Tag: Squirrel War

Slow Garden Prep Work

Wolsey2 Comments

I missed gardening last year, but now that I know my wife is okay, I feel emotionally able to make an attempt at it this year.

My first year here in the house was really successful, but as we know, the squirrels really came in strong as garden raiders and soil destroyers. While kind of funny that they just ignored the chicken wire and crawled right through, it was aggravating.

Now that my hoop house is recovered in hardware cloth, with 1/2″ by 1/2″ squares, the squirrels have not been able to get in.

I, unfortunately discovered I have some pre-season work I have to do to finish all that up.

This is a picture of the invisible chicken wire the camera would not show, sandwiching weeds growing between that and the hardware cloth.

Between the layer of chicken wire and hardware cloth, weeds are growing. They are super hard to remove because of the chicken wire. I have to literally cut back the chicken wire and then pull the weeds. That’s hard for me to do. It requires bending over and my joints just don’t like it. I can do a section, maybe two at a time.

Add to that, that this is the Pacific Northwest, and it’s often pouring this time of year. That makes it super hard to get all this done. This week it’s been clear, but in the 20F temperature range, and I am just gonna have to wait until things clear up.

During my last work session, I pulled the good soil out of the other beds, and used it to top off the ones in my protected garden. I am going to concentrate on the beds that are protected in my hoop house first and work on the rest through out the year.

My protected covered hoop house, with two beds filled with soil to the top, and mulched with straw. One bed is still a work in progress.

I have decided to pull my other beds by the front and back of the house, and create kind of a gravel pad to put them on. I am just not into weeding, as it hurts a lot to do, so I would rather build it in that there is a reduced chance of weeds happening up front.

I’m going to create gravel beds along the back of the house, the front of the house, and in front of the deck. I’m making them good and wide, and putting my metal beds on top of that.

A side benefit is it will take more of the lawn out. I am not a fan of grass lawns, so that is a bonus.

My plan is to get some soil and gravel delivered, so I can work on this when the days come up that it’s decent enough to get something done. Then add in an irrigation system after the last freeze. I am putting a timer on this shit!

By fall I hope to have all the new bed areas set up and ready. That way next year I will have my wife’s requested flower beds, and less lawn to mow.

Squirrel Interdiction Fail and Rats?!

Wolsey2 Comments

I was working on my garden this last Saturday when as I stepped out on my back porch, a common brown roof rat shot out from under the stairs and across the yard. It had been eating dropped bird seed.

This is not the actual rat, as it was so fast I didn’t get more than a moment before it was gone.

It went in the direction of a neighbor’s yard that isn’t usually mowed, and has a lot of shrubbery and overgrowth. I was shocked because it was dead middle of the day. It was black and small, so I think it was a roof rat. It was not one of the bigger ones.

I do find this a little concerning, and this might be the inevitable outcome of bird feeders, and a garden.

I did some research and learned that you can add spicy pepper to your feed mixes and the birds can’t taste it, but mammals can. This actually might help with the squirrels which are literally digging up my entire yard and garden.

I tested it with the peanut tray, which the squirrels get into, and boy do they hate it! It’s 3TBSP to a pound of seed, and it works well. I added a little olive oil to make sure it stuck, and it worked. The crows still got the peanuts we feed them, and the squirrels are off elsewhere.

My wife is sad, but they are literally destroying the yard, digging up all the clover seeds, and every garden bed I have looks like this now below.

This bed was level and had leftover mulch, until the squirrels decided to go HAM on the beds. My Beet bed, and my tomato bed look the same.

As for my Squirrel Interdiction efforts? The reason they got into the area was that I used chicken wire. Chicken wire has too big a holes to use. I just ordered $300 in hardware cloth with 1/2 by 1/2 squares, and not I have to redo the entire structure this winter.

Sigh. Squirrels 1, me 0.

My New Plan

I am going to wrap the structure in hardware cloth. I am just going to do it over the chicken wire. I can’t see how that would matter at all. It will just create a double layer of fuck you to the squirrels.

I am going to cayenne pepper the bird seed and peanuts. That will give them less incentive to destroy my yard and my garden, and my wife will still have all the birds. The hawk that sits on the fence and looks for rodents might have to look elsewhere, but I am fine with that.