Gardening and Plant Thread

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I cannot wait to eat this spicy fucker in a month with a bloody ribeye and salted butter. May is holy shit hailstorm season here though and as well as this plant is doing I expect the worst.
IMG_6825.jpeg.webp
Last Winter here was extra mild, I expect Spring and Summer will make up for it in big storms.
 
I've grown tomatoes and peppers in years past. One year I made a fermented pepper sauce that was like 50/50 peppers I grew and supplemented with just grocery store peppers. It's interesting. I still have a few bottles in the back of my fridge.

This year I'm trying to grow tobacco and maybe roll my own cigars (for personal usage, fuck off taxman).

My main problem is the fucking squirrels.

They keep digging my stuff up. I think they're trying to bury nuts. In the past I found buried peanuts in my pots.

Any suggestions?

Fuck squirrels:
20260422_183440.jpg

Some of my plants are doing decently:
20260422_190246.jpg

I plan to transplant them when they get too big for these pots.

The rocks sorta prevent squirrel fuckery but I think I need something better. Apparently peppermint repels them?
 
This is the time of year I wish I knew kiwis irl because I’ve got an overload of plant starts. It’s still unseasonably warm and nearing early summer temperatures. We’re experiencing a drought that could be corrected by rain in May (although this won’t help watersheds or snowpacks which means heavy water restrictions inbound) and it’s waking all of the bugs up early and all at once. Something is eating the leaves of my lupins and I suspect caterpillars since the pot is under a tree. So far it isn’t too bad and we plan to use BTK if it becomes an issue.

We’ve harvested kale, our spinach is almost ready to harvest some, and the other brassicas are showing evidence that they’re getting ready to form buds. The marigolds have intensely large blooms and the dianthus are budding fervently. Our summer bulbs are beginning to rise a lot, too. This includes gladiolus, hostas, daylilies, crocosmias, baby blue bells, hyacinths to name a few. We’ve got at least a dozen tomato cultivars healthily growing in 4” pots. Interestingly I’ve sprouted Valencia Peanuts this year which may produce or may not, but the heat of the small greenhouse has been the perfect environment.

Later season harvest plants are also beginning to sprout such as melons and pumpkins, but we have also started and have grown a few types of squash such as Luffa squash and Carnival squash.

I’m also still holding off on transplanting the celery out of their 1” cells, but they look fantastic and have not faltered once. I want them to be heavily rooted before I move them up to bigger pots.

I’ve poured fish emulsion on almost all of my plants and the effects were noticeable within 48 hours. Many of the plants started growing more vigorously or seemed to “settle in” to their new spot if recently transplanted.
 
Speaking of pee, is there any way to get a lawn that’s had dog pee on to grow again? Or does it just take time for rain to soak away the overdose of nitrogen?
It's the sodium that kills the grass, not nitrogen. Eventually, you will have lush dark spots where you had bare spots, but it looks terrible in the mean time.

Find grass seed for your growing region and amount of shade. Mix a tablespoon of grass seed into a handful of coco coir and spread it on the dead patches. The coco keeps it moist and in place until it germinates.
 
Speaking of pee, is there any way to get a lawn that’s had dog pee on to grow again? Or does it just take time for rain to soak away the overdose of nitrogen?
It's the sodium that kills the grass, not nitrogen. Eventually, you will have lush dark spots where you had bare spots, but it looks terrible in the mean time.

Find grass seed for your growing region and amount of shade. Mix a tablespoon of grass seed into a handful of coco coir and spread it on the dead patches. The coco keeps it moist and in place until it germinates.
If you can get away with it, don't plant just grass. Plant a grass-clover mix at the very least. You ideally want more than a single species and a stable mycorrhizal network because that way you're "hiring" the fungus to redistribute things throughout the soil for you.
 
My main problem is the fucking squirrels.

They keep digging my stuff up. I think they're trying to bury nuts. In the past I found buried peanuts in my pots.

Any suggestions?
A couple of tips that aren't exact, but might be helpful if adapted:

When I was trying to get the squirrels to stop digging up my bulbs, I found out that squirrels are attracted to areas where it looks like there was recent digging. This is because squirrels are idiots and do not have an extensive mental map of where they hid all their nuts; they just go back and dig up likely places. (Which is how squirrels plant oak trees: by forgetting an acorn.)

