How to Keep Raccoons From Digging Up Plants In Your Garden
ORIGINALLY FROM NOVEMBER 2022, UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2024
Are your plants or yard getting trashed every night? Have you been wondering who the culprit is? It might be raccoons.
These nocturnal animals may look cute, but it's not so cute when they dig up your garden and mess with your precious lawn.
How to Tell What Animal is Destroying Your Garden
Before you jump to conclusions, let’s examine what raccoon digging looks like versus skunks or moles.
The easiest way to tell what animal is destroying your garden is to look at the aftermath. Raccoons roll turf up like a carpet. Skunks create whirls with their snout to get to the grub. Moles tunnel close to the surface and create mounds throughout your yard in the shape of a volcano.
Now that you know what animal is making the mess, let’s discuss why they come around to begin with.
Why Raccoons Dig Up Plants and Lawns
As fall approaches, raccoons, skunks, and moles are on the hunt. They’re looking for grubs and other insects in your garden, especially under turf, before the cold nights of winter arrive.
One reason the grubs are there is because of incorrect watering practices or poor lawn care. So before you blame the raccoon for ruining your plants, it might be time to look at what you can do to prevent them from targeting your lawn in the first place.
How to Keep Raccoons and Other Animals Out of Your Garden
Unlike skunks and moles, raccoons don’t just dig up your lawn. They also dig up plants, creating quite a mess. They can literally destroy your garden in one night. Has this happened to you?
If it has, I have a few techniques to help stop raccoons from digging up your lawn and plants.
Remove the food source
The best way to manage these animals is to remove the food source, this means removing the grubs. This can easily be done by applying beneficial nematodes (BN). Have you heard of these before?
BN are microscopic worm-like organisms that live in the top inch or so of soil and feed on soil-dwelling insects like grubs. These little critters do an amazing job of ridding your garden of many pests!
However, once the fall temperatures cool, the soil temperatures drop and so do the grubs. By November, they drop down and overwinter in the warmer depths of the soil, emerging in the early spring months when the temperatures rise.
If you suspect you have grubs, early spring is the ideal time to apply beneficial nematodes. This is when the soil temperature starts to warm back up.
But if it’s too late in the season to apply beneficial nematodes or you know darn well you treated your garden and have removed the grubs yet the raccoons are still wreaking havoc, what else can you do?
Create barriers
Raccoons have a very good memory. If they’ve successfully found grubs in your garden before, they will return. This can be extremely frustrating if you've been diligent about ridding your yard of grubs to remove their food source.
This is when you want to use a barrier (like poultry wire) on top of the lawn.
If your lawn or garden is on the smaller side then laying poultry wire (or something similar) on top of the area can prevent further damage. For larger turf areas, I recommend rolling out bird netting and securing with landscape pins. Bird netting works best when rolled up onto a wooden dowel or a piece of PVC irrigation pipe. When you need to mow that area of turf, simply lift the poultry wire or roll up the bird netting, mow as usual, and lay the barrier back down.
Either way, the raccoons won’t be able to dig in the area that you covered. After a few attempts, they will eventually learn and leave!
Practice regionally-appropriate lawn care
Understanding that the roots of a lawn can grow deeply means that we should be watering the lawn deeply, certainly more deeply that the synthetic lawn care industry wants you to think. When we can water deeply less frequently, we grow a healthier lawn. Water-wise gardening is simpler and more effective for rodent management than you might think. his makes the soil less favorable for grubs. Fewer grubs means fewer raccoons!
Also, be sure to feed your lawn with organic fertilizer in the spring and fall months. This practice allows your lawn to recover from grub damage.
Use repellents
As a last resort, you can try a repellent. The type you use depends on the animal you want to keep out. Repellent will not solve the problem, but it’s a good deterrent when used properly as noted on each product’s label.
FOR MOLES, GOPHERS, AND VOLES
When it comes to moles or gophers, there are great repellents on the market such as:
The active ingredient in each of these that I recommend is castor oil. Castor oil is not toxic, won’t harm the garden or your plant, and is safe for your pets or children to walk on once it’s applied and dried. Remember your grandparents (or great-grandparents) taking a spoonful of castor oil? Yep, this is the same oil.
It’s available in a granular form for you to broadcast over the area then water in or as a hose-end ready to spray liquid. I prefer the latter since it saves me a step and is less expensive than the bag of granular castor oil. For these products, it’s especially important to follow the application and reapplication process listed on the label. Do that and you’ll reap the benefits of keeping moles, gophers, and voles out of your garden!
FOR RACCOONS AND SKUNKS
Unfortunately, it's a little more challenging to repel raccoons and skunks than it is to repel moles.
The only product I am aware of on the market for this purpose is a repellent called Critter Ridder. It was labeled under the brand Havahart, which is now owned by Safer Brand (they recently changed the label).
The active ingredient combination of Oil of Black Pepper, Piperine, and Capsaicin found in this product is effective at repelling. When I used to work at a nursery, it was the only repellent people would buy saying it worked. Keep in mind that it needs to be reapplied, as noted on the label.
Ways We Can Grow Together
Have more questions about rodent management? I’m happy to answer them! Please don't hesitate to send me an email.
If you have other pest problems you want to solve the eco-friendly way, check out these helpful blogs: