7 ways to keep problem animals out of your garden

Birds, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons and other animals can be cute – until they start messing up your yard or eating your garden. Here are seven ways to deter animals from destroying your garden.

Keep raccoons and other scavengers out of your garbage cans by spraying the outsides and lids with half-strength ammonia, or spray the garbage bags as you place them in the cans.

• Reapply the spray often, especially after a heavy rain.

Put those old, deflated, shiny metallic balloons – the ones lying around your house from past birthday parties – to work in your garden.

• Cut them into vertical strips and hang them from poles around your vegetables and on fruit trees. As they flap in the wind, the shiny reflection helps to scare off invading birds, rabbits and squirrels.

Protect a favourite stand of flowers or vegetables from hungry rabbits, moles, gophers, squirrels, shrews and voles by encircling it with garlic plants.

• Although the odour is innocuous to people, the smell tends to be repulsive for smaller animals.

Some animals – including cats, deer, dogs, rabbits and raccoons – can't stand the scent of vinegar even after it has dried.

• Keep these unwanted visitors out of your garden by soaking several rags in white vinegar and placing them on stakes around your vegetable rows.
• Resoak the rags every seven to 10 days.

This mixture doesn't smell so great to people, but if you won't be around and think wild animals will take advantage of your absence, it's worth a try.

• In a three litre jar, mix three raw eggs, shells and all, and a small bottle of hot sauce.
• Fill the jar three-quarters full with water, cap it tightly, and shake it.
• Let the mixture ferment for five days, then drizzle it around the perimeter of your garden.
• Alternatively, dig a shallow trench along the side of your garden that's often breached by wild visitors and fill it with the debris from your vacuum cleaner bag. To wild things, it will smell strongly of people, convincing them to stay away.

Thrift-store row covers can protect all sorts of plants from rabbits, deer and hungry birds.

• Collect sheer white or beige curtains and throw them over the plants at night.
• If you want to leave them on during the day, hold them aloft with pieces of PVC pipe stuck into the ground.

Many old-time gardeners placed empty canning jars around the perimeter of the garden. Instead, you can use ordinary glass bottles.

• The glass reflects light and when the wind blows over the tops, the containers "sing" or "whistle." The noises and reflected sunlight help to discourage rabbits and many other unwanted visitors from entering your garden.