Since it's now the start of the active period for SVB, I'm going to start spraying my exposed cucurbits with spinosad in the late evening once a week. It's supposed to kill SVB and their eggs/larva. Plus it's organic
So far, the closest I've found to a yellow dish is a frisbee. Does anyone know if that is deep enough?
I don't know why the squirrels dig in the dirt. I thought maybe they wanted to eat the bean seeds, but I found lots of bean seeds sitting on top of the dirt.
Another gardening related cross post from Show Me Your Pallet Projects!...
Last week I planted two of my elevated planters with bean seeds. I love beans. A few days later, I noticed that a squirrel had gotten into the raised bed, dug around in the dirt, and unearthed a number of bean seeds, making a mess out of both planters.
For storytelling purposes, reenactment pictures follow....
Squirrel digging in my newly planted beds...
Do your squirrels mess up your planters and give you that attitude, like this...?
I suppose when you are winning the war, you can just act casually at the scene of the battle.
So, my newest pallet project was to make some squirrel screens for my elevated planter beds. I found some scrap pallet wood 2X4's and a 20 foot stretch of 1 inch chicken wire 24 inches wide. I made a simple 2X4 foot frame with the 2X4's on edge and stapled in the wire with my staple gun.
Picture of the new pallet wood squirrel screen...
Good use of materials I already had on hand, so total cost was free on this build.
Here the squirrel screen is on top of the planter....
The 1 inch chicken wire works great for keeping the squirrels out of the planter. So maybe the bean seeds will have a chance to sprout this time. Once the seeds sprout and grow a bit, the squirrels don't dig up the plants.
Anyways, here is a picture of an older frame I also use to protect the garden bed, but this one was built with 1/4 inch hardware cloth which doubles as a compost sifter over a wheelbarrow...
I used that compost frame sifter on the wheelbarrow for many years, but it is retired now from that duty because I have converted a cement mixer into a compost sifter. Still, the point is that if you need a compost sifter and also need to make a squirrel screen, I'd go with the 1/4 inch hardware cloth option and make it dual purpose.
Picture of my cement mixer compost sifter for those who may not be familiar with the concept. I had a whole thread on the making of that sifter elsewhere on the forum. If you have lots of compost, this is the way to go....
It's been a couple days since I made the new squirrel screen and covered the planters. I was out this morning and noticed that a few bean seeds have already sprouted up and are poking up in the dirt. I don't know how much damage the squirrels did initially digging in the planter, but with bean seeds, it will not hurt to space out the plantings and put in more seeds in a week for those spots that the seeds did not sprout and/or were eaten by the squirrels.
Like I said, once my plants have sprouted and have grown to the point where I need to remove the 2X4 squirrel screen, the squirrels don't do much damage to my beds. However, if you continue to fight the battle with squirrels eating your produce, you might need a much larger cage to protect your plants, like this picture I got from Google....
Again, that would be an easy pallet wood project for someone. Just make it to the size of your raised bed.
Keep an eye out for those long pallets if your raised beds are longer than 4 feet. Here is a pick up haul I scored of some long pallets earlier this year....
Those 2X4's are 8 feet long so they would be great for a squirrel frame on a larger raised bed. Also, I recently built a pallet wood trellis for my raised bed and used some 6 foot long pallet wood 2X4's in that project. In both projects, you don't need perfect 2X4's because they are not used for structural support. Pallet wood 2X4's can be the perfect choice for you and save you lots of money.
It's a good thing that you thought to do that with the vehicles. I'm so happy though because no one got hurt.We were pretty lucky actually. They were expecting baseball sized hail... We have a 2 car garage and 4 vehicles...We had 2 cars in the garage, pulled my truck far enough into the barn to protect all the windows but still allow horses to get in & out. That left my daughter's Elantra as you can see in the picture. We pulled it close to the house. When the tree fell, it missed her car by inches...
