It’s time for my annual proclamation that this is the year we will get the woodchuck problem in the garden under control. This time I really mean it.
I know you have heard it before, but this year I am taking matters out of my own hands and putting them squarely in the hands of professionals. My hired assassin even comes with a 5 year guarantee to keep sons and daughters, cousins and distant relatives from coming to move into the particularly extensive abode that stretches from my chicken coop to my barn (easily 50 feet).
Over the years I’ve tried traps, poison, smoke bombs (which worked until they didn’t and I nearly burned down the barn), getting a terrier, throwing rocks at them, and running like a crazy woman (who screams while waving her hands over her head) out of the house at them — nothing has made a lasting difference and I think the ‘chucks have come to feel that I’m not serious.
Last year I over-confidently thought that I had at least banished them from the vegetable garden (where they pose, all cute-like, in front of my game camera while mowing down anything even remotely related to a cabbage). I was convinced my fence fortress was impermeable, but within days of planting a brand new Goji Berry Plant – it was gone. I guess they were tired of the Brassicas and found this to be a real treat – especially after having pushed the gate backwards on its hinges just enough to get in.
I’d really like to try out Goji berries. (Have you had them?) I’ve never bought them in the store, but they are purported to be quite healthy. And if I can achieve cascades of pretty red berries covering branches that are trained nicely into a pretty cone form I could even be happy not to eat them and just look at them.
So, is this possible?
It’s March; anything seems possible. And if the chucks are gone and I try planting it in a container, I think I might have sporting chance.
-Rochelle
Images: courtesy of Proven winners and woodchuck via creative commons Carly and Art
Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Proven Winners. I am not an employee of Proven Winners and all opinions are my own. See the other posts in this series.
Ah, you need to understand the ways of the woodchuck! There is something about your garden the woodchucks find particularly attractive. What is it? Change that.
Also, animals tend to follow the same paths, figure out where there are and create barriers at the choke points where they can not go around. Either that or call someone who will live trap them and bite the bullet on expense.
Hey Rochelle, I empathize with your woodchuck problem. However, I think you may want to be careful about growing goji berries, as there’s some evidence to suggest the plant has the potential to become invasive in parts of the U.S. I know you would not want to be even remotely responsibile for creating a second problem in an effort to eradicate the first. Good luck and keep us posted. Lynn