Knowledgebase
Preventing squirrels eating corn cobs on plants #878550
Asked July 24, 2024, 10:58 AM EDT
Baltimore County Maryland
Expert Response
Can you send a photo of the issue you are having with tomatoes? We will be able to correctly recommend treatment or management if we can diagnose the issue. You can also review our tomato diagnostic page to see if you can match the look of the symptoms.
As for keeping wildlife off of plants, you really can only net or fence the crops, but squirrels will climb just about anything so you may need netting over the whole plant. Or you can try to use a spray or granular deterrent product around the perimeter of the growing area (probably will not want to use directly on edible plant surfaces though) but it will need to be reapplied often and after rain or irrigation and that may not work efficiently since they could climb past it. You can also try some scare tactics like a motion activated sprinkler, or shiny Mylar streamers. It is trial and error as to what works to keep wildlife away and unfortunately we don’t have set studies that are science backed that prove one thing works over another since wildlife tend to act differently given their surrounding environment (deer might be an issue in some yards while leave most things alone in other yards).
Feel free to send photos in a response.
Emily