Something Pulling up and eating my tomato plants?

Or rather than moth balls, you can spray your seedlings with capsicein (the chemical agent in hot peppers.) It’s food-safe, and if you’ve ever touched your nose after chopping habanero peppers, you can see how it works on squirrels. The downside is that it has to be re-applyed after every rain until your plants are a bit more fibrous. You could also ring each of your seedlings with chives/garlic/onions.

marie-helene

in Garden 11 years and 1 month ago

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apartmentgardener | 11 years and 1 month ago

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I have just started a garden in our backyard. I transplanted a whole flat of tomato seedlings in a few days ago. Something is killing them! I go out in the morning to check on the garden, and I see that nothing remains of some of my plants but about a half inch to an inch of stem! Worse, one of the seedlings has been dragged out of its hole, and the root ball with again, about a half inch to an inch of stem is just lying next to where I planted it! I also noticed some leaves missing from my yellow squash and zuchini plants, though ohing like this. Oddly, my sunflowers, corn, and green beans are all perfectly fine. What is going on??? How can I stop it? I’m down to about 8 plants from nearly 20… 🙁

marie-helene | 11 years and 1 month ago

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Could be a squirrel with a taste for tomatoes. Squirrels are odd this way, and block by block, have different habits. One thing they have in common is that they don’t like onions and garlic, so that’s a good first crop, just to train the squirrels away. The other thing is that they can smell the oil from your skin, and will dig out new seedlings out of curiosity sometimes. You can just buy a head of garlic, break out the cloves (without peeling the skin) and push them in the dirt around your tomatoes. It’s a bit late in the season; typically, you put the garlic first, at the end of March/beginning of April, and put your tender seedlings a month later.

cate | 11 years and 1 month ago

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Don’t worry, with eight plants you’re going to have a monster crop of tomatoes!

apartmentgardener | 11 years and 1 month ago

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Thanks for the advice about the garlic, I’ll try that anyway, just as a precaution for my last remaining seedlings. We were thinking it might also be mice, I’ve heard they can have a taste for young tomato plants? I have some pots of wildflowers out back as well, and saw some evidence of digging in that when there were tulips in one. Tulips were fine, but the holes in the planter dirt were very annoying. Yeah, we got a little bit of a late start getting them into the ground this year. We’ve only ever done container gardening before this, and this spring was so cold this year. We are cherry tomato fiends in this houshold, so I’m certainly looking forward to a monster crop! I guess realistically 8 is bmore managable than 20, but It’s just terribly depressing to go out and see nothing but nubs.

dorkofwindsor | 11 years and 1 month ago

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couple of possibilities. 1) squirrel. 2) raccoon. 3) rat. Odds are high on the squirrel. I have some planters i inherited when i moved in, have never planted anything in them (even remove the weeds and just display bare dirt) yet they go digging through them like thieves through a jewelry box. I honestly don’t know if they are looking for potatoes or whatnot, but you would think they would know after years there is nothing. Also, if you are relatively close to the park (3 -6 blocks) i see raccoons scale eight foot fences with ease into backyards all the time and a tomato plant has absolutely no chance there as well. Lets face it, none of us can resist an nice red tomato. Try a chicken wire fortress.

Arkady | 11 years and 1 month ago

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You can remove both ends of cans & slip them over the plants – embedding them in the soil about an inch & a half. Also, a small sprinkling of moth balls pressed into the dirt around the plants might act as a deterrent.