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Post by chrysanthemum on May 13, 2021 20:46:14 GMT -6
There was a large armadillo in the big trap this morning. If we can get the three small ones, then we’ll be able to work on closing off the access under the shed. The garden has stayed safe since the refencing project. That is a great blessing, for which I am very thankful.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 14, 2021 18:04:43 GMT -6
Glad to hear you finally got one. Varmints in the garden are not a welcome sight.
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Post by chrysanthemum on May 20, 2021 13:53:04 GMT -6
We got a big one the other day, but the rest of the little ones are still evading us. I had really hoped that my garden was safe, but this morning there was a whole bunch of digging in a number of beds. There was even a hole in the soil in a huge terra cotta pot that comes up higher than my knee. If it was an armadillo, I guess it climbed on a smaller pot, stood on its back legs, and dug. Otherwise, it’s not an armadillo at all and I’m dealing with a climber who will be impossible to keep out of my garden. I’m pretty discouraged at this point.
I need to have my husband go out this evening and help me look for any more signs of where they might be entering. I’m guessing that our gate is still our weak point, but there wasn’t any digging at the entry way or around the edges of the garden as far as I could tell.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 4, 2021 6:32:26 GMT -6
We had a long stretch after we fully beefed up our fencing where there was no digging in the garden. We have not caught the rest of the young armadillos (I think they’re actually smart enough to avoid the traps or something), but we weren’t really minding them as long as they weren’t in the garden. Well, something dug a lot of holes in most of my garden beds on Friday night/Saturday morning. Ugh. Most of the plants look okay, though there were definitely some torn roots on cucumbers and peppers. The most likely casualty will be (once again) a young Heavy Hitter Okra seedling. This one I had sprouted, then grown out inside before hardening off and planting in the garden. It was just growing out some nice true leaves to show that it had taken to its new home, and then it got completely uprooted. I did replant it and cover it with a moist paper towel tent, so to speak, and it survived the afternoon yesterday. I’m thinking that I’ll end up replanting for the fifth (?) time, though, because the roots probably won’t sustain it. What’s really strange is that there was no sign of digging under our fencing anywhere, and we really don’t know how the animal is getting into the garden unless it climbs the fence. There was also digging in a pot and a planter, and I don’t know if armadillos could do that. What other animal would dig so vigorously in my soil but not really harm the fruits? (There was one red pepper on the ground with a bite out of it, but I’ve been having some of that without the digging, so it may be unrelated.) It’s really hard to get a picture of the deep holes, but some of them go down six inches in the typical cone pattern. Is this something other than armadillos? The outside edge of that pot, by the way, is more than a foot off the ground.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 4, 2021 19:11:42 GMT -6
You may have a groundhog problem? Groundhogs have little hands like raccoons and can climb fences or trees or whatever they like. They are also prolific diggers and love tearing up garden plants. They eat the same veggies that we prize, like tomatoes and ripe canteloupe or watermelon. I had one here a few years ago. It took me half the summer to figure out what was doing all the damage. I'd find tomatoes, half-eaten, laying on the ground several feet from any tomato plants. I'd find prize tomatoes missing from cages that were two feet off the ground, knowing that whatever stole them had to climb the cage but couldn't imagine what it might be. Finally, one day I spotted the culprit running away from one of my plants and diving under the fence.
Another wary garden predator is the dreaded red squirrel. I've had those sneak in there in groups and steal everything from cucumbers to watermelons. I'd find softball-sized watermelons missing and follow the trail of evidence from my garden to the edge of the woods about 50 feet away. They'd eat and roll, eat and roll until there was nothing left. I'd find a few pieces of rind here and there along the way but no sign of even a seed by the end of the trail. They'd eat all the seeds out of my cucumbers, leaving only the rind which resembled a hollowed-out canoe. I'd find places where they had eaten my tomatoes, leaving me nothing but the peelings in a neat little pile.
A hot wire placed along the bottom and top of a grounded fence will keep them from climbing under or over. If you don't have an electric fence, you can fashion a PVC pipe roller across the top of a fence with a smooth wire running through the center. When the squirrel or groundhog tries to climb over the top, the lightweight PVC pipe will spin on the wire, like a rolling pin, giving them no traction to heave themselves over the apex.
