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Stop Critters From Eating Your Garden Before You Do

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- How do you keep animals from eating the vegetables in your garden before you do?

Susie Bachman from Bachman's has a few tips to keep deer and rabbits away from your garden.

Bachman said you could use topical sprays or a scent deterrent.

Topical sprays give the plants a bad taste to the animal when they take a bite of the foliage. Bachman said both the spray and scent deterrents work great and are fairly inexpensive, but you need to reapply after each rain. There are many organic choices with these products as well.

Bachman said remember that you need to make sure you don't spray any of the topical sprays near the time when you are planning on harvesting your vegetables.

Scent deterrents will scare away pests because it smells like a predatory animal.

There's also a new product on the market developed by the University of Minnesota. It's a systemic repellent called Repellex and it works as a taste inhibitor.

You only need to do one application and it will last 12 months, but Bachman says this is not for use on anything edible.

You can also consider planting plants that animals don't like to eat like juniper, spruce, barberry, lilac, astilbe, monarda, and salvia.

Bachman said to keep in mind that animals will eat anything if they are hungry enough.

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