Anyone with a great DIY solution for keeping deer away from a flower bed?
Unfortunately, a fence is not practical.
We put in a really nice, new flower bed around the backyard that has brought the deer out of the woodwork. They seem most interested in the daylilies and hydrangea plants. We have tried a few different sprays, and these do seem to work wonderfully for the better part of an afternoon. Last night I tried some ball-type deer repellant that we placed at the base of the most desirable plants. These are 4-1/2 - 5 star rated on Amazon. This morning, I saw a doe and a fawn, both literally licking their lips as the moved towards the garden. I couldn’t risk the plants to see if they eventually would have been turned away by the miracle repellant (which stinks to high heaven, by the way) and I had to chase the bastards away.
There was a time when it was a treat to see deer ambling through the backyard. Now I’m thinking about getting a wolf.
My brother in law has done food plots for the deer, and to get them grown up, uses some sort of tape fence (like 1/2" wide ribbon) that gets sprayed with some repellent. His experience is it works both on the food plots and the garden. You have to not mind the look of it, which is half of it. It’s not a full on fence, but it’s a tape that’s visible. He uses fiberglass poles from Agway to string it on and the stuff (whatever it is) comes in a hand pump spray bottle. I recall a remote plot he did some years back they never touched till the day he took the fence down, and they ate it bare in one day when that was gone. So, they they knew dinner was inside that line. He strung it about 24-30" off the ground as I recall. As long as bears don’t come knock it down, you’re good. I can ask what it was if you like.
Thanks, that’s an interesting idea for sure. Unfortunately, given my yard, setting up something like that would be a bit more of a project than I’m willing to take on. Not to mention the wife would never go for it.
If I can’t figure out a way to keep the deer away, I will have to either replace the food plants with something the deer won’t touch and move the desirable plants closer to the house (the deer will only come so close), or just get rid of the plants altogether.
Lol. Yea, the deer must have different policies where you live.
I have 36’ of almost continuous floor to ceiling glass looking out from the kitchen over the pool. Tulips, Bearded Iris and Hosta in between. The deer will come right up to the glass at the kitchen and look at me as if to say, “Hey buddy, mind your own business. Can’t ya see I’m having lunch here? Get back to wash’n dishes!”
My sister said that her husband used to go out and urinate around their garden frequently to try to keep the deer away. I can ask her if that actually worked, or if it was just a fun story to tell.
What seems to help for me for deer and porcupines is hot pepper spray. Every year we make a large batch of fermented hot sauce, after being strained the seeds and skins go in a big jar of olive oil for a few months to make chile oil. I only use a little for cooking but the rest turns into hot pepper spray. I put about a cup in a spray bottle with water and a little everclear to help it mix. It works well but it’s hard to keep up when it rains a lot.
Yeah. This seems to be the main problem with over-the-counter sprays. They work until it rains. And they ain’t cheap considering how often I need to reapply.
I’ve read hit and miss stories about bar soap. The best practice seems to be cutting the bars up into smallish chunks and spreading the bits and pieces around the perimeter. Irish Spring gets the highest marks for effectiveness, go figure.
Strange that the deer eat your daylilies and hydrangeas. Although we don’t have daylilies, we have other kinds of lilies and hydrangeas, and the deer ignore those.
Our approach has been to plant plants in the unfenced front garden that deer won’t eat, and to also plant shrubs and trees that they are free to browse on, so they have something to eat, but they won’t kill it. The fenced in backyard garden has all the stuff they eat, or at least sample. Deer are notorious for taking a bite out of everything, then deciding they don’t like it.
Got any old hops you don’t mind parting with taking space in the freezer? I’ve made a slurry of hop pellets and spread it around my raised beds to keep the bunnies and woodchucks away, and it has worked quite well. I would assume that it would work for deer too, but I’m not sure how you’d apply it on your flowers. On something like hostas it would probably work fantastic.
I feel your pain! We have planters on our patio. The deer left them alone last year but got into them this year. My wife has wooden trellises that she leans against the planters and that seems to work. Our bigger problem is a 30 pound raccoon I call Godzilla, who was getting into our bird seed. He was impervious to pepper spray. It was a battle of wits and will and he won! We bought a pole with a baffle but we get black bears in the yard, too, so we will wait to put it up.
In other words, we don’t buy or make beer, we just rent.