Month: April 2019

I  wrote this article in 2012 about my old garden.  I have included the original article here with additions in italics about what I have learned since and what I am doing at my new garden.

Like people, deer love the new growth plants put out in spring.  Unlike us, they eat the foliage instead of admiring it, bringing howls of dismay from gardeners who just spent a lot of money on the plants at the garden center.

I put hair and soap around my plants, ground up garlic and hot peppers and turned them into a slurry to cover the leaves of the plants with a disgusting substance, and even attempted to shoot at the deer with a BB gun.  (Sometimes the whizzing BB startled them away).  I even ran out of the house screaming at them.  The deer were quite unfazed most of the time.  Finally, we gave up and installed an electric fence.

We use three strands of wire on metal posts, and we have a gate that folds back unobtrusively into the woods where the fence crosses the driveway.  Electric fences are easy to install and to maintain, as long as you buy a T-post driver to get the metal posts in the ground. 

Consider driving the posts your workout for a couple of days; it’s great for upper-arm strength. After you install the t-posts, you can use the tool to drive garden stakes.

Stores like Tractor Supply sell the necessary supplies.  Electric fences are not dangerous if properly installed, and they give a harmless, although unpleasant, shock.  

The deer fence worked for a time, but then the deer learned to jump over the three strands of fence as though it wasn’t even there.  At my new home, I have not put up any fencing around the garden, even though my home sits in the middle of hundreds of acres of woods.  I am not entirely certain why the deer avoid my home. The neighbor’s dogs probably help keep them away, and perhaps the disruption of the land-clearing and house construction process made them divert their paths.

At my old home, I had a permanent fence, six feet tall, surrounding the perimeter of the vegetable garden. I never had any deer intrusion. At the new garden, if and when deer become a problem, I will not install a permanent fence because of the expense and trouble involved in constructing it, and because the permanent fence encourages weed problems.

If I need a fence at the new home, I will use two electric fences, one inside the other. Instructing you on building a deer fence is beyond the scope of this article, but the basic idea is this: deer don’t like to be trapped between fences, so if you build two fences far enough apart that they can’t clear them both in one jump, but close enough together so they can’t jump over one and then regain their energy for another jump, they won’t try jumping at all. For more information, visit this website for fence- building directions.

If you have close neighbors who might object to the electrification of your property, try commercially produced deer repellents. Deer Scram Professional Grade is the most effective product I have found.  It is a granular substance, containing dried deer blood, pepper, garlic, and cloves. 

Motion-Activated Sprinklers  scare the deer away, too and are actually one of my favorite deterrents that I will probably impelement at the new home before I build a fence.  I have had mine for many years, but I couldn’t use them at the old house because I would have had to have hoses stretching across the driveway permanently to operate them.    They are also useful for keeping unwary guests out of your house, cats from using the garden as a litterbox, or even chickens away from your newly sprouted seedlings.

At my new home, I have solar powered flashing red lights that fortify my garden against the deer.  This may not be a solution for people with close neighbors, as they would be irritating in close quarters, but in the country they are not bothersome and seem to be effective.  I also have these lights which are not nearly as obnoxious.  I do think the large light is more effective, though.

Another way to minimize deer damage is to compose your garden of plants deer dislike, although they will eat almost anything if they are hungry enough.  Deer usually dislike strange tastes and textures, with the exception of roses, which they love: a few thorn pricks seem to be worth the taste.

Herbs, mints, and their relatives have unusual tastes and smells.  Deer do not usually like mints, but be careful with them because they can become invasive.  Plant them in a pot sunk in the ground to contain their roots. 

Upright rosemary makes a great small evergreen shrub for hot, dry places and I have never known them to eat it.  Deer avoid the mint relatives Agastache and salvia.  They don’t usually eat foxgloves, larkspur, or coneflowers.  

For spring bulbs, plant daffodils instead of tulips, daffodils do better here anyway.  Deer avoid hollies, boxwood, and loropetalum.  They also dislike conifers.

Some of the deer’s favorite plants are azaleas, roses,camellias, hydrangeas, Indian hawthorns, Hostas, pansies, and tulips.  Sometimes you can hide these favorite plants among or behind less favored plants; plant your tulips and pansies among some mint and rosemary plants.

Plant favorite plants close to the house instead of at the edge of the woods; deer generally do not venture close to the house, unless there is a lot of “deer pressure,” which means that there are a lot of hungry deer and not much food. Deer have been known to eat tomatoes out of potted plants on people’s porches.

Don’t even try to plant a vegetable garden in deer country without protection in the form of a fence; deer love beans, peas, and lettuce, and they have been known to watch the tomatoes ripening, just as you do, and to pluck the one you were planning to harvest the next day from the vine during the night.

Before you purchase plants, find out whether or not you have deer; your neighbors will know if you haven’t seen any.   In the Blythewood area, if you have any woods nearby, you probably have deer. 

Garden centers, books like “The New Southern Living Garden Book” and online sites like bluestoneperennials.com offer lists of plants that deer dislike. Plan ahead to purchase plants deer dislike to save yourself the pain of walking out to admire your garden to find all the blossoms stripped from your roses and your shrubs defoliated.