Lil wrote:
We've been living in this house for about 2 years. Recently, we
noticed that some neighborhood cat has been using our vegetable/fruit
garden area as a litterbox. Most of this area is open and covered
with weedmat with woodchips over it. Are there good ways to deter the
cats, without either harming them or our veggies and fruits? I
suspect part of our problem is we live on a corner lot....

Thanks in advance!

Lil

You can densely surround a garden with thorny groundcover that cats won't
cross & dogs won't squat on, to their bum's distress if they try. Good
protective groundcovers include Crown of Thorns, or "pygmy crimson"
barberry, or a low-growing creeping rose or dwarf "shrub" roses. It could
even be a vining variety of blackberry or raspberry so that it was part of
the harvestable garden. Or Smilex (Greebriar aka climbing asparagus) forms
a woody thorny vine
barrier & is even sometimes called "cat briar" because it keeps cats at bay.

Of course cats will often find a way over or around such a barrier, the
same path you'd likely take, so there may also need to be a closeable gate
for your own ingress.

You could also can lay out all over the ground lengths of dried thorny
canes, anything that makes it less pleasant to dig in fresh-turned earth.
This would only work in spots where you wouldn't yourself be kneeling down
or rooting about with your hands.

Another method is to just clean up after the cat & say to yourself, "Oh
boy! Compost enrichment!" & toss the cat turds in the compost heap. It's
no more or less than you'd have to do with your own cat. Indeed, you can
GET your own cat, for whom it would not be quite so annoying to clean up.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com