Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

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worth1
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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#21

Post: # 27696Unread post worth1
Sat Aug 08, 2020 8:04 am

Maybe its a rat collecting tomatoes for Ratatouille.

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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#22

Post: # 27711Unread post bower
Sat Aug 08, 2020 12:15 pm

Rats are terrible tomato thieves. They are also crafty enough to climb up and take what they want. The year I had rats around, and a lot of tomatoes planted outdoors, they were waiting for my big tomatoes to blush then taking them away... at first I didn't realize what was going on, since I wasn't keeping a close count of those tomatoes. Most other animals will just bite the tomato on the vine and leave the remains.
Someone told a story about rats, they got into a basement and when the owner went down they had a neat little stash of his tomatoes laid out in a line. I also had rats come by and take every last head of my barley. It was so neatly done, I thought a human had stolen them. But then I saw the rat climbing the pea trellis to get in for a last look.
One thing I have learned about rats, they must have fresh water to drink every day. Mice don't need it, they can get it from their food. So unless you are near a river or a pond, the first thing you can do to prevent rats from setting up camp is to make sure you have no buckets or vessels of water around, or anything to catch rainwater that they can get into for a drink. If they have no source of water, they have to move on.
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worth1
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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#23

Post: # 27712Unread post worth1
Sat Aug 08, 2020 12:44 pm

[mention]Bower[/mention]
The desert pack rats survive with no water to speak of?
I bet the tomato thief is a rat.
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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#24

Post: # 27726Unread post bower
Sat Aug 08, 2020 6:12 pm

[mention]worth1[/mention]
IDK about desert pack rats, that's not what exterminators generally have to deal with here. ;) The Norway Rat and similar urban or common rats must have fresh water to drink daily. I know prior to my problems here I had a habit of leaving buckets around the yard which filled with water when it rains, and according to all that I read, getting rid of that source of daily water is the first step to discourage them around your property.
I agree, the tomato thief sounds like a rat to me. No other animal is so devious and reactive - what you are picking at first blush? Me too! Let me finish the job. :lol:
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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#25

Post: # 27743Unread post Setec Astronomy
Sat Aug 08, 2020 11:22 pm

If it's a rat, it must be a big one or a whole family, because it's got a heck of an appetite.

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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#26

Post: # 27752Unread post Setec Astronomy
Sun Aug 09, 2020 6:35 am

Whatever it is, it gave me a break last night. Whether that's because there's nothing left (between what it ate and what I picked), or some other reason, I don't know.

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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#27

Post: # 27759Unread post EdieJ
Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:32 am

Good reason to have a feral cat or 2 hanging around. We aren't having mice/rat/vole problems any more! On the other hand, those darn kittens wallowed out my dill, summer savory, almost all my parsley, destroyed my pea bed - we only got one picking grrr - and yesterday I found my best pepper plant with a broken stem. Talk about the cure being worse than the disease! 😒
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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#28

Post: # 27818Unread post Setec Astronomy
Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:37 pm

It's a racoon.

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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#29

Post: # 28069Unread post KathyDC
Thu Aug 13, 2020 11:52 am

The birds in my yard are terrible and I have to pick at first blush or else they'll peck away. They leave yellow and oranges alone, so those I will leave to vine ripen. But anything even a little bit red, forget it. It's not as fun to pick them before they're fully ripened, but it's a lot more fun than growing bird food...

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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#30

Post: # 28072Unread post karstopography
Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:09 pm

I essentially gave up on my tomatoes, one lemon drop cherry remains, for the height of summer, the squirrels got so bad. The squirrels even get those little lemon drops. They got to where they ate anything green and silver dollar sized on the slicers. They only ignored San Marzano for a time, but then they also hit those tubular shaped paste tomatoes. All without a hint of a blush or even being fully grown. I’d catch them red handed hopping off with the fruit. Sometimes, a tomato would drop out of the tree nearby. Like they were a plague of locusts. Most of the season, they left the tomatoes alone, then a switch flipped and it was Katie bar the door. Btw, it’s pure nonsense they are just getting moisture from the tomatoes, they would eat them almost to a nub even if it had rained with puddles all around.

