Catnip plants in NJAES research plot at Rutgers Snyder Farm.
Farmers and home gardeners may be as attracted to the new lines of catnip being released by Rutgers NJAES as cats are. The new varieties have larger leaves and flowers, which produce more of the essential oils that cats go crazy for. Rutgers Professor Jim Simon and doctoral student William Reichert have developed lines with a custom designed essential oil composition. Up to now, catnip oil has been too expensive to use as a repellent, but it has been shown to repel mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches, termites, dust mites and deer ticks. Read more at Rutgers Today.
