Keeping Animals out of Your Garden

Keeping Animals out of Your Garden

Keeping animals out of your garden can be difficult especially if you live in an area frequented by wildlife. In current times, humans and animals are required to live peacefully with each other. Some people have to deal with wildlife intruding their homes and destroying their gardens.

When looking at ways of keeping animals out of your garden, you have to make sure that not only does your garden stays intact and beautiful but that you also don’t cause any harm to the animals. 

The post looks at a few solutions that you can employ to keep your garden looking great throughout the year.

Keeping Animals Away with Repellants

For the most part, animals particularly wildlife are usually a joy to observe, there are times though when certain animals such as squirrels can become a nuisance.  Annoying, if they have taken an interest in the haven of greenery and colorful flowers that you have taken a great deal of time to grow.

When discouraging animals from destroying your garden, you ought to think about the senses that they depend on and use these as a deterrent. The majority of animals have a superior sense of smell and often amazing hearing. You can make repellants that play on these elements.

Repellants that play on scent are almost certainly the most effective. Strong smells such as garlic, baby powder, chili powder, or rotten eggs all interfere with the animal’s ability to smell the plants that they like to eat.

It is important to reapply these smelly things when they wear off or after heavy rainfall. You can also spray repellants for example; mix water with hot pepper onto plants will make them unappetizing to the animals that enjoy them.

Plant Repellants

Animals don’t like the smell of some plants. Planting such plants at in the garden will act as a natural repellant and keep them out of the garden. Some of the plants that repel animals include daffodils, marigolds, and boxwood.

You can also establish the plants along the sides of your garden if you don’t want to include them inside the actual garden. However, it’s important to note that some animals might still invade your garden despite incorporating these plants.

Visual and Audio Repellants

If you prefer to use repellants that play on the visual and audio senses you can consider items such as the scarecrow, motion detectors with a spotlight, and radios. These devices will scare the animals causing them to flee.

The only downside to these repellants is that the animals soon learn that no real threat exists and will wander back to munching on their favorite part of your beautiful garden. One way to make the effect of the devices last a bit longer is to change their location so that whatever animal is entering your garden will not know from which direction the light or sound will come from.

 Animals are very intelligent and will learn from experience. Whatever manner they were stopped they will often remember it and stop or simply try to find another way in. It is safe to say that you might need to be on your toes because you may have a bit of battle ahead of you.

When you choose your repellants, it is important to remember to choose those that are safe to use around children and pets. The goal is to deter the animals from eating your garden not trying to bring about harm to the animal.

Keeping Animals out of Your Garden with Fences

Although fences are very expensive and take a lot of work to set up, they are a viable option for excluding certain types of animals especially wildlife from your garden. With a fence, you have the option of enclosing your entire yard or certain sections that prove troublesome. Whichever method you decide it is important to create the fence that will effectively keep out the wildlife that is eating your garden.

Protecting Bulbs/Seeds from Animals

Animals love digging up bulbs not only of flowers but also of vegetables. If you are not cautious, you can easily have your garden destroyed and all the hard work put to waste.

 One of the ways of protecting bulbs and seeds is using covering materials such as hardware cloth. The material provides a great barrier to use for protecting your plants. You can use this when you plant your bulbs. It is advisable to get one with ¾” hole spacing in it because it will allow the bulbs to sprout right through the spaces. The hardware cloth protects the bulbs by keeping them out of the reach of animals.

 If that is not an option for you there is always the old screen trick. With this method, you can take an old screen and lay it over the planted area. The method is effective because it allows the bulbs to get rain, air, and plenty of sunlight but makes it difficult for the animals to get through to your bulbs.

 Another option is to plant the bulbs or seeds deep – this will discourage burrowing, as most animals will only dig no deeper than 6 inches. If you plant the bulbs a few inches deeper than six inches, the animals may simply give up and leave your bulbs and garden alone.

However, the method of planting deep might not be ideal for plants that require you to establish them near the soil surface and not too deep. Some varieties will not do well if planted too deep. An example is flowers that will delay to flower because they were planted too deep.

Conclusion

Keeping animals out of your garden is possible but it’s safe to say it’s not always an easy task. You have worked hard on your garden and if you have animals working just as hard to enjoy it, try the various repellant methods mentioned. It will ease your frustration and bring your garden back to life.

When dealing with persistent animals, you might have to use more than one of the suggested methods and sometimes even a combination of several methods. If you liked this post on keeping animals out of your garden or found it helpful, please share it and also follow us on Pinterest for more helpful posts.