I might go back to mostly determinant plants just as they are easier to cover or get serious about a squirrel proof perimeter fence or netting. Netting has worked in the past, but it’s been harder to pull off with the big and tall indeterminate plants. Thankfully, raccoons, possums, armadillos all bypass all the maters. No stinking mockingbirds in my yard either and the cardinals seem to ignore the tomatoes.
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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#31

Post: # 28076Unread post JosephineRose
Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:26 pm

EdieJ wrote: Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:32 am Good reason to have a feral cat or 2 hanging around. We aren't having mice/rat/vole problems any more! On the other hand, those darn kittens wallowed out my dill, summer savory, almost all my parsley, destroyed my pea bed - we only got one picking grrr - and yesterday I found my best pepper plant with a broken stem. Talk about the cure being worse than the disease! 😒
I have been deliberately feeding several ferals and have not seen any sign of rats.
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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#32

Post: # 28080Unread post Setec Astronomy
Thu Aug 13, 2020 3:03 pm

KathyDC wrote: Thu Aug 13, 2020 11:52 amThe birds in my yard are terrible and I have to pick at first blush or else they'll peck away. They leave yellow and oranges alone, so those I will leave to vine ripen. But anything even a little bit red, forget it. It's not as fun to pick them before they're fully ripened, but it's a lot more fun than growing bird food...
My birds would peck anything that wasn't green, I was particularly torqued how bad they were hitting the orange tomatoes. They did seem to be a little color blind to the Purple Bumblebees, which are a weird shade. They seem to have moved on...unless there is just nothing left for them to peck.
karstopography wrote: Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:09 pm I essentially gave up on my tomatoes, one lemon drop cherry remains, for the height of summer, the squirrels got so bad. They got to where they ate anything green... Most of the season, they left the tomatoes alone, then a switch flipped and it was Katie bar the door. Thankfully, raccoons, possums, armadillos all bypass all the maters.
I have had that experience with squirrels, where they eat everything green or not, and ignore everything until whammo one day they don't. Kind of like this racoon who started up all of a sudden (I caught him in my planter the other night and he ran off), although he's not eating anything green, well, maybe he will now that anything with color is gone. When I was a kid, my father and I planted a number of dwarf apple trees--and we never got one apple because the squirrels would eat them all before they even got to size, forget being ripe.

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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#33

Post: # 28082Unread post worth1
Thu Aug 13, 2020 4:21 pm

Saw this one today. :lol:
2020081395161813.jpg
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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#34

Post: # 28084Unread post tyrupp
Thu Aug 13, 2020 4:43 pm

breakfast of champions

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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#35

Post: # 28088Unread post LK2020
Thu Aug 13, 2020 5:36 pm

Oh, dear, that sounds like it could be a groundhog. But it is unusual for them to leave the fruit just clean gone. Groundhogs are devastating, and they tend to wreak a lot of havoc, taking a bite or two from multiple tomatoes, then just throwing them around. They will munch on a big tomato, and leave it half-eaten still on the vine. They do move on to the smaller tomatoes, but tend to focus on the big ones first, if available. They also plow around, knocking off a lot of fruit. But they've done that in my in-ground garden with plants within 3 feet of each other. If this animal is coming up on the deck with furniture to stand on, maybe it is just a neater eater under those circumstances.

Squirrels might be more likely to just pick smaller fruit and make off with it. Or raccoons.

Do you have a fenced yard? It could also be deer ... they will just pluck things clean.

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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#36

Post: # 28106Unread post Setec Astronomy
Thu Aug 13, 2020 11:12 pm

LK2020 wrote: Thu Aug 13, 2020 5:36 pm Oh, dear, that sounds like it could be a groundhog.
If that was directed at me, it's a racoon, I've chased it off a couple of times now in the early part of the night. I've been trying to leave it other things to eat so it stays out of my plants, but it's got a large appetite, or there is more than one. I do have groundhogs, but they only come out during the day and never on the deck...and they can't climb the planters in the yard.

