About to be a dead sumb*tch

A squirrel accidentally hitched a ride here in a car the other day and got out and went for my grapes. Told everyone that squirrel is not from here and he would be having a long night & day. If he’s in the trees hawks in the daytime and owls at night are after him and on the ground are the coyote, dogs, bobcats etc. . Have not seen him since. Natural predators are the best control. Once it’s dark here every small animal watches it’s back. Every morning I see coyote dung and it’s full of hair! They ate something the night before.

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Tomatoes.

What about tomatoes? I’ve read groundhogs tend to like tomatoes. It hasn’t bothered mine, but probably wasn’t able to figure a way into the homemade wire cages…plus, the tomatoes are 50’ past the sweet potato vines, so the groundhog may not have bothered even looking.

I have too many tomatoes, usually harvesting 15 – 20 lbs per picking at the moment. I always have at least a half dozen “culls” that are either too afflicted with BER to be worth keeping, or have cracks or bruises that render them less than ideal. If I place a nice pile of tomatoes close to his/her den, but along the path to the garden, could I possibly distract the groundhog enough to keep him/her occupied, since they tend not to venture too far from their dens? I should be able to replenish them every couple days until at least late Sept.

Years ago we were dealing with crazy numbers of skunks. We learned some people in town were catching them and releasing them in our area. We also had a close neighbor relocating the skunks he cought…but not taking them NEAR far enough! Basically after a day he was probably catching the same varmints over and over again!
Our boys take the dogs out and they divide whole skunks between two or more dogs! Lol

In places where shooting isn’t an option, swimming lessons for unwanted critters inside a live catch trap is effective, and smells less then shooting a skunk anyhow.

Just don’t advertise or worry about what illogical fools think. If we let them “save” everything they would destroy it all trying.

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I’m hoping the neighbors pit bull decides she wants a groundhog snack.

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FWIW I already see noticeable regrowth.

When you trap something you didn’t intend to. Like a fox, or the infamous pepe le pew. I love those stinkers, they dig up yellowjacket nests.

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Sonofabitch :rage::rage:

About this time last year my abundant sweet potato foliage was eaten down leaving about 30% by deer. They came back like yours are and still had an abundant harvest. I draped bird netting over the area and set up the game cam to confirm. Even though they had eaten there before and had come back for the rest, the bird netting dissuaded them.
Fire and adjust.
This year I netted the area. It looks like the foliage was pushed down through the netting but no damage to sweet potato or netting.
Your netting damage looks like a rodent or raccoon. Was the foliage damaged?

A fair amount of the new foliage was eaten. Not as badly as before.

I am wondering what kind of contraption I can set up.

I think it’s the same groundhog.

Would row cover work?

I realize the groundhog could rip or chew through it (or tunnel under), but since row cover is opaque, perhaps if he/she can’t SEE what’s under it, would that help?

I had the same issue and basically just had to put a small fence around my raised bed. Many of the plants had no leaves. I had a plastic fence just like yours and rabbits or a groundhog kept chewing threw or would dig under the fence and went straight for squash and sweet potatoes. Luckily since doing that, the sweet potato completely recovered and are doing great. I’m eventually going to put in a much better fence and dig hardware cloth into the ground as well as a foot or so up.

I already have a 7’ netting fence because of the f@$&ing deer.

Yep, same here. The deer no longer did the damage, it was now the rabbits or groundhogs. So very frustrating.

Do you think row cover might do the trick?

Even squirrels dig holes to go under my fence ( temporary fence) to get to my plums and pears.

I think you really should look up the regs in your area, if you don’t know them already. If your area is like mine, put up one of those Have a Heart traps and bait it with things the groundhog likes and then transfer it to state land. If you can humanely put it down (.22 to the head) without getting into trouble, that’s probably the best thing to do. He knows you have what he likes. Hardware cloth might work also but you’d have to bury it a bit since this animal can dig.

They also have a great sense of smell!

I trapped my last ground hog in a have a heart with sweet corn cobs and apple cores. Once it was gone I had no more damage.

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Finally convinced the spousal unit we needed to hire a pro.

After 75% of the sweet potatoes were gone…

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