4 Ways to Keep Cats Away From Your Garden

Seeing cats in the garden trampling and scratching the flower beds, borders, and vegetable garden is unbearable. Even if the gardener is an animal lover, he may want to keep them away without harming them so they don’t cause damage.

Why do cats come into your garden?

There are several reasons why a cat might come into a home or vegetable garden, including:

• the presence of rodents such as field mice, mice, rats, etc.;

• the freshly dug soil for its toilet;

• relaxation on a mulch heated by the sun;

• clawing on vegetation with sufficiently solid bark.

Here are some tips to keep cats away from your garden.

Make cats uncomfortable

The first thing to do is to avoid attracting neighbourhood felines to your garden. To do this, a few basic principles:

No food within their reach! Do not feed them, and protect your garbage cans so that they are inaccessible to stray cats. If you have your own pets, don’t leave any of their food in your yard.

Assuming that cats come onto your property to hunt, take steps to repel rodents, so they don’t become easy prey for their predators.

Properly enclose your garden sheds, garages, and any areas that might provide stray cats a comfortable home.

Protect your garden

One solution to cat control is to allow them into your territory while protecting your garden. You can do this by:

installing a fence of more than 6 meters high;

installing protective netting around plantings;

installing greenhouses to house seedlings, which will prevent cats from digging up young plants;

placing small rose branches between the seedlings.

Use natural odour repellents

Sensitive to odours, using ones that cats hate is one way to scare them away from your garden, and there are plenty to choose from:

condiments: pepper to sprinkle on seedlings after watering, a mixture of water and mustard to spray on plantings, or newspapers soaked in vinegar and placed around your vegetable garden;

plants: we all know catnip attracts cats, but some plants have the opposite effect thanks to smells that cats hate, such as lavender, coleus and ruta graveolens;

Citrus fruits: cats hate their scent! Scatter lemon, orange and grapefruit peels in feline areas;

Cat repellents: available at pet stores, they are made of fox and other predator urine and are safe for pets.

Good to know: using and renewing enough repellents after each rain is essential.

Scare them off!

Several effective and inexpensive methods exist to scare cats away:

Noise: keep cats away with a shrill whistle or aluminum foil, whose noise strongly repels the animal.

Ultrasound: Install an ultrasonic device that will turn on when the cat gets too close.

Watering: Install a motion-sensing watering system, or use a low-pressure hose on the pet yourself. The water is painless for your pet, but it will scare it away from coming back.

Good to know: it is strongly advised not to use bleach as it may attract the neighbourhood cats, who will systematically come and urinate on the bleached surfaces they love the smell of!

Now that you know how to repel cats from your garden, please remember to leave a few words in the comments below.

Read more about gardening:

– Treating Fruit Trees: When Do Pests Attack Fruit Trees

– Controlling Tree Weevil;

– 8 Ways to Protect Your Garden in Winter;

– Building a Ladybug Hotel in Your Garden!

– 8 Ways to Attract Wildlife to Your Garden;

– How to Get Rid of Aphids;

– Techniques and Equipment for Safety Pruning;

– 9 Trees That Grow Fast.