animals digging up my plants

because i put bone meal in the mix

any ideas how to make them stop?


the rain has been watering my plants on a perfect schedule for me so i hadn't seen them in awhile. other than 1 being destroyed and several others knocked over they look great, the good ones are about a foot tall now.

also found a new spot to put my other plants, not as good as the other spot i had but it will do.

Get a live trap and relocate those bastards.

Your kinda at the mercy of the wild till that smell of the bone meal is not so strong. Could you put some sort of barrier to at least try to discourage the thought of an easy dig? How about getting some barbed wire fence and coiling it up around where the stem and dirt meet.

i was thinking of hitting putting some cinnimon on the soil????

i really thought i was in the clear, i tried not to use too much of it and i watched them prretty close for the 1st few weeks and didn't have any problems.

we will see how it pans out, i won't be back out there until next Sunday probably.

Last year I lost about 20.

The only thing that stoped em was growing em in 1/4 in wire cages....

View attachment 1567446View attachment 1567447View attachment 1567448

Hair,My pis fox piss, cat piss, dog shit my shit,, mothballs, deoderant, soap, chicken wire,putrid egg deer an rabbit repellant all failed.

liquid fence is what i use works great

I don't think it's cause of your blood meal. In fact, I don't think the rumors about foxes "tearing up soil to get to blood meal" is true at all. Foxes are indeed great diggers, but they don't often dig for their food unless they see it run into a hole. If anything, a fox will lick up all the topfeed of blood meal. I bet what you have is a raccoon, or a family of raccoons. Raccoons pretty much just get curious when something is different in their normal environment, and go to great lengths to investigate. Once they've accepted it as normal, they wont touch it again. However, you Could have groundhogs (woodchucks, gophers, whatever) or other burrowing rodents, that's a whole other problem that I've not yet had to deal with. Try to find tracks, that'll f'sho tell you what you have, then you can try to get rid of it.

Usually I dig my holes two weeks ahead of time to fool the animals and allow time for my organic premix to "cook".

When I come back to plant I find that alot of the holes have been dug up from animals trying to find the source of the smell. They stop digging the holes up after a couple weeks because the smell goes down and they dont find any food in the holes.

This year I have a fence up so all animal problems are taken care of.

Hopefully they won't do it again. I don't think it was a fox. The dig spots were small, a woodchuck or something???

I will probably be putting my 2nd batch out this Sunday so when I do I will hit the 1st spot with some liquid fence.

Dude, sprinkle cayenne pepper powder all over the soil where they were digging...be liberal...It won't hurt the plants, but whatever was digging will think twice after a faceful of hot pepper.

personally, i'd call the poor critter, "dinner".
and thus it would be...

unless it's family or something, then it just gets locked up with supervised outdoor time.

Here is what I do. Irish Spring Soap and Moth balls, spread around plants, good for Deer. Wee Wee from fox, in little dispensers with cotton balls, most good grow stores sell it, good for skunks. Critter Ridder, sprinkle around plants, can be bought at just about any depo, or hardware store, good for rabbits moles and squirrels. Than spray liquid fence all over the place as a back up. Now this may sound expensive but if you use all of these methods only a little material in needed for each grow, and they are all Organic. Also will cost less than five good seeds, and if your crop is eatin well that just sucks, can't put a price on that. Oh and if your plants aren't ready yet do what a previous comment said and pre dig your holes, this also works very good, lets the critters in and do there thing without harming your plants. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of bud lol ( I just made that up lol lol ). Hey good luck, and remember to share with the less fortunate.

Are you a greenie or did you grow up on a farm?

The easy solution is not the one most hippies would take.

ThinkSayMakeDo said:

I don't think it's cause of your blood meal. In fact, I don't think the rumors about foxes "tearing up soil to get to blood meal" is true at all. Foxes are indeed great diggers, but they don't often dig for their food unless they see it run into a hole. If anything, a fox will lick up all the topfeed of blood meal. I bet what you have is a raccoon, or a family of raccoons. Raccoons pretty much just get curious when something is different in their normal environment, and go to great lengths to investigate. Once they've accepted it as normal, they wont touch it again. However, you Could have groundhogs (woodchucks, gophers, whatever) or other burrowing rodents, that's a whole other problem that I've not yet had to deal with. Try to find tracks, that'll f'sho tell you what you have, then you can try to get rid of it.

Click to expand...

i know it's true i have had it happen alot not just foxes but possums raccoons will all try to get at blood meal

unless you use liquid fence

Metasynth said:

Dude, sprinkle cayenne pepper powder all over the soil where they were digging...be liberal...It won't hurt the plants, but whatever was digging will think twice after a faceful of hot pepper.

Click to expand...

this sounds like a fine idea, heard of it but never tried it
only one person i ever knew used it, but for a rather strange purpose
had this mean little old lady next door, but i always got along with her
she talked about how she had a 'cat' problem, with cats on her porch
said she fixed the situation with sprinkling hot pepper around
i really didn't get how that was going to deter cats
she gave me a wicked smile and said, 'eventually they sit down'