I've been researching this subject here and all over the internet. Can someone tell me if they use the flakes, or the crushed. Does it even matter which kind? As long as it's hot? And where did you get it? And if you can get it in bulk?

And if it's good for discouraging raccoons? I've never had so many coons in my gardens! That Bayer Advanced spray helps with some of the coons, and certainly the woodchucks and deer, but a couple coons have ignored it and dug up some of my precious seedlings! The ones I've been coddling since last November!!!

If anyone can help, thank you! Especially Dana!

Dana

When I use red pepper as an additive to deer spray, I use liquid hot sauce.....whatever is cheap and on sale at the grocery store. The best way to deal with raccoons is to live trap them baiting the live trap with flavored marshmellows. They really like the chocolate and strawberry ones. We make a trail with them leading into the trap. I doubt that red pepper will slow them up much as they are digging for earthworms.

Davi, do you dilute the hot pepper sauce? Would you take a moment to say how you use it?

I really don't have a problem with deer. I've used liquid fence on the perimeter of my property for years, and have them trained! Recently, we had a few days of rain, and I got nervous because the gardens are filled with daylily buds. I went around spraying those buds with that Bayer Advanced rose and flower. I wanted a backup! So far, so good.

Yes, I've been trapping the coons, but their numbers have exploded this year and I only have one cage. Yesterday, I went around with a bottle of hot pepper flakes from my kitchen. I've had this bottle for years, because after my husband died, I quit cooking.

Anyway, I shook the hot pepper flakes on the ground around my seedlings, because a couple of the coons didn't seem to mind the Bayer stuff that I spray there. This morning the seedlings were fine, though the coons attention to other things was very apparent. I'm surprised because this bottle contained all just seeds. No flakes or crushed stuff. Yet it seemed to work. I'll continue to use it! Plus, I have two bottles of Louisiana hot sauce!

I make my own "home brew" deer repellent by beating 3 eggs, adding cheap garlic powder, about 1/3 bottle of hot sauce and then pour the mixture into one of my old one gallon Deer Fence containers. Then I fill the jug with water and sit it in the sun to "ripen" till the eggs are putrid. If you are just wanting to spray hot pepper, you could dilute just the hot sauce in a spray bottle. It would be more cost effective that flakes or crushed red peppers. I don't measure the hot sauce that I add....it depends on the strength of what's on sale....if you would be uncomfortable with the hotness, so will the deer.

If you are trying to save tiny seedlings, you can find a product called "Repels-All Granules" at Lowe's and other big box stores. It's an organic that you just sprinkle around and it works pretty good. And it's less offensive to the neighbors!

Davi, thank you so much for your recipe!!! I've been going from store to store, all around in my county, opening bottles of liquid fence, and they were all bad! I don't know if they had gotten frozen or too heated. I really wanted the concentrate this time, and at one store it was forty dollars for that bottle and it was never gonna work!!! They had three bottles of it. All were dark brown and smelled like polish remover. Sheesh! None of the store personnel seemed to care. One lady told me that her customers say it doesn't work anyway. Well, no lie!

I have a couple of those empty gallon jugs. They spray so good! Davi, do you need to strain your concoction? I can't wait! I hope it smells sooooo bad!

Two things. The Bayer Advanced Rose and Flower no longer works. Or at least not on all raccoons. It seems that the company changed the formula. I just noticed that the label now says it's effective for up to 14 days, when it used to say 30 days. There's no mention of this on their website. I'll call them just to make sure, but probably they've lost a very good customer.

The second thing is that I'm so impressed with the Louisiana hot sauce in the garden! I may have mixed it a bit strong, cause it was even chasing me out of there! I'd like to know if the smell alone would work when sprayed around the perimeter, to keep those coons from coming into my yard. I don't want their diseases and ticks in my yard. Does anyone have any experience with this?

Have you thought of trying a motion activated sprinkler? Here's a video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...

I once tried deterring raccoons from going after the hens in our barn by dumping some bulk cayenne pepper outside their coop door. I think the raccoons enjoyed the condiment with their chicken and broke the door open anyway.

Wow, Sue. How awful. Those raccoons can sure ruin things for a person.

Thank you for the link.

Oh Oh, I goofed. (Or I AM a goof.) It's the Bayer Dual Action that is effective for 30 days. This is the one that helps me with the raccoons and groundhogs. The last two bottles I bought looked exactly like it, except for the words Dual Action. They didn't help me at all.

