How To Prevent Raccoons From Digging Up Lawn

Raccoons are those cute little neighbors that would always come visiting your yard.

Seeing them around can be quite fun but seeing them destroy your garden with their constant search for food is not a pretty sight.

Keeping the raccoons away from your lawn is not easy because they are attracted to the fruits, plants, and vegetables they can find in your lawn.

Since you do not want these critters destroying your lawn, it is essential to keep them away.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Raccoons usually come to your lawn in search of food and shelter. They resort to digging up your lawn when they do not find these.

Here are some points to note about keeping raccoons away from your lawn:

A vital tip to keep the raccoons away is to remove their food source from your lawn.
Eliminate the pests in your lawn because they eat pests.
You can build a protective fence around your lawn to prevent them from entering it.
Raccoons are nocturnal animals, and you may not know you have a raccoon problem if you do not watch out for the signs.
Some signs that you have a raccoon problem in your home are hearing noises at night and seeing garbage around.
Raccoons dislike loud noises and bright lights, so you can deter them from coming to your lawn by playing loud music and using bright lights.

Raccoons are troublesome little creatures, and you must be patient when dealing with them.

It would be best if you also adopted humane ways to eliminate them so you do not violate environmental laws.

We would highlight comprehensive and safe methods to prevent raccoons from digging up your lawn. We would also answer FAQs to enlighten you.

Continue with us to learn how to humanely eliminate raccoons from your lawn.

6 Ways To Prevent Raccoons From Digging Up Your Lawn

Raccoons will always make it to your lawn if you have what they need: food and shelter.

They may not only stop searching for food around but also go as far as digging up your lawn, scattering your garbage, and living in your home.

Learning to stop them is important because they will keep returning if you do not curb them.

It would help to go from simple tactics, such as removing their foods, to more complex tactics, like contacting a pest professional.

Below is a list of realistic and effective ways to prevent raccoons from digging your lawn:

1. Remove Their Food Sources

This is the first and simplest step to prevent raccoons from digging into your lawn. Raccoons are omnivorous animals that can eat anything as long as they like.

Their favorite foods include fish, crayfish, insects, fruits, vegetables, and frogs. Having these meals on your lawn is not farfetched because you might also need them to feed your pets.

However, if you need to keep the raccoons away, it is advisable to remove them from their reach and keep them away.

It may not be enough to remove the food items from the surface of your lawn because raccoons always find their way, so it would help to put them in secure containers they won’t be able to open.

2. Remove Grubs

Normally, grubs are pests you should remove from your lawn because they can damage the grass in your lawn.

It is important to remove the grubs from your lawn because raccoons eat grubs and can dig your lawn so that they can eat them.

To remove grubs from your lawn, you can reduce the moisture in your lawn because they can only survive in wet places.

You can also use natural predators like nematodes to kill them.

3. Plant Herbs That Repel Them

Although some of the favorite meals of raccoons are plants and vegetables, there are certain plants that raccoons cannot tolerate.

Planting these herbs would deter them from coming to your lawn; talk less of digging it up.

Some examples of plants that raccoons hate include cucumbers and squash because of their thorns.

They also detest spicy foods like black pepper and chilies.

Heavily scented plants like onions and garlic are also excellent herbs you can plant to repel the raccoons.

4. Build a Protective Fence

This is an excellent method to ensure that animals, including raccoons, do not enter your lawn to dig up plants.

Protective fences like an electric fence would help protect your fruits and vegetables from the attack of raccoons.

An electric fence is not a fence but strips of electric wire built around the fruits to scare raccoons away.

The electric wire fence is a safe method to put the raccoons away because the shock from the fence is enough to scare them but not cause severe harm.

You can put up an electric strip 6 inches above the ground and another 12 inches above the ground to prevent the raccoons from jumping over it.

However, an electric fence can be dangerous if you have little kids or outdoor pests so you might plant thorny plants instead.

5. Remove Water Sources

Food is not the only thing raccoons search for. They also search for water.

After removing all the food sources of raccoons, you might want to check for water sources too.

You store water when it rains if you have a swimming pool, bird bath, koi pond, or reservoir. It is advisable to cover them with durable material, especially at night.

It would be best if you were more careful with your fish pond because they would look for water there and go fishing.

6. Use Lights and Music on the Lawn

Raccoons are nocturnal animals and get scared in the presence of bright light and loud noise.

This might be because the noise and lights indicate that a predator is around, so it would help to “deceive’ them with the noise, especially at night.

Conclusion

Seeing raccoons dig up your prized fruits and vegetables is not the prettiest sight, and if you do not take active steps to stop them, they will keep doing it.

Some of the things you can do to prevent raccoons from digging your lawn are:

Remove their food sources, remove their water sources, build an electric fence around your fruits, plant herbs they don’t like, use lights and noise to scare them, and kill the grubs in your lawn.