How to Stop Deer From Eating Your Gardens
I don’t know about you but the deer eat everything in my gardens. Even the things that are supposed to be deer resistant. They especially like the new buds of flowers so if I don’t stop them before they eat those little buds, I don’t have flowers.
This year I was on a mission. I need to have my flowers all blooming for my daughter’s June backyard wedding. I had stocked up in the early spring, some “Scarecrows”. They are little contraptions that you hook up to your water hose and they detect motion and set off a spray of water. There are a few tricks to these things. 1) You need to start using them early in the season 2) you need to remember to turn them on at night 3) you need to remember to turn them off in the morning so you don’t get sprayed and 4) you also need to move them around so that those pesky deer don’t get used to them and just eat “around” the protected area.
The Secret Weapon
I also needed to have other preventive ways to keep them out. There aren’t enough hose or water spigots in our yard to have enough of the scarecrows. I’ve always used Deer Off and I was prepared with that. As luck would have it I discovered a blogger who like me, is a gardener. She suggested using Deer Out instead. I thought it was worth a try since Deer Off wasn’t working that great for me.
The Deer Out is pretty amazing. According to the package direction you only need to spray every 30 – 90 Days, as needed. Amazingly, it is working pretty well. The deer love my Hosta’s and by this time of year, they would normally be eaten down to little twigs. Not this year. They are full and lush and I couldn’t be happier. My rose bush is teeming with blooms that are ready to burst and all but one of my phlox plants have flourished. The only reason that one plant got eaten was that I think that I missed it when I was spraying. It’s tucked a bit under a few other plants and I missed it when it was still small.
The little family lives on our cul-de-sac which is completely surrounded by water. They would have to walk down the road or swim to move to another area. While they do both, I think they feel safe a secure. Until this year they had plenty of food too much on with my yard being the largest smorgasbord. I should have a neon sign in front of my house flashing “ALL YOU CAN EAT”!
Other Things We’ve Tried
The other methods that we have tried are coyote urine and even sending all the boys in my life out to use the great outdoors to pee. But those methods haven’t worked. We’ve tried other deer sprays and they are less effective. The Irish Spring Soap trick doesn’t even phase them. I’ve also bought contraptions that you stick in the ground…..waste of money.
Thankfully my vegetable garden is protected by a fence and only once in all the years we’ve had a veggie garden, have the deer jumped into it to munch. I think the combination of the fence and a lot of tomato cages, is a complete deterrent to them.
If you, like me have deer issues, Deer Out is how you stop deer from eating your gardens! Now is the time to give it a try.
Peace,
