rabbit , squirrels , deer , and other backyard wildlife can quickly go past the occupation of “ Oh honey , look at the cute … ” , to ideate elaborate ways to bump off your garden thieves without your spouse ever take in on to your vicious patch .

Wild mammals , and to a certain extent Bronx cheer , like the same food as we do , specially when you present them in such gracious , respectable grouping in your garden . Whentulips , tomatoes , andsweet cornare so promiscuous to access , why should they attempt to find food elsewhere ? That ’s wheregarden fencescan save the mean solar day . Fences installed properly and of the correct superlative and depth can be very effective for keep out cervid and rabbit . But for climbing iron like squirrel and jumpers like deer , unless you make an real cage , fences are pretty useless . And fences tough enough and magniloquent enough ( 7 feet ) to deter cervid can be very expensive . This is where brute repellents like Liquid Fence are very utilitarian .

Don’t use poisonous animal deterrents

days ago , gardeners would place mothball around their flower and vegetable gardens , and they did indeed work – rabbits , cervid , and rodents hate the smell . Unfortunately , mothballs were and still are made from toxic substances . Back in the sidereal day , Naphthalene   was the main constituent , a centre derived from the distillation of ember tar . Today , they ’re made of1,4 Dichlorobenzene , a chemical slow to reveal down in garden grease and a mistrust carcinogen in humans . If animals roaming your garden sample the mothballs , there ’s a good chance they ’ll die .

The best deer and rabbit repellent

A liquidity or granular repellent is the safest way to deter lapin , cervid , and most animate being . I ’ve tried a few of them , and by far , the best in my experience is Liquid Fence . The fighting ingredients are listed in the chart below :

The melodic theme with any kind of repellant or hindrance is to “ train ” an animal aside from your garden . In most cases , cervid , rabbits , and the comparable are just wandering by your vegetable or blossom garden , sampling as they go . repellant are most utile in early fountain when solid food sources are sparse , and animals will eat just about anything . It ’s also the prison term when you have niggling to deal with them and every flower prime and leafy green is precious . If you may keep animate being moving past your garden early in the time of year , they ’ll deplete where there are n’t foul odors .

The pros and cons of Liquid Fence spray repellent

There are two downside to Liquid Fence . The first is that it must be use to dry foliage after every significant rain since pee dilutes the oils . One leap , I get a little lazy about this because we did n’t see rain for a duad of weeks . The repellant was doing a great job . But the night after the rain ended , rabbit and god knows what other neighborhood critter attended my garden smorgasbord and ate until they must have been the size of it of whales . Most of my tulip and snapdragon were last , as wereallof myleafy green veg – every last leaf of spinach plant and romaine . Lesson learned .

The second downside is that Liquid Fence smells big to us , too . Fortunately , we can only smell it when it ’s sassy , as in when it ’s first spray . After a day or so , it will be comparatively undetectable to our noses but will still be terribly odorous to creature .

So , while it can get a little dear in a rainy time of year , in my experience , there is no better spray repellent for cervid and rabbits than Liquid Fence . When I enforce it , I spray it on the most potential - to - be - eaten plant – leaf and bloom , and I spray it along the circumference of the garden as well – on the border of the prime garden and the raised vegetable beds . These are the area an animal will come across first , and when they encounter the smell , they ’ll ( in hypothesis ) bypass it . Early in the time of year , I ’ll also spray it on surface soil around the plant .