If you’ve spent many days taking care of your lawn, manicuring the grass and tending to your plants then wild animals attacking your garden will understandably make you upset.

Raccoons tear up your lawns in search of food. This food can include grubs which are their favourite, the food can also include worms and other insects. They choose to tear up your lawns because it’s easy to access, your lawn is relatively soft and easy to dig into for them.

Hungry raccoons tearing up your lawns can not only be disastrous to your garden but it can also be bad for your health, so its best to keep them away. If you want to know more about why they tear up your lawn read on.

Why do raccoons tear up lawns?

Raccoons will tear up your lawns and garden in search of food. These animals are smart and have excellent memories, remembering where they can find food. Also, they’re pretty stubborn, if they don’t find food on the surface but smell it under grass they won’t hesitate to dig up your lawns to find it.

One thing they’ll look for in your lawn is grubs. Raccoons will eat a variety of foods but they particularly like eating grubs. How raccoons find grubs is unknown. These animals may be smelling the actual grubs or they may be smelling the faeces that the grubs make. Raccoons have a very good sense of smell, they can smell scents what we humans can’t.

These animals will tear up your lawns because it’s easy to access, your lawn is relatively soft and easy to dig into. Raccoons will rip up chunks of lawn as they look for grubs until they’ve found what they’re looking for or until they’ve dug up your whole lawn. They can even come back the next day or the night after to check if they’ve missed any food.

Other foods that these animals may look for include insects and worms. You may have not seen these insects on your lawn recently but because of their excellent memory raccoons might associate that area with this food.

How do I stop raccoons from tearing up my lawn?

The first thing you can do to is to remove their food source. You can remove the grubs from your lawn by adding beneficial nematodes. The more nematodes you have the fewer grubs you’ll have. Over time, the raccoons will realise that there is no food in your lawn and they will go about their way looking for food elsewhere

One way to keep raccoons out of your lawn is to use garden netting. For this to work you would need to cover the whole perimeter of your lawn. Garden netting will stop raccoons from wanting to step on your lawn as the plastic feeling under their feet will be uncomfortable and irritating. You can also use chicken wire on your lawn in place of the garden netting.

Another way of getting rid of raccoons is to use cayenne pepper on your grass. Raccoons may be used to the smell of garbage but they do not like the smell of cayenne pepper, note: this is a hit or miss but it’s worth a try. Also worth noting: If you use cayenne pepper the spice can get into the raccoon’s eyes and damage them as they try to get it out, use another deterrent if you’re concerned about this.

One repellent method that can also be beneficial to your garden is to use motion activated sprinklers. These animals are active at night so you cannot always be there to shoo them away. The motion activated sprinklers will scare them and blast these bandits as they will walk onto your lawn 

You can also use repellents such as coyote urine to scare them away. Coyotes are predators to raccoons so the smell of their urine will naturally discourage them from wanting to dig up in that area. This is a quick and easy way to keep raccoons away. 

Summary 

In summary, raccoons will tear up your lawns in search of food. This food can include grubs which are their favourite, the food can also include worms and other insects. To ward them off you can use garden netting, coyote urine, cayenne pepper, motion-activated sprinklers or benifitial Nematodes

If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other raccoon related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: how do raccoons find food, why are raccoons different colours, what do urban raccoons eat, why are raccoons nocturnal, why are raccoons protected