skunks

[slugworth]

Skunks ripped up 18 cuke plants last night.
I hate when they do that.
Tried to re-plant
Good thing I always plant massive amounts.

[slugworth]

Forget putting bone meal in any hole for any plant variety.
I have to replant 100% the next morning.

[Setec Astronomy]

How do you know it was skunks?

[karstopography]

Thankfully, no skunks on my grounds. Armadillos are bad enough, but they seldom did vigorously enough in the garden to uproot anything but the tiniest of seedlings.

[slugworth]

One episode years ago I dug the holes for the plants and put bonemeal in,then let things sit for a few days for the striped ones to do their thing.
Then I planted once no more activity in the holes.

[brownrexx]

I never use bone or blood meal for this reason. skunks dig it up every time. One year I found my tomato seedlings ripped out and laying on the ground the day after I planted them with some fertilizer in the hole. I forget what I had used but now if I use anything, it is feather meal which is 12-0-0. My soil test shows an excess of P and K so additional is not needed. Skunks have not dug up my feather meal.

[slugworth]

I didn't use bone meal,but there must have been something in the potting mix that made them dig down to china.
They left the tomato plants alone that I planted weeks ago.

[brownrexx]

I think that they go after other fertilizers besides bone meal. One year I bought some of those fertilizer spikes that you drive down into the ground to feed trees. They dug them up and ate them!

[slugworth]

I think you nailed it.
I used the spikes in a container then recycled the soil for the cukes.

[slugworth]

must be a young skunk.
The old ones suffer from incontinence and drip when they walk not threatened at all.
I can't tell it was around til I see plants out of their ground sockets.

[slugworth]

The heat/drought is causing significant shrinkage on the surviving cukes.
They are puny and curling up like a horseshoe.
At least they are not bitter yet.