anyways now im here to give you the best preventative ways i’ve learned for dealing with squirrels in your pots:
big rocks- i’ve tried small rocks, i’ve tried sand, they dont care. the best you can do is get big enough rocks that they can’t lift up or dig under without it possibly crushing them. they do actually hate the combo of big rocks + sand though
[chicken wire]- best at preventing them from accessing anything in a pot. you’re going to want to make the soil level and inch or so lower in the pot though (low enough they cant try and reach either if they wanted to), unless you make some sorta dome then whatever. this can also just be a temporary solution till the plants get established more and is the best way to grow seeds and seedlings without their shitty lil paws fuckin around in there. it can be trickier with plants you already have established, but basically you’re gonna wanna make a makeshift “cloche”
^this thingy. better to do makeshift bc you can buy a whole roll of chicken wire and save it for future garden projects or whatever kinda emergency. unless you wanna pay this much to get it:
yeah, prolly not, + your plant might grow taller than that shit anyways, you’re gonna need to custom make some of your own cloches somehow. they can be messy. whatever. it doesnt have to look perfect. do you want your fucking tulips to live? yeah? then who cares how it looks okay? okay
anyways
speaking of bulbs, if you have to, and havent planted the bulbs yet, minus well wrap that fucker in chicken wire too. just in case the lil shits do get their shitty hands on it somehow. ideally you prevent that from even happening, but if you have moles this might help too.
the way i made a cloche was literally just getting some mesh screen squares [here], clasping them all together with metal wires, and putting the chicken wire on top so the squirrels cant crawl in. with a pot, cover the pot in the chicken wire, cut it how you want but a little off the edges so you can loop some metal wiring into the chicken wire and then bring it together and tighten it under the lip of the pot so the metal wire is tight and cant be peeled open by squirrel-hands. they are already pretty repelled it seems by the sharp pokey bits of the chicken wire so use that to your advantage to make your plant also dangerous. once the seedlings are growing big enough that the leaves are trying to poke and weave through the chicken wire, you can just cut a couple pieces of the wire around where it’s sprouting out and they likely wont try to pry it open if you leave some of the pokey bits to protect to stem.
there’s other fancier ways to make cloches, i’ve seen someone do it with the old metal wiring of lamp shades, if you’ve got anything like that going on, maybe even something that holds pots up, whatever, something strong enough to hold the chicken wire, be tightened if needed, and also not collapse in on itself.
if you’re on the ground, stakes are your best friend at keeping the cloches down. if you’re on a balcony, see if you’re allowed to drill into the bottom of it, if not, then your best bet is using some of those big rocks. make sure the chicken wire top is tight enough so the rocks cant just fall through. if your cloche is going over a plant in a pot, my best solution has been making some sort of opening i can get into but the squirrels cant, put the cloche over the plant but inside the pot, and then pile a shit tonna rocks against the chicken wire. and hey, well, it worked.
anyways, on to my last solution;
certain herbs/spices/etc.- some people seem to swear by cayenne pepper working, it didn’t work for my squirrels at all, they were un-phased. or at least, it didn’t deter them for long, and i couldn’t keep coating my pots with it because it was getting too thick and moldy bc its literally little bits of vegetable trying to compost on my gdamn pots now. so that didn’t work for me. but the squirrels around me seem to not like the smell of mint, garlic, or cinnamon, at least, that’s the ingredients in the spray i got;
which they seem to not like. you do have to apply it weekly and after it rains, but i’ve noticed any of the pots i dont spray (usually vacant pots that stuff died in or extra soil or whatever) they will start digging in over the pots with plants. they’re after the roots of your plants anyways, because they’re evil and anti life, i know, so spraying it w a pepperminty garlicy cinnamonny essential oil blend I think would repel even the most desperate squirrel, I mean it doesn’t sound like a tasty combo to me either lol. the stuff does mildly smell of it but not nearly as bad as you might suspect. I actually got a rodent version but it just like vanished off of amazon for whatever reason. this stuff is 24 dollars tho [here’s a link] if u want it
you could try growing those types of plants like alliums and mints, I think that might work if you line your garden w that sorta stuff. idk. but this stuff has been essentially the best solutions i’ve had for keeping squirrels out. i’ve tried all the other shit. you name it i’ve tried it. this is the best you can do. short of trapping or killing them but I personally don’t want it to have to come to that if it doesnt hafta, so here’s what I got for you if you’ve been dealing w the fuckers too and I hope it helps for you.
oh, and uh- DO NOT FEED THE SQUIRRELS, EVER. dont give them the idea that you’ll provide food for them ever in their fuckin lives. you allow them to get away w eating your bird seed too much and all the sudden you’ve got a squirrel that thinks its Your job to feed it, alright? i’m pretty sure its the same as feeding monkeys, where they see you as lesser than for it and like you’re some weak sub monkey that gives their food away bc they suck and are stupid comparatively
it helps to have a dog or a cat to guard your yard or balcony, also, squirrels are crepuscular, which means they’re most active dusk and dawn, so if you can that’d be the best time to get out there, i’ve found just waking up and walking outside to admire my plants a bit at sunrise makes them avoid my garden, you have to make them think you could be on the other side of the door at any time, so popping out at random times helps, but especially around those times.
never give them an inch. never let them get the idea they can come to you for anything. the squirrels will become more aggressive if they don’t have many other options for food sources, but you still shouldnt feed them because they’ll assume you, your food and your garden is a free for all.
