How to keep animals from digging up newly sown seeds (bloodmeal!)

This squirrel sure seems to be enjoying the few raspberries I'm growing!

I'm pretty sure this gorgeous, sleek, fat squirrel is partially responsible for my garden failures early this season.  While my friends are posting photos of baskets full of green beans, tonight, I sauteed up a pan containing exactly 12 beans.  My family gathered around the dinner table where a plate of the 12 long beans lay straight as the tines on a fine-toothed comb.  Or maybe more like a wide-toothed hairpick. Each member of my family ate his/her 3 beans - not too fast! - lest he/she be accused of taking more than his/her fair share.  

What's the problem? Birds, squirrels, maybe a chipmunk...I'm not sure.  When I sow a row of beans, inevitably 70% of the seeds don't come up.  Sometimes it's because I'm a seed hoarder and put my faith in seeds that should have been tossed years ago.  But most of the time, I go into the garden and find a frustrating little hole where I planted a seed the day before.  Just a few plants make it and thus we end up with 12 beans for dinner.  

However, recently, my husband went to the hardware store and came back with a bag of bloodmeal as a "surprise" for me.  Whyever would you buy that, I asked??? For no other reason than, "Because it sounded like something you'd like".  

I have never used bloodmeal but turns out it supplies a good deal of nitrogen and has a side benefit of repelling small animal pests.  When half of my cucumbers did not come up (with the typical holes the next day where the seeds were just carefully placed), I started again with more seed and sprinkled some of the bloodmeal over the area.  No digging and seeds promptly germinated! 

So while we guardedly eyed each other tonight over the plate of 12 green beans, there is a bumper crop of cucumbers coming up. There will be peace once again in the Spray household and it's due to bloodmeal, a fertilizer with a name that people think gardeners would like.  Well, peace again until my addictive sweet/hot pickles are made - then they'll be eye-balling each other again!

Oh deer!

I mean, I get it...but I don't really get it. The hosta is green, lush, healthy, probably has a healthy dose of Sluggo around it...but I don't know. I'm thinking that if there needs to be so much pest protection around it - it kinda takes away from the beauty of the plant.

I try not to be too judgmental. I've written several posts now about how gardening is a subjective art, but yet I did happen to collect all these photos on separate jog-bys throughout the year. The garden above - huge and so pretty with the tall lilies. I was sad to see the entire garden area surrounded by stakes and netting.

The shade garden above was really really pretty. Really. The cell phone photo does it no justice. It dipped down several feet from the sidewalk and was quite a hidden gem. This is in a very wooded area and we do have lots of deer. I'm sure there are issues and I'm sure the gardener was fed up with her garden being the local salad bar. But ugh...the netting...

Above, a perfectly manicured lawn, perfectly kept garden, and perfectly straight (and very tall, I'd say!) stakes.

I don't know. I obviously have no solutions. Look at my hosta above. Look at my day lilies below. These guys were new planted the previous fall. There were swollen buds about to open and I said to my family each day, "Keep your eyeballs on that - it's going to be gorgeous!" But guess what? My family never got to see them at all last year. And guess what? New growth this year has been mowed to the ground. Actually, for a few minutes, I suspected that the annoying kids nearby had cut them down just to spite me because they looked cut with scissors (a curmudgeonly thing to think, huh?).

And guess what? I forgot about these day lilies below on the other side of the garden. I only found them when...

...I found the poopies a couple feet away from them. The nerve. This guy stood 3 feet from my house, eating my day lilies and pooping on my lawn. Probably at the same time.

Oh deer! This dope (see his head?) in my neighbor's yard showed up at the wrong house, nothing but lawn and a big old evergreen there, dummy.

What I have noticed is that my hellebores are absolutely gorgeous and everything behind them is fine. I've read that deer will avoid crossing over plants they dislike, and I think it's true. Perhaps instead of a netting and stake barrier, it might be useful to try edging a garden with plants that deer are averse to. There's got to be a solution somewhere between Fort Knox and The Greenish Thumb all-you-can-eat (and my dad's method of stakes with bars of blue-green Zest soap hanging from them is not what I'm talking about!).

Teenagers trashing the place

Well, hopefully there are several more years before I have to worry about my own teenagers trashing the place, but there is a family of raccoons who go through my trash on a regular basis, leaving their leftovers all over the side yard for us to pick up. Besides the fact that they do carry diseases (my neighbor found one in her carport, swaying around and not looking quite "right"), they're the one true pest I have to contend with. In my small garden, I may patiently wait 90 days for a single butternut squash. When the raccoons come by and gnaw at just one of my squashes or melons, it can be really frustrating.

Besides their diseases, messy habits, and ability to devastate my backyard garden harvest, they're aggressive. On this particular day, I had to call animal control after hearing noises in the trash can for going on 2 hours. Turns out all the guy was really able to do was tip the trash can over (I guess I could have done that!). Apparently, since the trash was dumped the day before, the raccoons were able to get in to the bin, but since it was empty, had no way to get themselves out. The animal control guy said there were 2 fat "teenaged" raccoons in the trash can.

I did learn some interesting tips. The raccoons have very nimble hands and are often able to work their way around bungee cords, ropes, etc. They get into the cans by climbing the fence next to the cans and lifting the tops. The best way to prevent raccoons from getting into the cans is by setting them away from anything they can climb. Unfortunately for me, I have a very small side yard and there is no way to set the cans entirely by themselves. He also mentioned that we should make the contents unappetizing to the raccoons. One suggestion was to keep a spray bottle of bleach nearby and every time a bag goes in, the top of the bag gets sprayed with bleach. I may save this smart suggestion as a last resort. The easiest trick might be to simply set a heavy rock on top of the can. Several ideas to try!