Create Your Dream Garden 
Keeping Woodchucks Out
Question: Something has been eating my tomatoes, and over the weekend I saw the culprit. A woodchuck waddled over, reached up, bent a branch down and grabbed a tomato! How can I keep woodchucks out of my vegetable garden?
Answer: Woodchucks (also known as groundhogs) and rabbits are the top raiders of vegetable gardens, well ahead of raccoons, opossums and skunks. (Skunks actually aid the gardener by eating grubs, Japanese beetles and other nuisance bugs.) You may think first of trapping and moving the woodchuck, but this is not advised. Many states have laws against relocating animals, because it can lead to the spread of diseases like rabies, and often the animal doesn’t survive in its new location. There may not be enough food for it there, or the right type of food, or it may face competition with or predation from the animals already in residence. Even if you did trap and move the woodchuck, another would take its place in your garden anyway. Instead, try a combination of repellents and fencing.
For repellents, try lining the edges of the garden with blood-meal fertilizer or with a rodent-specific repellent like Hinder. (Follow the label directions of any product carefully, especially when using near edibles.) Many gardeners swear by used kitty litter; they pour it down woodchucks’ holes or scatter it around the edge of the garden.
An easy-to-make L-shaped fence blocks both woodchucks and rabbits. Use chicken wire. You can keep woodchucks from burrowing under the fence by “planting” the chicken wire at least 4 inches deep. Bend the bottom edge 90 degrees (into an L shape) and point the bottom of the L away from the garden when you bury it. When the woodchuck starts digging, he’ll hit the mesh. Above ground, make the fence about 3 feet tall. You can drive posts into the ground to nail it to, but keep these only about 2 feet tall, so that the top of the chicken wire stays loose and wobbly. This discourages woodchucks from climbing over it.
_________________________________________________________
Get illustrated instructions on tending 5 popular crops
Learn how to grow fruits and vegetables with our Fruits & Veggies CD
Learn everything you need to know about vegetables with the Everything Grow Your Own Vegetables Book
Squirrels ate every. last. thing. in my veggie garden this year. I’d like to kitty litter them all right.
I have found that a .22lr stops them for the rest of the year!!
Steve in SE PA
I found that installing an electric fence 3″ above the chicken wire fence has solved the problem completely. I have three 4′ x 8′ raised bed gardens now that are surrounded by a 2″ chicken wire fence and topped by the electric fence. I used a Have-a-heart pet fence. It was easy to install and deters the groundhogs and squirrels.
Robert
Hi Amanda,
We had, and probably still have, a momma groundhog and her 3 kits. They wiped out our summer garden, mowing through the crookneck and zucchini squash plants in a couple of days, turning an overgrown 4 x 8 raised garden with a 3 ft fence into a wasteland. I have tried the kitty litter as I have 4 cats. I found that it did cause the critters to vacate the area for a while but they would always come back. Because one of the burrows was close to the garden, I could always catch a whiff of the litter while around the garden.
Does kitty litter really work? Have you tried it or known someone who’s tried it with success?
Hi Amanda,
I haven’t personally tried kitty litter to ward off woodchucks. However we published a letter in a recent print issue of Horticulture from a man who wondered if there was a way to reuse kitty litter, and we received many responses from other readers touting its effectiveness against woodchucks and rabbits. If I had a problem with woodchucks, and I had a cat, I would give it a shot.
—Meghan Shinn, editor