OT Garden questions

Lets here some ideas on keeping deer and racoons out of the sweetcorn patch. I need to stop them soon.

Electric fence if you are really serious and want to spend some money. If not pi$$ all round it especially using the wind to blow the scent toward where the varmits come from - also keep a dog out there all night.

An electric fence is the only sure fire solution.

i can tell you what did not work for me. peeing on the sides, leaving sweaty clothing in the garden, string fences with dangling things attached, motion activiated alarms. have others say bars of soap on a string, cheap perfume sprayed on rags and placed around the edges and probably the most effective for deer, electric fence. sure fire way is death to them but no effective way of doing that; too many varmints with too many nights with too many hours in them.

I bought some stuff called liquid fence from Tractor Supply that seems to work. Only problem is it has to be regularly reapplied after rain. I agree with the guys below - an electric fence is the only real solution.

The 30-06 works for me . Brand don't matter.
Then they go into the freezer - You need something to go with the veggies. Works for me

Electric fence. Hal

I second that!! Now If only a Miller High Life delivery driver would sneek into the garden with a delivery......That would be one heck of an afternoon. And beats driving to the grocery store!

#1... BE PROACTIVE... start long before they have taken to visiting every night in hordes...

#2... electric fences may deter some but the only sure way to stop damage is by elimination of the problem... IE... dead raccoons...

#3... Deer will do about 1/1000th the damage to a sweet corn patch that a raccoon will... Deer will pull some tassels and nip some silk but that really is the extent of it... Raccoon will go down a row and open every husk looking for a ripe ear... They start to do so long before anything is remotely ripe (they start at tasseling and silk emergence)... They will decimate a sweet corn field with repeated nightly feeding frenzies..

#4... get your hand on as many live traps as possible.. Set on the perimeter of your sweet corn patch, spacing them out. Put a piece of pipe or rebar through the rear corner, vertically, and pound it into the ground... Coons will tip a live trap over and then are able to get out... Bait that trap with good ole marshmallows... Don't be surprised if you find them pinned to the top in the morning with a hole dug under the cage and the grass and dirt filling the bottom half of the cage...

#5... take a walk in the morning to check your traps, bring your 22... shoot em in the melon and use em as fertilizer. What you kill over the course of a summer won't hardly dent the local population. In most states it is illegal to relocate a live trapped animal unless you are a conservation officer, animal control officer or licensed pest removal company.

If you wish not to kill em... then plant 10X what you hope to harvest... maybe more...

There's also the coca cola concoction but that's illegal in 50 states... and kills EVERYTHING and ANYTHING that drinks it... use with extreme caution...

In my area, the only way to keep the deer from taking the whole garden is to build a really good, 10 foot tall fence. Shooting the deer will get you in REAL trouble if some nosy neighbor sees you dealing with the killed deer. And there are so many does around here that you probably couldn't get away with shooting so many. A good fence works for deer.

We don't have much trouble with raccoons, although I have had to shoot some a couple of times. They are really bold--I cannot ever leave cat or dog food available at night, even inside outbuildings, since the coons, or even worse, skunks tend to come take the food. And I don't think I could build a fence a raccoon couldn't defeat. Having a dog outside helps, since most dogs will start barking if raccoons are near. I have had my best success with raccoons using my 12 gauge with fairly large shot. Nobody seems to care if I blast raccoons! The most I ever got was 5 in a night, but the last several years, I haven't seen any evidence of raccoons around here. Guess they heard I was gunning for them!

I use electric fence. 2 strands at bottom for coons. 1st strand about 4 inches high, second strand about 8 inches, strong 110 volt charger. The strip of aluminium foil with peanut butter on it to introduce them to the fence sounds good to me, but I haven't had to do it. One strand chest high for deer. Expect the deer to tear down the fence a few times until they get the message. Yes, deer can jump over it if they figure out they can. Haven't had that problem yet. Google deer fence for USDA plans. They involve a sloping fence with several strands. Local strawberry operation has one of them and no deer problems now AFAIK.

None of my neighbors would care if I killed all the deer and coons around, but that would be a 24 hour job.



KEH

I normally plant beans and clovers near my corn and deer leave the corn pretty much alone. This year I planted about one acre of sunflowers and them danged deer ate every sunflower leaf and head off! Even got to the corn. I think it was partly due to the lack of rain and lack of natural forage.

Friend of mine plays a battery powered radio tuned to a talk show each night and sets it in the corn. He swears by it. (Limbaugh has a four legged audience?)

Coons still wreek havoc, but I plant double what I need and live with it...but I shoot 'em every chance I get.

Don't know about deer but my grandfather always planted cucumber plants in his sweetcorn to keep coons out, he said the coons hated cucumber vines. I don't know if it realy worked but he always had loads of corn and loads of cucumbers.

Thanks all for the ideas. Our garden is small and close to the house, the corn is getting close to being ready.The deer have topped a few stalks but the coons are terrible,we have a live trap and have caught 12 in the last 2 weeks out of the barn one morning we had momma and a young one in the trap at once.

We tried all the things Pete mentioned, hanging things on a wire, peeing,hung irish spring soap all around. We found some chicken wire in the shed, layed it down flat where it looked like they were going in the garden and haven't had any more deer problems since. ( been 3 weeks now). They must not like to step on it.They leave our okra alone also.