Squirrels in the garden can be fun to watch. Personally, I love to see them scampering around, burying nuts, and building nests. For many gardeners, especially those with vegetable beds, squirrels are pests.
For most of us, there is a balance to strike between enjoying this native wildlife and protecting your veggies. Squirrels are vegetarians. They mostly eat seeds and nuts, but they’ll also enjoy your leafy greens, root vegetables, squash, and other edible plants.
If you don’t want to hurt them or keep squirrels out of your garden completely, use this simple, harmless, and natural trick.
The Stick Trick to Keep Squirrels Out of Your Vegetable Patch
A simple, natural way to prevent squirrels from getting to tasty veggies requires only sticks. Use sticks and twigs you find in the yard, gardening stakes, or stalks of bamboo. If they’re sharp and pointy at the tip, all the better. You can even use wooden kabob skewers, available on Amazon.
The idea is that if you have sticks poking out of the ground around your vegetables, the squirrels will find the area uncomfortable to dig and forage in. You can use this strategy with vegetables, but also with planted bulbs that they would otherwise dig up.
The downside to this method is that it requires quite a bit of labor on your part. It’s not enough to create a perimeter or sticks around a vegetable bed, like a fence. They’ll just jump over it. You need to create barriers around each plant they find desirable.
There are two ways to use this strategy. The first is to insert sticks so that they barely stick out of the soil. The squirrels will find it unpleasant, even painful, to step on these sharp stick ends. The other strategy is to have the sticks emerge a little further from the soil, so that the stick ends are in the faces of the squirrels as they try to reach or dig for veggies.
Does the Stick Trick Work?
I no longer grow vegetables in my garden, but when I did, I tried the stick trick after squirrels ate some of my seedlings. Once the veggies grew bigger, squirrels were less of an issue. I found that the sticks worked very well, for a time.
Squirrels are clever at getting around obstacles. If you’ve ever seen a squirrel figure out a bird feeder baffle, you know what I mean. After a few days, they understood the pattern of the sticks. I was able to prolong the effectiveness of the stick barrier by changing it every few days. This isn’t tenable for everyone, of course, but for the short seedling period, it worked well enough for me.
Other Natural Tricks to Keep Squirrels Out
The most effective and harmless way to prevent squirrels from eating your flower bulbs or veggies is to use multiple strategies. Here are some other ideas you can try, along with sticks, to protect your tastiest plants:
- Scary Sites. Over time, they’ll become less scary, but several things can deter squirrels for a period of time: shiny streamers that move in the wind, pinwheels, and plastic owls (like this one from Amazon).
- Covers. Squirrels are clever and persistent, but they can’t chew through wire. Cover vulnerable plants with wire mesh. Use a cage made of chicken wire, for example, placed firmly over plants, and squirrels won’t be able to reach them. They don’t look nice, but you should only need them for a few weeks until the plants get bigger and the soil settles. Squirrels are particularly drawn to freshly dug soil. You can make a cheap garden cloche from a colander in a pinch or purchase chicken wire garden cloches from Amazon or garden supply stores.
- Provide Water. Sometimes, when a squirrel eats mature, juicy vegetables, like tomatoes or cucumbers, it’s doing so because it’s thirsty. Place a dish of water near your mature veggies for an alternative.
- Apply Hot Pepper. Squirrels don’t like spicy foods. Sprinkle cayenne pepper on and around vegetable plants, or use a spray to completely cover plants. One bite will prevent a squirrel from coming back for a while. They will be back, though, and rain and water will wash off the pepper spray, so keep reapplying. You can quickly and easily order cayenne pepper in bulk from Amazon.
- Release the Hounds. Dogs love to chase squirrels, and squirrels don’t like being chased. If you have a dog or can borrow one from a friend, let them chase and scare the squirrels regularly. This will make your yard feel like an unsafe, unfriendly place to hang out.
- Avoid Feeding Birds. This is a tough one. Most gardeners love to see birds in the garden. Bird feeders are great squirrel attractors, though. You can try squirrel-proofing feeders to help them lose interest, or try feeding birds far from your veggie patch. Most effective is not using feeders at all.
Squirrel-proofing your veggie patch is not easy. It usually takes multiple strategies and tricks. Give the stick trick a try. It does help, and you may only need it for a few weeks as your seedlings grow.
