One way I've heard to deal with groundhogs. Block off one entrance to their den and get a fire burning at another entrance. This will pull the oxygen from the den and they will suffocate. This is a drastic measure.

There are motion detector sprinklers for deer that may work.

Janice I love your "peaceful" idea! Sorry folks I know they cause damage and all but they're still so cute!
Even the dang turkeys look cute to me! I am a true animal lover, what can I say!! I used to grow sunflowers knowing they were feeding the rats and possum It takes all kinds huh!
But good luck with resolving the issue Twit!

Greg I thought like you until I moved and realized what damage they do. If it was a nibble here and there it could be acceptable.

The first year I moved in I sat by the windows taking pics of all the wildlife. Well Spring arrived and they ate all the tulips and the daffadoils a plant that is suppose to be poison and not animals is suppose to eat them. Okay no Spring flowers. Then every hosta, daylily was gone. I walked out the next morning and dropped my cup of tea.

This hosta was 9 years old when I moved it to the new house. It was 3' tall and 5' wide. I had to move it with a dolly. This is what they did to it in one night and every other mature hosta in the garden.



This is what that hosta and every other hosta, gerainum, lily in the garden looked like. Just stems sticking out of the ground.


I cried for days and started looking for things that keep them out of the garden. I have a 8' fence around one acre where I garden but they jump the fence. I have to make stuff not so attractive with repellents, lights and lots of movement in the gardens at night,

I love nature from a distance.

Cinta that is horrible!! I know the amount of damage they can do, I understand that, and I know I'd be really upset in your situation, and try to find ways of controlling them. I agree that when I think of what animals do to gardens, I do imagine it as "nibbles" not "huge big bites" (I sound like a vegan huh? The funny part is I do eat meat! )
Anyway, as always I hope animals, people and our gardens can co-exist!
Cheers (and thanks for responding Cinta! It puts it into perspective for me!)

Oh Cinta.

We don't have ground hogs here, but while traveling I have seen the damage they cause. I'm all for getting them away from twits garden.

This discussion makes me think of Chris with her midnight ride with the destructive toad.
Some how I don't think that would work with the ground hog.

I returned to the baited trap today and found that it had an occupant. No, not a groundhog, but a raccoon. This explains the occasional scattered garbage from the garage cans we've been seeing for the last year or so. I was talked out of putting it down by the family council, so we did a trip to relocate it in some woods 5 or 6 miles away. What a smell! Trap has been washed and rebaited. We'll see what tomorrow brings. No further damage to report. The bait was watermelon, would you believe it?

Twit this warms my heart! Thanks for posting updates! (and for being kind to the animals! Even if it was under pressure from your fam!) Good luck with it all!

twitcher, I do not mind the racoons I feed them. I leave out rotten fruit and I have a lot of fruit trees they get to eat from. I just put a rock on the garbage can.

Lynn, I love my hostas and it breaks my heart when they eat them down to the ground. Between the groundhogs and deer I am in constant battle.

I went into house hunting mode for 2 years to find enough land to garden to my hearts content and I finally found my 3 acres and did not realize I also found an entire county of wildlife to feed. They have had some really expensive meals. I have 15 to 20 deer in my yard at times. Especially when the apple trees come out.

I welcomed the little fox that used to come, and the racoons. But not the bunnies, gophers, deer and squirrel. They just cause way to much damage for us to occupy the same yard.

I really don't mind the raccoons either, but he was in the way of catching the groundhogs and had to be relocated.

Racoons are the most destructive animal by far that come to my yard. I have hot wire around certain gardens to keep them out because of the total devastation they create.

Squirrels and rabbits do some damage, but I allow them to stay. Racoons gotta go.

Tabby, what kind of damage do they do for you? We have the occasional rabbit, but neighborhood cats keep them nervous and in check, as well as keep most of the squirrels away.

They utterly destroy the water gardens trying to get the fish - ripping apart plants, tubing, netting and tearing thick lining. They wreck the grapes and rip down all the corn, fruit, peas, beans - anything edible. They get into metal cans used to store feed. They've been doing their best to break into the chicken coup and we constantly have to fix the damage.

We can keep rabbits out of things with just chicken wire, but raccoons need much stronger deterrent.

We've caught and relocated dozens of raccoons. My spouse actually prefers relocating skunks because they are better behaved. We don't catch skunks on purpose, but sometimes they get into the trap when we are trying to catch raccoons.

Now you have me wondering. Even though I saw the groundhog running from the garden on the day the damage was done, I wondering if the raccoon might have done it. I assumed that because the broccoli plants were devastated that it was the groundhog. Do raccoons eat broccoli plants?

Seems like you have had more trouble than I. It would be so discouraging. One thing I have learned from a newspaper route is that the raccoon population, even in cities, is much higher than people think.

about the racoon population.
I have never had the racoons bother my vegetable gardens. But we have so much natural vegetation that they probably prefer. They do eat the fallen apples, but don't seem to be interested in eating anything still on the trees/bushes.

I find it interesting that different people have different "pests" For me it was crows, but I've been using metallic ribbon and this seems to keep them out of my semps. They really weren't doing anything other than playing with the less rooted semps.
Best of luck to all!

The raccoons don't seem interested in any of the brassicas.. Those are eaten by voles who dig under the hot wire so now I'm leaving the wire off during the day and letting the cats in the garden.

Robins are the ones who often uproot my newly planted semps while searching for worms. Although my neighbor's crows (they nest in her trees so we call them her crows) have actually taken off with one of my new Triste semps so I securely wired down the other one.

Those crows watch what you do and wait for a chance to do something. They think things through.
And they tried to kill my cat. Really!
They teased my cat, leading him towards a sleeping fox. Fortunately my cat and the fox knew each other and the cat is as big as the fox.

Wow, you have mean crows Tabby! But I love the fox, what an excellent picture!

Areas that had minimal wildlife damage are experiencing more than normal damage. We have had several warmer than normal winters and there is such a large population that they have to come out of the woods for food.

I did get discouraged my first year because although I have always had deer, rabbits, and a skunk or two. There was a nibble here and there and it was not a problem see a skunk run like you mean it.

Because of population growth the county have allowed bow and arrow hunting to curb the deer population. They were causing damage to cars, houses, and crop to the point that the county could not absorb anymore. Number of car accidents and death was unacceptable.

My insurance has cut me to 3 deer hits a year. After that they will not pay. I told them I did not hit the deer they hit me. You are riding down the road and they jump out of the woods on to your car.

If you panic and swerve in the wrong direction you are dead. If you are driving a little cheap car you are dead meat. I drive the truck or the Jeep in the evening because that is when they usually are out running.

The wildlife is more than cute little annoying incidents in our gardens. It can be your life or your children's life at stake. It is crazy because I live in the average suburbia area. We do have large plots of land but it is not the country.