Wish I'd known this a week ago, BEFORE the squirrels ate the apricots from my tree (& dropped the rest on the ground). Next year...

:-)

My friend fixed this problem with cayenne. She said the squirrel had a tasty meal on her potato vine before she sprinkled it.

Sorry, liz, also sorry about that capital 'l' that my computer won't make because i just dumped an ice cube on that corner of the keyboard. it melted before i saw it. i guess i'll forever now have no caps. ugh.

anyway . . . i'm afraid it would take a ton of cayenne pepper for an entire apricot tree unless you could get it higher on the trunk than they could jump. Sorry about the apricots, too. happens to my tomatoes all the time.

now why is that 'S' capitalizing when nothing else will.
Sigh, nothing else of the upper keys is working including punctuation.

it's going to be a long night if i have to take this keyboard apart.

Good to know, Anna. Works for me too.

And so it seems my keyboard is working for the moment.

Well these blow up snakes sure don't slow them down, I can hear those varmints laughing at me every morning as they scurry away with cheeks full of macadamia nuts.... thanks for the tip!!!

Hope it works for you, Robert. I've heard those squirrel laughs a time or two myself.

Allas, I couldn't afford the amount of cayenne it would take to cover our hazelnut and English walnut trees. Bill (our fall resident squirrel) and the Blue Jays harvest them all before they even mature.

My crazy VARMITS love cayenne and jalapanos...But once when I put a whole ripe seed head from a sunflower out for them they were scared to death of it. Go figure

Here they don't bother the plants...well, hardly any. They used to steal peaches before my peach tree started dying. The raccoons were worse about the peaches. It was raccoons that would leave a dozen or so barely tasted upripe peaches on the ground in one night. The squirrels are also pests at the bird feeder all the time. But otherwise, they aren't destroyers of plants here that I've seen.

They dig up plants in search of the nuts and acorns they may or may not have buried last fall. The cayenne pushes them in a new direction.

I should have mentioned that in the tip.

We had a couple of macadamia nut seedlings come up in a planting bed. I thought well I guess some good will come from the squirrels burying the nuts. The seedlings had gotten 7-8 inches high. It was rather exciting.
I was so disappointed when the squirrels dug up the seedlings and ate the seed nut right off the root ....

robert.

I tried mixing cayenne with bird seed to try to discourage the squirrels from emptying the feeder. It didn't work though... Apparently Texan squirrels like spicy seeds!

It's all that heat you have down there. They are used to HOT!

I just sprinkle it around the young plants I don't want them to dig up, especially those in pots. It seems to help here.

Marylyn said:I tried mixing cayenne with bird seed to try to discourage the squirrels from emptying the feeder. It didn't work though... Apparently Texan squirrels like spicy seeds!

Florida squirrels do too

Try a product called Plant Skydd. The DNR uses it when planting new trees. I use it, and have no trouble with the EVIL squirrels.

Thanks, Reid, good to know!