Sorry Bayer. I'll be more careful to read the label next time.

josieskid said:I've been researching this subject here and all over the internet. Can someone tell me if they use the flakes, or the crushed. Does it even matter which kind? As long as it's hot? And where did you get it? And if you can get it in bulk?

And if it's good for discouraging raccoons? I've never had so many coons in my gardens! That Bayer Advanced spray helps with some of the coons, and certainly the woodchucks and deer, but a couple coons have ignored it and dug up some of my precious seedlings! The ones I've been coddling since last November!!!

If anyone can help, thank you! Especially Dana!

@josieskid sorry, I just noticed this thread! If you're referring to me, I use the flakes. There's a local restaurant supply (non-exclusive) "club" store where I pick up a pretty large bottle.

It repels the squirrels, but I can't say for sure about raccoons....I'd say, try it bc there's nothing to lose!

If you weren't referring to me, I was never here! JK!

Dana, you are hilarious! Thank you for the reply. Yes, it is for sure helping with the raccoons, because I sprinkle the flakes and spray the sauce per the instructions that Davi was kind enough to post here.

They stopped digging up my Rose F Kennedy X Emerald Starburst babies! Plus the groundhog has stopped pruning my phlox!

@josieskid I'm glad to hear that it's working for you!

Quite a while back (like, before Mother's Day ), I had planted the last five daylilies, of a total of 15, in the new "old tree garden", and completely forgot to sprinkle pepper flakes when I was done! Sooo, "something"....ahem....had completely dug out two of them, and partially dug out a third one! Of course, I got sick that evening, and didn't notice it until three mornings after planting them....and they were sitting out of the ground in high heat and humidity, all that time, no less!! I felt so defeated, that I just plopped them in a shaded garden, sprayed and covered the roots with a tarp, that was already there, until I could get around to washing them off and putting them in a couple inches of water to re-hydrate them. I did have one casualty , but I just re-planted the survivor and a new one back in those two spots today! Yes it took that long to find the motivation! ...that's how discouraged and angry I was at myself

Well, yesterday, the culprit returned to the scene of the crime....a stinking groundhog, and I shooed him out of that garden!!! ...aaand he romped across the yard again today!!!

Suffice it to say, I've made a huge "note to self", and that bottle of pepper flakes has been following me around the gardens like an extra limb!! So here's hoping it works to repel that dang groundhog!

Side note: I called our county Game Warden, and got his VM that said he would be "...gone for 10 days...". Gave no start and/or end date for his vacay! Seriously?? I reeeally don't get the point in half-communication!! Sooo, he's got a nice little message, from the "Communication Police", to greet him when he's back!

Dana, so sorry to hear about what that creature did to your daylilies. I know exactly how you feel! I was supposed to have Wild Horses, Darla Anita, and Bas Relief growing out there, and now I only have one of them, and I still don't know which one it is, cause it's struggling.

Don't hang your head down on account of it, you were sick! After all that work you did in the old tree garden, they gotta try to undo it. But, don't let them take away your joy!

And thank you for confirming about the pepper flakes. I knew that was you talking about it before!

josieskid said:Dana, so sorry to hear about what that creature did to your daylilies. I know exactly how you feel! I was supposed to have Wild Horses, Darla Anita, and Bas Relief growing out there, and now I only have one of them, and I still don't know which one it is, cause it's struggling.

Don't hang your head down on account of it, you were sick! After all that work you did in the old tree garden, they gotta try to undo it. But, don't let them take away your joy!

And thank you for confirming about the pepper flakes. I knew that was you talking about it before!

Omg! I'm quite behind on things, and I just now saw this!

You're quite welcome! It stops them only after they move some mulch and get their nose in there, but I'll take displaced mulch over re-planting things!

Thanks for the encouragement, too! It's very much appreciated!! I was in very bad need of a happy medication switch then, so my 'chemical imbalance' was playing a huge role in my reaction to that situation. But right or wrong meds aside, there's nothing that is more of a pet peeve to me than having to redo my work, of any kind, unless it's redoing/fixing the work of a colleague or family member who 'dropped the ball'!!

But I digress! Thank you again!

You are welcome Dana, and thank you too. I love to read all your posts on this site.

Oops, double posted somehow!

Thank you....I have fun sharing!