Growing Tomatoes: How To Keep Out The Midnight Snackers
Growing tomatoes in a rural area, can be hard if you often have "unauthorized visitors" in the night, such as deer, rabbits, foxes, raccoon etc.. Even towns and cities can be plagued by these visitors, who also think your beautiful tomatoes are "just right".
Have you ever noticed, that they will often wait until your large juicy tomato is ripe for picking before they snack?. They will wait until you have done all the hard work of raising a great vegetable garden. Then they invite all their friends and have a buffet style midnight snack on your tomatoes and other vegetables, while you are sleeping.
In the morning, it looks like the leftovers of a party, you get to clean it all up and you were not even invited!
So.. What do you do?. besides erecting a scare crow, or taking shifts guarding your prized tomatoes and other vegetables with a big stick to scare them off? Try this:
GREAT TIP: How to safeguard your growing tomatoes: Many animals, including deer, rabbits, foxes and raccoons, and sometimes cats and dogs (although they mostly dig in your garden rather than take the tomato) HATE the smell of vinegar, even when it is dried.
So get yourself a large jug of white distilled vinegar, (it does not cost much and is worth it) pour some in a bowl and soak a few rags with the full strength vinegar, do not dilute it.
Place the vinegar soaked rags on stakes around your garden, especially near your tomato plants. (But not on the plants, just in the area) The more stakes the better. Then re-soak them every week or so, until you can harvest your tomatoes and other vegetables.
This will put off the party animals, at least until next year, unless of course you get one with no sense of smell!.
