We've never had a problem with alfalfa, or alfalfa tea -- but when we use horse manure, or fish emulsion, the roses in the main yard don't get any.

We once bought a bunch of Mills Magic Rose Mix. What a DISASTER.
The Dalmatians ate every scrap of the stuff.
The only GOOD thing I can say about that adventure is that it sure firmed up the solid waste output.

Jeri

That is what i am thinking today as i am fertilizing the yard and roses today. I am using milorganite,bone meal, and sulpomag. I am really curious as to what critters may come calling with all that bonemeal!

My roses are new this year, and I put some bone meal around them. The dogs went digging happy. They would even roll in the soil under the roses, so after replanting some of my roses I just used compost. Next year I will either have to put up some sort of fence or use regular fert..

Years ago I tried blood meal and bone meal. The neighbors black labrador dug up my plants out front and skunks,bears or raccoons dug up bulbs out back!!! :0) Horse manure smells a lot when first put down, but I get no reaction from the wildlife. It can also be made into a tea. Fish emulsion is sprayed onto foliage to keep the deer from eating it and it works as a fertilizer the wildlife leave alone. It must vary, reading prior posts....

I use Rosetone. I have to water it in well right after I put it down, and even then I have to watch my dogs and stop them from eating it. What I did last time was have my husband walk around behind me with the hose while I spread the fertilizer. If I can keep them away from it for a day then they'll lose interest. I tried blood meal once to keep the rabbits away from my raspberries and my dog was so excited that she dug up my raspberry plant and ate it. I found out what she had done when she threw it up inside the house (it was also covered in hot pepper spray).

Use a spading fork or dibble to make deep holes around the drip line of the bush. Carefully pour the dog treat fertilizer in the holes then cover the holes with soil. Besides getting it down to the root area, the covering soil may cover the smell of the products enough so the critters don't bother them. A light sprinkle of household ammonia or some moth balls or crystals over the area will also mask the smell.

I use Rosetone too...I follow the package and scratch it into the soil around the roses. I then re-cover the area with mulch. I have not had a problem withmy 3 dogs getting into it (they sniff, that's all...) or with my cats either (a couple like to come outside visit the rose garden as there are some catnip plants around the edges)...

This thread is a hoot! I thought it was just my dogs - Roscoe, Daisy, Rufus and Raleigh that went crazy for fish emulsion. I would have guessed it was a "cat thing" but they chewed the top off the jug of FE and licked as far down into the jug as they could get their tongues too. I've started putting the FE out just before it rains and yes, sometimes while it's raining. It doesn't rain often enough these days but it seems to help the problems with the dogs by diluting the smell, I guess.

I only put out the alfalfa, blood meal, & bone meal in the form of the alfalfa brew that stews in a garbage can for a couple of weeks in the hot sun. The dogs will smell around it but they don't try to eat it like they do when I put it out straight from the bag.

Yesterday I found my mini Schnauzer Raleigh eating a honeydew melon rind (covered in coffee grounds too) that he stole from the compost bin. I think he's part goat.

Our dog loves to get into my bag of bonemeal. I only use Bonemeal at planting time (in the hole) and to be safe put a wire cage around it until established. She doesn't seem to be attracted to rosetone (or tree tone, it's cheaper). Those are the only 2 fertilizers I generally use for roses. More than that is more work than I need (but when I spread it I really use a lot (50lbs of treetone all in May).

Thanks for all the advice. Obviously, I'm not the only one with perpetually hungry dogs. It always amazes me what they'll consider food. I won't even try fish emulsion. I laughed myself silly with Hoovb's story about his dogs licking open the bottle. It's a good thing our dogs can't see this post--they'd get ideas from each other!

Using the fork to dig holes is a good idea. I'll have to try that this winter.

Debbie

After reading all this, I am very happy to be a cat person!

I've had the same problem. My yellow lab eats Rose Tone, Mills Magic, you name it. Mixing fish emulsion is a drag--and expensive. The one thing she won't go near in the house is citrus. She hates the smell of a lemon or an orange peel. Maybe I should just pour diluted orange juice on top of the Rosetone. Do you think that would make the soil around a rose too acid? I may still experiment next spring.

Cats have far more discerning taste.

Like Karl I put the organics "underground"; if soil is damp a broom handle makes a nice deep hole. Rather than moth balls/crystals which might be toxic to some lifeforms, I scatter chopped orange rind and coffee on the surface of the soil and THEN I put the mulch back. Now I'm up to 40 roses I've divided the garden in three sections, as thw whole operation is mighty time-consuming!

