Posted on 09/14/2008 5:29:20 AM PDT by yankeedame
Anyone who's ever had deer in the garden knows that these cutesy marauders -- which author Rhonda Massingham Hart calls "Agent Orange on hooves" -- can decimate a landscape like no other pest.
Safe from hunters in the suburbs and well fed by the shrub and flower buffets set out by kindly gardeners, deer are becoming more and more of a problem in these protected pockets.
Penn State University wildlife specialist Dr. Gary San Julian says just five male and five female deer can produce up to 200 deer in just five years. "The reproduction ability of this animal is huge," he says. What's more, a typical adult deer eats four to eight pounds of food a day, according to San Julian. That's a lot of hosta!
As we continue to convert forests and meadows into housing, we shrink the distance between deer and us. And deer are adapting quite well, realizing we're not as scary as they originally thought.
The back-yard carnage is especially bad in winter when there's little else to eat, although deer damage can happen anytime of year. Just ask your tulip buds and daylily blossoms.
So what can you do to fight back? Try some of these...
Be careful what you plant.
"The first rule of deer-o-scaping is to avoid plants that deer actively seek out," says Hart, who wrote "Deer Proofing Your Yard & Garden" (Storey Publishing, 1997). "Deer will make pigs of themselves when they find their favorite foods. And they will do it over and over again."
The problem with supposed "deer-proof" plant lists is that various lists often contradict one another. Also, deer don't read these lists. The reality is that if deer are hungry enough, they'll eat anything. Maybe even your SUV.
Nevertheless, most deer seem to have a particular fondness for tulips, hosta, daylilies, yews, burning bushes, azaleas, rhododendrons, arborvitae, most roses and most fruits and vegetables. They generally don't like strong-tasting, strong-smelling, toxic and/or fuzzy-leafed plants. See the sidebar for a list of reasonably "deer-resistant" plants.
Repulse them.
Most garden centers have a shelf full of products that repel deer either by adding a scent they don't like (blood, garlic, rotten eggs, etc.) or by coating the plants with a bitter or other yucky taste (Bittrex, hot peppers, the fungicide Thiram, etc.) Some products use both. Some of the brands that some gardeners swear by are Plantskydd, Bobbex, Deer-Away, Deer Off, Liquid Fence and Deer Scram.
The key is applying them often enough to keep the repelling scent or taste current -- sometimes a challenge when it's raining a lot or when plants are growing quickly. Don't try to tinker with the labeled dilutions of repellents, apply them in early morning or early evening, and test them first on small areas of plants before coating everything. Hart says it's also wise to rotate and alternate different repellents before deer get used to them.
Other ways to stink them out.
A deer's first priority when food-shopping is making sure he doesn't become dinner himself. So picking up the scent of a possible predator may be enough to scare him away.
Examples are the old farmer tricks of hanging sweaty shirts around the garden or hanging out muslin bags filled with human hair. Some gardeners have had pretty good anti-deer success by fertilizing with Milorganite, a granular product that's made from treated Milwaukee sewage sludge. Apparently there's still enough human scent in it to make deer wary.
Another scent repellent favored by Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center Director Sally Ferguson is "Swedish Skewers," made by soaking cubes of floral foam in a "soup" of bloodmeal, ammonia and water. To make, mix 2.5 pounds of bloodmeal in a bucket of water and add 1 cup of ammonia. Impale foam cubes on bamboo stakes or skewers, soak them in the bloodmeal/ammonia mix and then stick them around plants you're trying to protect. Ferguson says you may need to re-dip them weekly.
Surprise them away.
Some gardeners have saved plantings by using motion-activated gadgets that automatically spray a burst of water when something enters the watch zone. Others have used the same startling-action theory by employing motion-activated lights, radios, pie plates strung on wire and even mini-cannons set to go off at intervals (which might diminish your popularity with the neighbors).
Then there's the basic get-a-dog advice. Dogs usually scare away deer, but the effectiveness will depend on the dog and whether you're letting him/her outside and unchained when deer normally come by to feed.
Fence them out.
This is the ultimate plan. Deer-plagued public gardens such as Hershey Gardens in Dauphin County and Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve in Bucks County gave up and just erected tall fencing around the entire perimeter. That works great, provided there are no openings and the fence is at least 7 to 8 feet tall.
But perimeter fencing -- even the less obtrusive black plastic kind -- can get expensive and can give your landscaping that San Quentin feel. Fencing works best when you can tack it to trees in a wooded area, where it blends into the background better than in a subdivision.
