Saturday, May 25, 2019

Protecting Newly Planted Catmint from Kitties

Too much catmint photo by Teresa Stanton at Flickr.com.


My garden writer friend Larry, the LaidbackGardener, up in Quebec, Canada, recommends that you place barriers around newly planted Catmint plants until they get established as the kitties can get a bit enthusiastic and kill them with love before they get a chance to be send out their roots.

Larry writes, "You only need a temporary cat barrier,, while nepetas settle in and stop giving off their cat-enticing aroma. The problem is not with well-established plants, but freshly planted ones. During planting, some roots are inevitably broken or leaves are damaged, leading to the emission of nepetalactone and the resulting cat attraction. So, cover freshly planted nepetas with some sort of barrier (a cut-off gallon milk jug, for example) to keep the cats away. After 4 or 5 days, the aroma accidentally released during planting will have disappeared and cats will no longer be a bother. 

See his full blog post here:
https://laidbackgardener.blog/2019/06/02/protecting-nepetas-from-cats/amp/

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