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On my morning walk before starting the never ending weeding, I looked at my ice plants, which are in containers, wondering why I wasn't seeing any blooms. It was soon apparent. Something has been eating them! Could it have been Bambi, Benjamin Bunny, or perhaps some of the hordes of chipmonks I see scurrying all over the yard? I know the deer love our hostas, but are very discriminating about the ones they eat. Thank goodness, that means that we will still have some left. Is there anything that I can put in the containers to steer them away from my ice plants, as they are new this year and I want them to get established.
Funny I should come across your post this morning; as I was having coffee I watched one of our resident squirrels go hopping from pot to pot of ice plants on my deck. He would stop, eat a flower or two and then hop to the next pot and do the same thing. The only difference between the pots is one has fuschia flowers and the other two have yellow. I just checked and he did not eat all the flowers, just a few, so I'm not screaming (yet). I've never noticed this behavior before. Right now, the big activity is building and padding their nest in one live oak tree with ball moss from another oak tree. Kinda funny to watch the mama run across the railing with a big wad of ball moss hanging out of her mouth.
Hmmm...my money would be on the bunnies or chipmunks but I don't know of anything to put on the plants to keep them away except perhaps some cayenne pepper. That is sometimes suggested as a deer repellent around here.
Thanks, Julie -- I'll try the pepper -- anything to save the plants! I first saw these a couple of years ago in California and fell in love with them; they had them trailing over walls, and cascading down mountainsides and I loved the fuschia flowers. Then this year I found them at Lowe's so bought some for containers in the yard. As we live in the woods...you can expect all kinds of creatures feasting on your plants.
Hope the pepper works for you, Jean. I picked up my first ice plant (at least that's what I was told it was) at a local nursery a couple of years ago and really fell in love with it. For a while I could not find a duplicate plant (even at the same nursery) and couldn't even confirm that it was an "ice plant." All the ice plants I found online -- I think they are Delosperma if I'm not mistaken -- had very thin, kind of tubular succulent leaves with fuschia flowers and my plant had thick, leaf-shaped leaves with yellow flowers. I have come across these plants much more frequently now, even in the big box stores. I put one down by my water garden and it is doing nicely.
My sister lives in the L.A. canyons area and has ice plant all over the hillside at the end of her yard. She says it's planted as a kind of fire break since they are so prone to wildfires in the area.
Since jalapenos are now suspect in salmonella in food too bad I don't live close to a restaurant -- say The Big Texan in Amarillo -- they probably have a supply they need to throw out. I could make a jalapeno salad for the critters!
My FIL has suggested to me that I use his singing bass (motion activated) to scare my whatever away. That would be a lot easier than running wire for the motion activated light. My SIL has a motion activated frog that she has used for this problem too.
