Pest control– the harvest has started, and so have the squirrels and crows (jays and woodpeckers come later; mice and ground squirrels are a bit harder to see sometimes). Critical to know- squirrels and chipmunks will steal nuts before they are ripe; so you must really be on your guard. I was harassing them today, starting before dawn, with some good effect. Permanently de-commissioned four red squirrels; those little guys certainly pack away the nuts. We also put up a new hawk roost today; I think our first one made from a chestnut tree. Combine that with keeping the crows back, and maybe we'll get the hawks back for a bit. The owls, of course, use the roosts at night without worrying about crows at all.
Now (or maybe last week) is a good time to check out the vintage post on checking ripeness, and on determining ripeness, as well. New growers should check them diligently; you'll lose them! Before my work today, we'd already lost the entire crop on one of our earlier bushes.
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Yeah you all probably know that candy-striped leafhoppers LOVE the chestnut tubelings. I didn't know we have candy-striped leafhoppers as I had just cleared out the buckthorn before I did the chestnut planting. Anyway I had to extirpate those leaf-hoppers since they were swarming the tubelings. There's a few leafhoppers left out in the woods but my tubelings are now completely free of that pest. Amazingly.
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