animal pest question, especially for swamp growers..

[Jeff Johnson]

I have grown in the wet for years in seven gallon buckets.

About half of my grow this year has been trashed...

The plants are bitten/nibbled on about 8-10 inches up...then left to fall and die.

The ones they really nailed are HFH hybrids...erdpurt and hashplant.

An entire bucket of erdpurt X afghani were gone, and the soil dug up...

Deer would have eaten the plants...would a muskrat do this?

Some will recover...they are caged and sleeved...

Any theories would be welcome.

 

[farmer jones]

Don't grow in a swamp, but i have had a racoon get into a couple of buckets. The buckets were there for a few days till they went in the ground. They had cages. The racoon did not eat the plants but he did chew most breaking them over. I beleive he was after something in my dirt mix. I think the plants were chewed and broken over to get them out of his way so he could dig easier. By the way i did walk up and catch the bandit red handed. He ran like any ripper. Now i have tops on all cages till they need removed. If you have a game camera. Give it a try should not be hard to find out. Seems interested in you grow. Good luck!

 

[Buddah Watcha]

If I had to guess I would say snails or slugs... I'm growing on the swamp some erdpurts and slugs just love em... I would toss some slug bait! But could be some other stuff too Good luck man!

 

[jeffd7766]

Having the same issues....in a swamp... the are stripping the outter layer of "bark" off them leaving the inside exposed.... im almost postive that its either baby rabbits or mice....they dont seem to be eating to but using the hardness to knaw at...when they chew a brnch off its never gone but always just laying there....try moth balls or like i did put out 40 mouse/rat traps and steaked them into the ground. I will see what i get next time im out. also made old fashoned mouse trap with wire...5 gallon bucket....small plastic container and peanut butter..

 

[Amanita]

You don't get problems with waterlogging?

 

[anchient]

use fences, or fences layed down on ground around them, animals will not walk on fences layed down. or just alot of moth balls in your buckets, does not hurt plants.i would use rat wire fences. but every spot is different. i like swamps myself, even badass (big game hunters) deer hunters don't go there, all the water you could ever need. only thing that dig up buckets are small animals. i have used traps before,they work, have traped off and on since i was a small kid.but then you have to eat it or sell it's fur. IT IS WRONG TO KILL WITHOUT A VERY GOOD REASON!! the will to live is very strong in everything! be it a bug, animal ,fish, or humans! hope some of this infomation helps. later anchient

 

[two heads]

Sure sounds like slugs. Slug bait will get rid of them fairly quickly but the damage done may be irreversible. You could try painting the damaged area with tree pruning paint or building up the soil, burying the damaged stalk.

We had this problem in 2008 in the swamp. Here's how it looked:

Sorry to say, they didn't recover... Now slug bait goes down early in the season.

 

[supermanlives]

muskrats or such. i once lost 40 plants in 5 gal buckets in my swamp. they were like 4 ft too. went on muskrat killin spree. got 17 of em by summers end

 

[skullznroses]

If its what Two heads has-> to me, and just sayin it looks this way to me, but whatever it was likes to curl up right in the middle of those trees there and chew from the inside. I can guess that it had small choppers on it, or else it would have eaten more of the bark.

That aside I can safely say Ive never had the luxury of sitting in my plants the whole night through, so Ive never shot vermit. I have had an overabundance of slugs in years past.. and I think rabbits are the ones that dig em out. Slugs love the leaf skin, and Ive lost only small plants to slugs. Id say you got yourself a need for some organic jalepeno spray or other capsaysin product, cause thats no bug. Its digging for fish its either a raccoon a rabbit or something else with teeth... and thats how you can attack it. Make it taste terrible. Put touthpaste on it.. if you think it s a miniature hippy. lol

 

[anchient]

looks like small animal, try sticky trap for rats. they catch everything from bugs to small animals. they will not come back

 

[Sat X RB]

ya'll got dogs? dog shit will keep most creaturea away.