Re: Wildlife
Let me tell you my ground hog story. I used to think ground hogs were cute before i started growing pumpkins, i would watch out my back window as they would go up to this mulberry tree, stand up on their back paws, grab a branch and shake the tree so the mulberrys would fall to the ground and them eat them.The first year i was growing pumpkins i did not have a fence, I must have been lucky to get a pumpkin at all after what i know now. I had one up to the 300lb range stsrting to turn orange.. I was away for the week and my dad was to stop by and water for me. I called him the day before i was to return to see how my babies were doing. he said " well yesterday i saw some scratches on the side of the pumpkin and then today i saw a groundhog coming out of the pumpkin", not wanting to beleive what i just heard i said "what do you mean coming out of the pumpkin" he said " well, there was a big hole in the side of the pumpkin and the ground hog was coming out of it"....By time i g!
ot!
home the next day all that was left of 300lbs of pumpkin was the stem and a pile of pumpkin seed shells.. The local ground hog family had eaten 300lbs of pumpkin in 24 hours. The season was over for me. The next year I put up a fence 3 feet high.. the ground hogs went under it... the next year with much manual labor i dug a 1+1/2 foot deep trench around my 25 x 100 ft garden and burried the fence. This made the fence too short and the ground hogs went over it... Year 3 : left the burried fence in the ground and put up a second 3ft high fence around it.. did it work.. well i have video of the ground hog climbing vertically up the fence and down the other side... year 4 I buy the lagre racoon size haveahart traps. i put them around my plot with apples cut in quaters for bait... Caught 10 of them in 10 days relocated them at least 5 miles away.. I kept them up all season loaded with bait and i succesfully grew a 482 lb pumpkin and placed 14th in the Altoona PA pumpkin bowl an!
d !
having the 3rd largest in the state of NJ.
The traps are what worked no fence stoped them from climbing but the burrying 1+1/2 feet into the ground is important. I heard if you curve the top of the fence back it kind of works like a squirle baffle on a bird feeder to keep them from going over. but then the cost of the fence starts to really go up too. I still trap a couple a year but the main population in my area has been relocated. On year 2 when i only had the fence not burried yet i had a vine started about 10 feet long, i watered it in the morning and all was fine.. that afternoon i brought a friend over to check out how my plant was doing.. the first thing we saw was a ground hog scurrying away under the fence, the next thing we saw was a 10 foot vine with out a single leaf left on it.. not a single one. so in summary you have your work cut out for you. Buy a 4-5 ft tall fence and burry it at least 1+1/2 feet into the ground (i have seen many areas around my fence where they had dug down a foot trying to get !
un!
der it.) Buy traps and keep them baited all season. Where i have the gate to my patch I used cinderblocks as a footing under where the gate opens burried in the ground so the ground hogs could not go under the gate. Good luck.
---- you wrote:
> Hello List,
>
> It sounds like I am going to need a chicken wire box 100' square! This is
> more of a battle than an art form. Wish me luck, and pass the ammo.
>
> Tom
>
> Glenn Peters wrote:
>
> > Tom: Groundhogs are very fond of pumpkin plants!! they will chew the new
> > growth off the ends of the vine.
> >
> > Glenn Peters
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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