Ho, ho, ho! Merrrrry Summertime!

garden ornaments
you know the squirrels won’t be fooled

The tomato plants are getting huge and so begins Varmint Patrol 2008.  For squirrels, well, the dog is on point to deal with squirrels. She does a pretty good job of it even if I do lose the occasional beefsteak to some fence-to-plant squirrel acrobatic successes. So for squirrels I have to rely on the whole predator vs. prey thing and hope my domesticated predator wins.

Birds are a different story. They just yell at and dive-bomb the dog, returning to smugly peck away at my most succulent tomatoes. I’m sure they sit on the roof and laugh at me when I go to pick a nice ripe specimen only to find the entire back side all beaked away. Gah! So my parents, hearing me lament over this last summer, suggested this solution by which they swear.

Apparently to keep birds from eating the fruit off your tomato vines, you can hang red Christmas ball ornaments around the plants early in the season. The birds peck them, find them to be hard and pingy and assume the same will be the case with other red orbs they see in the area. Now I am skeptical. I mean you don’t use the phrase “birdbrained” to compliment someone’s deductive reasoning. Nevertheless, this solution does not require me to cover my plants with netting or set up motion-detecting sprinklers like some low-grade, backyard Gitmo so we’re giving it a go. Results posted in July.

6 Comments to “Ho, ho, ho! Merrrrry Summertime!”

  1. Haley 8 June 2008 at 2:04 pm #

    People do something similar with chickens that have started to eat their eggs. They put a few fake eggs (golf balls or wooden ones) in the nests. After several brain rattling pecks the hens start to associate eggs with ow, and then (hopefully) give up on the egg eating.

  2. sheri 9 June 2008 at 2:28 am #

    That sounds like a GREAT idea, and even if it doesn’t work, your garden will be so cheery!

  3. modcottage 9 June 2008 at 6:25 pm #

    ok Haley, I had NO IDEA that egg pecking was a problem with chickens…but if the “decoy” style solution works for those birds, I have even more hope that this solution will work for mine

    and sheri, way to really see the positive! You’re a morning person aren’t you. ;)
    –em

  4. allison 17 June 2008 at 6:02 pm #

    PLEASE let me know if this works. I cannot spend another summer screaming, “You damned winged/furry bastards!” at 7 am each morning, upon finding another pecked/nibbled tomato….

  5. jacqueline 11 July 2008 at 3:33 pm #

    Brilliant!

  6. Elana 16 July 2008 at 7:35 am #

    I’ve heard of people doing the same with unusable cd’s. Hope it works!