dog's nose.) Fill a 4 litre milk jug almost to the top with water. Take one egg. Whisk or beat the egg really well, DO NOT STRAIN. Pour into milk jug and close lid. Shake back and forth to mix. Now, pour some into a small squirt bottle and as you are walking around your acreage or yard mist the plants you do not want the deer to eat. You do not have to POUR the solution on your plants, a little mist goes a long way. Rain will wash it off. I reapply after EVERY rain or dew and otherwise about once a week, if no rain. I have NEVER noticed a smell of rotten eggs on my plants in hot weather. The mixture will smell if left unused for a few days and you will smell the solution as you are misting with old solution, but it goes away as it dries..... my garden does not smell in hot weather. The protein smell deters the deer. You can spray your plants with fresh or days-old mixture, both work. My spray bottle has been used for about 4 years and has NEVER "gummed up". Better solution... permanent solution...an eight foot fence or deer hunting season."

Sure, fencing is still a good idea where you can use it. I use fencing around my vegetable gardens and put rings of fencing around young trees. But I'm not interested in doing that for perennial beds and other landscaping where that would be less than attractive. I really think the only solution there is to make the deer think that the plants don't taste good (so blood meal or more expensive treatments). Today we watched from the kitchen window as a deer nosed around a bed of tulips but left without munching an any. That's not proof positive, even though I know deer can be pretty brutal to tulips in other areas, because it could be this deer didn't recognize it (they really are creatures of habit, after all). But the fencing is not foolproof, by the way, and I have real doubts about that flimsy netting stuff although I've never tried it. What I did try was a much heavier version of that (commercial fish netting). At one point I surrounded my yard with a ten foot high fence of that, but the deer totally did not respect it. They ran into it until they broke through it or, more commonly, broke it loose at the bottom and snuck underneath of it. But thanks for the tip on trellises, I'm liking that welded wire idea for supporting beans and tomatoes. I need to do something soon for the tomatoes and dow gauk in my greenhouse.

Never saw a hornworm in 26 years growing tomatoes, that is until year 27. Didn't even know what one looked like and had never heard of them before either. Year 27 was last year and anyone who wonders how quickly they can destroy a tomato plant, trust me, it doesn't take very long. This was a tiny tim on Monday. 14 inches tall. It rained all day Tuesday, so was not outside to check anything or even see anything that was going on. Same tiny tim 9AM Wednesday morning. There was nothing but a few stems left and a couple of tomatoes. Luckily though, there was enough left in the season, half of August and all of Sept. for regrowth and toms before the frost set in. regrowing tiny tim This was on the other side of the yard, so none of the other tomato plants where affected, but trust me, i was going through those plants with a flashlight several times a day looking for any sign of them and found none. By the way, those hornworms measured 4 inches long and there where 2 of them on that poor little plant. So far this year no sign of them. A question though. My grandparents had a summer veggie and flower farm and my grandfather always swore by companion planting of marigolds and tomato plants. He always had marigolds surrounding his tom plants. and he had at least 150 tomato plants. I've always done the same thing when I plant them in the ground and when I use pots for the toms, I always plant a small growing marigold in the pot, right at the edge of the plant. I've never had an insect problem before in now 28 years of growing my toms, until last year. That one tiny tim didn't have a marigold in the pot with it, all the others had marigolds surrounding them and in pots with them and they never got any hornworms. Does anyone think that the marigolds help to keep the hornworm away or was last year just a coincidence and I've just been lucky all these years? Fran