You have planted your flowers and your vegetables, and you can’t wait to see how beautiful your garden is and taste your fresh vegetables. Suddenly your dog starts going nuts and you look out into your yard to see a stray cat going through your freshly planted garden. You are NOT happy. But you love animals, and you don’t want to hurt the cat. So, what can you do?
Stray cats are a problem in many places, and they can do a lot of damage to a garden. If you have a garden and you have found evidence of a stray cat going in and out of it, using it for a litter box, don’t despair. There are a few things that you can do to help your flowers and vegetables stay cat free.
Keeping Cats Out of Gardens – Texture
A cat will prefer a garden with dry, soft sand or dirt. Anything that is bristly or pointy is going to help with deterring them. Some of the things that you can use on or in the dirt are:
- Chicken wire on your dirt
- Chopsticks
- Eggshells
- Plastic forks with their tines up
- Pinecones
- Stone mulch
- Plant stakes made of plastic
- Plastic netting
- Straw mulch
Keeping Cats Out of Gardens – Scent
There are a variety of non-toxic, safe scents that aren’t liked by cats, so they usually avoid them:
- Black pepper
- Coffee grounds
- Fox urine
- Cayenne pepper
- Mustard powder
- Tea leaves (used)
- Orange peels
Plants:
- Lavender
- Geranium
- Rue
- Lemon thyme
Essential Oils (mix 1 oil/3 water then spray the mulch)
- Lemongrass
- Eucalyptus
- Lavender
- Tea tree
- Peppermint
- Orange
- Citronella
- Anise
Even though you may have heard or seen this on other websites, you shouldn’t use mothballs since they’re toxic. Fish meal, bone meal, and blood meal aren’t good to use either since they’re toxic.
Keeping Cats Out of Gardens – Water
Motion-activated sprinklers
These are just some of the things that you can do to help your garden to stay free of stray cats. We hope that you found this to be useful and that you will enjoy a cat-free garden. If you are looking for more gardening tips or you want some help with your garden, contact us. We are glad to hear from you and give you a quote.
