Oh Deer! Bambi’s Wrecking My Garden

Monday morning, I noticed they decided to snack on some sunflowers I planted at the edge of the garden about a month ago that were just starting to explode with growth.

Then on Tuesday, they ate about six inches off the tops of my okra plants and browsed on a row of green beans. I need to address the situation.

The only sure way to keep deer out of a garden is to build a tall fence – at least eight feet tall. You can also build two shorter fences that run parallel with each other, about four feet apart. The parallel fences can be as short as four feet in height. Deer need a running start to jump a fence. If they jump the first one, they’ll get stuck and work their tail off trying to get out. Deer will quickly learn to avoid the area. Some people run chickens or small livestock in the area between the two fences to keep the grass down.

But building one fence is more work than I feel like doing, much less two.

So how else can we keep deer away from our gardens? I’m going to start with a few tricks that have worked for me in the past.

Deer get spooky around people. We are a predator in their eyes, or rather noses. Deer often smell us way before they ever see us. Deer have a very wide field of vision, but they have poor depth perception. That’s why whenever you’re downwind from a deer and it thinks it sees you, it will often bob its head. It’s trying to slightly change its perspective to detect movement. But if you’re upwind from a deer, it will almost certainly smell you before you see it.

We can use this to our advantage in the garden. One of the strongest human scents is our urine. If you’re lucky enough to live in the country like me, just pee all around your garden. It really helps to keep the deer away. I noticed that the spot where the deer are coming into my garden is in an area where I don’t normally walk. I started giving that spot some more attention this week.

For you city-dwellers, this might not be an option. Hot peppers and garlic seem to repel deer. You can make a tea by adding a half head of garlic and three or four tablespoons of cayenne pepper to a gallon of water. Crush the garlic well and heat the mixture to barely a simmer. Then let it cool and strain it into a pumpup sprayer. Spray the mixture on the plants after any dew or rain has fully dried from the leaves. Garlic-pepper tea can also prevent many diseases and repels some insect pests.

This week I learned about a similar deer repellent that I might try. Make the tea just as I described above but don’t heat it. Then add three eggs and three tablespoons of milk or yogurt. Puree the mixture with a blender. Strain it, put it in a jug and let it sit for a day to “ripen.” It will be quite stinky. Then spray liberally on all your plants when the leaves are dry. You will probably want to thoroughly wash any produce you pick after applying this mixture.