Spreading a food waste item in your garden beds keeps cats away - 'it’s cheap and fast'

A gardener has turned to Reddit looking for a solution to keep cats away from their garden.

Cats may be cute indoors, but outside, they can be a nuisance. There are several tricks to keep them out of your flower beds, like planting lavender or installing motion-sensor sprinklers.

The issue for this gardener, however, is they don’t want to change the appearance of their garden with new plants or machines.

They were looking for, “advice on how to deter neighborhood cats/strays from using my little garden bed as a litter box without ruining aesthetic appearance."

READ MORE: Deter rats and mice from your garden with the ‘most effective’ plants expert recommends

Cats are a detriment to gardens because they use the toilet in the flower beds, can disturb the mulch and kill wildlife.

One commenter offered an ingenious idea. They said to spread orange or lemon peels around the plants, as cats don’t like the smell of citrus.

Another chimed in, saying in order to make the deterrent less noticeable, they could use citrus zest in the garden.

They wrote: “The simple and easy way is do a combination of orange and citrus zest and peels, cinnamon and then sprinkle chilli flakes.”

Don't miss...

Garden care: What is ‘dormancy’ and what to do now your lawn is entering this period [EXPLAINER]

Use cheap kitchen scrap in the garden to achieve ‘flourishing flowers’ all year long [HACK]

Gardener shares 5 flowers to plant now that 'look good in the garden all year round' [INSIGHTS]

Someone else offered spraying lemon juice near the flowers.

“I spray a lemon sprit on things I don’t want my cats touching or lying on. Also it’s not just unpleasant, their urine kills pretty flowers, my roses lost the will to live when my female kept wetting their flowerbed so had to use lemon peel there too.”

Someone tested the trick to see if cats actually hate the smell of lemon. They squirted some lemon juice on a bit of tuna that the cat normally loves, and it refused to eat it.

The user wrote: “They gave us a face that asked us why we would ruin excellent fish.”