Attack of the….Squirrels

Our little garden (which you can read about here), specifically our tomatoes, has been under assault recently. First there was the day that Lila decided that a fresh-from-the-vine-tomato sounded delicious for breakfast. Yep, our DOG actually took a tomato from the vine and ate it…when I saw her all I could do was laugh and take this photo:

Then shortly after, the neighborhood squirrels noticed our bumper crop of fresh tomatoes and the temptation was too much! They are courageous little guys (um, not exactly the words we have been calling them but this is a family friendly post) to brave our two ferocious attack dogs to get to the garden. One morning when I let Lila out there was a squirrel sitting on the back deck with THREE tomatoes that he was enjoying and he took off with all of them. Every time a tomato starts to turn a nice red color, they would get snatched by, once again, these courageous little guys.

Our tomato jungle, yeah, I don't know what happened either but they are OUT OF CONTROL:

We’ve received many suggestions on how to keep our tomatoes safe:
• Leaving the dogs out all the time (there would have been some unhappy campers)
• Surrounding the plants with human hair
• Rodent control (example: traps or other methods)

In the end, we went to the hardware store and bought cherry tree netting and stakes. We gathered all the plants together and staked the netting around the plants. I’m happy to report that, thus far, it’s working!

Gathered and netted tomatoes:

Finally, a few for us...well for Chris as I don't even like tomatoes.