Live traps (Have a heart type) will work too, but the trick in that is finding a type of bait that they love more than your garden. Best of luck finding the vandals.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 5, 2021 17:35:41 GMT -6
If it is a groundhog, it’s the most restrained and well-mannered one ever because it isn’t eating my fruit. I can be very thankful for that blessing. There’s a pretty deep hole dug right beside those two butternut squash, but not a bite out of either, even the immature one. I’ve wondered about a critter with hands because I keep finding olla lids removed. I don’t know if it’s purposeful or just knocked off by digging. I thought about a raccoon, but my corn is untouched. Maybe it’s just waiting, though, until it’s closer to being ripe and lulling me into a false sense of security. I am glad that the culprit hasn’t stolen fruit, but it’s so strange to find my garden invaded every morning. It’s certainly not as bad as it could be, but I do want to stop it, though, because roots are being damaged, and the plants will only survive so much. We have some pretty nasty red squirrels here. I really like that pvc trick. Thanks for mentioning that. We had problems with them in our garden last year stealing the tomatoes, but they also damaged electrical wiring in our backyard. We got a couple of lethal tube traps that we secured to tree branches and baited with peanut butter, and we seem to have significantly reduced our squirrel population back to normal bounds. We haven’t used the traps this season because we think that there are some red-shouldered hawks nesting nearby, and they often visit our “Northern Wasteland” (the name our children call the part of the property where the garden is located), and we figure they’re helping with the squirrels. Aside from armadillos, the other wildlife we’ve actually seen near the garden is a fox. Is that a possibility for this type of damage?
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 8, 2021 22:39:24 GMT -6
Foxes like digging for grubs, mice, lizards, and little bugs. So do armadillos. Squirrels really like seeds, at least they do here, so it's hard to imagine a squirrel passing on the squash fruit. Groundhogs usually eat the veggies, so it's hard to imagine them passing up free food. Racoons will leave corn alone until it's right at the 'milky' stage when it's at it's sweetest. Mystery is part of what makes for such an interesting thread. We'll all be interested and probably a little disappointed to finally find out what culprit really is.
Happy hunting.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 11, 2021 16:22:28 GMT -6
I hope you won’t be too disappointed to know that we have confirmed one species getting into the garden. This was from a trail camera that I was able to set up yesterday evening. This morning there was also a raccoon in a trap in the next door neighbors’ garden. (I had borrowed their live traps but had returned them a couple of days ago since the digger appeared to have moved up there.). I don’t know if it’s the same raccoon or if there’s a whole nursery about. I plan to set up the camera again tonight and see if it captures more pictures. (It also caught pictures of deer outside the garden. No surprise there.) It’s a good thing that I harvested three milky ears of corn last night for dinner before this guy visited.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 12, 2021 11:38:21 GMT -6
Lots of digging in the garden this morning, so I’ve probably got a family of coons nearby. When I was filling in some of the holes and moving soil this morning, I disturbed a big toad who had been happily hanging out underground near one of my ollas. I also have lots of skinks in the garden. I wonder if the raccoons are hunting those.
I think it’s time for a trip to the store to get some marshmallows to bait a trap.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 14, 2021 18:39:11 GMT -6
I use marshmallow cream, chocolate ice cream topping, and creamy peanut butter as raccoon bait. I melt all three together an old gallon can, then paint it onto the trap pan with an old junky brush or a stick. I paint a little trail of it from the door to the trap pan, so they don't try to get in from the wrong end. I also stake the trap down so they don't turn it over, trying to cheat and lick off the sticky goo from the bottom side. (They've done that before).
A troop of raccoons will ruin 50 ears of corn in one night, just 'sampling' them. They'll strip off the shuck, take a bite, throw it down and go on to the next ear. I'd way rather have armadillos.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 15, 2021 15:16:42 GMT -6
It has been interesting to compare the recent digging to what we experienced before we redid the fence. I’m going to conclude that armadillos were getting into the garden and basically tilling it up in early May, but then we successfully fenced them out. The digging since then was more likely just raccoons since it was more selective, though definitely similar, but there was no evidence of digging under the fence, and there was digging in raised pots and planters.
We never made it to the store the other night, but just plain peanut butter at the back of the trap (with the trap secured in a tight spot in the garden) did the trick for us to catch one more raccoon. Since then we haven’t seen digging, though we are keeping the camera up in various places for a while.
We did notice a new hole dug out under our shed (which we haven’t yet secured), but so far nothing has shown up going in or out of it according to the camera.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jul 15, 2021 22:37:24 GMT -6
There is something very satifying about outsmarting a raccoon. Congratulations on that one!
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jul 16, 2021 14:05:00 GMT -6
Thanks. I’m particularly proud of the one I caught in the neighbors’ garden since I didn’t even bait that trap, and I was surprised to find a raccoon inside it. I set the trap up at the one spot near their gate where I figured an animal could slip through, and it must have entered that way. We had to bait the traps in our garden, and there was another coon this morning. Thankfully it didn’t dig in too many places before it went after the peanut butter.
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