What Do You Suggest for Tomato-Hungry Squirrels?

Back in early June, when we planted the 11 tomato plants—along with basil, oregano and cucumbers—in our backyard, I imagined that I would be enjoying thick, juicy tomato slices, fresh basil and soft mozzarella cheese doused with balsamic vinegar right about now.

We have not consumed one tomato out of our garden. Not a single Big Boy, Early Girl, Roma or Cherry.

The plants are fine. The garden is thick with green viney growth, so much so that it's hard to walk around. They're so big they're toppling the wood stake-reinforced metal cages meant to support them. But save for a few green orbs high up on a couple of plants, there has been nothing to pick.

The reason? I believe squirrels have been treating the tomato garden as a kind of rodent buffet.

The evidence is circumstantial. I find half-eaten tomatoes here and there—on the back deck, near the garbage cans, on the top of the fence—with seeds and bits of green pulp scattered around. A couple of times I have found a squirrel gnawing on a tomato carcass. I suppose rabbits could be harvesting tomatoes from the vines and the squirrels are just scavenging the remnants. But the rabbits that inhabit our yard have never seemed that industrious. They don't like to work too hard for their food.

I am pretty sure it's the squirrels.

After hearing of our tomato troubles, friends and relatives have given us fruit from their gardens. They are fine tomatoes. They're intact, which is a plus, and ripe. But other people's tomatoes never taste as good as your own grown tomatoes, even if yours never make it to your mouth. Make that especially when yours never make it to your mouth.

Strangely, the cucumbers and the basil have remained untouched. And we may yet salvage a tomato or two before the end of the season. There are a few cherry tomatoes hanging on here and there. But the big tomatoes—the ones I imagined eating the aforementioned cheese and basil with—are gone.

Given that this growing season is a wasted one, my thoughts already have turned to next year. What to do about the squirrels?

When I was growing up in the country, my dad tried for years to maintain a rose garden. Unfortunately, we lived on an invisible path that deer used when they came down from the shady hills in the evening to drink along the nearby river. The rose bushes were like a fast-food drive-thru. My dad tried everything, from yelling at the deer to spraying lion urine on the bushes (there was a wild game park nearby, but evidently Northwest deer didn't know what a lion was). Eventually he erected a fence that all but obscured the roses but kept the deer out.

Along that line, I imagined draping mosquito netting, or something heavier, over the entire garden next spring. But then how to get in and harvest the ripe fruits and vegetables? I could hope the crows come back in greater numbers and whack some of the squirrel young ones. That seems kind of passive, though.

I've considered buying a BB or pellet gun—not to shoot to kill, but more to shoot to annoy and harass and hopefully make the squirrels think it's not worth the risk. However, there is no way I can be here all day every day, so that makes that somewhat dangerous approach rather pointless. And I've no interest in poisons or pesticides.

So please, what do you do to protect your gardens from hungry varmints? I need some ideas.