5 Ways to Protect Your Garden from Animals

There have been reports about the alarming rate of stray animals feeding on gardens. One can’t really blame inquisitive and hungry neighborhood animals for showing up in your garden and perhaps sampling a few particularly enticing tomatoes or peppers, and what have you.

Nevertheless, their invasion almost always leaves a negative impact on the garden, leaving garden owners to grapple with the loss. 

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Against this backdrop, we will reveal 5 ways to protect animals from gaining access to your farmland. The five proven ways to fortify your garden are as following:

1. Build A Barrier, A Wall, or Fence 

Neighborhood animals and other wildlife animals can pay unannounced visits to your garden if they can have access to your garden. To prevent them from reaching it, you need to build a garden fence.

Building a befitting fence around your garden will prevent the animals from visiting the garden, let alone feeding on your vegetables uninterrupted. Storables.com has various and unique installing wire mesh fences that are at least 2 to 3 feet high (higher to keep out deer) and buried at least six inches beneath. This will prevent the animal from digging underground holes to access your garden.  

Fencing unarguably is the most effective way to protect your garden from animals and keep unwanted visitors out. A fence that’s two to three feet tall will stop rabbits, although persistent ones may try to burrow underneath. To stop it, you should extend the fence at least a foot long.

Other protective gears like chicken wire, rabbit fence, or hardware cloth, which are the least expensive, are alternatives for small mammals. A deer can’t penetrate a fence that is six to eight feet tall. This will be too high for a deer to attempt.

2. Sprinkle Red Pepper Flakes

The second but effective way to prevent unwanted animals from your garden is, to sprinkle red pepper flakes around your garden. A hot red pepper flake on your garden bed will keep the animals away because if the animal tastes the flake, it will make their mouths feel hot. The hot sensation in the animal’s mouth will deter them from eating your vegetables next time.

Just think about this. If you see iron burning and it becomes red in the color you probably won’t be tempted to touch the object, would you? Forest animals learn this lesson quickly too when they must have tasted the red pepper flakes.

3. Exclude The Animals

Another best and effective way to deny animals accessing your gardens is to exclude them completely, either with a physical barrier or a “mental barrier” (i.e., if you can deter them psychologically, the best). Primarily, there are two obvious options: a temporary or permanent option. 

The fence known as the poly tape will give the animal mild shock because it is embedded with electrical wires or another barrier is scare-goat, a scaring element put in the garden like Mylar balloons showing big eyes or Mylar-ribbon strands, which blow in the wind). 

L-shaped barriers provide a false alarm that discourages enthusiastic digging animals (like woodchucks, skunks) from digging into your garden. You should make sure that you erode the confidence of climbing animals gaining access by creating a wobbly effect in the device.

The point here is, if a fence seems like too much of a hassle, lining your garden bed with wire mesh is a great idea. When you bury the wire mesh in the ground, it will create a cage or a kind of basket that will prevent the animal from eating the root of the plant, thereby keeping the vegetables or root plants safe from the munching jaws of gophers and moles.

4. Mark Your Territory

 It is scientifically proven that animals will stay away from areas where they believe a predator lurks around. If you get urine from carnivorous animals like wolves or foxes, it is better for you because this works like magic.

Also, a sprinkling of human hairs gathered from the hairbrush or barbing saloon in your garden is good. The farm animals will be threatened if they find the aforementioned items around the garden. They will have to turn around and run away from your garden with one whiff of the air.

A few heads up, however. As good as they sound, these urine products are inhumanely sourced (i.e., from fur farms), are of questionable composition, and are not absolutely effective anyway (remember, most animals are accustomed to the smelling dog and cat urine in the environment).

5. Scrap The Trap

Oftentimes, many unhappy gardeners check-up on the “humane” traps to clear their nibbling animal. However, this is a terrible choice, because by doing so, you will have killed many animals. This could lead to the loss of many parent animals, making their younger ones starve and sometimes die as a result. 

So, except you protect your garden, the animal will move in frantically trying to find a place where they feast on the vegetables. Sometimes, dogs in pursuit of these unwanted visitors get knocked down by cars in unknown territory, and such a story sounds more of abuse to the unfortunate dogs.  

Conclusion

Remember, as you build a beautiful house and have a garden within, animals will be attracted to your garden. It is your responsibility to protect your garden, you’ll need to make some home improvements by adhering to my tips. Spraying a hot red pepper on your garden bed is a (no-go area) for the animals. 

Setting up the strap, excluding the animals, and marking your territory pays off. Don’t lose out on eating fresh vegetables, strawberries, and tomatoes, all because you weren’t willing to protect your garden from unwanted guests.

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