Surprisingly, I'm not angry.
We planted fruit trees our first spring in this house (2010) with visions of bountiful harvests. It's been quite the learning experience. The pear thieves have made one thing abundantly clear: even if I could prune, dung, water, and nurture these trees to become their healthy best, and even if I managed to stay one hair ahead of the constant threat of fungal attack and insect damage, there is very little I could do to keep the squirrels away...
...wrap the tree canopy in chicken wire? Hideous, impractical.
...hunt down and destroy every squirrel family within a quarter mile radius? Repeat quarterly.
*sigh*
No, I think it's time to throw in the towel on microscale orcharding in my backyard :(
I'm not terrifically upset at this decision. I may even have put it off another season or two if the garden infrastructure I purchased 10 years ago weren't approaching the end of its lifespan. I'm looking at a total overhaul in the next couple of years, and if I had my druthers, it could look a little like this:
Mwah ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaa! Squirrels make me crazy.
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I feel your pain and we just put ours in this spring. Between the who knows what rust on all the leaves (peach, maple, apple, cherry, raspberry, blackberry). We have also been the scene of a mass Japanese beetle orgy where they gorge themselves on my leaves and have sex all over my plants. Nexts the grubs will destroy my lawn if I don't put the grub killer on at the right time. We have 4 blackberries and the tiniest seediest little raspberries. Im ready to move to a rental and put a tomato plant in a pot.
ReplyDelete"squirrles make me crazy."
ReplyDeleteAMEN!!