Got Mice in Your Garden? This $2 Pantry Staple Could Help Keep Them Away For Good
This simple ingredient is a non-toxic way to stop mice from damaging your plants and garden furniture
Every gardener knows the perils of pest control – especially in the spring. And if you're keen to deter mice from your yard right now, there's one non-toxic trick you need to know about: vinegar. Diluted with water and sprayed on both garden borders and furniture, it carries a scent strong enough to repel rodents.
After months spent tending to your plants and sprucing up your yard, there's nothing that dampens the mood quite like spotting mice or rats – but you don't need to fork out on traps or use harsh chemicals. Often, the best way to keep mice out of your yard is to use natural pest control methods.
It might sound dubious, but vinegar really can help you deter mice from your garden furniture and your plants. Below, a pest control expert explain why – and shares their best tips on how to use this humble pantry staple effectively.
How to Use Vinegar to Deter Mice in Your Yard
Vinegar works in the same way as other common deterrents, such as peppermint (which you'll find in plenty of popular products such as rodent repellent pouches, like these from Walmart, or peppermint oil repellent spray, like this one from Home Depot.)
These are just a few of the many smells that mice and rats hate – which is why they can be used to protect everything from your patio furniture to your raised beds.
Yet it isn't the scent of these deterrents themselves that acts as a repellent; instead, their odor serves to overpower and even neutralize other smells. This is what disorients rodents, making them less likely to seek out the food sources that would otherwise attract them.
'It’s not necessarily the harsh scent that makes vinegar useful,' explains Nicole Carpenter, President at Black Pest Prevention. 'It's actually the acetic acid that neutralizes chemical compounds and removes mice-attracting smells.'
So, while cleaning with vinegar might be a common household hack, this simple ingredient is just as useful outdoors.
Nicole started working at Black Pest Prevention when she was in high school, and continued working there while attending N.C. State University. Eventually, she became the CEO. Black Pest Prevention is a firm that helps with pest control in Charlotte and serves both North and South Carolina.
If you've noticed mice in your garden, you'll most likely find them in garden beds, which they use for shelter, and compost bins, which they use as a source of food. With this in mind, you can spray vinegar along your garden borders and around compost bins and lids to keep mice away.
'Vinegar is more useful as a cleaning tool than an active mouse repellent,' advises Nicole. 'In the garden, vinegar can help remove mice-attracting odors from patio tables, trash cans, compost bin lids, or even outdoor furniture in vacation homes after long periods of vacancy.'
You can dilute vinegar with water and dispense it using plastic spray bottles (which you can buy from Amazon). Alternatively, you can stock up on specially-formulated vinegar cleaning sprays like this one, also from Amazon.
To create a simple DIY cleaning solution, 'mix 1 part white vinegar with 1 part water,' says Nicole. 'Apply it only to hard, non-porous surfaces, let it sit for 10 minutes, then wipe the surface clean.'
While this is a brilliant way to effectively 'seal off' borders and surfaces from rodents, it's crucial not to spray the solution directly onto your plants.
'Never spray vinegar directly on your plants, lawn or soil because vinegar is an acid and can damage vegetation,' confirms Nicole. Vinegar is, in fact, a natural herbicide that kills crops.
It's also important to note that vinegar is a quick fix rather than a long-term solution – primarily because its odor weakens over time.
'Vinegar may be unpleasant to mice for a short time, but outdoors its scent fades in a couple of hours and stops working,' Nicole summarizes. 'This makes it a better cleaning solution rather than a standalone mice repellent.'
With this in mind, you can easily use vinegar solutions to protect garden surfaces, but you will have to reapply them daily for optimal results. It's also worth investing in rodent-proof garden essentials such as a heavy-duty trash can lock, like this one from Amazon, and secure patio storage boxes, like this one from Walmart.
For more natural pest control tips, check out our guide to the best mouse-repellent plants, or take a look at our tips on how to get rid of mice from a garage.
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