It seems like every house in America has three cats, but how do you keep them out of your garden? In this article, we have a complete guide for keeping cats out of the garden throughout all seasons.
The “how to keep cats off gardens” is a guide for how to keep cats out of your garden in 2022. The article also includes tips on how to ensure that you will have a safe and fun time with your cat.
Cats may devastate gardens by devouring and digging up plants, as well as utilizing the soil as a litter box. Cat excrement may be harmful to your health, which is why keeping them out of your garden is critical, particularly if it contains fruits and vegetables. We’ll go through Cats in the Garden: How to Keep Them Out step by step in this post.
Contents
Why Are Cats a Garden Pest?
Before we get into Cats in the Garden: How to Keep Them Out, let’s have a look at how cats might create problems in the first place.
Cats may wreak havoc in the garden in a variety of ways.
The first is by digging up and devouring plants that cats prefer, such as Cat Mint, which looks lovely with its puffy purple blossoms but is sadly a big cat magnet. The major issue isn’t a cat’s digging or devouring of garden plants; rather, it’s their habit of using backyard gardens as their own litter box.
Cat excrement may carry hazardous parasites that you don’t want to expose your family or vegetable garden to because of their carnivorous diets. The embryos of a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii, which has been associated to mental disorder in exposed adults and trouble in school in exposed children, are the most common parasite discovered in cat feces.
When a cat uses your garden on a regular basis, its excrement has a strong odor that may make your yard smell awful (click here to learn how to make your backyard smell better).
Cats in the Garden: How to Keep Them Out
Now that we’ve discussed why you should make an effort to keep undesirable cats out of your garden, we’ll show you how to accomplish it step by step in this part!
1. Make Your Garden Beds More Textured
Cats love soft surfaces where they can readily bury their excrement, which is why you’ll constantly find them taking the toilet in kids’ sandboxes and pawing through sandy kitty litter. This is all due to their natural tendencies to hide their smell from predators. A garden with a thorny surface is less appealing to cats than plain soil.
Fill up the top layer of your soil with…
- Pinecones. Deeply embed a pine cone with the prickly sides up throughout your plants and throughout your yard.
- Eggshells that have been broken. Place eggshells around your plants and the surface of the garden bed with the jagged sides up. Eggshells are not only unpleasant for a cat’s paws, but they also serve as fertilizer for your garden.
- Sticks. A natural cat deterrent is to stack sticks on the top layer of your garden soil.
- Chicken netting. To cover the whole surface of your garden bed, measure and cut chicken wire. Make sure the holes in the chicken wire are the right size to enable enough area for your plants to develop!
- Cayenne pepper or chili powder Cats will avoid your garden because of the pungent, searing fragrance of chili powder or powdered cayenne pepper! Because it’s natural, it’s also safe to use in your vegetable or fruit gardens!
These textures will make a cat look for a more comfy “litter box” elsewhere.
2. Experiment with Special Fencing
Fencing your garden to keep cats out may seem paradoxical, but the appropriate style of fencing may repel feline visitors. You’ll want to put up fence that cats won’t be able to get a hold of. Avoid wooden barriers, which cats may use to get a firm hold with their claws.
Wire mesh fencing with an overhang that is at least 6 feet tall is recommended.
3. Provide a Garden for the Cats
1000 Seeds of Outsidepride Blue Nepeta Catmint Herb Plant
- Catmint flower seed germinates quickly, and if seeded early enough, you may get blossoms the first year. The plant will be covered with flower spikes with numerous little violet blue blooms.
- Catmint is a perennial plant that grows to a height of 12 inches in USDA zones 3 through 9.
- Catnip Nepeta requires well-draining soil to avoid crown rot, although it can withstand drought and heat.
- Trim the plant back once it has bloomed to make it seem neater and to encourage another bloom. The nectar-rich blooms will bring a variety of helpful insects to the yard.
- Sowing Rate: 1,000 seeds cover 20 square feet, or 3 to 4 seeds per plant. Once the threat of frost has gone, sow the Nepeta seeds in the spring.
Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API / Last update on 2022-02-17
Catmint enthrals cats, as we described briefly before in this post. Consider providing your cats their own garden, replete with tasty Catmint and sandy soil, if you’ve done everything to keep them out of the garden. If you have a vegetable or fruit garden, make sure their tiny space is on the other side of the yard from your garden beds.
4. Install a sprinkler system with a motion sensor.
Water is the one thing that cats despise. If there’s one thing cats hate more than being startled, it’s being surprised. Both of these annoyances are provided by a motion sensor sprinkler system, which keeps cats out of your garden!
The Orbit 62120 Garden Enforcer Motion Activated Sprinkler is our favorite motion sensor sprinkler:
Garden Enforcer Motion Activated Sprinkler, Orbit 62120, Black
- 120 degree sensor with three activation modes: night only, day only, and always on
- Water and battery saving using intelligent sensor technologies
- 30 minute timed watering and a 35-foot adjustable impact sprinkler
- With only four AA alkaline batteries, you can activate over 7,500 times.
- The device can be adjusted as plants develop thanks to a sturdy metal tripod that extends the item up to 54 inches.
Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API / Last update on 2022-02-17
The Orbit Motion Activated Sprinkler is a 120-degree sprinkler with three modes: all-day, all-night, and 24/7 to keep cats out of your yard at all hours of the day and night. When there is no motion detected, the clever sensor technology saves battery life by shutting off and automatically and swiftly spraying water as soon as anything passes the sensor.
What We Enjoy:
- Animal movement is detected automatically, and unwary animals are surprised with a spray of cold water.
- For the good quality and features, it is rather inexpensive.
- There are three options for customizing the automated sprinkler modes.
5. Make Your Garden Unappealing to Cats!
Cats have a keen sense of smell, which might be irritated by some plant odors. Lavender and Lemon Thyme are two plants that cats despise, so by scattering a few of these plants across your yard, you may help keep unwanted cats at distance.
Citrusy scents, such as orange, lemon, grapefruit, and lime, are also avoided by cats. To keep cats away from your garden, scatter fresh peels among the beds.
6. Get a Puppy
The rivalry between dogs and cats isn’t going away anytime soon. Whether you currently have a dog or are considering getting one, the mere presence of a dog can deter a stray cat or other neighborhood cats from venturing into your garden. (Just make sure your dog doesn’t dig holes in the beds!)
Last Thoughts
When it comes to Cats in the Garden: How to Keep Them Out, there are a few ways you can go about deterring them. The first is by changing the texture of your garden to make it less soft and more prickly on a cat’s paws. Other ways to prevent cats from coming into your yard is by installing a fence, keeping a dog in your garden, and using citrusy smells and plants that cats don’t like to smell around your garden.
We hope this guidance was helpful, regardless of the preventive strategy you pick!
The “what can you spray around your house to keep cats away” is a question that has been asked by many people. There are different ways to deal with the issue, but this article will go over some of the most popular methods.
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