A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2005 ANY BULB SECRETS???

Hi everyone!
I'm planning to plant lots of bulbs this fall & was hoping some of you could give me your secrets on keeping critters from digging them up. Is it okay to collar them? (container open at both ends)Would that help?? Thanks!

Lots of info is available on this. Collars will help with the tunnel dwellers, but what about the tree dwellers? The squirrels will dig once they get a smell. I use blood meal when planting and mulch heavily because that tends to mask the bulb aroma. Some folks even place chicken wire over the bulbs.
Good Luck

I also have noticed out here that since the critters have alternate food supplies, the corn left behind in the fields, that they do not bug my bulbs. In CA, they used to get a bunch, so maybe if you feed the squirrels, they won't eat your bulbs.

Hi again BF..
I have heard of the chicken wire idea. Do you just lay them on top of the bulbs & let them grow through or what? Sorry. I didn't have to do anything before. We only have Red Squirrels here & don't seem to be quite as tenacious as our Gray friends down in Jersey, but I didn't want to take chances with the Fishers. I'll try the blood meal too. What kind of blood is it? When you say mulch, can I compost or is pine bark or cedar better?

Triss...
Hi. I feed everything & love the Squirrels. I put out corn & peanut butter/oatmeal mix as well as seed for the birds. We have Red Squirrels here & lots of woods behind us for them to feed in. So maybe that's the reason they didn't dig up my Sunflower seeds & aren't generally a problem. I fed the Gray Squirrels where we used to live also & never had trouble with bulbs...so you're probably right.

We have a wind break of trees that are Osage Orange and the squirrels just love them as well as the corn. They also eat the cats food on occasion. Better than my plants, so I can handle that!

hi bf and lady,

i love my bulbs and up to now no critters touched it ,but seems to me if you put ch. wire that the critters,squ. etc... won t they hurt their paws or something if at night they try fishing for bulb,i mean when th ey ll try and start touching the wire of caurse they ll back up but won t it hurt them...geeee,sorry it seemes difficult to xplain and of caurse i can also be wwaaayyy in the tatoes with that one.

thanks,

Gang,
I have only needed the chicken wire once and it workked. I still mulched(compost, pine nuggets etc) on top of that. I have never heard or thought about injuring the animals, it just frustrates them I guess. You have to put a big enough piece down to cover the area so they don't dig around it. The plants grew up through the holes no problem. I am not sure of the type of blood meal, although it is sold in bags at the nurseries.

Save your juice containers - cut off the bottom and put them over your bulb - push them down into the soil.

Leave the cap off, of course.

Okay Carly...The kind that are waxed? Do you just open up the top to enlarge the opening? I could try both this & the chicken wire in different places to see which works best here. Thanks guys!