This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
Cats pooping in raised bed compost
SulJW
Posts: 1
The neighbourhood cats have been using my raised beds as littler trays, I know I need to get rid of the compost as I now can't grow vegetables in it but I don't know what to do with it! Can I use it for flower beds?
0
Posts
Yes, it will be fine. It would also say its fine for veg too unless you're a bit squeamish about a bit of poo. You can always just remove what's in there. Plenty of crops are grown in all sorts of stuff which you probably wouldn't want to know about.
There are lots of scare stories about cats and Toxoplasmosis but vegetables can't catch it, and if you're growing root veg, then common sense is that you wash the veg before eating it and if that doesn't get rid of it, then the cooking process will. The only caveat perhaps is if your pregnant or suffer from an immune deficiency you should avoid cat poo, but otherwise Toxoplasmosis is generally harmless to most people. Try to keep cats off the bed by simply planting it up, or if you're waiting a bit, put some twigs in the ground or lay chicken wire over the soil to stop them being able to dig. Make sure its secured down.
another £1 for me .
Suljw. All sorts of things will poo in the garden, birds, mice , hedgehogs, it doesn't mean you have to remove the soil and start again.
I've never seen a farmer scouring his fields searching for dog, cat, fox , badger poo.
You'll be fine. Honest.
Yes you'll be fine ?
Having waged war with my feline friends for years I can confirm that things in ground work very well, where there are bare patches, spaced so they cannot scratch and dig.
Garlic granules work too, but need to be reapplied after heavy rain.
We recently installed an ultrasonic cat scarer and one main moggy who was being particularly insis tent, hasn't been back since.
some work on batteries, others On mains. Harmless to the animal but emit high pitched sound they dislike, as they have sensitive hearing.
Titalky harmless to birds, of which we have many visiting our garden.