As long as the bears stay away from the house!

Natalie, the black bears have never bothered eating my raspberries, it may be because of the thorns, I suspect they will eat the blueberries though. They love apples.

Margaret, I remember you mentioning that the bears were eating your apples. We've got fruit trees, and I'm sure one is an apple. Luckily though, deer also like apples, so maybe they'll just munch on those instead of my flowers. I wish I had thought to look for the raspberries. I have them here, and they are thornless, which I love. I have no idea what a blueberry bush looks like! I'm not a fan of them, so the critters can have them. They just better stay away from the raspberries. Looks like I'll have to fence them in too.

Natalie, fences won't keep the bears out, they are great climbers, but really most black bears are shy and scare easily, just keep a container of rocks by your door and throw in their direction, yell at them is all it takes and their out of there..

I wonder if I can keep Bailey from bringing back any rocks that I throw? Good idea though Margaret, and I'll do just that! If the rocks don't work, a shotgun blast in the air should do the trick!

I think bears are attracted to garbage cans. You have to be careful of that.

Rita, you are correct about the garbage, also be careful of what you put in the compost box, and of course bird feeders once the bears wake up in the spring..

Natalie, the rocks and yelling should work, but if not than I am quite sure a shotgun blast in the air will.

Rita, we know about that problem, and haven't yet figured out how we're going to deal with it. Again, I don't think we'll ever see a bear, but I sure don't want to do anything to attract them. We're so far out in the country that there is no garbage pickup. Instead, they have dumpsters spread out around the county, where you take your trash and recycling. It's a good thing that the dump station isn't close to the house. It's across the river and a few miles down the road.

I guess you could do what I do, which is not put garbage out in the garbage cans. Instead I keep it inside until trash day and then put it out. Otherwise the racoons get into it and garbage is thrown all around from overturned cans. But better racoons in the garbage than bears.

I just put out more suet for the backyard songbirds. I can't imagine not being able to put out suet and birdseed.

Natalie - I would contact your Wildlife Officer / Game Protector ... I bet they have information on keeping the wildlife out that will be safe for you and for them. When we bought this property, that's what I did, and a wildlife biologist came out and helped us figure out how to manage the property for wildlife - to make cover for turkey, pheasant, put up nesting boxes for ducks, all sorts of things, as well as giving us lots of advice on what to do when we had a "problem" animal.

Richard Norris of Ashwood Daylilies had a terrible time with deer. He ended up putting up two fences. I can't remember the specifics, but I think they were 8 feet apart - wide enough the deer could not jump both, and they were not likely to jump in between them. I think it was electrified too. Curt Hanson has a tall electric fence around his daylilies that is run on solar power.

Juli, That's an excellent idea! Once we get settled in, I'll contact someone for help. We've lived in the country before, but there are a lot more critters in Idaho than where we lived. I had thought about an electric fence, but didn't realize they could run on solar power. That's great to know! I need to look into that, too! We've been told that the electricity is very expensive up there, so I kind of put the thought of an electric fence out of my head. Solar would solve that problem.

Rita, your more likely to get attacked by a raccoon than by a bear.

We have black bears up at our western PA cottage. I have never seen one, but the neighbors said a few winters ago when the Allegheny got really high, it flooded our island completely, and a bear must have been hibernating there. They saw it in a tree for a few days, then it must have crossed the river and found a new home to hibernate in.

The cottage also has that ancient daylily farm - and a ton of deer. We really don't have problems with the daylilies because other food is plentiful up there. ~Jan

mcash70 said:Rita, your more likely to get attacked by a raccoon than by a bear.

Umm, yeah, considering there are no bears on Long Island but the racoons come around my garden every night.

We have HUGE raccoons here in our neighborhood, and they are scary! Mark ran outside a couple of nights ago, because it sounded like two of them were killing each other. Another neighbor was out there too. We never saw a dead one, and they decided that it was probably attacking a cat. The cat was fine the next day though. We just stay away from them. I finally took down my bird feeders because they were in the backyard every night. I knew that Bailey was going to tangle with them eventually.

Raccoons can be quite dangerous, a woman was attacked in Vancouver several months ago, I think she was walking her little dog, another person came to her aid and beat the raccoon off her. Thankfully we don't have any here.

This thread really took a right angle turn into talking about wildlife! LOL

I went back into this thread, looked for a good spot to split it, making a new thread for "keeping wildlife out of your gardens" but did not find a good place.

Sometimes threads do that. Just like conversation in person. Kind of funny how that works!

Juli, we are naughty! I've been trying to mention tomatoes every few posts, and daylilies too, but these things seem to have a life of their own, and I'm to blame for this right turn!

Well, I was part of the problem too!

Makes it even better!