I’m not sure who was the culprit, but my roommate says he saw some squirrels digging around in our then-unused planters a few weeks back.

“They could have buried something in the dirt and went after it,” he suggested.

Crud. I lost one plant. Not a big deal, but the squirrels did dig up all the soil in the box and spilled it all over my porch.

I’ve done some searching and came up with a few interesting techniques to deal with this problem, if squirrels are indeed the offenders.

A suggestion by the Brooklyn Botanical Garden includes setting up a alternate feeding station. That’s great an all, except that some describe the squirrels in my town to be as big as small cats. If that’s true, they would eat me out of house and home.

I also read that some people spray their plants with a hot pepper concoction, but enviro-friendly gardeners say to avoid dousing plants with pepper sprays because they can cause animals “severe pain and eye infections often leading to blindness.”

I don’t think shooting at them with an air pistol is a good solution and I don’t think trapping them or covering the plants will do anything. The best solution I’ve found would be to get a dog or a mangy cat.

I wonder if the dog would be worse around my herb garden? Any thoughts?