Evil Ground Squirrels!

[grow_my_own]

A family of ground squirrels has moved into the raised bed garden at the winery where I am the vegetable gardener. I have never dealt with this particular critter before. Personally, I'd like to sit out there some quiet, lazy afternoon and pick 'em all off one by one with a pellet gun, but I don't have time for that....

How does one deal with/eradicate ground squirrels? This is an organic commercial garden that supplies farm-to-fork produce for a commercial kitchen, so I have to be very careful in the methods I use to deal with these critters. I have never even seen them in a garden before, much less have them literally infest one of my gardens!

They ate our entire crop of cantaloupe. Little $@#%)&!*s.

I could use the advice of all the friendly experts here. Thanks in advance!

 

[Nyboy]

Let a large rat snake down their hole, can't get anymore organic. Look up pest removal companys close to you. Tell them when they get a call to remove non venous snake, they can relocate to your place.

 

[grow_my_own]

Hmm, that is a thought. It's not just one hole... they have completely taken over the garden. This garden is 3 raised beds made of rock walls that are 11 feet wide and 30 feet long and 30 inches deep! They have created a HUGE mess and have several holes/openings. There are even spots where they have burrowed through areas of sandy concrete used to support the rock walls! I just read an article stating that they like to gnaw through PVC pipe... they could totally screw up my whole garden!

 

[baymule]

You are making me real glad that I have to deal with fire ants, feral hogs and armadillos.

 

[so lucky]

Could you flood them out? Think about what it is that they like about the area, then see if you can change it. Maybe get some cats? Ground up hot pepper in the holes?

 

[bobm]

In spite of lots and lots of snakes, coyotes and hawks ... if you think that rabbits reproduce like rabbits , try the ground squirrels... I normally count 80 to 104 bodies every year, and that is not counting those that die in the tunnels for the past 19 years. I get poison grain (barley with a coating of Warfarin plus a blue food coloring... the same stuff that your doctor gives you to thin your blood ) from the County Agriculture Extension Office to pest control my 20 acres. Start by scattering ( not in a pile but throwing ) a handfull ( near most of the tunnel holes ) the grain here and there every 2 days until you see expired bodies . You want the Warfarin to accumulate in their bodies over a short few days time period instead of all at once, since if they get a bellyache, they go down into their burrow and naturally produce vitamin K that counteracts the Warfarin. Or you can get the gas cartridges, cover all entrance holes but one, light one cartridge , place into the hole and very quickly cover that entrance with dirt. Kills every resident occupant .

 

[digitS']

@grow_my_own , the problem may have gone past this solution. If they are living within raised beds, I don't know but I've found ways to get them to move from near the garden.

You can't take a very tolerant route with these rodents. As pointed out, they reproduce rapidly and more than our marmots, which probably behave much like ground hogs elsewhere, they eat everything! If it's green and 20 yards from their burrow, they eat it. At least a marmot would have to think on it over several months, maybe a winter or two, before eating melon vines ... I may be too optimistic.

Most recently, I was trying my technique on marmots but it has worked equally well on the ground squirrels. He was so far away, I could just see him raising up and looking around, now and then. I went through the neighbor's hayfield and found his burrow nearly inside the property line of someone I didn't know. Undeterred, I set to work.

My technique involves burrow-size stones, a short piece of 2 by 4, and a sledge hammer. You see immediately where I'm going with this ... or, where the stones are going. Straight into that hole and, at least 3 deep. Drive one right on top of the other, securely.

I don't know, they live down there 6 months a year. Do they die? Do they find some escape burrow and just pack up and slip away? (Look for those secondary burrows and fill them tight with rocks, too.) Whatever happens to them, I don't much care but every time I've done this task, the rodents were gone, gone, and gone!

That's all I really wanted. I have, however, shot them. They had taken up residence in a large rock pile and I just couldn't figure out behind which rock they were living. I may have upset some of my neighbors doing that but was hailed as a hero by another. His dachshund went after one of the marmots and required stitches afterwards at the vet's office.

Steve

 

[bobm]

Steve, The ground squirrels at my ranch just dig over, under or around those rocks and stick out their tongues at any passerby. I guess your marmots didn't go to engineering school for any booklearnin' ..... There are quite a few snakes on our property and they do go down the holes and can catch only the very young squirrels, the other just plug up the tunnel and go their merry way. We have coyotes by the dozen so when they come along , down go the squirrels . Sometimes the young coyote will try to dig them out with no luck. There are a couple dozen squirrels living under an old Oak tree with a pair of Red Tailed hawks nesting in it for years . Not to mention the dozens along the fence line posts and other trees native Valley Oaks, Redwoods, Beefwood, and fruit trees, next to the barn and under the barn, etc. I shoot quite a few with my .22, but to cut down the population, the treated grain and gas bomb is needed, as the neighboring young squirrels repopulate the vacated tunnels.

 

[grow_my_own]

We cannot use poison in the garden. It's an organic farm-to-fork garden. We cannot use chemical herbicides or pesticides of any kind. I told them to buy traps and that I will start digging out the beds, but I'm going to need a helper (those are HUGE and DEEP beds to dig out by hand, and I'm a pretty small person). I have no problem smackin' those little buggers in their little heads good and hard with the back end of a shovel as they try to escape. What's worse is that there is a vineyard ready for harvest about 10 yards away, and if the squirrels destroy that vineyard, the winery could suffer quite a loss. I have not been by to check this week yet, but I think that vineyard might have been harvested this past week (it's grape harvest season over here in wine country).

I was just hoping there was something other than poison we could use because of our farm-to-fork status. I'm going to call the county extension office tomorrow morning and see what I can come up with, also the local county's master gardeners' association. I am still open to suggestions here and appreciate everybody's input.

On my other job (I am also a nursery attendant at a local plant nursery/daylily farm), we sell a variety of products for eradicating moles, voles, gophers, ground squirrels, etc. Of the ones that contain poison, every single one of them says right on the package that it cannot be used where food crops are being raised. The only ones that don't are the little traps. I'm going to suggest to the good folks at the winery that they acquire a LOT of traps, at least 10 of them. There are a LOT of these little suckers living in the garden. I first noticed them in the pumpkin bed about 6 weeks ago, talked to the maintenance guy who said he had had them at his house, too, and that he would get some traps in the next week for the winery garden. Well, 6 weeks have gone by, and he never did get the traps, so now we've gone from having 3-4 of those little buggers in there and 1 tunnel to having all 3 raised beds infested with them, probably at least 25 of them living there now, with huge tunnels within the raised beds. At least the tunnels are not connected from bed to bed under the ground.

I know this because, after the raised beds were built and before we brought in the soil, the bottoms of all the beds were lined with 3/4-inch hardware cloth so that gophers and other critters that burrow up from the ground could not get in. I never considered critters that burrow down from the top... as I said, until now, I have never before encountered a ground squirrel in
the garden in all my 30-ish years of gardening.

These little so-and-so's got me pulling my hair out. It is way past time to get that winter garden in the ground, but I dare not plant another thing until them suckers are eradicated.

 

[digitS']

I know a guy who uses the traps in his hay fields.

Organic hay is important to his farm. He sells most of it. Somehow, he is happy with the traps. He says there is a technique.

I helped a friend with a couple of traps in her garden. She caught several ground squirrels but I'm pretty sure that it was only after she got me out of her way.

Harass them to heck if you can't kill them and send them there immediately. Unfortunately, they might move to your vineyard! Continue harassment ...

Guard your garden.

Steve