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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#37

Post: # 28119Unread post karstopography
Fri Aug 14, 2020 7:51 am

Be careful feeding raccoons as it will only encourage more to come to the feast and they still won’t leave your produce alone. There will only be more raccoons around to get into the garden. I knew someone that would put out a little food for a lonely raccoon. Soon she had a couple of dozen.

Raccoons are pretty easy to trap with the live cage type traps. We’ve trapped dozens over the years and they get relocated to a large wilderness park area not too many miles away. Wet Cat food is a proven lure/bait. Raccoons and possums love citrus fruit and decimate our orchard. Trapping has been the only way to effectively deal with them.
Zone 9b, located in the Columbia bottomlands, annual rainfall 46”

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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#38

Post: # 28152Unread post Setec Astronomy
Fri Aug 14, 2020 11:42 am

karstopography wrote: Fri Aug 14, 2020 7:51 am Be careful feeding raccoons as it will only encourage more to come to the feast and they still won’t leave your produce alone.
I probably worded that poorly--feeding is not really the right word, I had a hunk of watermelon that had gotten a bit fermented and I was going to throw in the garbage, so I put it out hoping he would eat that instead of tomatoes...but as you note, he ate the watermelon and still ate the tomatoes.

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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#39

Post: # 28296Unread post LK2020
Sat Aug 15, 2020 10:21 pm

Setec Astronomy wrote: Thu Aug 13, 2020 11:12 pm
LK2020 wrote: Thu Aug 13, 2020 5:36 pm Oh, dear, that sounds like it could be a groundhog.
If that was directed at me, it's a racoon, I've chased it off a couple of times now in the early part of the night. I've been trying to leave it other things to eat so it stays out of my plants, but it's got a large appetite, or there is more than one. I do have groundhogs, but they only come out during the day and never on the deck...and they can't climb the planters in the yard.
Yes, I was responding to your post(s), and I'm sorry to hear that you have a raccoon AND groundhogs. Raccoons usually bring a lot of friends, as noted! When I was growing up we had a really big beautiful garden, but it was situated in the woods, near a pond. The first year was fabulous! Then, the raccoons discovered it, and destroyed our corn crop, and liked to work on the melons, too. Between them and the bunnies (who ate all the peas), and eventually the human trespassers who also enjoyed destroying the melons, the garden slowly lost its appeal for my father, who was the chief garden boss. By the time my siblings and I were leaving home, it was rapidly dwindling and soon became a thing of the past. Unfortunately. Well, my dad had lost a bunch of labor at that point, too. I have great memories, though, and I know it fueled the interest in gardening that my siblings and I have kept alive.

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Re: Picking Fruit Before It Is Ripe

#40

Post: # 28304Unread post Setec Astronomy
Sun Aug 16, 2020 5:03 am

LK2020 wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 10:21 pmI'm sorry to hear that you have a raccoon AND groundhogs. Raccoons usually bring a lot of friends, as noted! When I was growing up we had a really big beautiful garden, but it was situated in the woods, near a pond. The first year was fabulous! Then, the raccoons discovered it...
Based on what gets knocked over, I'm guessing this or another racoon has visited previously (and in previous years), but never seemed to develop a sustained interest in what they have now, which is my tomatoes, groundcherries, and the strawberries I have growing on the table...although last night the strawberries seem to have gotten knocked over to get to the volunteer tomato that's growing in one of them. The racoons also (so far) have been oblivious to my Minnesota Midget Melons, which I picked the first one of yesterday.

The groundhog was cute when he lived under the neighbor's shed and used to visit in my yard. He wasn't so cute when he decided to move to my yard and dug a 10" hole to China in the middle of my back yard, that I was pretty sure someone was going to break their ankle in. Some Critter Ridder convinced them to move to the edge of the yard under some bushes. They don't seem to bother anything, but I don't have anything in-ground except some African Blue Basil.

Oddly enough, I don't ever remember seeing a groundhog growing up, I think the first one I ever saw was maybe 20 years ago, maybe a little longer. Conversely, in my youth I used to see a lot more racoons than now.

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