When Sharing Is NOT an Option

Some things are meant to get a share of your garden:
Neighbors.
The local food bank. 
The friends who only come to visit once a year.
But...
Thieving dark-of night or daylight bold as brass rodents,  twitchy birds, bugs in pestilence formation--these do NOT deserve a share. That's why you take the time and trouble to go to your local hairdresser and get her sweepings (That's right! human hair) or to the local garden center and secure something like this:

I suppose you could crack a few eggs in a bucket, stir in some hot pepper juice and crushed garlic and leave it to steep in the sun for a few days on the back patio.  Still, buying it commercially is awfully simple, and is less likely to cause your neighbor to give you the evil eye if he tries to have a backyard barbecue when the wind is wafting from your house toward his.  (This would be especially true if you've already exhausted his patience with the smell of your compost heap.)

This combo of aromas--atrocious as it is--specifically deters critters like deer (if you're in an area where they're an issue) and rabbits and squirrels.  It does work!  For some reason, they don't like this concoction dousing their breakfast greens.  Can't say I blame them. 

Most such products--particularly if they're organic--can be used even same day as harvest, if you think you'd want to do so!  But this time of year, the crops are hardly ready for harvest anyway.  More likely, you're just trying to give them a fighting chance for survival!

Those little snow pea plants I mentioned last week?  You can see above that although the first shoot was gnawed off near to the soil line by some hungry varmint, a good spraying gave a second shoot the freedom to take off and grow--this much in one week.  One of these days it will produce succulent snow peas, which thankfully will NOT carry that flavor of peppers, rotten eggs and garlic!
 Moral of the story:  sometimes smelling bad temporarily is a good thing!

This week's bonus blog link visits the blogger who inspired this very post.  Kudos to her as she attempts "one more time" to grow tomatoes despite an aggressive and audacious squirrel population in her back yard!

Bonus blog link: http://heysparky.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/look-at-me-im-sailing/