Electric fence is the only thing that works. Get a good charger, set a
proper ground rod, and put two wires, one at around 3" and one at 9".

"Tim B" wrote in message
. ..
Our garden is about 20 feet from a small woody place, which is just
because
that's the only place it can go. Every year we have awesome sweet corn
development until it's almost ready to pick, and suddenly all the ears are
gone. I figure it's raccoons, as none of the stalks were bothered except
for one year, so it's probably not deer.

Last year we got our entire back yard enclosed with split rail fence with
a
wire liner too small for raccoons, and that had little effect on the
disappearance of corn.

I've tried tying the ears inside of school lunch bags and that is of some
limited help. I've thought of making a big cage out of chicken wire and
PVC
pipe. Short of that, is there anything you've seen that has a proven
ability to protect the corn?

Follow-up question: this year we should have strawberries. Do raccoons
like to pilfer these too?