They look so cute, what with that little mask of theirs…
Raccoons – Photo by Gary J. Wood
…yet they can wreak havoc in your garden, around your house, in your house…
My concern was discovering that they have been in my garden rifling the strawberries. The fruit has not ripened yet, and the unripe berries have been pulled from the plants and were found laying on the ground surrounding the berry patch.
I looked all over the internet for information on how to keep these little cutie pies out of my garden. What I found was this:
**Dog hair – brush your dog and spread the hair around the area of fencing that circles the garden. We will do this shortly as Astro is losing his winter coat by leaps and bounds.
Astro’s hair
**Stinky socks – one site said that if you put the stinkiest clothing that you have in the garden it will deter the raccoons.
Stinky socks – Cartoon from SodaHead com
**Attach at the top of the fence, chicken wire. But you attach it at the top of the fence in a way so that when they climb the fence, it moves out from the fence so that they cannot go over it as they are hanging from the underside of the chicken wire. I do not have enough energy, or chicken wire to do this tonight.
**Cinnamon, and black pepper. And in another article it was cayenne pepper.
So, what did I do? I rifled my husband’s dirty laundry hamper and hung my husband’s underwear and socks all over the garden! He was not happy… :( OK – only kidding, but it does give you a funny picture doesn’t it? What I did was combine equal parts of cayenne, cinnamon, and black pepper in a shaker. I went down to the vegetable bed and shook this mixture around the strawberry patch, and all the new plantings. I will let you know tomorrow if they returned and foraged.
Gophers/moles are my biggest pest. I have to plant everything in screen mesh so the little critters can’t eat the roots before the plant gets established.
To get rid of the gophers and moles, try using chocolate exlax and juicy fruit gum. Find a hole that they have made, open it up and drop it in. It does work!
The racoons DO look cute… but I suppose the mask as a disguise should alert us to their criminal tendencies! Luckily, we don’t have problems with these in England!
oh, to live in the wild….
Best of luck………………to your husband!
My husband wouldn’t like the idea of his undies hanging out in the garden either. How strange. Ha-ha! Let me know if your ideas work – I’m having an issue with raccoons, too. I had a blue bird nest in a house on a post in the garden, and when I checked on them the other morning, the babies were gone and there were muddy raccoon paw prints on the post and box. Sad.
That is very sad!
I know that little pots of human urine around the garden helps keep deer away, but I will see how your racoon mojo works tomorrow. Thanks for sharing! (and thanks for letting your husband air his dirty laundry too..lol)
:)
We have used live traps from Havahart to get rid of squirrels and rats in the past, and we’re setting a trap out tomorrow to get rid of some raccoons before they get our chickens ( http://www.havahart.com/store/live-animal-traps/raccoon)
They also sell raccoon repellents. I especially like their motion-controlled sprinklers :-)
http://www.havahart.com/store/animal-repellents/raccoon
Good luck with the home-made repellent. I hope it works for you.
Thanks for the info!
Good luck. They are so cute but so frustrating! Iguanas are my biggest pest in Ecuador; for a long time I thought the damage to new seedlings was from cutworms! About twice a month in the dry season, ‘free-range goats’ will strip every green morsel in the garden. Grrrrrrrrr!
I look forward to tomorrow’s field report!
Z