BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Container Gardening Keeping Pets out of Container Gardens

How do you keep pets and wild critters out of your container gardens?

For my smaller ones, I put plastic over the top so they can't get into it. For larger ones, there are wire fences and cages that are pretty cheap to keep your prized veggies and herbs save from munchers!

If I didn't take precautions, my cats would certainly either eat the shoots, or think this was a litter box <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I had the most beautiful climbing rose I had just bought and planted. I go in and come back out not 5 min had passed and my dog had eaten the whole thing! She didn't have a cut on her mouth amazingly. Since then I have used mothballs in my flower beds (especially around my roses) to keep my dogs out of the beds. Later my hubby put a fence up to keep them out as you have to keep mothballs out there and if it rains they tend to melt away into nothing.

I have read that you can put citrus peel in containers to keep cats away and my dad swears by putting out freshly cut human hair to keep deer away from gardens. But you have to keep putting it out as the human scent goes away.

Connie in Oklahoma

If you plant pepper plants around the outside of your garden rats, mice, squirrels and cats will stay away because the peppers release hot oils that get on their fur that they have to lick to get off. One or two times of that and trust me they will be telling their friends about your house.

Hey!

These are great ideas! I've never really thought about it because I don't have pets...only the occasional deer that happens to pass by and believe me, I've got several tricks to keep them away. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I live near a small zoo, so I go and pay a donation and get a bag of tiger doo, or just any kind of poop it works like a charm and doesn't fade as fast in the rainy season.

Tiger doo! Now that's a new one on me! <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

I guess that's why my dawg "marks" her territory, the perimeter of the yard, with special attention being paid to the routes of her "enemies," the raccoon and the skunk. As neither of them bothers my plants, I'm inclined to let them be, but Daisy is so affronted that they travel through her land.

Tiger dung. Whatever will intrepid gardeners think of next?