Letting nature take its toll

Before planting this garden, we had noticed that although Bloomington has a pretty hefty deer infestation, we have never seen any around our apartment complex.  This led me to believe my wee patch would be predator-free.  It isn't.  Predators have come in all shapes and sizes.

I've been dealing with a little fungi problem which has turned leaves on several types of plants yellow, some of them with black spots.  Something loved my watermelon plants and they didn't survive past the mature-seedling phase.  Small seedlings that were happily growing have disappeared over-night, the thief leaving behind no trace of their own or the plants' existence.  A few peas have been tasted, tell-tale teeth marks in their no-longer perfect flesh.  My rose 'bush' managed to bloom just three flowers before something decided to strip it of its leaves.  Every strawberry I have ever grown here has been chewed before it was ripe.  The most alarming sign of these little visitors are the holes left by chipmunks.  It turns out that they eat roots.  And bulbs.  In the early stages of spring, I used to bound out of bed, throw on some clothes and excitedly survey new growth.  Now, I slink out and survey the damage.   

After heeding my kind mother's words to buy some netting for the strawberries, peas, broccoli, and carrots, I began to peruse the interweb in search of chipmunk solutions and found two pretty reasonable ideas.  The first is to put together a Chipper Dipper.  It's essentially a bucket with some water and sunflower seeds floating on the water.  Can you guess how it works?  The chipmunk reaches down to get to the sunflower seeds and falls in the water where he either drowns, dies of a heart attack, or is relocated gracefully by Farmer Brown (that's me).  The reviews for this idea are generally raves: "I killed 14 already" etc.  The other solution is known as Lawn Mole Formula.  I whipped a tablespoon of castor oil, another of dishwashing liquid, and six of water into a shaving cream consistency.  I added a tablespoon of this formula to each litre (half gallon) of water and poured it over the soil around my plants.  I then watered again to soak it into the soil.  It is supposed to deter burrows from burrowing but it seemed so diluted, I'm fairly sceptical that it will work. 

What do you think?  Am I onto something here, or am I chasing rainbows?