How Do I Get Rid of Squirrels in My Vegetable Garden?

Continuing our series on annoying animals in the vegetable garden, we move on to those lovely of lovely rodents the squirrel. Forget about a fence and aluminum pie tins for these animals. They will climb over the fence and probably use the aluminum pie tin as a plate for all the fruits and vegetables they are going to steal from your garden. Here are some solutions you can give a try that are safe, realistic and work.

Rubber Snake
Do you have a dollar store or an inexpensive toy store near your house? Then you should definitely take a trip there and pick up some realistic looking garden snakes. A number of fellow vegetable gardeners on our vegetable gardening Facebook fan page suggested that using rubber snakes really works. Every morning go to the garden and move them in a different location to confuse the squirrels. It is an inexpensive and safe way to deter squirrels from your garden. Just don’t scare the kids with them.

Blood Meal
It is dry powdered blood and is normally used in adding nitrogen to the soil. However, blood meal also serves as a pretty good deterrent to a rodent like the squirrel. Usually derived from cattle blood, squirrels (and rabbits) sense sort of danger when blood meal is around and avoid the area. By spreading blood meal over your garden, you can add nitrogen to your soil and deter the squirrels.

Alternative Food
Some may not agree with this method, but many do use it and that is to feed the squirrels at the other end of your yard. My father used this tactic all the time and it seemed to work for him. He would feed the squirrels on one end of the yard, as far away from his garden as possible, so that they would go there and never actually get to his fruits and vegetables. You can set a simple pie tin with peanuts in it to feed them.

I believe using a combination of all three of these methods will work wonders for you especially if you have problems with squirrels in your home vegetable garden. You can get the rubber snakes at the dollar store, the blood meal at your local garden center and peanuts at your supermarket. All three are very inexpensive and easy to implement.

As a side note, avoid using poison. Not only is it inhumane but really unnecessary, expensive and dangerous. You could possibly kill other animals besides the squirrels.

Give the three previously mentioned options a go today, and you will be well on your way to a healthy and squirrel free home vegetable garden.

About the Author
Mike is the author of the book ”Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person” and the administrator for the largest vegetable gardening group on Facebook. Mike can be reached via his website AveragePersonGardening.com.