Confiferqueen,

This is a common occurrence this time of year. Contrary to what some folks tell you, you are in a battle with nature. Once you set a crop, fungus, bacteria, insects, and animals are eager to take it. Once you set a crop, it's strictly a defensive game. If you don't take any action, "mother nature" will generally take the crop from you.

As to your specific question, it's probably squirrels. Coons typically break branches. Squirrels many times take the crop away, lock, stock, and barrel, to consume it.

If you want a crop, you have to take action. I've trapped and killed 45 squirrels in the last year, and still have some squirrel damage to peaches. I've had neighbors who lost a whole crop of pears to squirrels.

Nature is perfectly happy to let you starve. If you want a crop, start fighting.

Squirrels are notorious thieves of fruit and ruined hundreds of apricots from my tree. I'm sure they'd be the same towards peaches. But they usually leave debris on the ground underneath the tree (they often eat the pit and discard the unripe fruit). So it may be something else, or maybe your tree rats are different from mine.

I've yet to encounter racoon problems, but expect it any time as we know they wander into the neighborhood from time to time.

Better luck next year!

M

Thanks for your responses.
I'd rather not kill them. Would some kind of netting work?

Olpea, I think you are going to win the squirrel catch contest for 2009 at your current rate :-) I have not been carefully counting but would estimate around 30-35 for me, combination trapped and shot.

I would like to better understand what kinds of crops squirrels are eating. It seems like peach season is the most difficult time to control them. The peach crop may be the best thing to eat in the midsummer period - after the berries but before the nuts there may be limited options. All of the recent posts here about stripped trees show there is some common pattern; my biggest problem was a week or two ago but my season is earlier than e.g. Wisconsin.

Scott

Conifer queen I missed your recent post. If your trees have 4' of clear trunk, no low branches, and no way to jump on to the top from some other tree or house or fence, then you can either put a band of tanglefoot on the trunk or you can put a very large metal disk around the trunk that the squirrels cannot get around. This is by far the best option of deterrence if it will work for you.

Netting requires absolute closure -- if there is one teeny hole they will probably find it. So you need to attach it to the ground. The cheap plastic bird netting they can chew through and it may need to be coated with a bit of tangletrap to deter that. I have recently switched from the cheap plastic netting to woven nylon netting for bird control, and that kind may be better for squirrels as well since it is harder to chew through. Google for woven nylon bird netting and you should find suppliers.

I also would rather not kill them but after two years of zero peaches I turned into a squirrel killer. I use Kania traps which kill the squirrels with a hammer blow to the head - they are completely limp in five seconds, every time.

Scott

Scott,

That squirrel count starts from this time last year, not a year to date figure, so you still have a chance at topping me :-)

It's difficult to trap them now, there is too much other food for them here. I've had two neighbors who've mentioned the squirrel depredation on their sweet corn has been pretty bad. One neighbor said he caught a squirrel in the act, merrily hopping away with an ear of corn in its mouth. The hedge balls are on the trees now, so they'll start going after those pretty soon.

I looked into that woven nylon netting for birds and found it shockingly expensive. A 50' X 100' piece was something like $1100. Do you have a cheaper source?

Olpea, I think that is the price; if you need 50x100 it is indeed very expensive. I need only 10x20 (1/25th the size) to cover my blueberries and at that size it is reasonable.

Scott

Thanks for posting this. It's very timely and I was about to ask a similar question.

Last week I had 2 peach trees (Red Haven and Harrow Diamond) that were looking pretty close to being ripe so I pulled about half the peaches off of each to let them ripen inside and left the rest to ripen on the tree. When I came back a week later, every single Harrow Diamond was gone but there were no pits and no damage to the tree.

The Harrow Diamond is supposed to ripen 2 weeks before Red Haven so I guess the squirrels just took the absolutely ripest peaches and left the rest to tree ripen. Fortunately, I was able to beat them to the peaches this time.

Bart

I hate it when people call them tree rats. That is SO unfair to rats.

Last summer, the deer got all of mine. They left it completely alone until just before they were ready to pick. The DH was up by that particular tree on his tractor and told me I'd better pick them. Ha! I told him one more day and they'd be perfect.

I know it was deer. I found the pits under the tree, along with piles of deer scat. If you had that many disappear that quickly, I'd be suspicious of deer.