How to stop Raccoons from Getting into a Garden?

http://www.dogster.com/lifestyle/dog-safety-health-raccoons-threat-to-dogs-ask-a-vet
T_T

That simile killed me :P

Thank you for the laugh!

less Mahatma Gandhi

are you sure:

View attached image.

View attached image.

Probably wouldn't work anyways. Our family tried trapping raccoons that would come into our yard. Some of them were able to break out of the metal trap...

Weed?

I'm sorry, I still have to disagree with this approach:

My idea was that temporarily offering something easier and more desirable to eat would get them in the habit of looking for an easier meal

This is training the raccoon, but the raccoon's perspective on this may be very different from yours. From a raccoon's perspective, finding a source of strawberries that requires crawling under chicken wire that will snag it and an electric fence that will zap it is not so different from it finding a source of blackberries that require it crawling under vines that will snag it. It's using the same foraging skills that it might still be using to find food elsewhere. The raccoon's just being opportunistic in exploiting OP's weak fencing - it's still acting like a wild raccoon, just braving the dog and electric fence because a garden's a dense concentration of food and a safe space to chow down (the dog won't cross the electric fence).

Chowing down on kibble from a bowl is something very different from foraging. It is training the raccoon to look for this kind of food as an easy meal as you say. It's a type of food it won't find in the wild, in a container that a human has set out for them (with some human scent still accompanying it). This is further away from its natural foraging behavior and much more like a spoiled house pet. This is the opposite direction you want to go with a wild raccoon.

In step one, you get the raccoon accustomed to eating pet food; in step two, you take this mana away without replacing it with another food source, so the raccoon, rather than going back to the 'torture' of the garden or the very similar blackberry bush looks for another bowl of pet food. Step three is him finding it in someone's back yard, garage, or kitchen by crawling into their their doggy door. You've replaced the minor problem of a raccoon acting as a wild raccoon in someone's garden with a raccoon trained to expect pet food as its primary food source then leaving it to seek it out on its own. The only places it can find the food you've conditioned it to eat are going to bring it into direct conflict with pets and humans. That seems as inevitable as it does undesirable - am I missing something?

As to making the food inaccessible, hanging gardens have to hang from something, and raccoons are able climbers, so I would recommend proper fencing: dug down deep enough to prevent the raccoons from burrowing under, strong enough posts and fencing material to withstand deer as well as raccoons, with a close enough spacing that a raccoon can't squeeze through. Standard no-climb fence may have too large an opening to block a raccoon - it's easy to back it with chicken wire hex, if the raccoons can still get through. Pressure-treated 4x4s are maybe $20 a pop (if deer took down the previous fence, OP may need something sturdier than T-posts), and a hundred feet of no-climb fence is less than $200, while chicken wire tends to be cheaper. It adds up, but you can enclose a large garden for far less than the cost of a greenhouse.

Inb4 someone reading this thread decides to make a Plants vs. Raccoons game and dumps it on Greenlight

I grew up on a farm, myself, and my father shooting coyotes attacking livestock was part of that. Deer and raccoons have been an occasional nuisance, but for us the best solutions have been to deny them the food they're after by securing it. I suspect that will be OP's best bet, too. Even if you trap and relocate a raccoon and it doesn't find its way home, there will be other deer, raccoons, etc., going after the garden. A good fence will protect against all of them, will last for years, and will cost less than hiring a professional trapper (possibly multiple times).

There would be more mothers with kits out there..it's not like they will go extinct anytime soon

Neither is the domestic dog going to go extinct if you take a nursing golden retriever away from her puppies. Relocating an animal is one thing, in terms of what people are comfortable with; realizing its young may starve as a result is something that fewer people are ready to accept. It's something they may not realize when thinking they're doing the animal a favor by moving it to a more natural setting.

if you know there is an endangered species there..take it elsewhere

Point being of course that you don't know there's an endangered species there - that's why it's one of the reasons why many places require you to get permission to relocate an animal from Fish & Game.

If it's another animal's territory then they will have to fight for it. Nature is the best isn't it?

I wouldn't call that nature, given that its a direct result of human action putting the animals in conflict. Take red ants and dump them into a hill of black ants and they'll fight, but it seems to me more a human action causing problems for wildlife than wildlife just being itself.

In any case, if OP goes for the trap and relocate option instead of fencing, I think you hit the nail on the head in advising he contact a professional.