Animal Repellents
Most Deer and Rabbit repellents contain an egg solid and seasoning product that masks foliage to taste like a meat product or a bad salad. The problem is they only last for a short time. Repellex is a new product for us, but has been on the market for a long time. Its primary ingredient is capsicum, which is a pepper product that is sprinkled around the plant and watered in. The product is absorbed by the plant’s root system and makes it taste like pepper. If used on vegetable plants, it will give them a funny taste. There is a delay before your flower or ornamental plant can absorb the product. Hence you may need to apply a sprayed-on product early until the Repellex kicks into your plant.
I Must Garden is a scent deterrent preferred by a lot of our customers. Liquid Fence is also available.
Repellex for Moles is a castor oil product in a granular form. It is a more economical product for lawns, but is a fine granule that will require a hand spreader for best application. When Kip and I got engaged, I took my future bride to meet my widowed grandmother who lived on a farm with no running water, and heated her home with coal and cobs. She was perched on the front stoop wearing a black shawl and beating something with a small club. As we approached, we realized it was a mole she had speared in her trap and she was finishing him off. When we got closer, she flipped it in a cat dish and a pair of hungry cats shared their tasty treat.
Snake Repellents are so so. But the psychology is helpful for some people. The University of Nebraska did research and found that snakes are not very excited about traveling across lava rock. Forty years ago we sold boxcar loads of the rock, but it is a little more difficult to find these days. We carry Dr. T’s snake repellent.
Mice is nice when you have a feral cat. A year ago a forlorn pregnant yellow cat showed up at our dog’s food dish. Kip saw her and broke her 43 year ban on cats. When the kittens showed up at the food dish things got out of hand. Now we are cat people, who do enjoy a mouse-less farm environment. With that said, in our 43-year-battle we have learned a lot.
All mouse traps are not the same. Newer trap models are better. We utilize a lot of sticky traps because you don’t have to set them. We use Tomcat cube bait around the perimeter of our buildings and in greenhouses. We are trying a new mouse ‘scent repellent’ now, called Grandpa Gus’s Mouse Repellent. It has a nice Peppermint-Cinnamon scent and seems to be helping in some difficult spots where we do not want to smell dead mice.
