Hi There; For several years I've been growing water lilies. The first ones I planted managed to make it throught two winters before they became food for a muskrat, I retried another two plants only to fine that I again was feeding the muskrats, I thought I had solved the problem the second time by submerging the root of the lily in a plastic basket but unfortunately the muskrat was some how able to go through it and eat all the root. My question is how do I keep the muskrats from eating my lily roots, I don't want to put the roots in wire baskets for fear they may rust and arm the goldfish that I have in the same pond. I would love to grow them again because my fish loved to hide under the leaves, and the blossoms were gorgeous. I know the muskrats ate them because I' ve had them around for a number of years and was able to trap several.
Tough problem! Seems as though it doesn't matter where you're trying to grow plants---tulips in the soil or lilies in the water---the blasted rodents will find them! I sympathize. Maybe a plastic container, like a standard flowerpot, with the minimum number of small holes. Might slow 'em down, anyway. ---How about aluminum baskets/containers that would not rust? (If your water area is small enough for the fish to be affected by rusting metal, they might be affected by plastic effusions as well. ???) Some folks use "predator urine" to deter wild animals of various sorts, including muskrats.
I have a large pond and the gold fish are not the only ones I would be worried about there are also small misquito eating fish from another pond I managed to catch and the frogs, and larva from other insects, toxins from man made items would certainly harm them as well. As for Preditor urine, that's not available up here, at least not in my area.
Which predator urine would you suggest, the only bears around here are at the wildlife park down the road, we have coyotes but the dairy farmer across the road shoots them, and I also allow my neighbours cats to do their mousing on my property, I hate to scare them off.
