Sunday
May242009
Evil Squirrels
Sunday, May 24, 2009 at 9:37PM 
Embracing the warmer weather, Jeff and I picked up a bunch of plants at a local nursery on the weekend. I tend to opt for plants I can eat while Jeff prefers nicer-looking plants that blend with the rest of the garden. My choices: sweet basil, Italian parsley, marjoram, German thyme, woolly thyme, red creeping thyme, peppermint, spearmint, sage, rosemary, stevia, two types of tomato plants, eggplant, red pepper, zucchini, cucumber and lavender. Ok, I can't eat lavender, but I love the fragrance.
Last year, I tried planting most of my herbs from seed but got discouraged when the squirrels dug up many of my seedlings after I spent weeks nurturing them before transplanting them outdoors. This year I opted for young plants instead.
I sprinkled cayenne pepper after transplanting them into pots, hoping to keep away the squirrels. Unfortunately it rained, washing away the cayenne, and this morning there were GAPING HOLES in the soil of many of the pots; looks like the squirrels have been digging again. I've liberally sprinkled more cayenne pepper -- I'm going to have to find a bulk supplier.
Speaking of squirrels, I'm pretty sure one died in the ceiling of my office recently. There were noises up there for a bit, but the noises stopped. Then the smell began. Ugh.
When I posted about this in Facebook, my friend Bruce Macintosh wrote:
It's also possible that the silence indicates the squirrel has stopped feeding and the smell comes from a recent kill. Are any neighbors missing?
:-D
tagged Food & Garden, Gardening, squirrels
Food & Garden, Gardening, squirrels
Reader Comments (15)
Remind me to tell you the saga of the squirrel trap the next time I see you.
Careful with mint! It spreads like crazy and is hard to get rid of once it starts. For that reason, we buried a planter with deep metal sides. (Don't think it's a planter, actually. It narrows at the bottom but does have a hole). We put the mint in that. I can tell, it's trying to spread, but for the last 10 years, it hasn't been successful. Ha!
I've heard people recommend sprinkling blood meal on the soil to keep squirrels away, but that presumably doesn't work on carnivorous vampire squirrels.
Blood meal? Are you kidding? That'll set off a feeding frenzy. Were the "people" who recommended that 7 inches tall and furry?
Blood meal works on *rabbits*, which are vegetarian. Squirrels, like rats, are omnivorous, and the blood meal will actually attract them.
Home improvement stores sell annoying noisemakers that you can set up to irritate the critters away, but I think they're only effective a short time, and they irritate you and the neighbors, too.
If you have friends with kitties or long haired dogs, ask them to brush the fur out, and arrange the fluff around your plants. The predator smell sometimes helps save plants until they are bigger, and more able to hold their own against uprooting.
Aux contraire, you can eat lavender. The little flower is a great complement in a sugar cookie and not uncommon. And lavender essential oil can be used in cool drinks like lemonade or iced tea.
Bye the way the lavender bushes between the chaises and the view at Canaiolo and Malvasia have been replaced and the view is now wide open!
About deterring squirrels, I have heard that coyote urine (purchased in powder form) keeps raccoons away. Maybe it would work on squirrels!
P.P.S. Who is that cute hunk you have hired to water your plants?
Kristen is partial to lavender ice cream (shudder).
A local bakery here makes lavender sugar cookies. They're delicious, with a really unique flavour -- they really taste like lavender.
I enjoy them, but only in small quantities, which is really ideal for baked goods.
Why can't you eat lavender? (Well... you don't /eat/ it, eat it, but it's good in tea, cakes, sauces, and ice cream, though I do recommend straining it out of everything but the cakes.)
How does straining remove the lavender flavour?
In the same vein as Judi's selection, but possibly as a last resort, you might acquire a chamber pot (or reasonable facsimile thereof), collect human urine in it, and dribble the liquid around the fringes of the planters. I ran across this in a Spider Robinson story. The underlying theory is, humans are the baddest critters in the valley, and lesser predators will avoid marked territory.
Straining doesn't remove the lavender flavour - that's the point. It leaves the flavour without the little chewy bits to get caught in your teeth.
But it has to be something like a sauce or ice cream (base, when making your own ice cream) or tea or simple syrup which you're going to cook/steep for a while. So you add just the flowers at the beginning or in some cheese cloth and then take them out later, but you're left with the flavour.
Yes, I can see how the chewy bits would be annoying too. For the tea, you could maybe use a fractional distillation process to remove the flavour, though I can't see that being practical for an ice cream custard.