The Spicy Plant You'll Want To Grow To Prevent Snakes From Slithering In Your Garden

Spotting a snake in your yard can be terrifying, especially if you live in an area that's home to poisonous varieties. Snakes love places with tall grass, as well as lots of plants where they can wait for prey, making backyard gardens a good hiding spot. With this said, you can actually turn your garden against slithering snakes by growing a certain plant to deter them naturally. The plant? Chili pepper.

Snakes are often attracted to areas where they have access to water and easy prey, like small animals. If you have a pond, a birdbath, or a bird feeder in your yard, this could be a reason you frequently see snakes. Depending on their species, snakes eat anything that may satisfy their carnivorous diets, from birds and rodents to insects to frogs and fish. However, you could send them searching in another direction by disrupting their sense of smell, and thereby their ability to hunt efficiently. And one such way is to plant a natural snake repellent like the chili pepper plant.

If you want to prevent snakes from slithering through your yard, try growing chili peppers in your garden. These spicy peppers make great companion plants for leeks, onions, chives, and garlic. As for garlic, it's one smell rodents also dislike, so if grown together with chili peppers, you could use the garlic to deter one type of prey snakes are on the hunt for.

To keep snakes at bay, you could grow chili pepper plants along the edges of your property, though this may not do much for snakes that are already there. No matter where you decide to grow them, though, it's important to plant chili peppers in a spot where they'll receive lots of sunlight. These plants need six hours of sunshine every day to thrive (but can grow in partial shade).

Your peppers will also need to be kept in moist soil, so it's best to water them every other day depending on the weather. Note that chili pepper plants will die once it starts to get cold, but you could save them for next year by transplanting them into a pot and bringing them inside for the winter. While snakes are less active when the temperatures drop, as they go into a state of brumation, they will still wake and forage for food. However, your pepper plants hopefully will have sent them away already during the summer.

Snakes have a good sense of smell, and the reptiles use that sense to navigate when hunting. As these reptiles "taste the air" to evaluate their environment, plants with strong odors that may be unpleasant to them, like the chili pepper, can encourage the snake to leave an area or even avoid it altogether. Thus, simply by planting chili peppers in your garden, you can provide your garden space with the very defense it needs to ward off these unwanted visitors.

Beyond the plant itself, though, yet another way to use chili pepper as a preventative against snakes is by dropping seeds from your chili pepper plants around the lawn. You could also buy chili pepper seeds for this approach, or you could try applying the deterrent in spice form by sprinkling chili powder in the grass, in your garden, or wherever snakes seem to be hiding. But if this natural repellent and other similar approaches don't work for your particular situation, you may need to call in a pro to address the problem directly to ensure that no more snakes are found slithering outside your home.