Cats

[Numpty930]

I have recently moved house and I have gotten in to gardening. I have just sowed my seeds but the pesky cats are digging holes in my raised beds!! I have a cat scarer from B&Q but they are still digging! I have a dog but the cats are bigger than her and aren't faised! Someone please help garden!

I have cats and always sow my seeds in pots, and only plant them up when they are a decent size.

I'm afraid newly turned over soil is a cat magnet.

From the advice on here, I use lots of sticks in the ground! I have been trying to grow things in pots before planting them out, but I don't have a greenhouse, and my window sills filled up way too quickly. So now I'm doing a bit of both.

With the sticks, I plant the seeds and then surround the area with lots of thin sticks in the ground - nothing really high. I've been using bamboo just because we cut down a huge amount of bamboo last year, so I have masses of sticks. I've also been doing 'hoops' with the bamboo to create a line with longer sticks. It is working so far.

Also, orange peel is really good. I tried it a few months ago in my cat's usual spot, and he spent a while sniffing it cautiously before moving elsewhere.

@GinAndOnIt sounds like you have some techniques that work - at risk of revealing my complete inability to picture anything in my head, would you mind sharing a photo or diagram of the sticks and in particular the bamboo hoops? I'm on the lookout for ways to keep the cats off my veg patch, grrr particularly annoying as my cat is the worst offender

Thank you and sorry for my hopeless imagination

jelly I will do tomorrow! It's not the most attractive of methods, but it would be a hell of a lot less attractive if I let GinCat use the whole patch as a litter tray

jelly I don't know how well you can actually see the sticks, but here's what I mean!

Ahh, thank you Gin! I get it now. I'll give that a try. At the moment I'm using chicken wire which works well as the beds are small and the veggies haven't really started growing yet. But once they (hopefully!) do get going they'll be a bit vulnerable while they're small but too big for chicken wire iyswim.

Hopefully sneaky JellyCat won't see the sticks as a challenge / assault course to overcome!

OP,
I'm in the same position, and also bought a useless electronic scarer. Firstly, make sure you remove all crap after they've done it and treat as you would dog waste, ie bag it and bin it. Secondly like Gin I've used lots of sticks - I bought several packs of cheap kebab skewers from the local pound shop and am using them to protect my seedlings.

PS pointed end inwards, don't want to hurt the local moggies.

You could look into water spraying cat repellants, same principle as the sonic type but you can definitely see it working! And it has the benefit of watering your garden.

My neighbour (who is also the only one in our row with no cat and the one who is most garden proud) has put lots of sticks about four inches high in the ground around her plants. I guess it stops the cats running through the beds and also there isn't enough room for them to toilet there or dig a hole (my cat and her feline friend seem to have hole digging competitions in the soil, they don't do anything in them just enjoy a good dig). It seems to work. Another neighbour has a big peice of net over the plants which stops them digging but sometimes the plants come up a bit distorted as they can't et through the gaps in the net properly (that was the tulips).