Barbara -- Underground is vulnerable, here.
If a Dalmatian wants something, and the something is located below ground,
the Dalmatian takes direct action:

{{gwi:317648}}

Jeri

I don't have roses I have rabbits. My dog is a rescue, only about 2 yrs old. She will fly over a fence after a rabbit, day and night. I've tried everything to keep the rabbits away but the dog loves all that fertilizer stuff like crazy. Any advice?? Help!!

My problem is wildlife. Years ago, I made the mistake of using fish emulsion. It attracted badgers like mad. They did terrible damage, uprooting roses right and left, ssssatering all my bark mulch all over the place, even moving big stepping stones, because they are extremely territorial, and it was SO hard to oust them. I had to spend two years re-inforcing my fence with a sort of double-apron of metal mesh on either side,held down by plants growing through it and stapling it to logs, because badgers are formidable diggers. Ever since, I won' touch any animal-based fertilzer, aside from manure. Fact is that badgers like carrion,so rotting fish and bone or blood is attractive to them. So I just use alfalfa, cracked corn,and manure . Algae stufis very expensive here in Italy.

I've not had this problem, but would intensely hot ground red pepper mixed with a dry organic, like Milorganite, stop the domestic or wild munchers and rollers? I wonder if the ground red pepper would burn rose roots? If you think my suggestion would work, experiment with a very limited amount of rose bushes...perhaps trying the experiment out with your least favorite roses, or even on non-rose bushes or perennials.

Moses

Moses, I just don't dare. The badgers did not just go for specific plants-it's the general smell that pulls them in, and once in, they hunt and dig for voles, grubs, etc. As I wrote before ,once they decide that your garden is their territory,they lord it over everything,probably dig for earthworms,too. They'd smell the organic matter through the pepper smell easily,dig down searching for the, for example, bone meal, and even if-and it is one HUGE "IF"-the pepper was pungent enough to repel them-that plant would still be badly disturbed and damaged. And then they'd just move on to another plant and dig around for the grubs, etc....no, no, not worth the risk, no way.

I'm currently dog-less, but I have had terrible problems with raccoons and organic fertilizers. After I'd used organics, the raccoons not only destroyed/uprooted several young roses in the garden, they de-potted almost every rose in my pot ghetto. "Unpotted" is the proper word, but it doesn't convey the sheer mayhem the varmints unleashed. I have forgotten the exact number of roses they attacked, but the incursion continued until either the fertilizer smell dissipated or they had eaten it all, I'm not sure which. But as a second act, when they could no longer get it in the garden, the raccoons evidently smelled it stored in my garage. I kept the Root-tone, fish emulsion, etc, stored in one of those large (64 quart, I think) plastic tubs, WITH THE LOCKING HANDLES. The little bandits unlocked both ends of the lid, pulled every bag and bottle out, and proceeded to scatter and spill it all over the garage. They chewed the bottles of emulsion until they got their apertif to precede their main course. Where the fish emulsion mixed with the Root-tone, it formed a concrete-like mess that stank to high Heaven (or maybe it was low H*ll) and was impossible to fully remove. The stain is still there. The garage stank for YEARS every time it rained.

Oh, John.

Raccoon are very good at opening latches. Sliding locks, eye hooks with springs, etc. . On my old chicken coops I went through several different locks/latches for the doors. They could even figure out a carabiner clip. They couldn't figure out the locking carabiners that had a piece that screws up over the part that presses in thus preventing it from opening. You have to screw it on tight though. Thats what I use now lol.

We have a lot of wildlife here too that love smelly things. Possums are pretty bad and love to dig. Coyotes will also dig in the garden. Our livestock guardian dogs will bark at them but the Coyotes are smart enough to know the dogs can't get out of the goat pastures so they thumb their noses and dig to their hearts' content. I had some alfalfa pellet/tea that soaked most of the yr in a 5 gallon bucket with the lid on. I had forgot about it. I finally dumped it on the roses and lord it smelled like raw sewage!! I about puked. It bought out all the diggers for awhile. Roses loved it though.

John, your racoons remind me of the badgers...the utter havoc that some critters make is unbelievable. Also, the determination. During my Badger War, once I had most of the fence re-inforced, they started digging under this big ugly sort-of shed that the former owner of my land had built. I would've sworn that the ground on which it's built was solid rock, but somehow, a badger managed to dig into this literally rock-hard ground in order to get into the garden-and this was about 2 years after I'd stopped using any animal-based fertilizers.