Keeping squirrels out of garden AND trellising tomatoes

13 years ago

Hello!

I'm trying to figure out how I can grow my tomatoes on a trellis and still keep the squirrels out of it. I was planning to make the chicken wire cages Mel suggest in the SFG book, but that would make it difficult to take the cage off to tend the garden. I could run chicken wire around the perimeter of the garden, but I'm sure squirrels would climb over that. They like to dig holes near my plants and uproot my seeds. Any suggestions?

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Comments (6)

jeremyjs
13 years ago
Short of killing the squirrels or totally enclosing the plants in chicken wire I'm not sure what you can do. I've thought about trying electric fencing. You'd need several strands the lowest of which would have to be very close to the ground. Even then I'm not confident it'd keep out squirrels. They're wily little critters.
weedbreeder
13 years ago
I've been using Shake-Away, a powder with extract (I guess) of bobcat, wolf, and other, urine. I watched a squirrel this morning give it a wide berth where I had laid some on the ground between two EarthBoxes of tomatoes. Give it a try.
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loisthegardener_nc7b
13 years ago
The pesky squirrels like to mess around in my garden too. They 'plant' black walnuts that sprout and grow roots a foot deep before they show any foliage above ground. I have to dig holes down to china to get them out. One thing I found helpful is either landscape fabric or a very thick layer of newspaper covering every possible inch of soil, and then some mulch on top of it to make it look nicer. If the squirrels dig down through the mulch and hit the fabric/newspaper layer, they give up and plant their darn walnuts elsewhere. Of course, if your squirrels are doing other things in addition to digging, the fabric/newspaper wont help much.
tackysue
13 years ago
I have surrounded my corn in a big ol' cage. It looks ridiculous, but so far, no squirrels.

As for the rest, I have interplanted marigolds and surrounded the garden with them. I had read that they didn't like them. And, it seems to be working. No squirrel holes anywhere!

However, I have a red flag that is telling me that marigolds and tomatoes shouldn't be planted together so make sure of that before you plant them.

Good luck.
jeremyjs
13 years ago
Has anyone here ever tried the water sprayers with motion sensors?
rlkennerly
13 years ago
After our garden got decimated by critters last year we put an electric fence around it this year. It's only about 1.5 maybe 2 feet tall, but so far it has worked beautifully. No more tomatoes with nibbles out of them. No more missing almost fully grown fruit, etc. Here's a picture of how we spaced the strings of wire.

My uncle uses a hot wire to keep squirrels out of his garden too, and he says it works pretty well until the corn is ready for harvest, then the squirrels seem to find a way in.

Here is a link that might be useful: LookMaNoWeeds