Beginners need advice on watering & deterring animals

Hi! This is a new venture for me, both horticulturally & technologically - desperation with an iris "situation" has encouraged me to seek help through this kind of forum, which I've never done on any topic ever before! So here goes: we live in the Toronto area, love irises, planted several over the past 4 years - the Siberians are doing great but the beardeds (I now realize) needed better drainage, less water & more sun, so we prepared 2 new raised beds for them with all of those plus new rich sandy soil ......

1) easier question first: I've just transplanted about 25 rhizomes - one book I consulted said to water them every 2nd day for 10 days then once a week - another book said to water them once, them leave them alone ...... what to do??????

2) starting early this summer, some animal began pulling the leaves off all the irises & digging around the rhizomes - at this point we realized we had to move them all into properly prepared & situated beds - I examined each rhizome, discarded any questionable ones, trimmed off any discoloured leaves, soaked the rhizomes for about 50 minutes in a 10% chlorine bleach solution, dusted them in gypsum, planted them with 3 new rhizomes just purchased, watered them once ......... PROBLEM: some critter continues to come at night and dig them up! - I've tried 2 remedies - lots of human hair (from a local hairdresser), and little cloths soaked in ammonia (the latter having driven a resident raccoon out of my garden shed) - neither of these have helped - each day I go out to find at least 2 or 3 rhizomes (old or newly purchased) dug up again. We have squirrels, skunks and raccoons in the neighborhood. We would not do anything to harm the animals (eg, hot pepper which can get in their eyes) - we haven't tried a physical barrier like chicken wire, but since the raccoons pried their way into a sturdy aluminum garden shed, don't hold out much hope for that) ....... any suggestions would be very welcome! ...... Thanks!

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