Pea Growing, 2022

[Zeedman]

This is probably not useful for most people but I had a solar electric fence charger leftover from a brief stint raising grass feed beef and .. if you take a charger meant for miles of wire and you put it on a single 115' strand around a garden at squirrel height, it makes an impression. ;-)

That would probably work - but where to run the wire? In the rural garden, I have 36" of chicken wire low, and charged wires up to 6'. The lowest wire is located just above the chicken wire; that works for deer, raccoons, and discourages groundhogs (until they dig under). Few rodent problems there, in spite of nearby hickories... the owner's dogs & cats keep them at bay.

But at home, just chicken wire below, and welded wire fencing to 6'. I've watched the squirrels jump nearly to the top of the fence from the ground. There are black walnut trees across the street, and oaks & hickories just up the block... so like @Ridgerunner stated, I have A LOT of squirrels. They are everywhere, and causing structural damage, so I'm in favor of anything which would reduce the population. My live trap has been less than effective, so I'll give that BOSS a try.

Surprisingly, the squirrels are not a major problem in the garden. The only issues I've had were their pulling up bean sprouts once, and their pathological hatred of anything in pots.

 

[heirloomgal]

I've been known to trap squirrels. I used a properly sized live trap and baited it with BOSS (Black Oil Sunflower Seeds). I'd put the trap at the base of a tree (so they are comfortable they have a quick escape route) and scatted a little BOSS around it, then put more BOSS on the trip plate. Using just two traps I once removed about 50 squirrels from my suburban back yard in a month. When I started it wasn't unusual for me to see at least five squirrels back there anytime I looked. As I trapped them new ones would come in from the surrounding back yards.

If I disturbed the soil, either planting something or just pulling a weed they'd dig a hole looking for a nut. And they were causing property damage, mainly chewing up the flashing around my roof vents for the salt in it. There were just too many. I eventually thinned them down to manageable numbers.

It's probably illegal to release them anywhere except your own property and probably illegal to kill them, especially out of season without a license. You might talk to animal control and see what your options are. I took them to an oil refinery out in the country about ten miles away and released them, far enough away that they wouldn't find their way back. Or if I were going fishing in the marsh I'd dump them there. Not legal and not very courteous to people that lived around there but hopefully the gators were well fed. I wasn't ready to handle that many squirrel bodies.

It sounds like you are targeting a certain squirrel so I'll tell these stories. In my 50' x 75' garden in Arkansas one spring, a rabbit was eating my bean sprouts as fast as they were coming up. I killed 16 rabbits out of that garden before I got the last one doing that. That was rabbits I saw in the garden, not just ones in the area. I don't know how many of those rabbits were actually eating the sprouts, probably not all of them.

Also in Arkansas a skunk came through a pet door to get in the garage and sprayed when the dogs noticed it. I was not pleased. It was breeding season so the males were on the move. I killed seven skunks in the next couple of weeks. I don't know if I got the guilty one or not. If you have one squirrel, skunk, or anything else you have more.

When you go fishing in the marsh..........can you actually see the gators?

Skunks - I had one as a pet, for a little while, when I was a teenager. He/she was so protective of me so quickly that when any human approached me he would sort of handstand all around my feet pretend 'spraying' in the direction of the perceived enemy. Was so cute.

 

[flowerbug]

I wasn't aware black walnut husks had any hallucinogenic compounds. I knew they had ones that can stain, and presumably they have the juglone that kills other plants, but being hallucinogenic is new to me.

I suppose the only REAL way to know would be to check records from somewhere where a lot of nutmegs are grown, like Antigua or the Moluccas (assuming either place has squirrels)

i'm not aware of black walnuts having hallucinogens, but i was just thinking in terms of the other compounds and how strong they are. how some animals can even eat acorns, those are pretty bitter too.

 

[flowerbug]

One could hope that such an experience might dissuade squirrels from coming back. Maybe I'll try putting some nutmeg on my front step.

But I tend to agree with @flowerbug that it might have little to no effect, given that squirrels can eat things (like raw acorns) that would be harmful to humans. The squirrel in my shed continues gnawing on the chewed-open box of diatomaceous earth, and has eaten about 1/4 of it. With animals, you never know what they will tolerate, and what is toxic.

DE!? lol wow, that's not stuff you'd ever figure a squirrel would eat. maybe it has a bad case of worms?

and your comment about acorns was what i just wrote in another note a moment ago.

 

[flowerbug]

When you go fishing in the marsh..........can you actually see the gators?

Skunks - I had one as a pet, for a little while, when I was a teenager. He/she was so protective of me so quickly that when any human approached me he would sort of handstand all around my feet pretend 'spraying' in the direction of the perceived enemy. Was so cute.

i can imagine that didn't work out very well with how nocturnal they are?

 

[Ridgerunner]

When you go fishing in the marsh..........can you actually see the gators?

Not that much. The marshes where I actually fished were brackish water, some salt content. Gators are freshwater animals. You'd see plenty of them on the way there in the fresher water which is where I let the squirrels loose but almost never in the salty water.

