How to Keep Pests Out of Your Garden

There are few things as satisfying as a nice garden. Few people can look at a nice flowers or vegetable garden and not be envious. Unfortunately, it is not just the nosey neighbor that takes an interest in your garden, it is those little fury critters that are interested as well. Attracted by both flowering plants and vegetables, mice, moles, rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, and other little varmints can wreck havoc in no time. But here are some simple things to lessen the damage from these unwanted visitors.

My first suggestion would be to get a cat or two or more. Growing up in the country every farm had a lot of cats and for good reason. Cats don’t eat corn or tomatoes, they eat animals. Mice, moles, chipmunks, and the occasional squirrel and rabbit are all on the cat’s menu. A cat or two prowling a yard will not only kill many little varmints but will also repel their presence altogether. Unfortunately, well fed cats won’t necessarily eat what they catch but rather will often simply leave it at your door. Traps can also be used to reduce the number of mice and moles but don’t help to repel them, this is why the cat is the preferred garden protection system.

If for one reason or another a cat is out of the question, here are some other tips. Larger animals such as rabbits, groundhogs, and the like can be live trapped and moved to another area or killed. Avoid doing this in the early spring when most animals have their young. A woven wire / chicken wire fence will also keep these larger varmints out of your garden. Other methods which have various levels of success include introducing predator scents such as coyote, fox, dog, and cat and the placement of fake snakes. Real snakes work too but aren’t as user friendly.

Smaller varmints such as mice are more difficult to keep out of the garden due to their small size. Wire mesh can be used to make a fence but must be buried into the ground and capped in some way to keep the little creatures from climbing over. The use of predator scents as listed above will work to some degree as well. Poisons can be used, but placing poison near a vegetable garden doesn’t appeal to me. Moles actually aren’t too big of a problem most of the time as they primarily eat grubs and insects. However an infestation can result in them burrowing through roots and making the soil collapse and kill or harm the plants. The old method of flooding mole holes and killing them with a shovel seems like too much work, but if you have a serious problem you may have to do this.

While you may never be able to keep all of the varmints out of your garden, you can use these tips to reduce the damage that they may cause.