Sherman Shifflett
Crows can be devastating in a newly planted garden of corn. The best suggestion I have is to keep them out is to place a string 3-4″ over the cornrows when you plant, using stakes at each end of the rows. Crows (grackles too) will not stick their heads under the string. I’ve never seen squirrels pull up corn and I have plenty of the “tree rats” around.
One thing I learned about onions, beets, carrots, radishes, etc. is that after they’ve gotten a good start, when you cultivate, instead of hilling them up, pull the soil away from them – exposing the top half. They get larger. Worked for me. Beets, carrots and radishes also need to be thinned out.
With corn, I always pull the suckers at the bottom of the stalks. Dad said that the suckers pull growth from the stalks. Corn doesn’t produce very long, so dad used to stagger his corn, to keep production coming.
Coons are also very destructive in a cornfield. What bothers me is that the coons will pull down a stalk, eat a few bites, then pull down another stalk and eat a few bites, etc. Squirrels and crows will also eat corn, but are not as destructive as coons. A couple of years ago, a bear got into my corn patch. Coons will pull down corn in different spots in the corn patch. The bear pulled down corn stalks in a circle and ate all the corn on stalks he pulled down (unlike coons). Also, a bear practically destroyed my blueberry bushes a few years ago.
Several ways to control coons: A friend places one of his beagles near the corn patch, on a chain, with a dog house. Dad did that too. Years ago people used to put a transistor radio in the corn patch. One thing I have done that works is to spread newspapers around the corn patch, shovel on dirt to hold the newspapers down. Coons won’t cross the newspapers for 8 or10 days. Don’t use newspapers with color, though, just black and white.
I cannot grow sweet potatoes. Deer eat the vines right down to the ground.
Guineas are the only birds I know that will eat potato bugs, but they developed a taste for tomatoes too, so I had to get rid of them. But I never had many ticks when the guineas were around.