How To Protect Your Garden From Wild Boars?

The wild boar, which typically feeds on grass, acorns, insects, and other small animals, has become a real nuisance for gardeners. As its natural habitat shrinks, it increasingly seeks food in gardens during the night. We will explain how to protect your garden from wild boars and prevent these animals from ravaging crops.

The wild boar, a new pest in the garden.

Gardeners who own a vegetable garden are increasingly encountering wild boars in their garden or can only observe the damage after a nocturnal visit from these animals...

The wild boar is now considered a nuisance in gardens and fields for two reasons:
• on the one hand, the population of wild boars continues to grow. Even though hunts are organized to limit their proliferation, it is estimated that the number of wild boars in France has multiplied by 20 in 40 years.
• on the other hand, the natural habitat of this large game is shrinking due to urbanization.

These two factors explain why wild boars are increasingly seeking food in our gardens. Today, it has become essential to protect your garden from wild boars because these animals can cause a lot of damage by trampling crops and digging the soil.

The best repellents to keep wild boars away.

The first solution to protect your garden from wild boars is to use sound or chemical repellents.

For example, you can equip yourself with a device called a "sonic scarecrow". This device emits high-frequency sounds randomly to deter wildlife such as wild boars, rabbits, deer, and roe deer.

Since wild boars have a highly developed sense of smell, another solution to scare them away is to use odor repellents to spray around your garden. You can find homemade repellent recipes on the internet using camphor, boiled water, crushed garlic cloves, and essential oils such as citronella or peppermint.

As wild boars are also timid animals that flee in the presence of humans, two other free tricks are:
- scattering human hair around your property. This is a natural repellent that you can easily and freely obtain from your hairdresser!
- mixing urine with a little water and pouring this mixture into containers such as tin cans that you will scatter around your garden.

In addition to these grandmother's tricks, there is a repellent available on the market made from silica transformed into talc. This product has the double advantage of being inexpensive and 100% natural. It is safe for health and the environment.

Fences and permanent installations

Even though the repellents listed above are effective against wild boars, they are only temporary solutions to prevent nocturnal intrusions in your vegetable garden until a more permanent solution is installed.

Indeed, these different methods need to be constantly renewed to maintain their effectiveness. When it rains, the active ingredients are diluted and the odors intended to repel intruders disappear.

To permanently protect your garden from wild boars, it is essential to block their access to your vegetable garden by using:
• sturdy barriers all around your plot if you have a small surface.
• an electric fence if you need to protect a larger area.

An electrified tape fence is effective as long as you install 3 different wire heights: one close to the ground, one at 20 cm for piglets, and one at about 50 cm for adults. It is not necessary to use high electrical power to repel these nocturnal visitors. The electric current should be deterrent without being dangerous.

Finally, other permanent installations can keep wild boars away from your garden.
The first one consists of securely fixing wire mesh trellises flat on the ground around your fence and hiding them with grass or mulch to obstruct the approach of wildlife.

The second one involves stretching barbed wires and hanging small bells on them. The bells will act in the same way as a commercial sound repellent. Their tinkling will scare the animals and encourage them to turn back.

Note: If, despite these different solutions and tips, you encounter a wild boar in your garden one day, be cautious! Wild boars usually flee in the presence of humans, but they are becoming less fearful and your shouts may not be enough to drive away the intruder.

In the presence of a wounded or frightened adult or a female with piglets (the sow and her piglets), it is better to do nothing and wait for the animal to leave on its own. In these particular situations, a wild boar can become dangerous and charge at you.