Rabbits, squirrels, deer, and other backyard wildlife can quickly go past the line of “Oh honey, look at the cute…”, to imagining elaborate ways to dispatch your garden thieves without your spouse ever catching on to your evil plot.
Wild mammals, and to a certain extent birds, like the same foods as we do, especially when you present them in such nice, tidy groupings in your garden. When tulips, tomatoes, and sweet corn are so easy to access, why should they try to find food elsewhere? That’s where garden fences can save the day. Fences installed properly and of the correct height and depth can be very effective for keeping out deer and rabbits. But for climbers like squirrels and jumpers like deer, unless you create an actual cage, fences are pretty useless. And fences sturdy enough and tall enough (7 feet) to deter deer can be very expensive. This is where animal repellents like Liquid Fence are very useful.
Don’t use poisonous animal deterrents
Years ago, gardeners would place mothballs around their flower and vegetable gardens, and they did indeed work – rabbits, deer, and rodents detest the smell. Unfortunately, mothballs were and still are made from toxic substances. Back in the day, Naphthalene was the main ingredient, a substance derived from the distillation of coal tar. Today they’re made of 1,4 Dichlorobenzene, a chemical slow to break down in garden soil and a suspected 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
The safest way to deter rabbits, deer, and most animals is with a liquid or granular repellent. I’ve tried a few of them, and by far the best in my experience is Liquid Fence. The active ingredients are listed in the chart below:
| Cornmint Oil | 1.20% |
| Cinnamon Oil | 0.90% |
| Castor Oil | 0.45% |
| Garlic Oil | 0.15% |
| Other Ingredients: Water, Polyglyceryl Oleate, Xanthan Gum | 97.30% |
| Total | 100.000% |
The idea with any kind of repellent or deterrent is to “train” an animal away from your garden. In most cases, deer, rabbits, and the like are just wandering by your vegetable or flower garden, sampling as they go. Repellents are most useful in early spring when food sources are sparse and animals will eat just about anything. It’s also the time when you have little to share with them and every flower bloom and leafy green is precious. If you can keep animals moving past your garden early in the season, they’ll eat where there aren’t foul odors.
The pros and cons of Liquid Fence spray repellent
There are two downsides with Liquid Fence. The first is that it must be applied to dry foliage after every significant rainfall since water dilutes the oils. One spring I got a little lazy about this because we didn’t see rain for a couple of weeks. The repellent was doing a great job. But the night after the rain ended, rabbits and god knows what other neighborhood critters attended my garden smorgasbord and ate until they must have been the size of whales. Most of my tulips and snapdragons were gone and all of my leafy green veggies – every last leaf of spinach and romaine. Lesson learned.
The second downside is that Liquid Fence smells bad to us, too. Fortunately, we can only smell it when it’s fresh, as in when it’s first sprayed. After a day or so, it will be relatively undetectable to our noses, but will still be terribly odorous to animals.
So while it can get a little pricey in a rainy season, in my experience there is no better spray repellent for deer and rabbits than Liquid Fence. When I apply it, I spray it on the most-likely-to-be-eaten plants – foliage and blooms, and I spray it along the perimeter of the garden as well – on the border of the flower garden and the raised vegetable beds. These are the areas an animal will encounter first, and when they encounter the smell, they’ll (in theory) bypass it. Early in the season, I’ll also spray it on topsoil around the plants.
Buy on Amazon: Liquid Fence Ready-to-Use Deer and Rabbit Repellent 1 Gallon