Electrified fences can be smaller and a little less expensive, especially if you bait it with peanut butter to lure deer in for a sample shock. But it's still not exactly attractive and has the potential to shock you and the grandkids if you're not paying attention.
Another option is a double fence -- a pair of 4- to 5-foot-tall fences placed parallel to one another 4 to 5 feet apart. Deer think twice about being able to jump far enough to clear both.
And the simplest fence of all is a single strand of heavy-duty, deep-sea-fishing line strung between trees or posts at two to three feet off the ground. Many gardeners swear by this one, saying it confuses deer when they bump into it.
Yet another option is erecting barricades around sensitive plantings. This approach works great when you use 6- to 8-foot-tall barricades of thick burlap, poultry netting or sturdy deer fencing.
If all else fails, have you ever thought about rooftop gardening?
Plants for Pennsylvania gardens that are among the least likely to be browsed by deer:
TREES
SHRUBS
EVERGREENS
PERENNIALS
ANNUALS
I have a neighbor who uses his own urine to keep keep the deer away. I won’t be eating anything from his garden...
I use Liquid Fence to keep them off my plants. I have deer in my yard all the time and they leave my plants alone.
Between the deer, armadillos, and hogs I’ve given up on gardening and any yard.
Before they built their house up north I remember one dinner when they and my dad and I got into a heated discussion about deer hunting - they were totaly against it!
As expected, their attitude has totally changed now that they've suffered the consequences of deer overpopulation.....
Armadillos are the new scourage around here. They’re across the Missouri River now and if Iowa’s winter doesn’t stop them, they’ll be past the Minnesota border in ten or twenty years. Plantskydd works to stop deer but washes off in the rain. Its essentially blood from slaughtered packing houses.
Liquid Fence is also my liquid of choice. It smells awful but for that reason it works great. I have a gazillion varities of hosta that they ate like lettuce before I started using it.
If deer and bear had their numbers kept in check in forested areas where they originally were found before invading developments, we wouldn;t have this problem.
The canard that we are driving out of their habitat by building is only partially correct.
In the past their numbers were FAR smaller than now. They were well controlled by deer hunts. But as they moved into parklands the animal rights wackos blocked every effort by fish and game people to stage controlled hunts to limit their numbers. From their they moved into developments and other areas where successful hunting is difficult or impossible.
In New Jersey, the resident bear population was limited to a small area near the Delware Water Gap and kept there by controlled state hunts until the Bambi-ites in New Jersey stopped the hunt a few decades ago.
Since then the black bear population has exploded created increasing dangerous encounters between bears, people, livestock, pets and cars. I believe even now, the Corzine Administration in New Jersey is “cooking the books” on bear-human encounters.
AS for the deer pests, eating shrubbery is the LEAST of the problems they generate. Fatal or serious vehicle collisions, as well as a public health problem from deer ticks infested with Lyme disease and other contagions are even more threatening.
gardening? I know it not.
I use one of those automatic water sprayers and it is amazingly effective. Can’t use it in freezing temperatures though.
We moved to an old farmhouse and I’d never had to deal with deer before. I couldn’t figure out what was happening to my roses. My pastor, who is a rosarian (breeds his own) clued me in. I have to spray weekly because it’s different herds moving through all the time but I haven’t lost anymore new growth or rosebuds. I love the stuff.
It’s gotten much worse the last few years here in West Michigan. They WILL eat anything. We also have neighbors within a mile that have those automatic corn feeders in the woods. The herd keeps getting bigger, and they only kill a few each season. Do the math, people.
Does it work? (human urine)
“Does it work? (human urine)”
Apparently it does.
“Fatal or serious vehicle collisions, as well as a public health problem from deer ticks infested with Lyme disease and other contagions are even more threatening.”
...Absolutely....in our area the average cost of a deer-auto collision was $2000...to try and manage the deer population, the county held an archery hunt in the river Park....I went down to the check station and talked to the biologist in charge...he was pulling ticks off the dead deer and sending them in to the state university for analysis...ticks were pulled off the left ear only....one doe had 14...it made your skin crawl to see it....when our neighbor got Lyme, he went to 4 different doctors before the last one finally properly diagnosed him....he suffers from chronic pain in his joints.
I love the deer in the yards.
Once had EIGHT, EIGHT points bucks in my front yard!
Being involved in an auto accident usually changes the mind of even the most deer-loving.
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