Citrus and possums

Correy says...
Patrick I feel your pain.

Possums love Brisbane and are constantly dueling to the death on our roof. They will eat everything from your garden just before it is ripe. I haven't had them eating new shoots from fruit trees. Yours must be really hungry.

The Brisbane council protects the possums and you are not aloud to move them even a 100m away from your home this is because they are territorial and other possums will kill the newcomers.

Here is a link to Possum proof your valuable fruit trees for only $238. Some people might think it is over the top though.

Possum Barrier

People who are sensitive to possums often suggest putting out "non-organic" fruit in a bowel each night. This will cause them to eat this fruit and not your plants.

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Jason says...
We also had the mysterious pefectly peeled lemons left hanging on our lemon tree... it turned out to be fruit bats eating the peel and leaving the fruit otherwise untouched!

Tom says...
The possums from Oz at least are sort of friendly looking. Ours are hideous (and they smell as nice as they look). I wouldn't have expected that yours could look so cuddly but be so vicious. Anyway - to the problem at hand - possums eating everything you work for just as they come ripe (and sometimes long before) - we found sprinkling cayenne pepper at the base of our pineapples, citrus, passionfruit, and ambarellas stopped them digging and climbing those. It's a constant battle, though.

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BJ says...
Yes, your Opossums are more like our Dasyurini's - Quolls, Devils etc. Tiger Quoll is sometimes called an Opossum, but they are getting fairly rare - certainly not much of a threat to the average fruit grove - besides, they are carnivores.

I have at least 3 types of Possum here, so my roof becomes a battlefield for the right to raid my passionfruit, papaya and Inga pods. Luckily all 3 of those grow like weeds and the possums are welcome to them - I just wish they'd be a bit more quiet about it!

Tom says...
I think your critters are more ferocious than ours - they're certainly noisier. I've never heard a possum here make a noise other than a low hiss even as I've carried it away. And I don't think I'd try to grab one of yours by its tail from the descriptions you've given of the murdering type on your roofs. For all the hissing and showing of twisted, sharp teeth, you'd think ours would be more like yours; but it's actually easy to walk up to one of our slow, near-sighted stinkers and grab it by the tail. Maybe you should reconsider the cayenne pepper advice I posted, though, as it sounds like it's better not to aggravate yours.

Marg says...
Yes Kath I think it's the possums, I have the same problem. They mainly eat the yellow skins but this week a green one is half peeled too.
I also have a ruby grapefruit around the other side of the house. One year the grapefruit skins were all left hanging on the tree with all the flesh eaten out of them through a small hole. In the sun they looked like beautiful glowing pink chinese lanterns! When some scaffolding right beside the grapefruit came down this stopped.
It was suggested that I could construct a metal cone around the tree trunk so possums couldn't climb up but my lemon tree branches are quite close to the ground and I'd rather not prune it too strongly.
I think I'll try the cayenne pepper sprinkle - we've tried peeing around the tree but that makes no difference to the possums although it really helps the citrus fruit :)

Bronro says...
Buy a cheap set of garden solar lights and surround your trees with these. Possums will avoid the tree.