I've been reading up on ways to keep all those stray cats from making gross toxic dump piles in my new garden. Lots of websites list smelly things they might not like.
Mothballs, which are actually as toxic as the poo, so no, I won't use that.
Cayenne pepper, okay, I have some left over from a yellow jacket nest project of about 4 yrs ago.
Lemon juice/peel, they don't grow on the trees up here, this would get kinda pricey, and have to be replaced on a regular basis, and I'm not sure it would work.
Ammonia. ??
Half filled water bottles; this sounds like a fly repellent from the southwest. I doubt if it would work on cats.
Okay so I was in a store, and found lemon scented ammonia, a huge bottle for a buck nineteen. I'm not sure what gives it the lemony scent, but ammonia is organic, breaks down readily into nitrogen which is actually like fertilizer, so how bad can it be? I squirted it around the perimeter of the garden yesterday, and it's been about 24 hrs., and no new piles! Yay! To me it's already a success, compared to two or three piles a day I've had to scoop out recently. I realize that after it rains again (tomorrow?) I'll have to repeat the application, but it's cheap, and only takes a couple minutes to go squirt around the edges out there, so it's definitely something that would be easy to maintain.
Knock on wood!
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Found a better remedy: used fishing nets, discarded by local ocean fishers. Green color, wide mesh so birds don't get caught, lightweight, easy to spread across whatever area of the garden has loose soil that's tempting to those cats... keeps them out!
Best prevention? Keep something growing all the time. Sow something in the shade of existing plants so the seeds have a chance to germinate and grow a bit before taking out the older plants. Otherwise just a scrap of screen or plastic fencing will do for small bare patches.
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