Re: Squirrels Steal My Rhizomes

From: <HAPPYBIRDR@aol.com>

<< When did your rz disappear -- really right after planting or was it
 actually later on?  >>

Marte,

Thank you for your long and informative post.  

THE RHIZOMES THAT DISAPPEARED THIS WEEK WERE PLANTED LAST WEEK!!  So I know
it's not rot or borers or petering out or anything like that.  I don't see a
trace of these things.  I planted them with Schreiner's wooden tags still
attached and the whole thing (2 or 3 of them) just vanished.      

I've been growing iris for years though it's been a while since I've added new
ones, and I've had experience with some getting soft and mushy and some other
normal iris problems.  

From what you said, I'm inclined to lean toward the crow theory.  As I
mentioned, the same thing happened last year in the same general area of the
perennial garden.  And I have seen a few crows in that general vicinity
because it's not far from the vegetable garden and it's about 100' from the
house and crows don't usually come too close to the house.  

If it is crows, I don't know that cayenne or even pizza pepper would help.
Cayenne is recommended to be added to bird seed to deter squirrels but
supposedly it doesn't bother the birds.  So it probably would not affect crows
in the garden.  I'm also on a birdfeeder list.  I'll ask there what people
have seen regarding crows in the flower beds.  I have plenty of birds at
several feeders right outside my back windows so I have some familiarity with
avian behavior.  Crows are the only birds around here large enough to carry
off a rhizome though.  Except for an ocasional  hawk  -- and the hawks go
after other birds.   As I think about it, the solution might be to cut some
pieces of bird netting that I use on my blueberries, drape it over the new
rhizomes and weight it with rocks.  Once they're established, I have no
ptoblems.  

Once in a while I do have a raccoon or opossum in my yard coming from the
nearby state park but this is fairly well developed suburbia.  No deer, elk,
bears or any large herbivores.  Squirrels in my yard have eaten peaches and
pears off my fruit trees, corn from the vegetable garden, crocus and tulip
flowers, bird seed from the feeders and Lord only knows what else.  They are
generalists when it comes to diet.  So they are naturally the first ones I
blame when something disappears.  

Thanks again for your help.  

Pat
Long Island 

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