Keep Animals Out of Your Garden
One sure-fire way to keep animals out of your garden is to fence it in & lock it up like Fort Knox, razor wire and all. But most of us have to settle for some old wire fencing or homemade sprays to keep animals out of our gardens. Whether your animal pests are deer, chipmunks, rabbits, raccoons or even your next door neighbor's favorite pet, there are a few things you can do to keep them out of the garden. Even if money is a little tight.
Tips to Keep Animals Out of Your Garden
- If your neighbor's cat or dog uses your flower or vegetable garden as a litter box, keep a garden hose with a sprayer handy in the area they visit most often. When you catch them making a mess of your garden beds, give them a good high-spray soaking. Hopefully they'll learn quickly to leave your garden beds alone.
- Sometimes, with neighborhood pets, you can get away with just acting like you're throwing something at them and yelling wildly at the same time. Who knows, maybe your neighbor will hear you and take action to see their pet doesn't visit your garden again. Or, you could just politely speak to them about it.
- Deer can jump high fences even from a standstill. Some people have success with keeping deer out of the garden by tying fishing line around the garden and then tying bright marking tape on the line. It supposedly confuses the deer and they look for greener pastures.
- Keeping raccoons out of the garden is a bit of a trick. Sometimes you have to resort to electric fencing to keep them out. If your garden is away from the house, you could try electric fencing powered by a solar charger. The solar chargers have come down in pricing quite a bit and are now affordable for even the most frugal backyard gardener.
- Rabbits are pretty easy to keep out of the garden if you can find some old fencing or chicken wire. Just pound in some fencing stakes, wrap the fencing around the garden and you're pretty much set.
- For smaller animals like chipmunks and squirrels, or even rabbits if the fencing option isn't on the table, you may have to try homemade plant sprays. You can find homemade plant spray recipes all over the web and then experiment with one that works best for your garden plants.
