What Can I Use to Keep a Cat Away From My Flower Bed?
Cats, like many children, like to play in dirt. Unfortunately, cats, unlike most children, also use dirt as their toilet. When the prime excretory real estate is the flower bed you've so carefully tended, it's particularly unfortunate. Cat urine can kill flowers, and no one wants to come across a souvenir of the neighborhood tom when they're wrist-deep in their topsoil. Luckily, plenty of humane options are available for protecting your flower bed. Does this Spark an idea?
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Smelly
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Offending cats' keen sense of smell is a surefire way to keep them away. They hate the smell of citrus, so you can chop up the peels of oranges, lemons, grapefruits or other citrus fruits and scatter them throughout the dirt of your little garden plot. Add new ones every week or so; the old ones will decay so you don't have to worry about retrieving them. Another option is to empty out your used tea bags, sprinkling the leaves over the soil.
Ron Smith, a horticulturist at North Dakota State University's extension service, suggests a mixture thought up by a German gardener. It includes two parts red pepper, three parts dry mustard and five parts flour. Cats will stay away from areas where you put this powder. The same German also created his own plant, coleus canin, to keep cats away. You can ask about it at your nearby garden center, but you might have to mail-order it from Germany.
Startling
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A motion-activated sprinkler system should only have to go off once or twice to deter cats with bad intentions. They generally don't like water, and they definitely don't like surprises. Likewise, you can find machines that make noises that are unpleasant to cats but that you can't hear, and you can set them up to be motion-activated.
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Deterring
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Whether cats are playing or going to the bathroom, they scratch and dig around in the dirt. If you make it hard for them to do this, they'll go elsewhere. Take a section of wooden lattice and lay it flat on the dirt of your flower bed, arranged so the flowers can come up through the holes. When a cat digs a little, it will hit the wood and won't be able to finish its business. If you don't mind the way they look, another option is to lay flat paving stones throughout your flowers. They cover up most of the dirt, so cats have less to work with.
Distracting
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If you have the space, set aside a little plot of land and use it to plant catnip or spider plants. The cats will spend their time in their own little "garden" and be more likely to leave yours alone.
Warnings
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Some people, even experts, suggest scattering mothballs throughout your flower bed, or burying small jars of diluted ammonia among the flowers. However, not only are the smells unpleasant for humans, but the chemicals can be dangerous if a child or animal accidentally ingests either one. Opt for a natural deterrent instead.
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References
- Photo Credit Gatto sui fiori image by Buffy1982 from Fotolia.com
