Great Gifts for Gardeners! | Gardens Alive!
Give the Dirty-hands crowd what they really want: Defeated deer, wanquished weeds & neutered neighbors!
First up is the multi-critter controlling Motion Activated Sprinkler. It looks like an ordinary, turned-off sprinkler head—until movement near your prized plants activates the infrared sensor, and it suddenly comes alive, shooting a couple of cup's worth of cold water at the thing whose movement activated it. The pest runs away—completely unharmed—and your plants remain uneaten! Available at many garden centers, catalogs and web sites, the actual name of this product is the "Scarecrow"—because it comes with a set of decals that make the thing's head look like Heckle or Jeckle.
The manufacturer's website (http://www.scatmat.com) has a very cool "statistics" section that rates the device's success—based on customer comments—against 14 different pests, listed by frequency the device has been tried against them. For the top pest, deer (no surprise there), the device scored 86% satisfaction, based on an impressive 708 individual reports. Other top pests (in order) include cats, raccoons, dogs, herons, rabbits, squirrels, skunks, groundhogs, possums, and those perfidiously pooping Canada geese (against which the device got the highest score of all—90%!). Apparently groundhogs don't mind getting wet nearly as much—it only got a 75 for controlling them. (Sounds like one of my old grades.) You can buy it direct from the website but you'll find lower prices elsewhere.
Of course, those of us in the soon-to-be-frozen North can't use such a device in the winter, when hungry deer eat your car after they finish off your rhododendrons. That's why my azaleas and baby peach trees are protected by the "Wireless Deer Fence". Not a fence at all, these foot-and-a-half high stakes are sold in sets of three and come with a bottle of scented pellets. You put a pellet into the hole in each stake's head, twist open the body, install two AA batteries and then place the stakes around the plants you wish to protect. Two batteries doesn't sound like much, but take it someone who has picked them up the wrong way—the capacitor inside the waterproof housing builds up a real kick of a charge. Makes you bark like a dog. Anyway, deer are attracted by the scent of the pellets, press their nose up against the contacts on top, and get a harmless shock that sends them scurrying to eat the neighbor's landscape. Check it out at by calling 866-GOT-DEER.
Now, you can't surround all your deer-prone plants with these cute little stakes, so a bottle or two of deer repellent makes the perfect 'stocking stuffer' for gardeners tired of sharing their prized plants with those giant stomachs on legs. Come to think of it, get a bigger stocking and make it three bottles. A LOT of land to protect? Think pantyhose!
Let's see—that's deer, squirrels, cats, weeds…what pest haven't we covered? Oh, right—the one that's often the worst of all—PEOPLE! If you know someone who could star as Scrooge Mc Chemical in a Toxic Garden Christmas Carol, why not be the Spirit of Gardens' FUTURE and present them with a gift certificate from Gardens Alive or similarly organic-oriented supply company.
If they're the typical American turf toxifier, perhaps suggest they use their ducat to obtain some corn gluten meal instead of the stuff they use every Spring to send amphibians and earthworms to an Early Reward. This all-natural by-product of corn processing is a powerful pre-emergent herbicide—it prevents crab grass seeds from sprouting as well as any toxic chemical—and a top-notch lawn food in one package; organic weed and feed!
Give your Garden Scrooge a gift certificate with product details from the GA website, or a note saying you've already ordered some yourself for Spring delivery to their house! You'll do a good deed, give a gift in the best possible spirit, AND be able to walk across their lawn without scrubbing your feet with Brillo afterwards!
And the earthworms, birds, and butterflies will be sure to say,"God bless us, every one!"