Does anyone have any ideas how to keep small animals such as chipmunks and gophers from digging holes and burying food in plant containers? I've planted twice this spring and have lost quite a few plants to being dug up and trampled by chipmunks. Thanks!
keeping out pests from containers
Well, it's definitely not gophers! They live underground and wouldn't have any way to get in your containers, and wouldn't be burying things even if they could get in the containers. They dig around underground and munch on plant roots. If your critters are burying food in there it could be squirrels, I can't count the number of baby walnut trees I used to get popping up in my containers because squirrels had buried a nut in there. To stop them, I started taking that black plastic bird netting and putting that around the top of the container. No more problems after that--I'm sure they could chew through the plastic netting if they wanted to, but they never bothered. Hardware cloth or other wire mesh material ought to work too.
Sounds strange...but old panty-hose works good too. :)
I use red cyanne pepper and/or red pepper flakes. I tried regular ground black pepper but that didn't stop them. They hate the cyanne pepper though. I ran out of the cyanne so I bought red pepper flakes this morning. They don't like it either.
One stupid thing I did though was use chili powder one time as that was all I had. I put it around my seedlings and didn't realize out of ignorance and stupidity that chili powder usually has some degree of salt mixed with it. Burned all my seedlings up. Didn't even have to chew out the squirrels that time. :-{
Gravel works pretty good and it doesn't have to be big nor deep. Why dig through gravel when there are so many other places to dig in?
Yep, I second the gravel idea. Works like a charm ;)
You can get bridal veil netting very cheap in fabric stores. Walmart even carries it here. Nice wide width too.
Blood Meal works good, but will need to be re-applied after a rain