Those plastic forks just seem mean! They may be plastic, but they could still hurt!

Maybe a pitbull?

My cat would love them and use them for grooming.

I don't really like the idea of having cat poo in my veggie garden.... so I love this idea :)

I lay down pieces of wire fencing until the plants are big enough to cover most of the dirt.

I just wish this worked with dogs too. There is an off-leash park behind my house and the neighbors think that means off-leash neighborhood. I'm getting really tired of one particular dog using my lawn as a toilet every morning. I wonder how my lawn would look sprouting forks.

Live animal trap and a trip to the Humane Society.

Any advise for squirrels?

My garden consists entirely of window boxes on my balcony, and last year squirrels uprooted two dill plants and sampled most of my tomatoes :(

I sprinkle lemon or other citrus peels over the soil. Cats avoid the peels, so it keeps them away. Gravel/pebbles as mulch also work, since the cats can't dig into it.

Used coffee grounds work well for me.

Akay: I planted small prickly cactus plants mixed in with my porch garden and the squirrels stopped coming around...

HA! This is an ANNUAL trial for me, so much so that I document my efforts extensively from year to year, hoping to find the One True Method for preventing my nemesis: SQUIRRELS. They dig in the soil of my container garden, squashing or ripping up my plants in the process. Last year I think I finally found the perfect solution. The goal is to cover ALL tempting bare soil in the pot. To do this you will need:

- hardware cloth (this is not cloth at all, but rather a type of wire mesh that comes in sheets - it looks like a roll of wire grid)
- wire cutters
- twist ties
- a sharp nail or very pointy screwdriver

Cut strips of hardware cloth to fit the spaces around or between the plants you've got in the containers. Poke holes around the lips of the containers (or at the top edges), and fasten the cut pieces of wire to the tops of the containers with twist ties. So basically all bare soil in your pots will be covered with a wire grid that the squirrels can't pull off. This is the ONLY fool-proof way!! Nothing else has ever worked: chili peppers, coffee grounds, small stones (gravel) over the top of the soil, wires embedded into the surface of the soil (they just pulled it off and dug underneath!)

... of course, this method will only stop digging. They will still eat all your tomatoes. Your only weapon in that case is speed (harvest them first!)

heh, I put pointy bamboo skewers in my planter boxes and my cat just stretched across them like they weren't even there :/

Allison stole my answer! :D

My friend puts window screens over her veggie garden to keep wild critters away.

The cats who run through our 'hood have mostly been dumped / neglected so after we opened a no-kill rescue and took in 7, the rest get trapped and animal control gets a phone call. No earthly reason to let cats or dogs run free in this day and age. And it's completely uncivil.

One of my cats goes BANANAS for the basil I grow in our front room windowsill, so what I do is to put several stakes in the box, cover the box with tulle (the netting stuff you get at the fabric store for making bridal veils and ballet costumes) and tuck the tulle in underneath. It's a self-watering planter, so all I have to do is untuck one corner of the tulle to add water. Make sure the stakes are tall enough and the tulle loose enough to allow the plants to expand as they grow.

This has worked so far, though I have to say that each year the cat gets better at finding breaks in the tulle armor.

We have rabbits, squirrels, and cats as well as a few select neighbors that have routinely raided and/or trampled through our vegetable beds and borders. We use branches we've pruned off our trees and break them down into sticks of varying lengths and stick them into the beds now. They blend in nicely with the plants and prevent critters (and humans) from gamely trespassing. It also prevents our dog from stepping into the beds too. Oh, and when we don't have enough sticks we use bamboo, also cut at an angle into varying lengths.

I also agree with allisonnf. In many places CATS are not allowed to roam - why shouldn't cat owners be held to the same standards as dog owners? Besides, cats kill incredible numbers of bird, reptiles and amphibians (and some mammals). So don't feel guilty about the shelter - most will even loan you the trap!

this is great! squirrels have been using my windowsill plants as a rodent club med. everything that i've tried just seems to make things more fun for them. (including rigging up a pretty nifty hanging plant system which they now jump into and swing like a giant dirt hammock, crafty little buggers) i'm sure they won't hurt themselves on the plastic forks, so i am going to give this a try.

haha my own cat is my biggest problem and I have a feeling he'd walk up to one of those forks and use it to rub his whiskers on then poop next to it.

I don't see this deterring cats because they're so agile they can easily walk between the forks. I think amefree has the best idea (citrus and gravel).

Bamboo skewers. Saw them in planters in Greece, then told my mom about it when I got home. Stick them in the ground, pointy end up, and cats won't bother.

Hey, ClarkP2! I'm fresh out of crazy pills over here. Do you think you could send me some?

I think my cat would also rub her face on the forks and then just poop next to them. I wonder how long compostable taterware forks would hold up.

I prefer natural alternatives, also Ím thankfull with all that give healthy alternatives . A cat is an animal, animal of instics, and them never gonna go to your plants or garden to destroy it as a person. I saw that many of you may kill them, but understand it please!!! are ANIMALS!! and be more intelingent than a animal!

Akay- to keep those pesky squirrels away use cayenne pepper, they can't stand it. I put it in my bird feeder. It's high in vitamin C, and the birds love it.

I sprinkle CAYENNE Pepper over the surface of my raised veggie beds, especially those that are newly sowed, and in the spaces where established transplants haven't filled in yet.

No cats poop there....I buy the big canisters at Sam's Club.

To keep squirrels from eating all your tomatoes, spray the tomatoes with hot pepper wax. It's sold in a spray bottle at garden stores. You'll need to respray the tomatoes every few days, and after it rains (and also before you eat them!), but it helps. Hot pepper wax is also useful if squirrels are digging up newly planted bulbs. Just spray the bulbs before you put them in the ground, and the squirrels will give up after sampling a few and leave the rest alone.

To keep squirrels from eating all your tomatoes, spray the tomatoes with hot pepper wax. It's sold in a spray bottle at garden stores. You'll need to respray the tomatoes every few days, and after it rains (and also before you eat them!), but it helps. Hot pepper wax is also useful if squirrels are digging up newly planted bulbs. Just spray the bulbs before you put them in the ground, and the squirrels will give up after sampling a few and leave the rest alone.