So many of us have to deal with Possums eating our home-grown veggies in our vegetable patches. It is important to remember that it is us that have moved into their habitat. Replacing trees for them to nest in with our cozy roof structures and replacing all their native food sources with exotic high calories fruits and vegetables in our back yards. Understanding your pests’ habits, behaviours, preferences and lifecycle is the best way to formulate a plan to protect your veggies.
Possums are shy, solitary, territorial animals. They mark off their home patch by urinating and rubbing oil in strategic locations throughout their territories. This means the one possum living in your territory can be trained and will protect it. They all have excellent night-vision, hearing and a sense of smell. Possums have a lifespan of 5-8 years.
Typically, they would live in forests and woodland throughout the eastern and south-eastern parts of Australia, ranging from the rainforests of Queensland to the eucalyptus forests of Victoria Possums prefer the dense foliage of trees and rarely come down to the ground.
Possums are omnivores. They eat almost anything edible—dead or alive. In their natural environments, possums eat leaves, flowers, fruits, grass and fungi. They also eat lizards, insects, bird eggs and baby birds. Urban possums can be an absolute nuisance. They can be noisy by clambering over roof sat night, destructive by urinating and defecating in ceilings, tearing up heating ducts and insulation, raiding chicken coops and garbage bins and cropping through people’s gardens.
Think about growing some of the native plants that support possums in an area well away from your veggie beds. Plants like angophora, banksia, callistemon, ficus, melaleuca and eucalyptus. Possums also eat acacia, leptospermum, flowering grevillea varieties and nearly all lilly pilly varieties as well as exotics such as plumbago, New Zealand Christmas Bush, Liquidambar, Crepe Myrtle and Jacaranda.
Protect you garden beds with spikey bushes like hakeas or saw tooth banksia, or smelly plants like passionfruit marigold, mint bushes, tree wormwood, geraniums. Use garden lighting as they tend to stay away from bright lights. And if all else fails spreading vegemite along their path will deter them.