Steve and I have been spending buckets of time rearranging the yard. Some jobs are better handled by pros, so we paid some Tree Dudes to cut back branches and slay the suburban shrubbery. Sadly, there's not much good Show and Tell yet. We need to kill stuff, in order to plant stuff.
We did install a little raised bed with some tomatoes and peppers. Steve watched "Shortie," the baby bunny who lives by the stream, inspect the fencing. Let's see if we can out smart Shortie and the ground hogs this year.
Apt. 11d 
“We need to kill stuff, in order to plant stuff.
Right. I have a pine tree on my kill list for the house we’re buying next year. It’s ugly and it leans over the house.
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I’m not sure if that fence can keep out a groundhog or not, but if you have deer or raccoon somewhere near, you’ll need something more.
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I don’t know if I’d mentioned this, but I have one neighbor who doesn’t care that a groundhog is living under his deck and another neighbor who is determined to grow a small container garden just several yards away. I get along well with both of them but I’m not very good at passing on information. And, while I can easily see the deck of each of them from my deck, they can’t see each other’s backyards very easily. It’s possible neither knows about the other’s issues with large burrowing animals.
Anyway, the neighbor who doesn’t like groundhogs keeps trapping them to the point you’d think it would become apparent that groundhogs are sort of an epiphenomena determined by the nature of the terrain. You can get rid of any individual groundhog without that much effort* but nature intends that some groundhog will have our yards as its territory and nature will not be denied. The groundhog-hating neighbor is Danish, so maybe I’ll try to use old “order the tides to halt” metaphor that they seem to get.
*Just remember to trap only during the day. If you trap at night, you will catch a possum and you really don’t want to know how many possums live nearby.
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*Just remember to trap only during the day. If you trap at night, you will catch a possum and you really don’t want to know how many possums live nearby.”
Or how many teeth they have.
http://www.aaanimalcontrol.com/blog/opossumteeth.html
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Just looking at that wall of green in the photo, you can tell there are at least a dozen possum in the general area. They just hang by their tail and wait for someone to pass below in the dark.
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In Massachusetts, you can kill a groundhog, but you can’t relocate it. Lots of advice about dealing with groundhogs: http://www.mass.gov/dfwele/dfw/wildlife/living/living_with_woodchucks.htm.
You could electrify your fence. Have you buried it 12 inches below the soil?
Or, how do you feel about dogs? Wouldn’t the boys love to have a dog? Terriers seem to be good at hunting groundhogs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urpFo0mebow
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At close ranges (<25 yards), a 12-gauge shotgun with #4-6 shot may be effective.
The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife either has poor aim or a real blood lust going.
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Heads up: I had a plastic fence like that last year, and the rabbits chewed straight through it.
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Hey Laura,
I was so daunted by the groundhog living under the shed that I didn’t bother to plant much of anything. S/he basically has a dinner setting laid out in front of the garden… But then I found this “scare owl”. I want to try it! http://www.amazon.com/Dalen-OW6-Gardeneer-16-Inch-Molded/dp/B00002N8HZ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337378863&sr=8-1
Oh, and now ridgewood-tutor.com is up and running! Thanks for your advice! 🙂
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