Your tomato plants will grow stronger if you manage to keep pests away, and one Instagram user has shared their clever trick for doing just that. Pests can have devastating effects on crops, and nothing is more frustrating than when they manage to get to the plants you have worked hard to grow and nurture in your garden. Tomato plants are a popular choice for many UK gardeners, and some have trouble keeping them safe and free of pests.
One of the pests you need to keep away from your tomato plants is the common squirrel. These rodents can have devastating effects on your tomato plants as they take bites out of the ripening fruit. There are many ways to keep squirrels out of your garden, including introducing certain scents or creating noise. But there is one trick we never thought of until we saw it shared in a viral video on Instagram.
Instagram user Nicole Johnsey Burke, who shares her expert gardening tips and boasts over a million followers on her page, shared her clever trick for keeping squirrels away from her tomatoes. In the short clip, she reveals that she uses fake snakes to deter squirrels from her tomato crops.
Snakes are a dangerous animal that squirrels will avoid if they come across them. “Have you tried using rubber snakes to keep squirrels from stealing your tomatoes?” she wrote in the text overlay of the video as she shows a rubber snake toy wrapped around a garden structure near her tomatoes.
“I did—and the tomatoes have never looked better,” she wrote in her post. “Turns out, birds and rodents aren’t big snake fans. Hanging a faux snake in the tomato arch is my new go-to garden prank… on the pests.”
She added: “It’s just one of the predator approaches to pest control that I use all year.”
The post received thousands of likes and comments as people shared their reactions to her pest-deterrent method. One user shared: “I can guarantee I will scream at least once a week before I remember it’s fake.”
Another joked: “Listen… The way my brain is set up, I will scream every time.” Meanwhile, a third wrote: “Did this on my cherry tree this year and it worked!”
