Squirrel Problems
When we kept seeing squirrels in our garden, we decided we needed some kind of repellent. Unfortunately, we found that there was nothing that cost less than fifteen dollars. Instead, we looked up “organic squirrel repellent “on the internet and found some recipes. Almost all of them had some kind of pepper in it. This is our recipe:
1
Bring 2 cups of water and one cup of vinegar to a boil on the stove in a cooking pot.
2
Add 2 heaped tablespoons of cayenne pepper to the water. Stir to dissolve the cayenne into the water.
3
Add either a head of fresh garlic, crushed or minced, or two heaping tablespoons of garlic powder. Stir.
4
Remove the mixture from the stove top and allow it to cool completely.
5
Line a colander with cheesecloth and place a bowl under the colander. Pour the mixture into the colander to strain out anything that is not completely dissolved.
6
Pour the solution into a spray bottle. Spray your plants and around the edge of the garden with the solution. It should last 15-30 days if it doesn’t rain.
Another way to keep the squirrels out is to place ground chili peppers in the garden beds. Use the hottest chilies you can find, the little Thai chilies are good as are habaneras and cascabellas. The peppers make for unpleasant digging.
Just a note- we don’t actually have a problem with the squirrels yet. I’ve never had problems with them before. We decided to try this out just in case, though, after a couple of different people told us horror stories about THEIR squirrel problems!
Anyone else dealt with squirrels in their gardens?
Mashaa’Allah, the beauty of taking that preventative measure is that you safeguard against all rodents and unwanted garden munchers at the same time. None of the critters that normally eat your produce into oblivion like that pepper spray…unless they are some special, chili-loving, south of the border breed!
Barak Allahu feekum and may Allah bless your efforts richly – ameen.
A very wise woman suggested that we do this to prevent any problems, insh’Allaah! So far, so good- we harvested our first purple bush beans and sweet peas today, alhamdulillah.