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Old May 7, 2017   #22
bower
Tomatovillian™
 
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
Posts: 6,793
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When I do fish heads or guts, I prefer to do it all the one day, whether planting or leaving for a season. Digging 'a few days later' is more likely to bring the smell to the top, and then there will be digging!
Basic precautions that help:
- Dig your trench first with a clean shovel - a foot deep
- Add the fish and use the clean shovel to cover with a couple inches of the clean (unmixed with guts!) soil
- Plant as usual and fill it up with the untainted soil using the clean tools.
- Tamp down well, water and then put some big rocks on top, around /between the plants
- Whatever implements touched the fish hose it off and your bucket too, somewhere furthest away from where the fish is actually buried. Pour it on and hose it into the ground, where you don't care if they dig. Not that you're trying to leave a smelly spot either which would encourage animals to explore - if it's hot dig a hole for your discarded fish wash water. Use soap if you like too.

If you are careful enough that there's nothing smelly near the surface, you will outwit the critters. Using rocks around plants and watering them in also hedges your bets against any smell escaping through loose soil, or any animal being tempted to explore the soft fresh dirt.

Rocks are good enough to keep away cats, it's easy to make them too heavy and uninviting bare soil. Coyotes and foxes are the most determined diggers, I have seen them unearth boulders to get at fish below. That is when I buried some fish in the fall - I guess they located it still decaying in spring and were hungry and determined enough. But I have succeeded at least partly with fish here and there in the perennial garden, even with a fox around they didn't get more than a few.

Patrol dogs should keep away critters, but don't forget... they are diggers too!
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