Mom 4 Life
It Worked 4 Me

Keeping Cats out of the Garden by Kristina B.

July 07, 2009

Let me tell you a little story that happened a few years ago, not long after we bought our house.  The previous owner had put in some hardy plants in the back corner of the yard and made it a little garden area of about 4'x2'.  Cute.  But I wanted an herb garden more than I wanted a grouping of whatever was drought resistant and struck the previous owner's fancy.

I went out and worked hard, digging up the old plants to prepare for my herb garden.  It took a while, but I was happy.  I bought some seeds and returned to the spot a few days later to find, to my horror, someone's cat had used the place I was about to plant as a litter box.  If you don't know much about gardening, that's bad.  Very bad.

Why is it so bad?  Well, cat feces carry all sorts of nasty things that can contaminate the soil.

I was startled and angry and disappointed and gave up on my little corner garden right then and there.

Fast forward a couple of years.  Husband and I decided that we wanted to plant a sizable herb and veggie garden around the border of our house.  Again, we had to figure out a way to keep the kitties away from our growing soil.

We did three things together that seemed to work pretty well:

1. Wood mulch.  The soil in our area is very sandy, and this helps to change the texture of the dirt, making it less attractive to cats.  We spread it across our whole garden area, not leaving any of the sandy dirt exposed.

2. Coffee and tea grounds.  We drink coffee and iced tea pretty often at our house, so I open up the used tea bags and put the tea grounds in a bowl with used coffee grounds.  Every few days I sprinkle the contents of the bowl onto the garden surface.  Cats don't like it.

3. Orange peel.  We are blessed to have our very own orange tree.  When they are in season, I take some of the orange peels, sliced into slivers, and sprinkle on the garden surface.  Cats don't like that, either.

In the end, our garden has been left alone by the cats.  An occasional squirrel will dig in it but not cause any serious trouble.

Now if only we could find a way to keep cats from using other areas of our property…

Keeping Cats out of the Garden by Kristina B. appeared first on Mom4Life Blog.


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