How I deal with animals messing with my plants - Cheap and effective

I was just mixing up a new batch of my homemade animalsthatwillfuckwithmygirls repellant, and since personalgrow and zack66 raised some good points about this in my journal I'm gonna go into a bit more detail of how I deal with it. In case you missed it here's what I said before;

You are both right about animals potentially messing with them though and there is no shortage of hog, armadillo, raccoons etc., but I have already solved it and here's how I did it. I bought a bottle of capsaicin concentrate certified to be within +/- 5% of 1 million scoville units. Capsaicin is the compound responsible for making hot peppers hot, it is also the active ingredient in pepper spray. Mixing 1/2 tbsp in a spray bottle with water shaken well right before and during use, produces a liquid that is extremely hot and unpleasant. For comparison a jalapeno will max at around 8,000 scoville units and habanero at about 350,000. Misting the ground and surrounding vegetation keeps just about all animals away except for birds. It does degrade outdoors so I re-apply every outing. Just be careful to not breath in the mist, or get any on your hands and go to take a leak.
A lot of us do our grows in the sometimes not-so-great outdoors, often having plots that are simply too remote or impractical to check on nearly as often as we would like. There are also numerous animals that have no qualms about knocking over pots and equipment, rooting around in the soil or simply eating your girls alive. The reasons are many and varied, but the end result is the same; Damage to something you have probably worked very hard for and spent a lot of time and money to realize. This is what I do to prevent that...

So we're talking about animals, and they're nothing like us. Little things that we take for granted or simply would'nt even know were there can garner a powerful, instinct driven reaction. People like spicy food, and I can tell you almost any animal capable of detecting "heat" will not. The detecting part is important, birds for instance are largely unaffected by capsaicin, the compound responsible for putting the heat in a hot pepper. (In fact of you have problems with squirrels or other animals eating bird seed you put out, you can mix it with powdered hot peppers and the birds simply won't care.)

Capsaicin
; This will be your first ingredient. All hot sauces will contain some amount of capsaicin, but they will also contain some things animals may like such as fruit juices and smokey sweet flavorings. For this reason we need to be working with a concentrate, which is simply capsaicin and a carrier agent (usually soybean oil or similar). This stuff has no nice flavors, it is metallic tasting and is purely for "heat". The relative "heat" of these concentrates is measured in scoville units; The higher the number the hotter the juice. These concentrates are not terribly cheap and will only get pricier the higher and more refined you go. For our purposes any capsaicin concentrate that measures in the neighborhood of a million will be sufficient. If you want to spring for higher test stuff more power to ya'.

>>The concentrate I'm using

Vinegar; This will be your second ingredient. Again, vinegar is something that lots of animals who would do your plant harm can't stand. We know how pungent plain white vinegar is, now imagine smelling it with the finely tuned nose of an animal. Then imagine that same nose smelling vinegar that is also extremely spicy thanks to our handy capsaicin concentrate. Kinda self-explanatory. I use plain white vinegar.

Water; Yep just plain old tap water is the final ingredient.

To make a batch of animalsthatwillfuckwithmygirls repellant, mix these three ingredients in these proportions. (A good quality spray bottle is recommended to avoid leaks and drips, I like the ZEP industrial ones from HomeDepot for around 4 bucks, if not any will do.)

Fill your bottle up about 75% with water, add 1 cup of white vinegar and 1/2 tbsp of your concentrate. Leave room for the ingredients to mix when shaking. That is my recipe, you can add more or less depending on what you have, how big your sprayer is or what you want, but I suggest no less than 1/2 tbsp capsaicin concentrate per 20-32oz of water.

Vinegar, the carrier oil in the concentrate and water do not mix well so shaking the mix well before and during use will optimize results. Mist the ground and surrounding vegetation while increasing the circle around your garden till you're all outta' juice. Try not to breath the mist in or get it all over you, and if preferred or on a windy day set your sprayer to a jet. Misting is just easier to get good coverage quickly. Simply mix a batch and spray about every 7-10 days or every visit if you want.

The bottle of concentrate, a gallon of cheap white vinegar and a $4 sprayer should be plenty for 10+ batches. At the cost of the concentrate, a gallon of vinegar and a sprayer is still $3-4 per batch.

One more point, is "Paper Planes why would I do all this when I can buy a bottle of coyote piss that will do the same thing?" Good question.

1. I hate bottled animal piss
2. It has a permeating odor that if spilled on your hands or clothes will be there long after you wished you hadn't spilled it
3. It's predator piss, it repels the prey but attracts the predator
4. I hate bottled animal piss

Oh...If spilled on your hands in any way after the capsaicin has been added, it will require a very thorough hand washing or three before touching your face or genitals. Don't say I didn't warn you...and latex gloves are cheap.


