Will raccoons eat blueberries?

[143tbone]

So glad you are starting this post. I will be getting back to this on a continual basis but thought I'd kick it off with one of my many questions about blueberries.
I'm in the Puget Sound area, Washington state.

[Mojorabbit]

1. Racoons will eat blueberries

They are very enterprising. I have racoons though and blueberries and they have not been a problem. The birds on the other hand.....

[Ganja Ninja]

2. I'm guessing yes.

When I was a kid the raccoons would eat the corn in my grandfathers garden.

[yellowcanine]

3. Raccoons will eat dang near anything. They are true omnivores.

[aquart]

4. They LOVE sweets! Berries, fruit, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches...

We spilled a basket of blueberries in the garage coming back from the store and swept them outside for the raccoons who ate every one of them. On Long Island.

[emilyg]

6. They love my pound cake.

[shraby]

5. I read where one farmer planted a few rows

of late corn on the outside of his corn patch and earlier corn on the inside. The raccoons would come and check the corn to see if it was ripe and leave if it wasn't. By the time the outer rows were ripe, the rest was harvested.

[independentpiney]

7. Wow, that's a smart idea!

The raccoons outsmarted themselves, and they are really smart critters

[damntexdem]

9. Read "The Architect of Sleep" by Boyett.

http://jabberwockyreviews.blogspot.com/2007/09/steven-r-boyett-architect-of-sleep.html

http://chipuni.livejournal.com/457549.html

[MuseRider]

8. Always plant

enough for you and some more for the critters. It is the only way to keep from being mad and to enable yourself to garden without having to resort to chemicals, traps, shooting (heaven forbid) and all the other things that seem to always fail at one point or the other. I love the idea of planting the corn late outside the garden. I wish I had thought of that one.

Raccoons love everything I have ever planted or stored or spilled or thrown in the garbage lol. Give them a place to eat, put out stuff they like away from your blueberries, preferably close to where they come from like a wooded area if you have one and hopefully that will keep them away, at least a little.

[143tbone]

10. Thanks everybody! N/T

[mac2]

11. Do not feed wild animals

Our aunt had raccoons which she just loved. She got sick and couldn't feed them. They started to climb her screen windows and destroy them. They got pretty angry when they didn't get their food!

She had someone come to remove them since they scared her. They charged her $500 for removal. They kept coming back to remove more. I suspected they were releasing them over and over to make money. As you can imagine it was a real mess...and an expensive one.

[slampoet]

12. When i lived in Seattle there was a racoon HOLIDAY in the Wild Blackberry acre above my house.

The thicket was on a bluff and hard to get to for humans and really too dense a thicket to walk into but the raccoons would be out there every summer night making the happiest sounds. Everytime we'd turn on the flashlight we'd be able to shine 3,4,5,6 even a dozen of them.

Those greedy little things ate so much they left puke piles from their overeating.

[humus]

13. clever critter

this past July, luckily I harvested 90% of berries
before some kind of clever critter got the rest of harvest and all of the leaves from a 6' Blueberry highbush,
it was covered with bird netting too. This year I will have to double-upon netting.
Hope the plant comes back.
A long time ago in a Reader's Digest I read about about a racoon who would sneek into a dairy barn and milk
the cows.

[routerman]

14. Raccoons

The raccoons are really tearing up my blueberry netting I've had in place for almost 15 years. I had to switch from bird netting to metal chicken wire to keep them out............

[hippywife]

15. Is there really

anything a raccoon won't eat? :shrug:

[pscot]

16. Yes, but they prefer pie

n/t

[sandsavage]

17. We are over run with these little and not so little bandits

This works for us. The Three Sisters- corn,squash and pole beans. The squash and beans leaves
cause an intense itching on the hands,legs and arms on humans. It must do the same to those
little hands. It works great. Before we did this,we didn't harvest much corn. The squash runs
between all the rows of corn and keeps the weeds away. The pole beans climb the corn stalks.

Now if I could just find a way to stop the woodpeckers from pecking through the husks and ruining
our corn.

If you try this method. Plant the beans on just the outside row of corn,don't forget the corn on the
end of your corn patch. If you plant all through your corn, you will have a hard time getting through
the bean spider web. Pole beans go everywhere. Squash goes in the middle of the corn patch.

We are old so use the old ways.