I recently planted some tulip bulbs and something is digging them up every night. Every morning I find them dug up and the bulbs scattered about but not damaged. What could be causing this and how can I eliminate this problem?
Not sure about night, but squirrels will dig up bulbs, apparently just for sport. Ever see the excellent TV commercial for Post-It notes? The squirrels have them stuck on their walls to help them remember where they hid nuts in the past.
One way to deal with it is to lay chicken wire under the top inch of soil. The leaves of some bulbs (but not tulips) are skinny enough that if you need to lift off the wire later in the season, you can just pick it straight up. For tulips, you'd need to snip bigger holes in the wire. However, tulips have no problem growing UP through the existing holes.
In article , snipped-for-privacy@comcast.net (Bill Smith) wrote:
It's not likely to be chipmunks, groundhogs, or squirrels because they'd dig in the daytime, & wouldn't leave the bulbs unnibbled, and flying squirrels which do hunt seeds & whatnot by night can't dig holes.
Tulip bulbs occasionally annoy moles, who rarely or never eat them, but apparently find something garlic-like about them that is unpleasant. They will shove them to the surface undamaged as a cleaning exercise in their tunnels, tunnels which can otherwise go entirely unnoticed since not all moles reveal any evidence of their presence, & there's almost always only one mole per territory so easy to remain unnoticed (unless its a Townsends, the variety that most angers gardeners making scores of large mole hills). I had an Olympic mole completley undetectable unless I lifted up one of the largest stepping-stones exposing part of a circuitous tunnel. That mole industriously shoved gregeii tulip bulbs to the surface leaving them exposed but unharmed, plus any other bulb would be ejected from the soil IF it had gone to rot, so it removed for me a rotten smelly cyclamen tuber & some yucky narcissus bulbs, but didn't bother any of those that were healthy. The tulips though it just didn't like any of those in its ground. I just moved the greigeii tulips & the mole was no problem thereafter, it neatly aerated the soil without harming a thing. But in another year a mole took a serioius dislike to jack-in-the-pulpit tubors & shoved quite large ones to the surface; that was the only year I began to dislike moles a bit, & was glad when the cat got that one (any vacated territory attracts a new mole to take over so there's always one present, but the new resident never bothered the jack in the pulpits -- these critters can be very individualistic).
Skunks will dig up bulbs at night, but they're really looking for grubs or worms, so won't eat the bulbs. Raccoons & even dogs will dig up bulbs then not very likely want to eat them. A digging carnivore is your most likely culprit if you used some dead-animal-product to fertilize when planting, as it's the bonemeal or fishmeal, not the bulbs per se, that fools these carnivores into believing they smell something tasty in the ground, which they disappointedly leave behind when it's a nasty tulip bulb instead of meat. A non-animal organic fertilizer like kelp doesn't usually attract them. Retroactively ridding the surface of attractive odors, with a layer of fresh sterile compost, might keep them from detecting the edible-smelling bone or fishmeal you put in the hole with the bulb, or a sprinkling of cayene pepper usually deters them, renewed after every rain for a while, until the scent of meat lessons after a week or two. And in the future, if you have such industrious carnivors in your area, don't used animal-based fertilizers for bulbs. Kelp's just as good though pricier.
The most comman animal to dig up crocus bulbs are mice. Mice only rarely eat tulip bulbs which aren't as tasty & in most cases not small enough for the mice to haul away. If they did manage to dig up tulip bulbs, they might leave them with barely a nibble because they'd rather have crocuses (some of which are so tasty even people will eat them). An area with mice that have learned to dig crocuses can be impossible to establish spreading, naturalized drifts, though the original parent bulbs can be placed deeper than the mice can dig, and that might work for tulips too, most of which would do perfectly well if planted eight to ten inches deep rather than the commonly recommended five to eight.
The usual recommendation where diggers are concerned is to lay chicken wire over the surface. That sure wouldn't work in my garden, & it wouldn't work where an annoyed mole is pushing bulbs to the surface to be rid of stuff the nuisance-human keeps jabbing into its subterranean territory.
-paghat the ratgirl
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