The last two mornings I have come out to find 4 or 5 of my newly planted vegetables dug up out of their holes. The plants themselves appear to be undamaged so I just keep replanting them in the hole that some creature dug it out of.
What could be doing this and what is it looking for? My best bet is raccoons, but I have never heard of them doing stuff like this.
FYI I live in Northern California in the foothills.
Do you have grubs? Last year I had a lot of grubs. For a few days, I'd go out and find that my basil had been dug up -- nothing was eaten, just a bunch of digging around that happened to damage the plants.
I think it was a skunk -- I saw the skunk one day at dusk, not in the garden, but heading towards the fence. I also saw what I believe to be skunk turds in a couple of places around the fence and inside the garden. Skunks like grubs?
When I inspected the entire perimeter, I found a small gap that it must have been getting through. After plugging the gap, nothing was disturbed. My (apparently skunk-proof) fence is mostly 4 and 5' welded-wire, with a couple sections of 4' chicken wire. The bottom isn't buried in the dirt everywhere, but where it isn't buried, I've got rocks piled up on both sides of the base.
