Has anyone else had trouble with squirrels using their staghorns as a playground? Their claws have shredded my poor fern, is there anything that can deter them? Thanks.

In my opinion, @PlantyPlantersen, trapping is the only way to eliminate this damage from continuing to occur.

Welcome to NGA.

PlantyPlantersen said:Has anyone else had trouble with squirrels using their staghorns as a playground? Their claws have shredded my poor fern, is there anything that can deter them? Thanks.

PlantyPlantersen

Not knowing the size of location of your ferns, I'll try to help, since I have come up with many creative ways to keep squirrels from destroying my other plants. I have two old staghorn ferns and haven't really had any problems with the squirrels bothering them, however I have had problems with them pulling mounted bromeliads off a tree. Figuring they didn't like the location of where I mounted the bromeliads, which was in the crotch of a tree they nest in, I moved it and they left it alone, they don't seem to bother with bromeliads hanging in a basket from a tree. My stags are huge and hang on chains from large tree extended branches, if I was having your problem, I'd probably hang a noisy windchime to the chain. If your fern is small maybe put some chicken wire around it until it grows larger, if mounted maybe toss it in a hanging basket instead. They might be just pulling nesting material from the plant, so toss other nesting stuff in the plant they might use. If you have a cat or dog, put their hair in around your plant, it worked keeping rats out of my orchids. I have also will put clippings of thorny plants into my potted plants, so you could stuff those in around your plant.

I have lived a long life with squirrels, and have learned if you can't beat them you join them, not that I haven't used a few curse words at them here and there, they are very smart critters, but they do love raw peanuts, better than my orchids or hibiscus flowers.
You might enjoy this article.... http://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/leon...

Good thoughts Sherri.
I wonder if the squirrels are finding more than nesting material in the staghorn? I once had a raccoon tear up a plant looking for the ripe palmettto seeds that had fallen into it. Just a thought but it couldn't hurt to sprinkle some crushed red pepper flakes into the nooks and crannies. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't but it is easy and inexpensive.

Back in the decades of growing tropicals in Mississippi, I tried every trick in the book to keep squirrels out of bird feeders and off my orchids, orchids that were just about to bloom. Don't ask me why squirrels like to chew off those heavy buds/new flowers, simply dropping them to the ground. I finally gave up outsmarting them and relied on trapping. My next door neighbor had large tracts of land in the countryside, prime wildgame properties, and he looked forward to relocating those squirrels to his property. Heck, he still emails me telling me he misses adding my squirrels to his property. LOL Once I eliminated the family of squirrels that came to the yard regularly, I would be free of them for a few weeks, and then another family would make an appearance. I simply repeated the trapping.

It's humbling to know that squirrels are smarter than I am. Good luck with all that y'all try to outsmart them.

I am a bird watcher and have several feeders around and that guarantees I will have squirrels also. I know I can't get rid of them so I just work at keeping them from destroying too many plants. Murphy the dog delights in chasing them but I suspect the squirrels enjoy that game as much as he does.

I have squirrels here at my Vero Beach home too, but so far, they haven't bothered anything in the shadehouse (orchids). My property is huge and the squirrels typically remain on the front half of the property. The shadehouse is near the back property line. The only problem I've had is them getting a taste of my cat food. I use cat food to feed the fish in my pond, and I keep (at least) two, 25 lb. bags in the garage. Once the squirrels discover those bags, they'll chew through the thick plastic and then make a mess. Only then to I resort to the trapping. It seems that there are always two that do this and it's now happened twice in 3 yr. I can easily trap the two and relocate them to a nice piece of property well out in the countryside. Once squirrels find a "handy" meal, you'll never deter them from going back, time and again.

Ken, you must have corn in your cat food, the squirrels sniff my cat's bowl and walk off no grain, but the rats love it, they actually tore a hole in my friend's screen porch to get at a bag of cat food.

We set death traps for rats yearly, and it's that time of year again, starting to see damage and saw one on my Ring camera during the night. Some are as big as a squirrel and they love to just destroy plants, they chew them up and drop them all over, not really eating them. Last year they got into my greenhouse and destroyed some Tillandsias, tore them to pieces, they chew the base of bromeliads too, then leave the rest to die. Knew it wasn't squirrels because it was happening during the night, we ended up catching seven of them in a week...they love peanut butter.

I live in a City, that calls itself, "The City of Trees" and most are some sort of oak tree, no way could you ever trap the amount of squirrels that live here. Actually, I think I have my squirrels pretty trained now, they know the rules, I don't really want a new bunch to move in .

Mine don't seem to train too well, and that's been in two states. In Mississippi, our neighborhood, a really large one, had hardwoods growing at practically every home, probably hardwoods by the 1000's. Squirrels in the same number. Believe me, Sherri, you can rid your house of squirrels, though as I pointed out, only for weeks at a time if you have a constant source of them as you describe. Squirrels are territorial so it takes a bit of time for them to venture into an area that they've not been before. Here in Vero Beach, I have more than 40 palms, but only 5 hardwood trees. Three of those are Black Olives and because they have some thorn issues, squirrels only are in my two oaks out front and of course, they climb the palms. I think they probably nest in my Australian Pines.

We keep our bird food and the corn we have for the ducks in a galvanized trash can. The critters cannot get into it as the top is really tight, even the raccoons are thwarted.

That would surely work, Alice. A sturdy, galvanized garbage can works as well.

When we first moved down here we rented in a nearby community where it was illegal to have bird feeders but it was not for squirrels but to discourage bears. A squirrel problem seems mild by comparison.

Yes, I would think so, Alice. I never knew that FL had bear problems. Compared to the west and northern areas, there are very few bears here.

We lived adjacent to a preserve that extends about 3 miles across two rivers all the way to the ocean. Some sparse development along A1A is the only civilization. Bears, bobcts and wild boars are common. Those boars used to do some real damage to gardens.

Taylor696 said:Here is my Platycerium bifurcatum, the Staghorn fern
It was a present from my mom.

Looks great!
You migth have to water it a lot, because sphagnum moss dries out pretty fast when hung up

@sedumzz, That fern posted by Taylor is over ten years old, this is apparently a revived old thread on staghorn ferns. Which has turning into a squirrel and bear chat now...LOL.

I'm going out to have coffee with my squirrels now.

I put sum bromalaids in my staghorn, looks like it's blooming. it's a monster about 5' across. I've had it over 20 years.

Now that is cool.

sunkissed said:@sedumzz, That fern posted by Taylor is over ten years old, this is apparently a revived old thread on staghorn ferns. Which has turning into a squirrel and bear chat now...LOL.

I'm going out to have coffee with my squirrels now.

Oh wait!!! I didn't realize!!!

Great looking plants, Phil. Yep, Sherri, a really old post. Wild hogs really do a ton of damage, Alice. None here in Vero that I've heard of (though there are probably some out in the rural county areas), thank goodness, but it's a real agricultural problem in the rest of the south. Armadillos do a lot of damage too.