Groundhogs make huge burrows that can injure livestock or pets.
Groundhogs, also known as woodchucks, can be the most destructive pests to your home garden. Crafting your own repellent can save money, avoid poisons, and preserve your well-earned bounty of fruits and vegetables. Left unchecked, groundhogs can not only destroy your produce, injure livestock or pets, and even undermine foundations of buildings.
The Facts
Groundhogs are rodents related to squirrels. Adults weigh between 4 and 14 pounds, and can eat about 10 percent of their body weight each day. They hibernate from October to February; Groundhog Day is Feb. 2 (doyourownpestcontrol.com/groundhog.htm).
Groundhogs reappear each spring around the same time you start planting your garden. They eat mainly vegetation and during the summer they put on as much weight as possible to raise their pups (a litter of two to nine pups is born by early April).
A single groundhog can dig out over 700 pounds of earth for one burrow, and it can have as many as five burrows across its territory (www.terrierman.com/lifehabitatgh.htm).
Considerations
A well-planted garden offers a tempting bounty to an animal that normally lives off grass stems, shoots, leaves, wild fruits and berries. Groundhogs like to stay near their burrows or near areas of cover like dense underbrush where they can outmaneuver larger predators like dogs, foxes, bobcats and mountain lions. Removing areas of cover near the garden is a first line of defense.
To keep the pests from eating your vegetation, several homemade remedies are available. Making the garden smell or taste bad is helpful. Sprinkling Epsom salts on vegetation can be effective. Salts also wash off easily, so they might have to be reapplied frequently. If you are not expecting rain for a few days, water the garden and then immediately sprinkle on the salts _ they will stick better. Moderate use is OK (imagine you are going to eat the leaves, and put on a little too much salt). Frequent or overuse of salt can make the soil less fertile, so this is not the best option with aggressive groundhogs.
Hot pepper sauces or oils diluted with water and sprayed on your plants are a stronger and longer-lasting deterrent. Since the hot part of the pepper is an oil, it will not wash off as easily. Chili oils are not effective diluted in water without being vigorously shaken and immediately applied--oil and water separates quickly.
Prevention/Solution
Some commercial repellents use the scent of predators to keep groundhogs away. Sprinkle powders around the perimeter of the area you want to protect or straight into the burrows.
Homemade solution: used, damp, stinky cat litter. This contains the same thing as the commercial repellent: the smell of predator urine. Throw damp cat litter into the burrow entrances and cover the holes.
Commercial bombs for fumigation kill the groundhogs. Homemade, kinder solution: use mothballs or ammonia to stink out the groundhogs. After they're gone, push as much soil into the entrances as possible and cover with sod.
Motion detector sprinklers are excellent repellents. These are available for around $50 from a variety of manufacturers. They use infrared to activate a noisy, violent water stream targeted to scare the groundhogs away. These will also work on other pests like raccoons, deer and crows. To deactivate the sprinkler, just turn the water off.
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