Protect Your Grounds from Groundhogs This Groundhog Day

POSTED ON February 1, 2020 BY Galena Lawn Care

There are few things more frustrating than to find the planting beds in your garden that you spent days preparing massacred by groundhogs. Birds, raccoons, bugs and woodchucks, are known to wreak havoc in lawns and yards, but there is no wild animal that is a bigger nuisance than a ground hog. Quick and energetic, these mangy, burrowing rodents have a voracious appetite and a nose for mischief. Ground hogs love lush pastures and meadows, but gardens are an absolute favorite of these furry animals. They love burrowing through soft green lawns and freshly tilled soil.

If you have a vegetable patch in your garden where you grow carrots, broccoli, lettuce, peas, squash and such vegetables, then you need to keep your guards up against these mischief makers. A flower garden too can be a treat for ground hogs as they love to snack on sunflowers, daisies, marigolds and other flowers.

Lucky for you, there are ways in which you can insulate your garden against such intruders. Let’s find out how to keep groundhogs out of garden this Groundhog Day.

Most Popular Methods

There are four highly effective ways in which menacing intrusions by groundhogs can be managed. Those are- scaring the creatures away, fencing them out and trapping and releasing.

Timely and professional grounds maintenance can remedy the groundhog problem for good. Professional landscape maintenance not only results in cosmetic and vegetative improvement, but also helps discourage wild animals from entering the premise. Keeping the grounds clear of woodpiles and bushes that groundhogs and other animals use as covers to enter the garden deter them from finding an easy way in.
If scaring them away sounds like a doable option for you, then plant wind chimes, bells, pinwheels and such sound-making items at the perimeter of your garden. These animals are shy and therefore scare easily. As long as you can keep the noise going at all hours, they would keep away. The idea is to make sure that at no point should it be quiet and hushed up.
Fencing is another way to protect your garden from ground hogs. The upside is, it will keep other nuisance makers outside too. But just any fence won’t do. Groundhogs can jump short boundaries. They can also tunnel under. So, you need a fence that stands at least 6 feet above the ground and reaches 12 inches below. Look for chicken wires in the said specifications. Those work best for small gardens and lawns.
A great, but a slightly challenging technique is catch and release. Rig the perimeters of your garden with live traps, and go to bed. Next morning, you will have caught at least more than a few groundhogs in the traps. The risky side of this method is that it could easily be some other kind of animals caught in the trap. Plus it involves handling the animals for release.

So, if you are not up for it, learn below how you can protect your garden from groundhogs this Groundhog day in natural and safe ways.

Natural Ways To Get Rid of Groundhogs

There are some very effective natural ways of keeping the groundhogs out of your garden. The object of all these methods is to create a smell barrier around the garden. This will make sure that the animals stay away from the marked area.

Epsom salts are a great repellent. Sprinkle it along the perimeter or pour a pile at the mouths of the burrows, it will make sure that the groundhogs stay away. Make sure to replace it after a rain.
Castor oil has a specific scent that offends groundhogs. So one way of stopping them from coming into your garden is by pouring castor oil in good quantity in the burrow holes. But the smell being light may not hold them off for too long.
Kitchen items that have offensive scents to chase groundhogs away are cayenne pepper, garlic and lavender. Using those to make boundaries around the garden works too. Repeat and replace as often as you can to keep the barrier from weakening.

Keep your garden maintained this Groundhog Day with Galena Lawn Care to keep the pesky intruders away.