Battling Squirrels with Cayenne Pepper

This will be a quick post, but it's an addendum to my earlier post about the worst enemy a small urban garden can face....squirrels.

I've been trying to take in my tomatoes as soon as they start to ripen to avoid the squirrels taking an obnoxious bite out of them, but they're fearless and relentless. They've started taking things even before they start to ripen (of course the go for the heirloom tomatoes when the do this). I'm about to go all Bill Murray on this garden....

One additional method of defense I'm trying is to coat everything in cayenne pepper. This is something I used when the squirrels were first digging up seedlings and it worked pretty well. I've started sprinkling tomato plants and surrounding areas with cayenne pepper. 

Cayenne pepper on a tomato plant

It's been raining a lot this weekend, which has washed away much of the pepper (and consequently allowed a squirrel to take one of my Jersey Devil tomatoes...). So, I've reapplied. This is a good thing to keep in mind whenever you treat your plants with any powder or spray...after the rain, it's time to reapply.

Sprinkled cayenne pepper around the plants

I'll see if this has any impact on my tomato yield... Good luck to you if you're battling the same thing. Let me know if you have some great techniques for dealing with squirrels, too!