Raccoons, birds, and snails oh my! When you have a garden, no matter how small or large, you will have pesky pests to deal with, but how can you maintain your beautiful garden without calling in the troops to deal with a nocturnal bandit?
What Works?
A quick internet search yields a wide variety of products designed to eliminate pests but let’s face it, while good in theory a lot of them don’t really work. Another point of fact is geographical location. Pigeons ambushing a roof top garden in New York aren’t going to be deterred by the same thing as Crows invading a corn field in Iowa. So how do you know what will work and what won’t? Ask somebody!
I live a suburb in Southern California – a small, quite community about 40 miles north of Los Angeles. We love it here, my family has lived in this area for many generations, and even though we don’t have acres of ranch property, we do still have to deal with coyotes, racoons, opossum, field mice, crows, and all manner of creepy crawlies. Our warm, sunny climate may be great for year-round growing, but we aren’t without pesky invaders.
Our Garden
This Spring, at the beginning of our quarantine, we started a large Victory Garden. We spent a week just pulling all the weeds and moving existing plants. Then came the tilling of the soil. We just moved to this house in January so since we don’t know the layout of the sprinklers yet, we decided to till the soil by hand. Thankfully there’s 4 of us that could take turns! It’s a lot of hard work. Next, we had to amend the soil by adding organic chicken fertilizer. All of this led up to the final step of planting the seeds, seedlings, and starter plants.
Our Masked Bandit
After two-week weeks of hard work, it was shocking, and devastating to walk out back one morning to see plants up turned, seedlings missing, and holes dug randomly around the garden. It had been raining that week, so the moist soil made the perfect scenario for catching footprints of our nocturnal masked bandit. We don’t have a dog, at least not yet, and I’m not one to kill an animal just because it’s hungry and looking for food so how do we keep this hungry critter from devouring our garden that we so lovingly worked for?
Dug up plants 
Randomly dug holes 
Muddy Raccoon prints
I did some research and found some references to lights scarring away racoons. I asked to my husband, Mel about it and he suggested we look into a solar powered, motion light for the garden area. This would allow us to mount the light wherever we wanted without having to run electrical lines, direct in where we wanted without disturbing our sleeping neighbors, and it would activate only when it detected something in the backyard.
The next morning, we woke up to another hit in our garden by our pesky bandit so off we went to Home Depot. There was a large variety of lights to choose from and so many different features available. Prices ranged from $30 to $200 depending on what you wanted – some lights are wired & other are solar powered, some have backup batteries, there are lights that alert your phone when activated, and some with enough lumens to see them from the moon! It all seemed confusing to me. I was very glad Mel was with me to help me figure out which light would be the best fit for us.
Our Solution
We ended up choosing a solar powered, motion light with around 1000 lumens. No fancy options, just simple and easy to use. It was less than $50 and he had it installed in 15 minutes. The most complicated part was programing the sensitivity zone which wasn’t actually that difficult. After Mel adjusted the setting to program, I walked the perimeter of the garden, back and forth, three times to train the motion sensor for the area we wanted it to focus on. That was it! We went to bed hoping to wake up to our garden in-tact, and we were happy to wake up the next morning to find it worked! It’s been almost a week and our little nightly visitor hasn’t hit our garden since! Fist pest eliminated!
Slimy Pests
The next pest we had to deal with was slugs & snails. We could see the evidence of their munching on the leaves of my bell pepper plants and followed a slime trail to a little slug trying to make his escape unnoticed. This was one pest I was familiar with.
Growing up, my dad always had a garden. He took immense pride in the fruits and vegetables he grew but snails were his worst enemy, and he absolutely hated them! He tried many different tactics to eliminate them from the garden, even going as far as putting snail bait pellets around the edge of the garden. Unfortunately, we woke up one morning to find that my rabbit, Snowball, had gotten out of his hutch and eaten the snail bait. We found him dead at the edge of the garden. My dad felt horrible.
After buying me a new rabbit, he headed down to the local feed store to ask if there was a more kid & pet friendly remedy and came home with a bag of crushed Oyster Shells to put around the garden. I remembered this when it became our turn to deal with these slimy, plant eating pests.
Our Solution
Mel & I went to the same feed store my dad always used, Camarillo Feed, and picked up a 50 lb. bag of crushed Oyster Shells. They were very reasonably priced. You can put the oyster shells around each individual plant or make a perimeter around the entire garden. Since we have a very large garden with a lot of plants, we chose to use it around the perimeter. We laid a 2-inch line of Oyster Shells all the way around the entire garden, making sure to completely fill the line all the way around.
Surprisingly, it only took ½ a bag (about 25 lbs.). I’m happy to report our garden is snail & slug free! The rough, salty shells naturally repel the snails & slugs and as an added benefit, the shells are 36% calcium which is very beneficial to strengthening stems and roots for the plants in your garden. Pest #2 defeated!
Winged Pests
I was feeling pretty confident in our humane pest control so far, that is until this morning. Our garden is located right outside our bedroom window. Each morning, I look out the window to survey how the garden faired during the night. This morning was no exception, and everything seemed safe and sound. Two hours later, I went out to work on a few things, and noticed something out of place. I walked over to find two of my lettuce seedlings tossed out of their beds, one completely devoured, the other still in-tact but with a hole pecked into the side of the root base! As I was contemplating the scene, I heard a crow squawking at me from it’s perch in the tree above. I knew right then who the guilty culprit was!
Aside from casting a net over my entire garden, how would I protect my tender seedlings from this winged pest? I called my mom to see if she had any advice and told her about the silver flashing tape my friend Becca had put in her garden using some reflective materials she had at home. Mom said a lot of birds fear the color red and to think about something I might have that was red.
Our Solution
I immediately thought of this shiny, red, curling ribbon I had in my Christmas wrap supplies, dug out the box to look, and low and behold I had both reflective silver and shiny red ribbons! I cut several pieces between 5” – 7” long and tied them to wooden skewers I had in a drawer, stuck the skewers in various spots near my seedlings, trimmed them so they didn’t touch the ground, and watched them dance in the breeze. Eureka! I then tied more, longer strips of silver and red ribbon at different heights on my tomato cages, and on the other wood stakes in my garden.
Throughout the day, I peeked periodically out the windows to see if I could catch any birds trying to sneak around but it was all clear. Best part is this one was completely free! I won’t know for sure for a few more days, but as of now, it seems promising. Pest 3 potentially thwarted!
Find What Works
These three tricks worked for us, but they won’t work for everyone. Each pesky pest will need its own trick, just like our three pests each need their own specific deterrent. Give our three tricks a try, it’s a good place to start. I suggest you try one trick at a time, whether it’s one of mine or from someone else, that way you’ll know if it actually works or not. If after a few days, you don’t see any results, try something else until you unlock the right trick.
Old Timey Tricks
It’s fun having some old tricks to use in our modern garden. There are many different tried and true tactics that can work. Asking someone you know that is an experienced gardener, a quick visit to your local feed store, or stopping in and chatting with someone in your local garden center are all ways get some reliable information that’s pertinent to your area.
If you’re quarantined right now, and can’t get out, or don’t know anyone you can ask, check out the Old Farmer’s Almanac. This amazing resource has been around since George Washington was President! No joke! It was first published in 1792 and is full of wonderful information about the weather, growing calendars, gardening, food, and health & wellness. I remember my dad purchasing one every year to use as a guide and now we’re lucky enough to live in an age where the Old Farmer’s Almanac is available at our fingertips whenever we need it.
If you try any of my tricks, or find a different one that works for you. Leave me a comment and let me know! I’d love to hear somethings that work for you in your area!
Happy gardening!