Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Recently we did some segments about gardening with dogs and a viewer ask that we talk about
dealing with issues with cats so we wanted to be equally fair to the feline members of
our audience so I want to talk about how to get the cats away from indoor plants. Cats
love to dig in the soil, they like to play with plants and so I think it's a good idea
to have lots of toys around for them. There are repellents that you can get for cats and
some of them are quit toxic so you want to read labels well before you use those. But
some things you can do take heavy duty foil and crumple it up and put it on the bottom
of your pots and that will help keep that cats from digging in your indoor plants. You
can also take trimmings from your roses and just punch those in the soil and make a line
of those around the base of your plants and that will certainly detour the cat from either
lying or digging. Bay Loral can be used in the same way any plant that's got a stiff
stem like this. You can use pine cones just make a nest of pine cones stick sweet gum
ball are perfect because cats don't like that prickly surface. They also don't like expanded
shell so I've been using that to top some of my succulent plants and the cats have been
staying out of the pot. Big rocks can be a deterrent also for cats they just don't like
the texture of them. And most cats don't like orange peals or citrus peals of any kind so
save those. You can put on fresh around the plants but dry them and a layer of bows. Now
cats can be trained but you have to be persistent with cats and you can teach them "no" when
they're in a place or around a plants that you don't want them to be around tell them
"no". Or if they're persistent then you can use a spry bottle that works really well.
There's also a motion activated sprayer that you can use outdoors called the Scarecrow
that you could use to protect your garden space if you want to keep cats out of that.
Another thing that I'll use are balloons. You can tie balloons to plants hanging plants
or on the stems of plants if your cats are climbing them. After the cat pots two or three
balloons they tend to stay away from those areas after awhile. Another thing you can
do is use chicken wire especially on new beds where you seeded plants and you don't want
the cat digging just make yourself a cage that fits over the top of the bed or even
in some of your landscape beds you can put a layer of chicken wire down under the mulch,
and that will keep that cats from digging in those beds and just pin it down and cut
openings to put your plants in and that works very well it also works for dogs too. They
are plants that cats tend not to like things like lemon time, rue, and lavender cats tend
to stay away from. But it's a nice idea if you've got cats at home to have some plants
in the garden for them and of course one they're favorites is catnip and it's an easy one to
grow but you might actually have to put it under a cage in order to grow it because they'll
destroy the plants when they're very tiny otherwise. Then you can grow cat grass for
your plants. My cats love all kinds of grasses. Purple fountain grass they'll just chew it
up. But I grow grass for the cats and the grass seed is mixture of oat, wheat, and rye
and other grains actually but the cats are going to just sit by the pot and nibble on
the plant every once and a while you might have to do a little hair cut a little trimming
and when the plant starts to look really bad just get another pot started and so you might
just keep a pot all the time growing as cat grass. It's a little bit difficult to get
it to germinate so I like to but it in a cherucata pot very moist soil, put the seed in, then
I put some plastic wrap over the top of the pot until the seeds sprout and that tends
to help get it started. So grow some cat grass for your plants and some catnip and your cats
will be happy and your plants will be happy too.
Now here's a couple of dill plants this one has, it's a little bit small but its only
got three plants in the pot so it not going to be quit as stressed. I would still cut
one of those down and plant the other two in the garden, take the one down and put it
in your cooking. This dill though has maybe a dozen plants, but in the pot its going to
be easy to divide that, plant this as a section and plant this as a section. And when the
plants are a little bit small its easy to separate them and still plant them in different
spots in the garden. But once they get up kind of tall its difficult to do that. Now
this is a mint plant that's got really nice, fresh big leaves. This one has some old ***
stems, a little bit smaller leaves same mint but this ones be around in the nursery I guarantee
you quite a bit longer. So both will but this one again is going to get off to a better
start. It'll be a little easier to manage. Sometimes you can find discounts and in a
bargain rack with some of the plants that have been around a little longer and you'll
have to do a little bit more TLC with them and native plants especially like native grass
they have a massive root system so when they're in a 6' inch or one gallon pot they tend to
get distressed pretty quickly. So sometime the tops will look really bad just because
they're root bound but they'll still get off to a good start in the nursery. You just have
to plan ahead and know what you're getting into and be ready to do the care and division
of the roots that needed to get your plants off to a good start and get them growing happy.