I should have known. After all, it was a drought year. Instead, I plunged in full of anticipation, still reveling in the prior year’s unprecedented success. Yes, this year, once again, my newfound prowess as the tomato whisperer would be on display in the garden and on the plate, and I would receive the kind of tangible results that a writer craves and so rarely achieves. Determined to better my performance as the patio pot producer, I bought the two remaining Gardener’s Blue Ribbon Ultomato Tomato Plant Cages at my local Home Depot and ordered an additional six to be delivered. It was time to get professional.
Not content with my tomato prowess, I planted plenty of peppers as well. Having figured out that they needed more sun than last year, I knew that all those flowers would yield more jalapenos, serranos, poblanos, sweet-hots, and bells than I knew what to do with.
The squirrels, however, had other plans.
I had already committed plenty of time and money to the backyard, re-covering cushions, making new ones, and investing in three hardy rhododendrons that I had to move in and out of the garage for a couple of weeks. In Bend, you never plant before Memorial Day. Even after that, you can still wind up with a hard frost. Before then, you’re just tempting the fates.
So, I bided my time on the planting front, not wanting to increase the amount of foliage I had to put to bed every night and turned to the lawn. With two dogs of my own (down from four) and at least one bi-weekly visitor, the backyard looks more like a golf course with sand traps than a green fairway. I spent hours scraping away the dead grass and spreading 20 cubic feet of new dirt to level out the divots and lumps and provide my grass seed a comfy, rich layer in which to germinate. Then, deeming the section of the lawn closest to the house unsalvageable, I dug up the existing sod and replaced it with six hard-to-find, new pieces. Who knew there was a sod shortage?
Although I’d started my prep early in the season, the temperatures soared. I ran the sprinklers twice a day, and my water bill soared right along with the temperatures. The grass blades did not. I tried again. More scraping. More dirt. More grass seed, a special Northwest blend this time. Finally, I realized that a broken sprinkler head had doomed my re-seeding efforts, which made me feel even more like a failure, though figuring out how to replace it myself helped assuage my bruised pride.
By the time my friend Leah announced that the seedlings she had started and then stepped up were ready to find their permanent homes, I was more than willing to switch gears. As it turned out, so were the squirrels.
The morning after I’d planted the peppers, I walked out the door to admire my handiwork and give them a pep talk, only to find that three of the five newbies had been decapitated. To be honest, that’s an understatement. It was more like they’d been cut off at the ankles, with an inch of stalk left on each. The squirrel culprit(s) had even signed their work with the neat pile of limp pepper shoots piled atop the nearby rusty file cabinet planter. If there’s one thing more aggravating than losing your new, young plant to furry rodents is having said furry rodents not even make use of it. They’d done exactly that again and again with my flowers and those of the neighbor the last time a drought had gotten this severe.
Knowing I was due to collect the tomato starts the following day, I jumped online. Surely I’d find out how to keep the squirrels away from my garden. I found an answer within minutes. Pepper. Squirrels hate pepper. I ran to the pantry and grabbed red pepper flakes and cayenne. They’re both on the old side and probably need replacing anyway, I reasoned as I emptied both bottles into a bowl. Before long, a burnt-red blend dusted the dark soil in my pepper pots.
I thought I had beaten the little critters when the remaining two pepper plants survived the next night. So, in went the tomato starts, followed by a liberal sprinkling of my cayenne mixture. The squirrels had worked me perfectly, topping half of them by the following morning.
Back to the Internet. This time I concocted an onion, garlic and jalapeno brew, which I cooked until it reduced by half. If stinging eyes were any indication, spraying this concoction on my plants was going to work brilliantly.
Evidently, my squirrels like spice. It reminded me of my friends who tried to teach their dog, Ziggy, not to counter surf by ordering a triple-spicy batch of Kung Pao Chicken. The pup, whom I would later adopt, returned for more.
Further research revealed that peppermint deterred squirrels. Sprinkle peppermint oil on cotton balls and place in your garden, articles advised. I couldn’t fathom seeing cotton balls in my pots, but wine corks were perfectly acceptable. I also have a lot of them.
“What’s up with the corks in the pot?” a friend who was over for drinks would eventually ask. By then my pots were looking positively festive, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Following my failed culinary efforts, I turned to Amazon, ordering a 4-pack of solar-powered animal repellants with an ultrasonic motion sensor light. Unfortunately, all the blinking lights—designed to mimic evil cat eyes—did was make my backyard look like a red-light district. I should have taken a clue from the product description, which promised “to prevent intrusion of bad guys and dangerous animals such as deer, coyote, rabbit, bear, owls, racoon <sic>, bird, etc.” Bad, bad bunny!
I also invested in the JIA LE Ultrasonic Animal Repeller, which supposedly would “stop hungry and rash animals from ravaging your favorite plants.” I’m still not sure whether it’s on or off. I’m guessing the clicking noise isn’t a good sign since I’m not supposed to be able to hear it.
With the repellers proving ineffective, I turned to the one thing I had sworn I would never own—a plastic owl. Two, in fact. Amazingly, they seemed to work, a fact that delighted and dismayed me in equal measure. Even though I shuffled them between two to three locations, the squirrels, however, weren’t fooled for long.
Having lost faith in online solutions, I decided to get creative. Wrapping tin foil around the base of the plants worked for a couple of days, but just looked too ugly to bear. So, I came up with a compromise. Maybe if I stapled onto sticks curly strips cut out of soda cans, the shapes and motion of the tin—to say nothing of the sharp edges—would do the trick. The project took most of a Saturday afternoon. The squirrels apparently enjoyed the fiesta décor that evening.
My brother mentioned that he had found videos of squirrels trying to climb poles that had been lubed with WD-40 and sliding down each time. Maybe slippery tomato cages would help. So, unwilling to use a petroleum product near food, I grabbed the spray can of canola oil. I’m sure the squirrels would have preferred olive oil with their greens, but they didn’t complain.
Finally, I turned to the one repellant I had been avoiding. Urine. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to buy the bottle of liquid predator urine offered on Amazon, but it turns out that Wilco has bottles of coyote urine granules and fox urine granules. I popped for both. Since putting out the coyote urine, the deer have stayed away, but the squirrels quickly got over their hesitation. The fox urine proved slightly more successful, although it confused my dogs to no end.
While I can’t quite believe that I now can speak with authority about fox vs. coyote urine, the plant buffet is finally starting to grow. But only barely. The occasional guerrilla squirrel attack initially reminded me that I had to bolster the sprinkling of fox urine along the perimeter of my yard and add a second line of defense around the pots themselves. When that stopped working, I finally gave up. Even so, I’m still watering and fertilizing. Why? I guess because I’ve always believed in providing the best for my guests.
At this point, Battle Squirrels has cost me $137.70. My total garden investment also includes money for extra pots, tomato cages, soil, and fertilizer. Ironically, the weather has been so strange that it’s looking like this summer’s yield would have been pretty wimpy even if the squirrels hadn’t attacked. The poor harvest does not include the mushrooms sprouting on my lawn, courtesy of all the rain and all that new dirt. At this point, I’m plucking anywhere from five to two hundred mushrooms most mornings and evenings. If only I could convince the squirrels to like fungi.
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