How to get rid of / deal with woodchucks humanely?

Hi,

Thanks for the cat litter down the groundhog hole idea. I'll try it.

We live in Baltimore, County, MD. We have so many thousands of deer in our area they travel in herds. The darn ground hogs, as you know, multiply like mice.

Over the years my father and I have taken different paths - gardening-wise.

Dad uses a traditional straight row-rotary tiller plus cheap granular fertilizer. I discovered that with organic, raised bed gardening - a few plants can feed 10 families with no weeding or hoeing needed.

Here's what's worked:

Dad has put up giant lights on each end of the house. So bright you could land a Cessna at night. I told him he was just giving the varmints a better look at what they were eating. But Son of a gun. The Swiss Card, Collards, Cabbage and Turnips he planted under the light haven't been bothered at all by deer or Groundhogs.

And I noticed that bats are using Dad's night lights to attract bugs all in one place. So our bat population has jumped. They are certainly more visible. You can hear them WIZZING past your ears.

I've had to adapt my raised bed, organic gardening approach to straight rows. If any plant sticks out beyond the row, Dad tills it under with the tractor tiller.

Strategy #1 - I planted New Zealand Spinach, Kale and collards - 8 feet of each down one row. Then two more kinds of kale, turnips and something green and shiny Dad bought that I can't identify.

Footprints show the deer and groundhogs are paying attention to my Veggie Buffet. When I plant two or three kinds of the same leaf vegetable all together. They often eat just one. Not liking the "Taste" of the other two. All Kale tastes the same to me.

Weird but true. Nothing on 4 legs seems to like the taste of New Zealand Spinach. They won't eat the squash either. But a 12 foot row of greens feeds an army.

Strategy #2 - Dad complains that a deer or groundhog went down his corn row and ate 52 plants. He actually counted how many had their tops eaten off.

Dad also, for the 1st time ever, has some kind of varmint eating the leaves off several of his tomato plants.

NOT MINE, however. I've been mixing an all organic, volcanic ash plant food into 5 gallon buckets of water. Poured it onto ONE Big Boy Tomato Plant. It's huge and nothing is nibbling on it.

I hoed up a moat around 1/2 a row of corn as a test. It's twice as high as the rest and a deep dark green color. The zuchini are vibrant too. Pouring the water on so it soaks way down to the roots helps.

Nothing much eats these super healthy plants. I noticed my Deep Green tomato leaves even SMELL stronger than Dad's light tomato green plants. Bugs and bees are attracted like crazy. They do eat a few holes in leaves. Nothing that bugs the plants, health-wise tho.

I set out 12 Sweet potato plants right in front of a ground hog hole. He dug his house under Dad's garden shed. To add insult to injury.

In previous years, the groundhog or deer would have eaten off the tender plants. But so far. Since I've been watering with the Volcanic ash plant food - all 12 are growing like weeds. Undisturbed.

I know each garden is unique.

Everyone has a different family of varmints to deal with. But after 40 years of gardening it's comforting to have a partial answer to a successful garden. A dependable NO PESTICIDE food supply.

Especially with the rising price of food.

I picked 10 pounds of kale last week. 25.00 worth at organic store prices!

Thanks,
Allan

_________________
Hi from Boring, MD. I'm now in my 2nd year of Testing "Burnt Dirt". 10 ' tall tomato plants! A combo of Volcanic ash and agni-hotra ash. A 4000 yr old idea from India. It cleans the soil and water and veggies of pesticides.