Cliff notes;
In a spray bottle, fill 75% with water, add 1/2 tbsp capsaicin concentrate and 1 cup white vinegar. Shake well before and during use. Spray the ground directly around your plants then continue spraying on surrounding vegetation expanding the coverage area around the plot until the bottle is empty. Spray every 7-10 days or each visit. Don't breath it in or get it on your clothes. If you get some on your hands, wash very thoroughly before touching your face or genitals.



-Paper Planes :joint:
 

Po boy

Well-Known Member
good recipe. good thread! rabbits are a bad asses here. this stuff should kick their ass. GL
 

DankBudzzz

Well-Known Member
Wow, so simple. I'm going to try it but I'm unsure if I can get any pure capsaican around here but I do have a friend that ordered ghost chilli peppers from india to make hot sauce, it's the hottest pepper in the world. I'm sure I could just concentrate it down with boiled water or some sort of solvent. I wonder if this works on slugs, those and rabbits are my biggest enemies.
 
Wow, so simple. I'm going to try it but I'm unsure if I can get any pure capsaican around here but I do have a friend that ordered ghost chilli peppers from india to make hot sauce, it's the hottest pepper in the world. I'm sure I could just concentrate it down with boiled water or some sort of solvent. I wonder if this works on slugs, those and rabbits are my biggest enemies.
If you started with a nice fine powder of quality peppers and reduced it I don't see why it wouldn't work. Then again you could always order it online. Just did a little research and it does appear that this would great for slugs, the vinegar would help too. Good luck and happy growing.
 

BeastGrow

Well-Known Member
you can kill slugs by putting beer in an open container. they drink themselves to death. my mom did this and got like 20 slugs in 1 night
 

3waygreatness

Well-Known Member
How far away from the plant do you spray this?

Another thought, you could soak mulch in this solution then could just put a little bit around your girls and the smell would stay longer. You wouldnt have to reapply it as much!?
 
How far away from the plant do you spray this?

Another thought, you could soak mulch in this solution then could just put a little bit around your girls and the smell would stay longer. You wouldnt have to reapply it as much!?
I spray the ground directly around the pots, then the surrounding vegetation in a 12-15ft circle all around them. As to the mulch I have never tried it, if you do report back!
 

*BUDS

Well-Known Member
You can put as much vinegar, capsicum, irish dish soap and lion piss as you want but if a herd of deer are hungry they will bypass this crap and eat your plants, no question about it. You have to build a chicken wire fence with logs as poles, anything else your kidding yourself .
 
You can put as much vinegar, capsicum, irish dish soap and lion piss as you want but if a herd of deer are hungry they will bypass this crap and eat your plants, no question about it. You have to build a chicken wire fence with logs as poles, anything else your kidding yourself .
If the deer are hungry enough even the small ones we have in FL will hop a 6ft fence like it's not even there. The point of spraying is to make them want to avoid the area all together. Just because the spray only goes 15ft around your plot, the deer will smell it long before then. At the end of the day nothing will be foolproof. All we can do is better the odds, and I am a firm believer this recipe will.
 

BigNBushy

Well-Known Member
Sounds great! I got a question, though. What type of store does one typically buy capsaisen concentrate at?

Would a lot of cayenne pepper powder work also?
 
Sounds great! I got a question, though. What type of store does one typically buy capsaisen concentrate at?

Would a lot of cayenne pepper powder work also?
Never seen stuff like this at a store, I bought it online. Yes cayenne powder reduced would work. Although it won't be nearly as hot as a concentrate.
 

getawaymountain

Well-Known Member
You can put as much vinegar, capsicum, irish dish soap and lion piss as you want but if a herd of deer are hungry they will bypass this crap and eat your plants, no question about it. You have to build a chicken wire fence with logs as poles, anything else your kidding yourself .
017.jpg015.jpg024.jpg026.jpg027.jpgthis is inside the fence 30 ladies !! and ya see the strings in the trees outside is how we keep them deer at bay hahaha lol.. they can look but cant get in at all iv'e seen them on my game cam stand up and hit the string and run like hell and one crazy buck try to jump up over and got all hung up for a minute and he didn't come back again either ,if i go to all the trouble of growing them big and pretty miles out in the bush then they are going to be there when i go to check them period. TAKE CARE OF YA PLANTS -YA PLANTS TAKE CARE OF YOU !! lol....
 
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