The Fate of Many a Tomato

Not a BLT or a homemade sauce, this is the fate of more than 20 of the ripening tomatoes in our backyard. The cause: squirrels. They are systematically picking apart the tomato plants and trying each fruit. If it's not ripe they make a few bite marks and move on to the next. The picture was of the specimen I found today, one I had hoped they would continue to passup due to its size. It used to be a ripening bradywine variety, but now it's compost.

I have not mentioned much about the garden this year but it has, until now, been a fairly successful followup to our foray last year. We added a bed and a more substantial fence and even planted some flowering plants for decoration and maybe bees. Also we tried lettuce and started most of our vegetables from seeds. The first setback was the now annual attack of the squash vine borer. This moth lays eggs on squash which hatch inside the stem and eat the plant from the inside. We found them last year and they struck again on our best squash this summer. Next year I think we'll definitely go with the easier and more consistant cucumber. Also, the peper plants have taken forever to come in from seed. They may just now be getting there. Now the squirrels have moved in and they are tearing up the tomatoes. The good news is that the compost is going gangbusters and we should be able to greatly improve our soil over the winter. We're slowly grwoing our GA clay into noteworthy soil.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.