Video: Simple Remedies To Protect Your Plants

SANTA ROSA — Host, Sarah Rutan: If you have a garden around your home, you’ll not only want to protect them from the elements but you’ll also want to protect them from wildlife as well. So today we’re in Santa Rosa with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Alan Kostelnik of Gardens of the Wine Country to learn how to protect your plants from wildlife.

Expert Contributor, Alan Kostelnik: When designing, planting and managing your garden, consider its exposure to the wildlife present in your area.

There are many remedies, there is people that build cages, there is deer netting or bird netting. A simple home remedy you can make in your own kitchen is to take garlic cloves, jabanero peppers and jalapeno peppers, put them in your blender and mash them up. There is no need to peel, there is no need to cook. Mash them up in your blender, then take the mash and put it in an old plastic gallon milk jug , empty gallon milk jug, add some water and let it steep for about three or four days in your garage. After that, you take it and strain it through some cheesecloth, put the liquid in a little atomizer spray bottle and spray that directly on the plant.

This plant is called a euphorbia. The problem here is the deer haven’t bothered it but what they have done is deer get thirsty and when the drip emitters are working, the deer see that and they will attempt to get a drink of water out of it and many times they will pull the emitter right off which will cause the plant to drown because of over water. So you’ll need to check your emitters for deer damage when you see stress to your plants.

Two other major culprits when it comes to native wildlife are gophers and moles. Over watering tends to bring them on because it increases the food source, especially in the case of moles. If you’re constantly watering your lawn day in and day out, you’ll have a very wet subsurface and the moles will continue to thrive. The best thing to do for plant material as far as gophers are concerned are gopher baskets, which is essentially a wire basket that you put the plant roots in, put the plants in the basket in the ground in the planting hole altogether. Moles are essentially subterranean rats and they will eat rat poison, which are little green cakes that you can buy at any hardware store or garden center.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local, top-rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.