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Hello fellow Gardeners...has anyone tried Vick's Vapor Rub to repel critters? I got the suggestion from a friend who inadvertantly discovered that squirrels HATE the smell...he was trying it to keep the rabbits out of his veggies. (I don't know why he doesn't just buy a roll of fence wire!) So I bought a few jars of the generic brand from Walmart and smeared it around the trunks and branches of the 2 trees in my yard, and the telephone pole...I just sort of sloppy-smeared it over about 6-8" of the surface and about 5-6' off the ground. That was about a week ago. The squirrels were eating/digging up my Caladium bulbs from around the oak tree as fast as I could put them in the ground but now I have several leaf spikes up! Yay!
Then I decided to try it on my cats. (I have 4) I'd poured ground cayenne all over this one bed that runs along the front of my front porch...there are a bunch of babies planted there...and the cats would make a beeline for that bed as soon as I'd let them out the door. Then they would sit right on top of the little plants while they surveyed their world and squash all the baby plants flat...grrrr! The cayenne didn't seem to bother them at all, I caught the worst offender LAYING in it right after I'd put it out. So I smeared several fist-sized rocks with the generic Vick's and set them in the porch bed, and I haven't seen the cats in it since. Yay! again!
I don't know how long the smell will stay strong, before it needs reapplied, but it's been a week on the trees and it's still strong. I'm still having to fill in armadillo holes every day though, but at least MAYBE I've found a workable solution for the squirrel and cat problems. And I just keep reminding myself about all the grubs the 'dilloes are getting rid of :-) I never bought any of the stuff someone mentioned from Ace Hardware (Yard Guard?) because a girlfriend of mine said she'd tried it on the feral cats in her yard and it didn't help at all...has anyone else had better luck with it?
Hope this helps someone. Now if we can just get some rain...did I hear we are having the driest dry season since the '30's?...I believe it!
Happy Gardening,
Becky
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