they care about the moisture, toms are otherwise low quality food for them. Try placing a pile of watermelon rinds a good distance from the garden.

I have same problem. They started with my corn. Shredded the husk and ate all the corn. Now they are getting at tomatoes. I have two poison bait boxes, snap traps (have not caught any yet) and live trap. I had rabbit problem also and found best solution was to remove all brush and hiding places. I cut down most of my cover crops. It's getting better hopefully poison traps will work.

Quite a lively discussion but here is the link about the Rat Zapper. I use mine to catch field mice outside before they decide to come inside. It is not designed for outdoor use but I suspect you could even place it in an open bucket laying on the ground to protect it should it rain. I have mine in an unused gas grill out back and have gotten something in it almost daily since putting it into service.

Rat Zapper Thread

Thanks for the suggestions here. I'll try both the melon rinds and a bowl of water and see if that helps.

as the Midwest is bone dry, I have lost all toms for several days now. Never happened before. I am going to forego my advice above. I have placed a bucket filled to the rim outside the garden fence, but with the next tomato gone, it's going to be the old 6 gallon bucket, half full of water, with the surface covered with sunflower seeds. that thing kills all chipmunks within a couple of days.

If I have rats and mice, I am going to do what ever it takes to get rid of them and kill them dead!!!! rats and mice in the garden can soon be rats and mice in house. ain't gonna happen here!!!!!

My thoughts exactly. My field mice and chipmunks live in the stonewall which is 100s of y/o so the only thing I can do is practice birth control. You need a permit to dismantle stonewalls here and I kinda like it.

Get a rat Zapper! I got one a month ago and got 8 chipmunks already. They work good for mice, rats, chipmunks. Do NOT use in wet weather though, it will be ruined.

The best thing you could do is get a semi-feral barn cat. You give them food/shelter outside and they will eliminate your rodent problem. Many shelters will adopt out "Barn Cats", at least here in CA

<but the ground squirrels are too big to fit.> Depends on what you mean by ground squirrels? If you are talking woodchucks/groundhogs I don't think a cat (feral or not) will help, a dog will. Tho a cat may help with mice and chipmunks.

If it is woodchucks you normally will have a family and they will eat. My go to for woodchucks are smoke bombs sold at garden centers and Home Depot, Lowes, or local hardware store.

You have to know where the hole is. They are never far from a hole. So When you see one they will run to their hole so look there. They can have more than one but if you know where one is that is a start.

The nice thing about smoke bombs is you won't see it, won't have to touch it, won't have to bury, or won't have to transport it which only makes it someone elses problem.

The whole fam damily will be in the hole from sundown til sun up. I like to fill or cover the holes with something so you can tell if it have been used again. And you can bet another fam damily will move in next year or the year after.

Most times woodchucks won't go into a Havahart trap and you end up with either a skunk or another rodent you don't want. One year I ended up with 16 skunks so now I use smoke bombs.

I use conibear traps for woodchucks.

I got fed up last
year and bought a few conibear traps. Between last year and this year
so far I've got 11 chucks. These are instant kill traps. No mess, it
just breaks their neck and they die within 2- 3 seconds. Outside of
shooting (which I can't do where I am) it's the best solution IMHO.
VERY effective. You place them at the woodchuck hole entrance. They
get caught whether they are coming out or going in.

We have several cats that come here daily. I suspect that some are feral as they have no collar and will not come to people. Yet we still have chipmunks get woodchucks, field mice, etc. I even saw a bobcat which I thought would help with some of these esp. the woodchucks. It's like the Wild Kingdom.