squirrel-baffling

I built squirrel-baffling cages around several of my pumpkins this year, and I count it a success:



I got eight pumpkins, they got three, plus many unripe ones. And they got a few of my acorn squashes. Last year, I don't think they recognized the acorn squash as food. I thought maybe they learned to eat pumpkin from smelling jack-o-lanterns that had already been cut open for them, but they didn't realize that the other squashes were similar. But this year they attacked both.

For the cages, I stuck an odd number of stakes around each little green pumpkin and wove grapevine around the stakes until the pumpkin was hidden. It wouldn't stop a determined squirrel, but maybe it looked like a squirrel trap, or maybe it just made it enough harder to get that the squirrels were deflected to easier pickings. (My compost piles are full of easier pickings.)

Next year I'm going to make as many grapevine baskets as I can, to hide all my squash under.