How To Keep Deer Away from Your Garden

Don't be lulled into feeling bad for Bambi. Yes, these giant stomachs with legs have big eyes and cute lashes, but they eat six to 10 pounds of arborvitae and rhododendron a day, carry ticks that cause Lyme disease and other ills, kill 150 people a year in car accidents, and are threatening many wild plants and animals with extinction. Think Darwin; not Disney-or your landscape will look like Mount St. Helens on Day Two.

1. There is only one guaranteed way to prevent deer: Erect a fence. The fence should be 11 inches taller than Shaquille O'Neal. The experts at Cornell University's Cayuga Heights Deer Project warn that for a fence to be an "absolute barrier" it must be a full eight feet tall. All professional deer fencing is this height. Be assured that 'invisible deer fencing' really is-you can't see it from most angles, so you get the protection without feeling like you're living inside a cage. Don't forget to deer-proof the driveway with its own fence or cattle guards.
2. A less expensive alternative is to install three-foot high animal fencing. Install this kind of fencing and then run a series of three single wires overtop at foot-and-a-half intervals; this should keep most deer off your property.
3. Try a REALLY invisible fence; one that's flat to the ground! Lay heavy metal fencing or sheets of corrugated metal on the ground completely around the area you wish to protect-like a vegetable garden. It feels very strange under foot-eh, hoof, and deer are reluctant to cross over it.
4. Your best non-fence bet is a dog. Deer fear dogs, and dogs like to chase deer. Studies have found that dogs kept inside deer-plagued property lines by an invisible fencing system are a very effective deterrent. Border collies and other working dogs are the best choices.
5. Spray-on deer repellants. Deer begin browsing at 28 to 32 inches off the ground-that's your "Strike Zone"; concentrate the spray at that height and limit the overspray to about a foot higher and lower. Reapply every four weeks and rotate several different brands over the course of a deer-dining season. Products that work best include:
   • Deer Away: a 37% solution of classically stinky putrescent egg solids.
   • Deer-Off: a combination of stinky egg smell with hot pepper and garlic.
   • Liquid Fence: smells like a combination of eggs gone bad with garlic.
   • Hinder: an ammonia-based repellant that can also be painted on trees to prevent rabbits nibbling the bark.

   (Don't worry-you won't smell these things after they dry-but the deer will taste them.)

6. An alternative to spraying plants is clothesline. String a clothesline at browsing height in front of the plants you wish to protect and then soak the rope with repellant.
7. Another good device is the "Wireless Deer Fence". Available directly from the manufacturer via the web (WirelessDeerFence), these stakes use scent pellets to attract deer to the electrodes on top, which convey one heck of a shock to deer what lick them via a capacitor powered by two double AA batteries. As with an electric fence, the shocked deer will remember their bad experience at your place and eat someone else's tulips and azaleas that season.
8. Make your own "Swedish cure" deer repellant at home. This repellant was developed to protect the ultimate deer delicacy-tulip flowers-from the merciless creatures in Sweden's famed Rosendal Gardens. (Yes, deer are a problem in SWEDEN; doesn't that make you feel a little bit better?) Here's the recipe:
   • Mix 2 ½ pounds of bloodmeal (half of a 5 lb. bag) into a normal size bucket that's about half to 2/3 full of water.
   • Stir well.
   • Add 1 cup of ammonia and keep stirring until mixed.

   Now, cut green florist block into big cubes and place each cube on a three-foot tall stake. Dip the staked cubes into the bucket and let 'em sit there for awhile and get really saturated. Then, place the stakes about six feet apart around plants you wish to protect. Re-saturate the cubes every couple of weeks or after a really heavy rain.

9. Avoid these repellants because they are toxic and/or ineffective. Do not use mothballs (they are highly toxic to you and your pets); or coyote, fox or other predator urines (they are harvested in a very cruel manner). Neither seems very effective either.