Photo courtesy of rittyrats at Flickr.com.

With their clever hands and inquisitive natures, raccoons can be among the most difficult of animal pests to keep out of your garden. They especially love corn and melons, but they’ll happily root through your garbage can and tear apart your compost heap, too.

Since scarecrows have absolutely no effect on raccoons, the most effective way to keep them at bay is to use an electric fence. However, if that option doesn’t appeal to you, you can try lighting the garden at night, when raccoons are most likely to make their raids. Failing that, do what the Native Americans did and plant squash among your corn plants. Raccoons don’t care for the prickly leaves, and this may keep them away.

If worse comes to worse, you can literally tape your corn ears to the plant, or cover them up with secured paper bags.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 5:03 am and is filed under Gardening Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.