critters eating annuals out of pots but not in the garden

by Cheryl
(New Richland,MN)

For the first time ever, I am having problems with some kind of night time critter (?racoon? or possum? or ????) digging and uprooting all of my annuals planted in my whiskey barrells around the yard. Whatever it is even crawled up the side of an old kitchen washtub that I have flowers planted in and uprooted them!! Is there something I can spray on the plants to deter the animal?

Doug says there are a ton of things on the market - ranging from garlic stakes (not through the heart though) to red-hot-peppers to foul smelling rotten egg concoctions to spraying soap over everthing.

You've probably identified the pest correctly. I'd start by visiting your kitchen and raiding the pepper stores there.

Sprinkle a lot of ground black pepper or dried hot pepper flakes around the soil. That will get the attention of the animal and they do tend to leave plantings alone with this on there. You do have to repeat it every week and after rains or it "melts" away into the soil and loses effectiveness.

I know a gardener who buys this by the commercial bag-size and keeps it in their garage to deter animals from all her containers. She swears by it.

I also know gardeners who use the hottest hot sauce they can find and spray this on their plants. The only thing I'll warn you about though is that this kind of hot sauce can "burn" tender plant leaves so do experiment with the amount of sauce per bit of water till you get something really nasty to eat but not nasty enough to torch your plants.

Good luck.