Animal pests introduce quite a quandary into the eco, wildlife-loving homeowner striving to keep a manicured, well-maintained lawn. Yards commonly contain the requirements for several common pest animals’ survival, mainly food, water and shelter. Unfortunately, the most effective and fastest way of preventing animals from damaging a yard and all included therein is extermination. So maintaining a balance of humaneness with efficacy is vital when repelling these invaders. Short of dispatching, the easiest approaches to deter pest animals — like rabbits, gophers and the dreaded skunk — is having a hurdle, especially about garden areas, or with organic repellents, like predator urine.
Natural and Environmental Repellents
Move all food water and supplies, like pet dishes, bird feeders and rubbish cans, inside at nightfall to discourage raccoons. If you must maintain the rubbish cans out, then fit them together with secure lids. Distribute a light dusting of cayenne pepper, baby powder or blood meal on vegetables and corn ears to serve as a natural raccoon repellent, and prune any limbs from trees hanging above the perimeter of your yard with lopping or pruning shears to prevent access.
Remove and discard piles of stumps, collected timber, tall grass and mounds of brush to discourage woodchucks and rabbits. Applying dried bovine blood, hot-pepper (capsicum) spray, talcum powder and puppy pee around the perimeter of your yard also repels woodchucks. If you have a gopher issue, place used cat litter, pine oil or rags covered in cat or dog pee in their burrowing holes.
Drape bird netting over fruit trees along with fruit-bearing plants which attract birds and wrap it around the base of the plants or trees. Secure the ends of the netting with the plastic retaining clips provided with the netting. Put strips of reflective tape to goal trees, hang reflective, disposable pie tins in their divisions or tie large, “frighten” balloons with pictures of hunters’ eyes on them into the limbs to repel birds from your yard.
Slim back overgrown shrubs and bushes, stack any firewood piles tightly and remove any fallen fruit from the yard to deter skunks from penetrating. Like repelling raccoons, eliminate any potential food sources and transfer or place tight-fitting lids on rubbish cans.
Fencing
Assess the perimeter of your yard or garden in feet with a tape measure and mark the corners with a spray of landscaping paint. Add the dimensions to find out the length in feet of chicken-wire fencing you need.
Divide the length of fencing you’ll need by five to arrive at the number of chicken-wire bets required. If the length of your yard’s perimeter is not divisible by five evenly, round up the span until it’s.
Drive a timber stake in every corner of your yard’s perimeter with a hammer and tie a piece of twine between them to serve as a guide for placing the fence bets. Tie the twine so that it rests against or near the ground.
Make two marks, 3 feet apart, with landscaping paint on the twine at which you will place the gate. Mark the remainder of the twine with the landscaping paint at 5-foot intervals to serve as a manual for the span between bets.
Dig a 1-foot-deep and 2-inch-wide trench about 1 inch behind the twine employing a garden trowel or scoop shovel. Reserve the dirt to backfill the trench later.
Hammer one 5-foot-long chicken-wire stake in each of the corners of the trench that runs along the perimeter to a depth of 1 foot with a short-handled sledgehammer. Make sure that the clips that fasten the poultry netting into the bets face the inside of the yard.
Hammer the remaining bets 1 foot deep in the trench at the places marked on the twine. Remove the wood manual bets and the twine.
Unroll the roster of poultry netting and place it in the trench before one of their corner stakes. Secure the netting into the stake by first prying open the ground-level hook having a flat-head screwdriver, inserting the connection between it and the stake and closing the hook by splitting it shut. Open another hook to the stake above the first, insert the connection between it and the stake and hammer it closed. Keep securing the netting into the wager. Attach the netting to each stake around the perimeter, pulling it taut before securing.
Cut 1 foot in the bottom of a 3-foot-long portion of the stick with cable snips once you reach the very first stake utilized to your opening. Reducing the netting 1 foot shorter prevents it from going from the trench and allows you to use it in order to enter and leave. The top of the 3-foot-long portion used as the opening will nonetheless be with the remainder of the fence.
Cut the mesh in the roster together with the wire snips and loop one part of tie wire at the top and one piece at the bottom of the netting attached to the wager. Twist the tie wire to fasten it into the netting.
Loop the other ends of the tie wires into the netting linked to the other stake and twist them to fasten. Untwist the two tie wires when you need to go into the fenced area. Finish by backfilling the trench with the reserved dirt and tamping it down with your foot.