Cats, Rabbits, Birds and anything other Critter that can ruin you Garden

[maggiespice]

So this week my DH made a beautiful raised garden for me. We dug the weeds by hand, tilled by hand, got the top soil that was needed, so it was a real labor of love. Then yesterday when I went to check things out there were THREE mounts of Cat poop that was there waiting for me. Oh, I was disgusted.

I told my DH, that I will not plant and have my veggies ruined by animals. So.......

He got to work and made a complete covering over the entire garden. It is good and sturdy and the best part is when I checked today there was no cat messes to clean up, so it worked like a charm!!! (I guess we could of tried other methods, but I don't think I would have wanted to "test" these and have my veggies destroyed.)

So I planted everything, beets, carrots, Que's, radishes, onions, etc, etc, Yup the works.

[Shwa Girl]

we had the cat poop too from neighbour's cats
we sprayed with vinegar
after a few times spraying with pickling vinegar, they pooped at their home

The cats kept visiting. When we had the rabbits, the cat took care of them.

Birds are pretty good. They wait for us to finish mowing or digging so they can access worms more easily.

[walkonby]

smart move to cover it like that! These animals/pests can really depress you after the amount of work ( and cost ) it takes to make that initial investment into gardening. Best of luck with everything you planted!! Sounds wonderful.....Mmmmm.....beets!

[maggiespice]

Thank you so much! It has been almost 2 weeks since I have planted and the covering is doing it's job very well, as the other day I seen animal hair on the netting so I know it is keeping critters out!!!!!!

[lecale]

We have raised beds and lots of neighbourhood cats and squirrels. Our solution was to take 300 bamboo skewers and put them in the bed pointy side up. If anything jumps in the bed, they get a nasty surprise and exit immediately. The squirrels won't dig either because the bamboo skewers tie up the soil.

We now have a fox in our neighbourhood and DH is excited. He only sees it as garden-positive.

[maggiespice]

Yeah, I put small sticks in at first, but I found that they took up a lot of space. Bamboo would have worked much better, but I had lots of sticks on hand. I actually have a smaller raised garden as well for my rhubarb. I have sticks in that one but because I only use it for the rhubarb, a few flowers and two clumps of basil there was plenty of room to add the twigs in.