I feel your pain.

I have the same problem for the last 3 years. I used to trap them then drive them 5 miles away and let them go. Probably caught a dozen.

Problem is: when you get rid of one bunch another comes right in.

If I see them actively digging I'll shoo them away. That works for 5 minutes.

That's all the help I can offer!

P.S. I'm not about to go out and buy an air rifle.

In my more uncharitable moments it has crossed my mind, thing is it probably wouldn't do any good. I live in a suburban area, so this would not be a good choice either.

I was thinking maybe a large piece of metal window screen or maybe even chicken wire tacked down wouldn't inhibit germination and help prevent this. They clearly prefer digging in soft ground though, who wouldn't? Irrigation makes the lawn popular with our squirrel friends.

The chicken wire sounds like a good idea...

I knocked out about 15 squirrels this summer with an air rifle, they kept eating my tomatoes. That cleaned things up for a while, then more arrived. They're brave too.

I've looked up the squirrel problem online and really there's no answer simply because they just keep coming.

One thing: they are territorial, so, you will have usually the same family of 4-5 of them in your yard and a few neighbors yards.....if you can manage to deter that family from eating your veggies or digging your grass, they'll bother your neighbors instead.

There are some pretty cool air rifles on the market. Urban environment is no problem as far as sound goes. I sight mine in from inside the house. I set up a table at the far side of the living room, open the door to a tree about 20 yards away, and put the target up.

If anyone is interested, I have a pretty cool target setup. It's lightweight and impenetrable even with fairly high power pellets. It's also a shoot-n-see type made with duct tape and paint.

Don't more squirrels just keep coming?

We have more deer than squirrels, so squirrels are easy to control. We looked out front this weekend and there were about 50 deer. Haven't seen a squirrel in awhile. So it depends.

Yes, I've considered "rodent control", lol Aguila makes a tiny little .22 round without any powder, only the primer and it makes no noise to speak of. Great for indoor plinking. But I like our furry friends. Now if I had a garden maybe I would think differently. For now the Squirrels and I have a cease-fire agreement and will live together harmoniously.

I used to have this problem quite a bit. For the past couple of years, I've spread mushroom compost over the top of my yard in the fall as a fertilizer / moisture retention aid when seeding, and the squirrels HATE it. They stay away from my yard, don't even run across it any more...

The screen mess may work. Many years ago we had a lab. He liked to dig as it was cooler in the ground that it was laying on the grass. Problem he found that it was even cooler if he dug near and under the slab that the house was built on.

Solution: I went down to the hardware store and bought a lot of chicken wire. Once I had filled in the holes, I leveled it off, and pinned the chicken wire over the entire area, and then planted grass. I made sure the pins were deep enough I could run the mower over them. By the end of the season you could not see the chicken wire. The Lab never attempted to dig through it. He was a smart animal and supervised the whole procedure so he knew what I was doing.

About 6 years later we moved. I did not say anything about the wire to the new owner and have often wonder what he thought when he tried to plant in that area.