FOXES are known for their nocturnal antics, such as trampling your flower beds and digging up your lawn.
A homeowner revealed the DIY tricks she uses to keep animals out of her garden.
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Responding to a Reddit afterUser Ok_Possibility2812 shared the two items she uses to keep foxes off her property.
She explained that she found a certain scent to be most effective at repelling the beasts.
“We use citronella spray and gel balls from a garden center or Amazon,” the poster read.
NAF Off Citronella Spray is currently available for £11.69 from Amazon.
Read more about garden hacks
She recommended spraying and diffusing the scent in the garden once a week.
The experts of Combat pest control explained why citronella is such an effective deterrent.
“Foxes have a very strong sense of smell and certain scents can be used to deter them from your garden,” they wrote.
They added that foxes are not very fond of citrus scents, including citronella.
While the poster swears by her second trick, she points out that it may not be as effective as she thinks.
She said she puts toy rubber snakes in all the planters in her yard.
“I think it does make a difference in the pots, but maybe I’m delusional,” she wrote.
The experts of Wild animals reported on the relationship between foxes and snakes.
They explained that foxes sometimes even eat dead snakes.
“The fox is an animal whose diet consists of a variety of things, including plants and animals,” they wrote.
“The foxes’ preferred diet consists of small mammals, birds and insects, but if given the chance they will sometimes eat animals such as snakes.”
Common garden pests
Common garden pests are no cause for alarm. If you can identify them, you can work to remove them and prevent them from coming back.
Aphids (green aphid, black aphid)
Aphids are very common and can affect the growth of plants. They have small soft pear-shaped bodies and are usually green or black. You can find them in clusters on the stem of soft shoots – look especially under leaves – or you can find a sticky substance on your plants that betrays that aphids have been there sucking the sap.
White fly
These small white-winged insects are related to aphids, only 1 or 2 mm long, and look very similar to white moths as adults. They can be found on the underside of leaves, preferring younger, fresher leaves. They fly in clusters when disturbed. Their life cycle is only three weeks long, meaning that an infestation can occur very quickly.
Snails
An unmistakable, clumsy-looking body plus small sensory tentacles on its head. Slugs propel themselves forward on a single, muscular leg. They range in size from surprisingly small to frighteningly large; limax cinereoniger species can easily exceed 20 cm in length.
Caterpillar of the cabbage moth
The caterpillars of the cabbage moth are happy to penetrate into the heart of the vegetable. The caterpillars are recognizable by their yellow or brown-green hues and are hairless.
Mealybug
Mealybugs are small oval insects with a white, powdery wax coating. There are several species, many of which have what appear to be legs coming out of their sides and back. In their earliest stages of life, it is quite possible to mistake them for fungi and not recognize them as insects at all.
The Reddit user shared a third suggestion for keeping foxes out of your garden.
However, this trick cannot be purchased online and can be off-putting to some.
“What works best is having lots of dogs come by and pee in the yard,” she said.
She explained that she runs a dog shelter and that she had noticed that there were fewer foxes after she had put dogs in her garden.
“Let them pee all over the yard, [it] “It sounds strange, but it works well,” she said.
Since dogs are known for marking their territory while urinating, it makes sense that this would help deter the animals.
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