I've had fewer dig-up-one-bite bulb attacks after I started camouflaging/tamping down my digging.


Neighborhood cats feel the raised garden bed is an excellent, pre-dug outdoor litterbox, and they can outwit coyote pee granules and sprinklers. What's worked is laying down hardware cloth/fencing roll of metal squares OK flat on the garden surface, right after or before planting. Get some where the squares are big enough to allow planting of seedlings with human hands. The seeds grow into plants just fine, and you can remove it after everything dies off in autumn, but what's essentially a grating makes it an uncomfortable place to dig a big poop hole with kitty feet. Like a cattle guard in a road.

I don't know if that would work with squirrels burying nuts, though; it might be too small for plants.
 
My main problem is the fucking squirrels.
IDK if its true of squirrels in general, but the ones around here seem to love hot peppers. They bury nuts in my raised planters and pots all the time. But they just rape the pepper plants. You may wanna check bylaws before you trap and release your squirrels. My county has a bylaw against it (I did it anyway, otherwise I wouldnt have seen a single pepper). When I get enough peppers, I also make fermented hot sauce
What's worked is laying down hardware cloth/fencing roll of metal squares OK flat on the garden surface, right after or before planting
Last year one of my customers had us build a frame out of 3-4" diameter logs from around their property and cover it chicken wire to keep squirrels out of the garden. Kind of like a gazebo. We also put little chicken wire cages over top of some random plants. It was a bit ugly, but it mostly worked. She had an incident where I forgot to wire one of the pieces of overlapping chicken wire shut, and a squirrel got through and was imprisoned within the frame until someone opened the door for it.
 
I've grown tomatoes and peppers in years past. One year I made a fermented pepper sauce that was like 50/50 peppers I grew and supplemented with just grocery store peppers. It's interesting. I still have a few bottles in the back of my fridge.

This year I'm trying to grow tobacco and maybe roll my own cigars (for personal usage, fuck off taxman).

My main problem is the fucking squirrels.

They keep digging my stuff up. I think they're trying to bury nuts. In the past I found buried peanuts in my pots.

Any suggestions?

Fuck squirrels:
View attachment 8899077

Some of my plants are doing decently:
View attachment 8899082

I plan to transplant them when they get too big for these pots.

The rocks sorta prevent squirrel fuckery but I think I need something better. Apparently peppermint repels them?
I grew a few different varieties of tobacco last year in a few massive pots. The leaves came out well but curing it and drying it properly became an absolute bitch. Just make sure you're well prepared and set up post harvest.
 
Well for my squirrel problem, I'm giving these a try:
20260424_074951.jpg

I might move on to traps or something if this persists.
I grew a few different varieties of tobacco last year in a few massive pots. The leaves came out well but curing it and drying it properly became an absolute bitch. Just make sure you're well prepared and set up post harvest.
Yeah I've been reading a bit. I have some space where I can hang them up in shade but it'll depend on the weather this year, I guess.
 
Well for my squirrel problem, I'm giving these a try:
20260424_074951.jpg

I might move on to traps or something if this persists.
I tried the hot pepper squirrel pellets/spray and they totally ignored it, despite all the "squirrel-proof" birdseed mixes that do the same thing.

So I'm skeptical that this will work, but if it does, please do report back. Squirrels are dicks.
 
I tried the hot pepper squirrel pellets/spray and they totally ignored it, despite all the "squirrel-proof" birdseed mixes that do the same thing.

So I'm skeptical that this will work, but if it does, please do report back. Squirrels are dicks.
Rodent repellents have never worked in my neck of the woods. They just ignore it when they're hungry enough.
If no pets can get access to it I would just go with warfarin and peanut butter.
 
Why on earth did we need a piss thread
I mean this one already exists
 
Shoot the squirrels then eat them
Don't eat city squirrels unless you are on the verge of starvation. The amount of pesticides and herbicides people put on their lawns will be concentrated in the squirrels. If it's a die from starvation this week vs dying from some fucked up Monsanto turbo cancer in 10 years, by all means dig in.
 
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