Is there an eco-friendly way to repel woodchucks?

Family Dinner by anoldent

In June, TheGardenLady filled two huge planters with flowers to decorate the deck for an upcoming party. I planted the thriller and filler plants in the urns and my spiller plant was the ornamental sweet potato vine. The planters looked pretty and the spiller plants happily spilled down the sides of the urns and started vining up the side of the deck. I was so pleased with the look.

I was pleased, that is, until the other day when I noticed that the leaves of one of the vines were completely missing. I wondered what could have eaten the leaves so completely from one urn but not on the vine in the other urn. I didn’t think slugs or snails could have eaten the entire leaves- I had never seen slugs or snails on the vines but had seen some of the leaves riddled with holes. This was different. Now there was not a leaf on one of the vines. Since it is fall, I wasn’t worried about losing the annual plants. But I was mighty curious to find out what animal was dining on my sweet potato vines.

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Groundhogs in the Garden – They Do More Than See Their Shadows

~Groundhog up a Tree~ by ~Sage~

Groundhog day just came last Tuesday.  As you may know, the Groundhog – Marmota marmax saw its shadow and let us know that we will have more winter. Since my area of the country has not really had winter yet, just two snowstorms that quickly melted, I was hoping that he wouldn’t see his shadow. I can’t wait for spring.

There are a few common names besides Groundhogs that people use. In certain parts of the country are called woodchucks, marmots, land beavers or even whistling pigs.

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Protecting Plants from the Wildlife

Family Dinner by anoldent

Once again, this GardenLady has been asked how to protect plants from all the wildlife that visit gardens and think they are their personal supermarkets. Sometimes it seems to me that we, the humans, are in the cage while the animals roam around enjoying the bounty that we plant.

Mostly, we have to learn to live with a certain amount of damage.

One suggestion, of course, is that we can install a fence high enough to keep deer from jumping over and deep enough in the earth from allowing animals to dig under. Some people say that deer can jump over most fences under 9 feet.

But to prevent woodchucks from burrowing under the fence one needs a fence that goes into the earth at least one foot deep or the lower edge of the fence should be bent at an L-shaped angle leading outward and buried 1 to 2 inches below ground.  See here.  And of course, the above ground part of the fence should be such that the woodchucks or rabbits cannot crawl through.

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