The fish I was after were saltwater fish: redfish, speckled trout, and when I got lucky, a flounder. No freshwater fish. I saw several raccoons in there on the banks. In the canals and bayous I'd occasionally see dolphins. And birds of course, all kinds of birds. Surprisingly very few mosquitoes, but at certain times of the year the no-see-ums (gnats) were unbearable. Long sleeves, long pants, and a net totally covering the head.

Skunks - I had one as a pet, for a little while, when I was a teenager. He/she was so protective of me so quickly that when any human approached me he would sort of handstand all around my feet pretend 'spraying' in the direction of the perceived enemy. Was so cute.

I knew a girl in 4-H that had a pet skunk. Even with the scent glands removed that skunk stank. What were your experiences with that?

 

[Pulsegleaner]

i'm not aware of black walnuts having hallucinogens, but i was just thinking in terms of the other compounds and how strong they are. how some animals can even eat acorns, those are pretty bitter too.

That's true, but remember that the Squirrels of North America EVOLVED alongside the walnuts, and so had innumerable years of mutations to adapt to those compounds. They DID NOT evolve alongside nutmegs, or (since I know of no other plant that has them*) myristicine, so that might be a different matter.

Oh, and I realized I made a reference in the last message that I didn't clarify (and hence, probably confused someone) to the "happy candy".

About six years ago, when I was in Chinatown Flushing, I went into a little store that sold South Asian snack foods and found some bags of what was marked as nutmeg candy. I thought they meant it was flavored with nutmeg FRUIT (which is the outermost layer of the nutmeg, and also eaten where it grows**) so I picked up a few bags. It wasn't it was flavored with nutmeg OIL, and quite a lot of it. One would make you go a little loopy, and two would give you a headache like you wouldn't believe! So I got rid of them. ***

*There are such things as the Calabash Nutmeg, and the Clove Nutmeg, which are used a substitutes and so may have myristicine. But as the former of those only grows in Africa and the latter, only in Madagascar, North American squirrels wouldn't encounter them either.

** Nutmeg fruits actually have four layers to them. There's the fruit itself, which as I said, is sometimes eaten or made into things (I have a jar of nutmeg jam in the pantry now, and I used to be able to get nutmeg syrup for pancakes when I was a kid.) Then there's the red aril which wraps around the pit (and which when dried becomes the spice mace****). Next come the shell (the only part that, as far as I know, isn't used for anything). And then finally the kernel (the actual nutmeg).

***Which took a while, as I had tossed the bag onto the floor of my very messy room, and a lot of the candies slipped out and got into places (I was still finding some under the radiator a couple of years later!)

**** The fact that two spices come from nutmegs was the result of the unintentionally hilarious message once sent by the head of the Dutch East India Company to the company head of the Moluccas colonies that, as mace was selling at a better price than nutmeg, he was instructing them to cut down some nutmeg trees and plant some more mace trees!

 

[meadow]

@heirloomgal I've been reading old pea posts and see that you grew Biskopens (aka Swedish Red) last year. Have you cooked with them yet? I read an enthusiastic review of their taste and am now feeling non-buyer's remorse.

@Zeedman If you have a few Mesa to spare, I'd be willing to do an increase grow-out to help replenish your supplies. I have a flower bed in front of the house that is isolated by distance, buildings, and trees. Peas and grass do well here.

 

[Zeedman]

@Zeedman If you have a few Mesa to spare, I'd be willing to do an increase grow-out to help replenish your supplies. I have a flower bed in front of the house that is isolated by distance, buildings, and trees. Peas and grass do well here.

PM sent.

 

[jbosmith]

That would probably work - but where to run the wire? In the rural garden, I have 36" of chicken wire low, and charged wires up to 6'. The lowest wire is located just above the chicken wire; that works for deer, raccoons, and discourages groundhogs (until they dig under). Few rodent problems there, in spite of nearby hickories... the owner's dogs & cats keep them at bay.

But at home, just chicken wire below, and welded wire fencing to 6'. I've watched the squirrels jump nearly to the top of the fence from the ground. There are black walnut trees across the street, and oaks & hickories just up the block... so like @Ridgerunner stated, I have A LOT of squirrels. They are everywhere, and causing structural damage, so I'm in favor of anything which would reduce the population. My live trap has been less than effective, so I'll give that BOSS a try.

Surprisingly, the squirrels are not a major problem in the garden. The only issues I've had were their pulling up bean sprouts once, and their pathological hatred of anything in pots.

My bigger remote gardens have a single strand of wire at around mid-thigh, but that's mostly to keep cows out (after they ignore their own fence?).

The wire I run at home is about 6" off the ground and a few inches away from a 24" fence. It's low enough that I have to lift it to mow near the fence. We're in town here and my main problems are rabbits plus the occasional woodchuck and my main goal is to keep them from going under the fence. The squirrels could 100% jump over the fence from the ground but for some reason they don't. I once saw one sniff it and shoot several feet through the air, clearing a row of potatoes that was outside the fence, and then stumble away looking dazed.

This wire had an exceptional track record until last year when a baby rabbit got under it. I suspect he started under it, got shocked, and shot under the 24" fence trying to escape. That had the effect of trapping it IN the garden which was less than ideal...