Keep Cats Out Of Your Raised Garden Bed With This Simple Trick

Raised garden beds are the perfect way to grow delicious vegetables or flowers in small garden spaces. Their extra height makes them easy to maintain and allows for a controlled gardening environment. However, the lovely soft soil in raised beds is also a magnet for cats who might want to use your raised garden bed as their own personal litter box. But don't worry, because you can use this simple trick to keep cats out of your raised bed. All you have to do is cover the bed with some type of netting to create a physical barrier. This can be done in a variety of different ways, so choose one that works best for your raised bed.

While your own cat might have its litter box indoors or its own outdoor enclosure or "catio," your neighbors might not be as environmentally conscious and will allow their cats to roam around the neighborhood — not to mention strays. Over the years, gardeners have been trying a variety of different methods to deter cats from raised beds such as sprinkling citrus peels on the soil, growing strongly scented herbs, or covering the soil with coarse mulch or pine cones. While citrus peels might be the secret to keeping stray cats out of your yard, the perfect way to keep cats out of your raised beds is to prevent access totally. The easiest method of doing this is to by using a physical netting barrier over your raised beds. Here's how.

If you're handy, you can easily create your own raised garden bed cover using some rebar, PVC piping, mesh netting or chicken wire, and twist ties. The pieces of rebar are used to support the PVC pipes. Cut these into 2-foot lengths and hammer them into the soil in the corners of your beds. If your beds are particularly long, you might need to add another two pieces of rebar on either side in the middle of the long edges of your beds. The PVC piping needs to be cut into lengths so that you can create hoops from one side of the bed to the other when you slip the ends of the piping over the pieces of rebar. Once you have your frame made, just cover this entirely with mesh or bird netting, making sure to attach this securely to the PVC pipes using twist ties.

Of course, you can use other materials to make your crop covers, such as bamboo stakes instead of the rebar, which could be difficult to find or out of your budget. You could also cover the frame with insect netting, as this will keep pests out of your garden beds as well. However, you'll need to remove this once your plants are ready to flower to allow bees to access the flowers for pollination. By the time your plants are growing strong, the cats may have found other areas to dig in.

If you don't have the skills or can't find the time to make your own crop covers, there are plenty of ready-made options that you can purchase and use. Particularly useful and easy to install are pop-up crop enclosures, such as this one from Amazon for around $27. These come folded in their own bag and you just take them out and let them pop out into their final size. Some have easy access points with zippered flaps, and pegs that you can use to anchor them into the ground. Depending on the size of your raised garden bed, you can probably find just the right one to cover the bed completely. Not only will these keep cats out, but they'll also stop birds and other wildlife from stealing your ripe, red tomatoes.

Apart from pop-up covers, there are plenty of other types of raised bed covers or floating row covers that you can buy to place over your raised beds and keep cats from using them as their litter box. Other than being perfect for keeping cats out, they are also the best material to cover your plants with to protect them from frost. Just like creating outdoor enclosures to stop your own cat from roaming, you can easily use the same principle to keep cats out of areas that you don't want them to use. You can also try to stop cats from digging your garden by placing chicken wire over the soil.