Unfortunately, no it wasn't. Weds I saw Denise and was telling her about the weird problem. We decided to go peek in at the heads on Jim's cauliflower plants. UH OH.....lots of damage. Luckily I had Jim's cell number so I called to tell him he was being eaten out of house and home and he'd might want to come sooner than later or he'd have nothing left.
This is what Jim's cauliflower head looked like when he harvested it.
All the black is dirt from the feet of the critter
If you enlarge this picture and look at the two parts of the leaves
next to Dalita's thumb and finger, you can see little scratch marks
Dalita was a great help holding the cauliflower leaves back and we decided to peek at Jim's as well. Double Dang....more damage....one of his perfect heads had been half eaten. We looked at Jim's remaining two and he had more eaten. Triple Dang.....
A perfect head.....at 12:38 pm on Nov. 15
We wandered around looking to see if anyone else had critter damage. Yep, anyone who has cauliflower has critter nibbles. And by tomorrow it might be more than nibbles. Luckily Mike arrived at the garden just as I was leaving so I could tell him that his perfect small head of cauliflower wasn't long for this world.
Since we don't know exactly what is eating the cauliflower it is hard to protect the heads besides just cutting them real small. The two options are:
1) Make a 5 sided cage with hardware cloth to put over the cauliflower plant. The frame can be made with wood and then cover the 4 sides of the square and the the top with the hardware cloth. Secure it so nothing can sneak through where the pieces meet. Once you place the frame over the plant, pin it securely to the ground to keep anything from squeezing through. This is somewhat impractical for us because it would squish all the plants around it and/or not even fit in the bed properly.
2) Use powdered fox urine. I've never used it but Mike has at home. Also, I don't know precisely what brand Mike uses either, but here is a link to learn more about powdered Fox Urine if you are interested. And lastly I have no idea if it smells either but it is organic!
Amy did say that just because we had trouble with wildlife critters eating cauliflower heads this fall, it doesn't mean we'll have problems in the future. Every season is different.
Vicki
3 comments:
Would hardware cloth over the 9 gauge wire like Vicki has on her bed work as a deterrent and possibly avoid damaging surrounding plants? What about a urine barrier around the perimeter?
Okay, so I am at the computer thinking it is only a matter of time before my garden becomes a buffet as well, so I thought I would do a little looking on what I can do as a preventative measure. This might be an easy solution or one that may potentially keep them at bay until plants come to harvest. If you think about it cayenne pepper is what they use in bird seed for the hot meats. Anyone have any thoughts on the idea? If nothing else maybe it would keep the squirrels from burying so many nuts!
http://www.ehow.com/how_4870100_use-pepper-squirrel-repellent.html
http://www.ehow.com/way_5464978_do-pepper-keep-rabbits-away.html
HA! to keeping squirrels out. Some squirrels like it hot and will eat peppered bird seed. I've tried that and my squirrels only live a mile away from the garden. So I'm thinking the garden squirrels are closely related genetically to my squirrels.
I'm thinking bird netting is the only sure fire way to keep the squirrels out right now. I don't know if they will continue to be such pests once the pecans are all off the trees or not. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you want them) pecans will continue coming down for another month or so. The pestiferous squirells may get better in January or February.
We'll see!
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