How To Keep Animals Out Of The Garden: The Natural Way

Note that many of these solutions will work for deer, raccoons, coyotes, rabbits, and various varmints as well.

1. Build Raised Beds. You don’t have to build formal raised beds, but even if you mound up the dirt, it confuses them.   Sloped beds are a further deterrent.

 

2. Create Narrow Pathways Between the Beds. If you think about it from a rabbit’s perspective, there are these mounds about 1.5 to 2 feet tall. If I were a rabbit and tried to hop between those mounds, I’d be a sitting duck for any cat or coyote standing on the mound. No way, not worth it! 

3. Mulch.  Mulch deters deer, rabbits, gophers, moles, voles… It seems to work. Straw mulch works great, it’s cheap and plentiful, and eventually it will decompose and become plant food.

 

4. Interplant. Again from the rabbit’s perspective, I am hopping around finding a nice clover patch here, another one way over there, and then… wow, a whole row of tender, organic greens all to yourself. But, if that row is interplanted with things I don’t like – like onions – suddenly, maybe it’s not worth it to me. This goes for all sorts of pests, including aphids, powdery mildew, voles, and so on. 

 

5. Plant a Perimeter of Things They Don’t Like. Garlic, onions, chives, catnip, lavender, and marigolds are all deterrents according to several sources. The Old Farmer’s Almanac recommends planting a double row of onions. You could also try a low, dense hedge. 

6. Build a Fence Around the Beds, or Around the Plants. You probably want to build a fence at least 2 feet high. It can be made out of a number of materials, so you can make it quite attractive: bamboo, chicken wire, wood, wire mesh will all work. If you don’t have raised beds, you should dig a trench at least 6-8″ below ground, and start the fence there. If you’re using a bendable material, bend it outward for added benefit. Rabbits (and voles, moles, etc) can burrow, so you want to cover above and below ground. 

7. Put a layer of mesh or other material over the hardest hit plants. You can use wire mesh, burlap, or hardwire cloth for this. You can build a loop-wire tunnel as well.

8. Try Other Alternatives. Fake snakes or owls, soap flakes, sulfur, blood meal, wind socks, human hair, motion-sensor sprinklers, a mostly buried bottle, dog, coyote, or fox urine, and cat litter are some. There are also some store-bought remedies,  try some of these cheaper, organic, and sustainable methods first. (Note cat litter should not be put in the vegetable garden, only on the perimeter, to avoid consuming potentially harmful bacteria.) Have fun!

 

9. Plant Clover and Other Bunny Favorites in Another Area of the Yard. This is the decoy effect: if you feed them well with their favorite foods, they won’t need to eat your veggies. What do bunnies like? Goldenrod, wild strawberries, clover, dandelions, wildflowers, alfalfa, and long grass.

10. If All Else Fails, Plant Extra for the Rabbits. They need to eat, too, and goodness knows we have altered their world by putting up roads and houses where they used to graze happily. Why not give them a little bit of extra food to survive in their human-altered environment?