{"id":3021,"date":"2020-04-06T05:37:42","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T13:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3021"},"modified":"2020-04-06T07:54:48","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T15:54:48","slug":"squirrels-and-onions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/squirrels-and-onions\/","title":{"rendered":"Squirrels and Onions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Squirrel\"<\/a>I have nothing against onion grass\u2014except for the fact that it is invasive and springing up throughout my yard and garden beds.\u00a0 I have nothing against gray squirrels, which are similarly ubiquitous.\u00a0 During this time when we are all \u201csheltering in place\u201d, the battle against both has taken on a new dimension.<\/p>\n

I went all in on pansies this year to brighten my garden in dark times.\u00a0 Pansies, with their expressive \u201cfaces\u201d and gorgeous colors, are the essence of springtime.\u00a0 I have planted them in the large planting boxes that flank my front steps and the cast-concrete planters that stand by the entrance to my back garden.\u00a0 A few days ago, seeking respite from work, housework and other responsibilities, I took a turn around the garden to admire the daffodils, hyacinths and other glorious spring plants.\u00a0 When I got to the cast-concrete planters, I saw that plants and dirt from the containers had been strewn willy-nilly over the surrounding ground.\u00a0 The culprit, without a doubt, was a gray squirrel.\u00a0 As I replanted the pansies, my relaxed, in-the-garden state of mind turned to rage.<\/p>\n

Like everyone else who lives in the suburbs, I have always had squirrels romping in and out of the yard.\u00a0 I frequently remove the tiny oak and chestnut seedlings that the squirrels \u201cplant\u201d in the fall.\u00a0 Sometimes in the early spring I have to relocate crocus bulbs that they dig up and replant in unusual places.\u00a0 These are minor nuisances, but generally, the squirrels are much less destructive as the groundhogs and deer.<\/p>\n

This year all of that changed.\u00a0 Our property now seems to be the primary residence of a gray squirrel that my daughter has nicknamed the \u201cMission Impossible Squirrel or MIS for short.\u00a0 This animal, which is plump, with a fine plume of a tail, is bolder and brassier than others of his kind.\u00a0 He bounds up the flight of stairs leading to our back porch, nonchalantly drinks water out of the plant saucers, and digs in the dirt around the vacationing house plants.\u00a0 The only thing that deters him\u2014and I am sure it is a \u201chim\u201d\u2014is an enraged human being three feet away.\u00a0 If the human being moves off, the MIS returns to whatever mayhem he was in the process of creating.<\/p>\n

Squirrels in general are not overly bright, but this one makes up for the intellectual deficiencies of his species by being extremely persistent.<\/p>\n

Deer spray is relatively effective at deterring MIS, as is my daughter\u2019s preferred solution, a spray of lavender scented all-purpose cleaner.\u00a0 Needless to say, the all-purpose cleaner smells better than the deer spray, which is compounded from pepper essence and rotten eggs.\u00a0 The problem with both substances is that they wash away when it rains.\u00a0 Since it has rained two out of three days recently, it is hard to keep up a spraying regimen.\u00a0 The squirrel is aware of this and keeps returning to our porch.<\/p>\n

In stressful times like the present, this is enough to push me to the brink of madness.<\/p>\n

But madness sometimes begets innovation, and that is what happened in my personal war with MIS.<\/p>\n

My daughter is a container gardener and MIS\u2019s destruction of her container plantings produced rage that might be even worse than mine.\u00a0 Shortly after the affair of the cast-concrete planters, she was listening to me complain about digging out the endless supply of onion grass from the borders.\u00a0 She asked if it was really \u201coniony\u201d and I confirmed that onion grass is as pungent as any of its allium family relatives.\u00a0 \u201cWhy don\u2019t you put it in the pots?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

That was a brilliant idea.\u00a0 Deer and rodents do not like members of the onion family and avoid them religiously.\u00a0 We have so much onion grass that if we could harvest and sell it, we would be extremely wealthy.\u00a0 Chopping up some of the pulled-up onion grass and scattering it in the container plantings would be a great way of deterring MIS and any of his adventurous squirrel relations.\u00a0 Because it is not a spray, it will not wash off in the rain.<\/p>\n

I have started the onion grass campaign, which I hope will help me win the war with MIS.\u00a0 There is only one wrinkle in this clever solution\u2014onion grass is a spring weed that disappears when hot weather sets in.\u00a0 Fortunately at about the same time the onion grass poops out, the catmint that grows freely in several spots in my garden needs its first pruning.\u00a0 Rodents and deer dislike mint family members almost as much as they dislike various onions.\u00a0 Substituting chopped up catmint for onion grass should continue the deterrent effect and save the container plantings.<\/p>\n

This seems like a great natural solution to a persistent problem.\u00a0 An alternative natural solution is the healthy appetites of the foxes and hawks that frequent our neighborhood and the skies above it.\u00a0 As Tennyson said, \u201cNature is red in tooth and claw\u201d, and MIS could conceivably become a menu item for one of them someday.\u00a0 For now I will keep harvesting the onion grass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have nothing against onion grass\u2014except for the fact that it is invasive and springing up throughout my yard and garden beds.\u00a0 I have nothing against gray squirrels, which are similarly ubiquitous.\u00a0 During this time when we are all \u201csheltering in place\u201d, the battle against both has taken on a new dimension. I went all … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2],"tags":[2279,2277,404,2278,540,1670],"class_list":["post-3021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","tag-garden-pest-control","tag-garden-weeds","tag-onion-grass","tag-plant-predators","tag-spring-gardening","tag-squirrels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3023,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021\/revisions\/3023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}