{"id":1787,"date":"2011-07-08T12:11:04","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T16:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/itfarmer.wordpress.com\/?p=1787"},"modified":"2011-07-08T12:11:04","modified_gmt":"2011-07-08T16:11:04","slug":"doing-battle-with-critters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/itfarmersblog.com\/?p=1787","title":{"rendered":"Doing Battle with Critters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"New<\/a>

New Weapons on Trial<\/p><\/div>\n

I’m not proud of large sections of this years garden, with one major reason: The plants are being eaten alive. There is no way a plant can grow well if ground hogs and deer are constantly munching on them like some sort of under priced dinner. I thought my new guard dog would help greatly, and she has deterred damage to my lettuce, but she alone can’t protect everything.<\/p>\n

To answer this new challenge I’ll be showcasing some of my attempts to battle these critters using any methods I can muster. I’ll start with a concoction of boiled garlic and cayenne peppers, continue through hanging pie pans all through the garden, and I hope to have motion sensors turn on lights to really scare these animals. I’ll share whatever I can learn, so lets begin with my first attempt to deter them from eating the food by making it taste Awful !<\/p>\n

This recipe is one I’ve discussed with a co-worker, with a twist. Chad suggested boiling garlic, then straining off the garlic chunks as a spray to deter flea beetles. I figured that if garlic will deter bugs, then surely cayenne peppers would deter everything else.<\/p>\n

I boiled a few small chunks of garlic with lots of water and nearly half a bottle of cayenne peppers. It can be quite potent to stir, so I added a small amount of olive oil so none of the chunks would stick to the bottom. After ruining my appetite for garlic for weeks to come, I strained out the chunks and added the now milky colored water to a half gallon of untreated water.<\/p>\n

I then did something else I’m not too proud of, but it may just help. I left the gallon of garlic water sit on my kitchen counter for nearly a week as I was too busy to try it out. Last night I decided it was time to use the hot spray, so I took a whiff of the contents of the jug. It had become worse then I imagined, with a combination of garlic, hot pepper and rotten veggie smell producing a stench I’ve never encountered before.<\/p>\n

This should really do the trick I thought, as I added half of the gallon jug to my sprayer. I then filled the rest of the sprayer up with tap water dilute it a bit. I sprayed everything from the beans through the peppers and onto the zucchini. While spraying, I noticed how bad the grazers had been treating my beans, as they were all nibbled down to 6 inches tall.<\/p>\n

I’m pretty sure this spray will work, as I rubbed my eyes after taking a shower, and my eyes became irritated from the hot peppers residue that made it through the rinse cycle….. This must surely be some potent stuff !<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not proud of large sections of this years garden, with one major reason: The plants are being eaten alive. There is no way a plant can grow well if ground hogs and deer are constantly munching on them like … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,41,101],"tags":[209,300,503],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/itfarmersblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/itfarmersblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/itfarmersblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/itfarmersblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/itfarmersblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/itfarmersblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/itfarmersblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/itfarmersblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/itfarmersblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}