jocundi
gopher
Tinkering with fruits and veggies in Eastern Boreal Forest on Canadian Shield.
Posts: 28 
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Post by jocundi on Jul 19, 2016 11:34:00 GMT -5
Herds of deer
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Post by ferdzy on Jul 19, 2016 16:16:05 GMT -5
I meant the peas and favas... it was the not eaten part that caught my eye.
LOL, I wanted to get a motion camera for the garden but Edwin (Mr. Ferdzy) said he didn't want to pay money to watch his vegetables disappearing.
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Post by steev on Jul 19, 2016 18:45:14 GMT -5
I want an infra-red-activated laser cannon, but it's slightly out of my budget, this year.
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Post by mskrieger on Jul 20, 2016 9:41:56 GMT -5
steev is right about the uselessness of a lot of domestic animals. If you want to go that route, I highly recommend picking up a friendly cat from a local feral colony. That's where I got the three-legged death squad. She was trained well. And some breeds of dogs seem instinctively driven to 'get' certain pests--you may want to purchase from a breeder who deliberately selects and trains for it. Or you may choose, as some of you have stated, to go the route of the gun. I particularly admire this man's strategy (a gun, his son, a dog, and 45 ferrets.) www.wsj.com/articles/SB118236239783842197
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Post by reed on Jul 20, 2016 20:35:55 GMT -5
I want an infra-red-activated laser cannon, but it's slightly out of my budget, this year. Maybe we could all go in together and make a bulk purchase, how many's in a case? |
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Post by steev on Jul 21, 2016 1:09:29 GMT -5
Well, you see why I was stoked at the prospect of a local feral cat, on the farm; didn't work out; he moved on or a coyote got him.
The gun option is not very useful, as I'm not there enough (yet).
Ferret-legging! Check it out.
I don't think the DOD has released laser-cannons for civilian use, yet; whatever, I'm in for two, at least, whenever, given that my pockets serve; I'm sure the Gummint will cut us citizens at least as good a deal in arms as it does our good friends, the Saudis.
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Post by mskrieger on Jul 21, 2016 15:22:31 GMT -5
Army surplus. Just you wait, they'll be for sale with some ridiculous stipulation like "may not be used in populated areas" or some such nonsense.
(I actually have friends who bought a tank from an Army surplus sale, tricked it out to shoot massive fireballs Mad Max-style and then shipped it out to Burning Man. The stipulation in that case was that it wasn't street legal...haha.)
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Post by reed on Jul 21, 2016 19:38:22 GMT -5
What good is a tank if ya can't drive it on the street?
On the bright side there are four less squirrels. Two trapped and removed far away but alive, I didn't have it in me to shoot em point blank. One shot dead at thirty yards, fair game ha, ha, ha. One ripped off the side of a corn stalk by a flash of feathered furry, I think it was a harrier hawk. One of the absolute coolest things I ever saw, I almost cried.
There are exactly six ears of corn left in that patch but there is hope for the next patch that is just starting to tassel.
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Post by cletus on Jul 22, 2016 14:48:34 GMT -5
Though its not a panacea, the principle of diversity has truth behind it. I saw an abstract from a study done on deer that showed they browse a lot more heavily on stands with less diversity, even with the same amount of edible x in each stand. But of course diversity isn't always super compatible with a market situation where more monocultures of very palatable plants is usually the context. Along these lines there are unusual edibles such as udo and Toona that are deer resistant. Also rich soil and genetic diversity are always important plant positive strategies for rapid plant growth/regrowth. Steev's comments on animal habitat is a crucial piece too.
Re: aromatic herbs, I agree they tend to be resistant to a lot of things. Spice mint is a vigorous plant in my garden that gets a lot of use in sauces and in the pot, and is pretty much untouched. Its nice to have a vigorous plant like mint that is easily used in daily cooking. Tagetes minuta self sows well also very enjoyable in cooking. I tend to think aromatics do play a role in confusing various pests, even if there isn't a lot of data on this its just another layer of diversity.
Re: sacrificing crop biomass for less predation of crops grown among weeds, this is something we should be trying to mimic in a production situation to skew the ratio of production/labor in our favor as much as possible. Establishing diverse very low growing perennial groundcover polycultures (with pigs and/or deep mulch to take out a lot of the perennial weeds first) to plant into, while in more disturbed areas sowing easily managed/cropped annual weedy crops like Tagetes, shiso, chervil, chenopodium to occupy those niches.
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Post by prairiegarden on Jul 25, 2016 10:07:37 GMT -5
Has anyone tried litchi tomatoes as a barrier? www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=21478 Most of these people seem at least as interested in the fruit but I was wondering if it would help with pest pressure, at least from things like raccoons and possibly deer. |
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Post by steev on Jul 25, 2016 10:18:56 GMT -5
Thorny squash are a good barrier to raccoons, but how much zucchini can you stand?
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Post by shoshannah on Jul 25, 2016 17:28:00 GMT -5
Blue Jays would pull up my onion starts for nesting material.
Something kept pulling out my squash seeds.
Our back yard is deciduous woods so have all the critters mentioned.
Squirrels like to hide their peanuts in my garden containers on the deck.
Lot more slugs and bugs this year.
Susan
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Post by steev on Jul 25, 2016 20:10:30 GMT -5
Maybe onions are good repellent for bird lice; might explain their use as nesting.
My tree-rats hide acorns in every pot.
There's at least one ground-squirrel that's scarfing my almonds.
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