Varmint-resistant plants

I’m wondering if you could tie a rag that’s been soaked in an essential oil, around a plant stake to good effect? I know my kitty absolutely hates it on the rare occasion I use fragrance. Might work, dunno.

My advice may not be the best depending on what kind of plants you ultimately want to grow but have you considered a row cover like below? If you are able to stake it well, it could help keep out (or maybe deter) animals from getting in there?

https://www.johnnyseeds.com/tools-supplies/row-covers-and-accessories/proteknet-6.9-x-328-insect-barrier-7230.html?cgid=row-covers-and-accessories#start=1

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I’m not looking for a fix for anything, just seeing if anybody has plants that i don’t have that aren’t bothered by animals.

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I’ve found that animals will nibble on anything if they are hungry enough.

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I think my brood of bunnies ate the leaves off my young tomato plant. :tired_face:

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Garlic, fragrant herbs and hot chiles. Everything else is vulnerable. Oh, and gooseberries - the thorns deter just about all animals, even birds. I am going to try cauliflower and a few other things this year, but I don’t have high hopes!

Rosemary. We live in rural Texas with plenty of varmints & insects. Nothing has ever touched the Rosemary plant, including us. We don’t like it. It just sits there year after year all by itself…

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Urban Houston here on second floor apartment. The mice/rats eat the jalapenos but leave the tomatoes alone.

Idiots.

I’m not poison guy but a little bit goes a long way.

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There are some life forms of which there is no shortage. Mice, rats, mosquitos, deer, human beings.

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I used to think hot chiles were critter-proof. Then we moved to our current house and brought along containers of chiles we’d been growing outdoors. Here the wildlife took a bite out of my red chiles—I think they were super spicy cherry peppers—and obviously spit out the bite they had chomped.

Wild turkeys lounge in our chives once the greens grow long enough. The big birds mash the chives down by vigorously wriggling down into the greenery. I have seen the turkeys do this, mid-wriggle.

And that is why we gave up trying to grow anything we might expect to eat. Critters have won.

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You left out wild hogs, there are so many in Texas tearing up neighborhoods, farms and ranches that they can be taken by any means up to and including helicopters and AR15s.

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Rhubarb. That’s about it. Also herbs, like you. The strong flavor of them keeps them safe as the bandits don’t typically enjoy those. By the same token, I would guess most things in the allium family.

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Exactly the same circumstance where we live. Spent nearly 20 grand on a fence so we could grow the most expensive veg imaginable.

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Speaking of dangerous to the human - part of our yard is a forested hill overgrown with ivy. We’ve been slowly cleaning it and finding a variety of interesting things in there. Old deflated ball. Socks. A pen. A mint tin. And a long circular wire. The last, I hung on the fence while cleaning to deal with later. Didn’t. And then a couple of days later, when I was bending over to dig up a dandelion, the end of the wire got me right in the eyelid. Nice battle scar at the moment.

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Snow geese as well. They literally mess up their nesting grounds in the Arctic due to overpopulation. Extended hunting seasons and other means have been enacted along the Central Flyway.

Snow geese boom could lead to ecological disaster (news-leader.com)

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So I take it you’re not one of those people who humanely trap a mouse/rat and load it up in your car. Then drive a few miles down the road and drop it off so it’s someone else’s problem…

No, but we used to inhumanely trap them in high school so the biology teacher could “work” on them. We went during class and there was invariably weed involved.

None of the faculty gave a rat’s ass and if they wanted to they could have sent the police to the handball courts before, during and after school.

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Oh no! I garden in fear of things like that. Always thinking I’m going to poke my eye out.

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It was very stupid of me. I should have just disposed of it right away. But luckily, only minor scrapeage.

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