{"id":62,"date":"2007-10-22T13:27:21","date_gmt":"2007-10-22T21:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=62"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:33:25","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:33:25","slug":"groundhogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/groundhogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Groundhogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

GROUNDHOG
\n<\/font><\/font><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Groundhogs are pests, but they have inspired a lot of fine writing.\u00a0 Michael Pollan, in his wonderful book Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education<\/em>, includes a very funny section on futile strategies and stratagems for groundhog elimination.\u00a0 William Alexander, writer, gentleman farmer and author of The $64 Tomato, <\/em>wrote “You may be smarter, but he’s got more time,”\u009d a chapter describing the extreme measures he took to get rid of the giant groundhog that he called “Superchuck”\u009d.\u00a0 I’m convinced that great poets of the past and present might have written a whole body of\u00a0 groundhog poetry had the poets opted to spend less time in their drafty garrets and more time in their gardens.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Groundhogs also get a lot of publicity every February, due to the lore that has grown up around Punxsutawney Phil, a celebrated Pennsylvania groundhog who predicts when spring will come by seeing his shadow–or not.\u00a0 Punxsutawney Phil probably has the most enviable job in the world; he is richly rewarded and lionized for simply waking up once a year.\u00a0 His handlers even save him the trouble of getting himself up and out of bed.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While not in Pollan’s or Alexander’s league, I too have written a lot about our resident suburban groundhog.\u00a0 I use the singular and the masculine as a convenience; we have actually had generations of males and females.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The groundhog or woodchuck is known to scientists as Marmota monax.\u00a0 It is sometimes called the land beaver or even the whistle pig.\u00a0 In my neighborhood and any other neighborhood in North America where people grow edible or ornamental plants it is known by a variety of names, most of which are unprintable.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Believe it or not the groundhog, a rodent, is related to the common squirrel, an animal that is just as voracious but a whole lot cuter.\u00a0 Groundhogs all look pretty much the same–up to two feet long from snout to tail with a thick grayish fur.\u00a0 Supposedly they top out at about nine pounds, but by October of every year, most of the mature groundhogs in my neighborhood would have to enroll in Weight Watchers\u00ae to get down to that level of slimness.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Groundhogs have three major qualities that make them problematic to farmers and gardeners: they tunnel, they eat and they reproduce.\u00a0 In my yard there are two tunnel entrances, both of which are wide enough to accommodate the fat fall groundhog as well as his slimmer spring self.\u00a0 One tunnel goes directly under my back fence, and the other goes under the side fence, giving the groundhog easy access to three yards full of tempting vegetation.\u00a0 I think that he spends the majority of his time in my yard because my plants are the most diverse and expensive.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Our neighborhood is full of groundhogs.\u00a0 Like their relatives everywhere they are difficult to discourage and impossible to get rid of.\u00a0 One neighbor caught “her groundhog”\u009d in a Havahart\u00ae trap and transported it elsewhere.\u00a0 By the time she got back from elsewhere, a new groundhog had moved in.\u00a0 Another neighbor is convinced that groundhog tunnels are undermining the stability of her garage.\u00a0 She might be right.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Being human and imagining that we can control the natural world, we all try to “groundhog-proof”\u009d our properties.\u00a0 The neighbor who worries about her garage sprays her vegetable plants with something that is supposedly distasteful to groundhogs.\u00a0 I have tried another folk remedy–pouring used cat litter into the tunnel entrances.\u00a0 This discourages the groundhog for about five days.\u00a0 My two cats, who limit their outdoor excursions to the fenced areas of the backyard, have had occasional stare-downs with our resident plant eater.\u00a0 These invariably end when one of the parties gets bored and turns his or her back on the other.\u00a0 I have also tried installing foxgloves, monkshood and other deadly or distasteful plants around the groundhog holes.\u00a0 The animals probably appreciate the flowers, but they are not fooled into eating the toxic plant parts.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My groundhog seems to favor clover, which grows abundantly in my lawn, and wild buttercups.\u00a0 I have a left a big patch of the latter conveniently near one of the tunnels.\u00a0 The groundhog, being fat and lazy, spends most of the time stuffing himself with clover and buttercups rather than anemones and campanulas.\u00a0 This fall I discovered that he also loves ornamental cabbage.\u00a0 I installed several in the back beds just before we opened the garden for a local garden tour.\u00a0 The big heads were lovely and I looked forward to seeing them persist right through the winter.\u00a0 Unfortunately the groundhog has polished off two cabbages already, and will undoubtedly finish off the third before the first hard frost.\u00a0 I hope all that cabbage gave him terrible gas.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My husband is always muttering about getting rid of the groundhog, preferably with a BB gun.\u00a0 I have forbidden this, because apart from any other considerations, he would be much more likely to hit one of the neighbors’ children than the groundhog.\u00a0 I have gotten tired of pouring used cat litter down the groundhog hole, and adopted a modified \u00a0“live and let live”\u009d philosophy.\u00a0 At least we don’t have deer–yet. <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GROUNDHOG \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Groundhogs are pests, but they have inspired a lot of fine writing.\u00a0 Michael Pollan, in his wonderful book Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education, includes a very funny section on futile strategies and stratagems for groundhog elimination.\u00a0 William Alexander, writer, gentleman farmer and author of The $64 Tomato, wrote “You may be smarter, but … 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":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","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=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1716,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/1716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}