Something is digging up my vegetable plants!

[Tricia]

Something is digging up my vegetable garden.

Twice now, in the mornings, I've found a few small plants dug right out of the ground and pushed away from where they were originally. The plants themselves are not eaten, but something is digging in the soil/compost, probably looking for worms/slugs(?).

Whatever is it has dug around the bell pepper and eggplants primarily, but has also dug around (but not moved) the larger tomato and squash plants as well as a cucumber.

Our garden is fenced with 4' chain link, but my mother's 2 "patio tomatoes" suffered the same damage. Each time, I've been able to replant, but I don't know how many times these plants can take this before they are damaged.

Help!!

Tricia in Dansville, NY

[SPierce]

Chicken wire. it helps

[2cents]

Moles will push plants out of the dround as they tunnel & forage for worms.
do you have mole tunnels?
Its a part of the garden activity here.
I just replant. Once the plants get larger, the tunneling doesnt have as large an impact.

[rainbowgardener]

Did you plant them with fertilizer? If I use any fertilizer with fish emulsion in it, cats and raccoons are guaranteed to did the plants up to get to the fertilizer. It's happened a few times with other organic ferts that (to my knowledge) didn't have fish in it. Occasionally even plants planted just with compost in the planting hole have gotten dug up. Apparently there was something not quite composted that attracted someone - - don't know what that would have been, I'm vegetarian so no animal products go in my compost (including I don't put any manure in it). But maybe some little bit of fruit or veggie residue was attractive to the raccoons who are omnivores, or to the groundhogs.

[applestar]

It's not really easy to guess what the animal might have been. Cats will dig around and poop. Bunnies sometimes dig a shallow bare-soil bowl to lay in. Squirrels dig to bury stuff in.

When is another factor -- during the night? During the day? is it always morning? Patio tomatoes -- were they in the ground or in containers because if containers, likelihood of squirrels increases quite a bit and bunnies become unlikely.

[philjam]

Birds will pull out plants just for fun. We have a hen turkey that scratches a place in the dirt to lay down in.

[mmmfloorpie]

My jalapenos have been bitten off at the bottom of the stem twice now.

[lilmountainlady]

Hi,
The same happened to me once. It would happen at night and the next morning I would find the poor plant laying to the side and the soil had been rummaged through.
I decided to use "chili powder" sprinkled around the plant.
The next morning I could tell that an animal again had tried the soil, but didn't dig up the plant.
I am hoping that "chili powder" wasn't it's favorite taste.

[GardeningCook]

Skunks have fairly often turned up to be the culprits here. They're search for grubs - one of their favorite meals.