Check Out 5 Easy Ways on How to Keep Chipmunks Out of Garden

If you live in an area that is close to some animal habitats, you may find that some of them invade your outdoor living space. At some points, they may give you some good benefits, but they can also damage your garden or even harm you.

How to Keep Chipmunks Out of Garden
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Chipmunk is one of the animals that often live around the residential area, especially the ones with big trees, shrubs, or rich vegetation. Some homeowners have to deal with chipmunks since they can actually damage your property and cause some illness for you.

Yes, despite their cute physical appearance, chipmunk can be a carrier to some diseases once they are infected by tick or flea. Once they bite you, their saliva will then infect you. The most common diseases include plague, rabies, and Colorado Tick Fever.

Well, let’s just say they don’t attack you, they still have a good ability to turn your lovely garden to a messy outdoor space.  If you have a lot of food sources for them like fruits, vegetables, and seeds, of course, they will devour them in no time. Moreover, as a good digger, they can damage your patio, deck, retention walls, and even the foundation of your house.

(You may also like: Check Out These 5 Simple Steps on How to Keep Birds Out of Garden)

But don’t worry, you can easily cast them out when you are facing the invasion of chipmunks. The tutorial on how to keep chipmunks out of garden below will show you how to deal with them.

How to Keep Chipmunks Out of Garden

Chipmunks can be easily identified by their appearance which looks like a squirrel – since they come from the same family – only with smaller size. The most active time for them to find sources of food is usually during fall.

Clean Up the Garden

How to Keep Chipmunks Out of Garden 1
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The very first step that you have to do is to keep your garden as clean and as neat as possible. Of course, it should be the regular maintenance that you always have to keep in mind.

  • Pick the fruits and vegetables that ripen, it will reduce the food sources for the chipmunks. Make sure you also clean up the fruits and vegetables that fall into the ground.
  • Clean up the debris, piles of leaves, logs, and trim the shrubs, tall grass, overgrown trees in your backyard. Chipmunks love to hide around the yard so you have to make it look as bright as possible.

Update Your Fence

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Even your backyard is surrounded by a privacy fence, if it’s not buried enough underground or have some holes here and there, chipmunks will still easily invade your garden. Therefore, you have to update your fence so it can prevent those critters to come around.

  • The ideal depth for the fence should be more than 6 inches or at least 8 inches. The chipmunks will fond it hard to burrow underneath.
  • For better protection, you can also add some netting on the top of the fence.

Make Your Garden Unappealing

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One of the greatest abilities of chipmunks is their smell, you can take benefit from it by making your garden less appealing for them. Peppermint, cinnamon, citrus, eucalyptus, and garlic are some aromas that they hate.

Prepare these supllies:

  • Aromatic oil from the options above or puree garlic cloves or mothballs
  • Water

Prepare this tool:

  • Garden sprayer

Follow these steps:

  • If you want to use aromatic oil, mix some drops of the oil with water, add the mixture to the garden sprayer.
  • As an alternative, you can also use the puree garlic cloves or mothballs for the chipmunk repellent.
  • Spray the oil or place the pureed garlic or mothballs on the spots where you plant the vegetation.

Use Some Predators

Cat on Backyard
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If you have dogs and cats as your pets, they can help you to cast out the chipmunks. However, you may face another problem since the cat loves to present their catch to their owners.

You just need to let your pets stay in your outdoor space. The presence of cats and dogs will scare the chipmunks.

(Recommended to read: How to Get Rid of Garden Snakes Safely and Easily with Only 3 Steps)

Set Live Traps

Live Trap
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Of course, you can always use live traps to keep the unwanted invaders to damage your garden. However, setting live traps to catch chipmunks only effectively work when you only deal with a few of them. Even more, some adult chipmunks may have some babies that they need to feed, keep that also in mind.

  • Choose a live trap rather than the rat traps. It’s a more humane way that you can choose to trap chipmunks.
  • For the baits, you can use fruits, seeds, and nuts from any kind.
  • Place the trap close to the burrow or around the sites that you often found chipmunks signs.
  • Check the trap as often as possible, don’t let the chipmunks get stressed and died. Besides, it’s inhumane, their carcass can also attract other predators to come to your garden.
  • Trapped chipmunks can be so aggressive that they may attack you. Always be careful and wear safety gear when you want to remove the chipmunks fro the cage.
  • Also, the dead chipmunks can spread some kind of infection. Always clean them up in the cleanest and safest ways possible.

(Read also: 6 Easy Steps How to Keep Raccoons Out of Garden | Simple DIY Tutorial)

So those are some ways that you can try to cast the chipmunks out of your garden easily without costing you a lot. The tutorial on how to keep chipmunks out of garden above has been proven quite effective by some gardeners. Of course, you can do all the steps all by yourself by only using easily-available tools and materials.

However, if you are facing the severe invasion of chipmunks, you may need to get some help from a pro. Though it can be quite pricey, some pros don’t only offer the eradication treatment, but also the prevention plans. You can easily find pros that specifically offer chipmunks exterminator service.

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