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mulberryknob

Safe critter repellents

17 years ago

Relevant to another thread, I wanted to say something about safe ways to repell unwanted garden critters. (Dawn is absolutely right IMO about moth balls. I used them for a while years ago and then learned better.)

Human hair is a deer repellent. We have used it tied in cheesecloth bags hung in orchard trees, or just sprinkled over deer favorites, such as strawberries. Blood meal repels all small critters, bunnies, voles, squirrels, chipmunks--but attracts dogs. And human urine repels lots of critters. (Send your husband out to "mark" the perimeter of the garden...under cover of darkness, of course.

There are also companies that specialize in non-toxic products. Spray-N-Grow is one. (Although they sell rotenone which we used for years until we learned, after DH developed Parkinson's, that the use of rotenone has been linked to the development of that disease. My husband also has other risk factors--red-green color blindness, Norwegian ancestry, and working in a shop full of diesel fumes for years.)

Comment (1)

  • 17 years ago

    In addition to the human hair that Dorothy has mentioned, I save pet hair when I brush the dogs and cats with the Furminator (it removes tons and tons and tons of undercoat and loose hair) and scatter that dog and cat hair around places where I don't want wild critters messing with the plants.

    As for Rotenone, which Dorothy mentioned in passing, it has joined the growing list of organic products that we don't use any more because they can be just as toxic as chemical products. Other formerly-considered-safe organics that are not used at our home are all tobacco-based products, sabadilla dust and all pyrethrum/pyrethroid type products. We do still use neem oil, citrus oil, pepper spray and insecticidal soap at certain times of the year (not in the hottest months because they burn foliage), targeted BT products, food-grade DE, iron phospate-based snail and slug killers (though not for snails and slugs), and some biologicals like Serenade.

    In a perfect world, all organic products would be "safe" for use, but in the real world, even they often are not and can have unintended consequences. Some organic products are neurotoxins and can be just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than the synthetic chemical products they are substituted for.

    One more note--when someone recommends a "home remedy" for garden pests, do your research first and make sure you know what you're doing. A lot of garden-type home remedies that are recommended are ineffective, some are dangerous and others may do what you want them to do, but then they have a secondary and unintended effect that can be dangerous.

    For example, insecticidal soap sprays are very effective---but they tend to kill the beneficial insects that normally help you keep the pest insects under control, so one side effect of using them is that you may end up with more, not fewer, pest insects. Also, some horticultural soaps and oils burn foliage once the temperatures are above about 85 degrees--and the degree of damage varies from plant variety to plant variety, so always test a spray (commercial or homemade) on 1 plant and wait a day or 2 to see if you see wilting/foliage death before you go out and spray every plant you have.

    I like sprinkling blood meal around a plant I want rabbits to avoid, but if you have dogs (or certain predator varmints), they'll be attracted to the blood meal. Every time I use blood meal, I have vultures circling for days over the garden trying to find the "dead animal" they keep smelling.

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