squirrels & mosquitos

[mindymom]

i'm sure i have whined in this forum at least once about my damn squirrel problem. every year they take all my tomatoes (last year i actually got 4 cherry tomatoes off the vine. i don't think the squirrels saw them.) they pull them off the plants before they even get a chance to ripen, and every year i vow never to grow tomatoes again...until about january. so, i am trying to come up with a way to keep my tomatoes this year without viciously murdering every one of the scruffy little rats. :

i have 8 plants, 3 in my front garden, two in a recycling bin, 2 in large individual pots, and 1 in my side garden. i have erected a floppy chicken wire fence around the recycling bin, but it just isn't feasible to fence all the plants, besides which last year's fence did a much better job keeping me out than the squirrels. i have tried cayenne powder, but this just encourages the damn things to keep biting until they find one that tastes better!:

so here is what i was thinking: i will put out a water dish for the damn things. the internet tells me they don't actually like tomatoes, just eat them for the water when it is too dry out. that is certainly consistent with what i've seen this year. so i'm thinking - bird bath? will squirrels drink from a bird bath? they seem to prefer not to walk across my yard, maybe because we have outdoor cats - they get to the tomatoes via two trees, the porch roof, and then the pergola. do i need to hang a water bag? any squirrel-lovers out there who can tell me how they prefer to get water?

then if i get a bird bath/ water bag, do i need to use mosquito dunks? we have serious mosquito problems and i've been debating getting some sort of mosquito baby death trap pool anyway. has anyone used dunks before? will they be safe for my cats, or should i maybe put them out of cat reach?

the unfairness of having mosquito problems and dehydrated squirrel problems at the same time does not escape me. what is wrong with my town???

sorry so long and rambly. any advice is very welcome, please!

[columbusmomma]

Looking for advice and answers too! The darn squirrels are pulling off our green tomatoes every day now
What can be done??

[mindymom]

idk. i am going to try the bird bath. i put a chicken wire fence around the ones they seem to be most obsessed with, with bird netting over top for tonight. we'll see....
if you manage to put a stop to it please let me know what you did!

[skueppers]

I don't have any idea about the problem you're having, but I can tell you that squirrels will happily drink from a bird bath. Good luck!

[Brisen]

I can't find a link, but I remember reading for birdbaths and such, that as long as you change the water, it shouldn't be a problem. They have to live in it for a while before they become mosquitoes, I think, so if you empty & refill it daily, it's not a problem. I only did a quick google check and didn't find anything to support that, though. Maybe someone else here knows for sure.

ETA: As usual, I used a different search term after posting and found what I was looking for. http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~insects/atlpamph.htm That link says refill pet water dishes daily, and to empty and scrub out birdbaths weekly. It looks like mosquitos can go from egg to flying in a couple of days.

[mindymom]

Originally Posted by columbusmomma

Looking for advice and answers too! The darn squirrels are pulling off our green tomatoes every day now
What can be done??

Columbusmomma I think I've had some luck (or they just got bored with tomatoes since it's rained a lot this week, idk which). Anyway, I wanted to let you know what I did. As predicted they had no trouble climbing the floppy chicken wire fence I put up around my two best plants, so I put bird netting over top of it and staked it down all around. I have read that squirrels can chew through this stuff, but I thought maybe mine would be too lazy, since there are four other gardens on my block, all with tomatoes growing happily unprotected. (I know, I know, slightly evil to hope they go elsewhere.) Anyway, since I staked it I haven't lost any tomatoes from those two plants. Knock on wood.

I also tried, on a couple other plants, putting cut up pantyhose over the fruits. I tied off the bottom and stretched them over the whole clump of fruit, cinching tight above the top fruit. They have since pulled two of the covered clumps down and pulled the fruit away from the branch, nibbling it a little so that I can't eat it, but they did not manage to get the nylons off of the plants or the tomatoes out of the nylons. I am calling that a draw since neither of us got to enjoy the fruits and I am nervous that they probably could chew through the nylon if they were determined, but like I said I am hoping they will find it to be too much work. I'm going to have ds build me a little bamboo structure tonight so I can put bird netting over more of my plants.

HTH. The few tomatoes we have gotten have been sooo tasty. I'm not giving up this year!

[wendyland]

I got 2 out of 10 of my container tomatoes this year. the squirrels got the rest. we had a bunch of window screens in frames laying around. my husband built a box over them with a hinged top (it's all put together by duct tape). It's keeping them out, thankfully.

[MissMommyNiceNice]

I don't give squierels water. Unless it's with the hose on high-power jet. Those bastards can suck it. I also have a terrible mosquitto problem in my neighborhood b/c of all the unmaintained ponds and abandoned buckets. My son got so bit up that no less than 3 people today alone asked me if he had poison ivy. IMO, there's plenty of water for them to drink. And that's not going to stop them from digging in the dirt around the plants, uprooting them, and generally decimating everything. The only thing we found that works is a nice silent BB gun.