Here are some simple ways to keep hungry deer away from your garden and fruit trees and shrubs. Use 3 or 4 tips together to get the best bang for your efforts.
- Plant strongly scented perennials around crops: catnip, hyssop, mint, chives, garlic, lavender
- Plant prickly plants around crops: lamb’s ear, barberries, cleome, roses
- Create barberry, boxwood or short-needle spruce barriers around yard
- Harvest all crops as soon as they’re ripe
- Stack some pallets around trees. Deer don’t like stepping on them
- Build high fences around garden or trees
- Create a fishing line fence around the garden or trees. Freaks them out
- Wind chimes (tin cans) in the trees or on a fence
- Hang open bags of human hair from the trees or a fence
- Cover crops with bird and deer-resistant netting
- Spray crops with natural repellents: rotten egg-garlic mix or capsaicin. (See recipe below). Rotate regularly.
- Hang fabric softener sheets or bars of soap (drill hole through) off branches or fence
- Surround with motion-activated sprinklers
- Pee on fruit trees. Yes, pee on them.
Anti-Deer Smelly Stuff
- Fels Naptha soap — 1 bar
- Onions, roughly chopped — 2
- Garlic, cloves crushed — 2 heads
- Red pepper flakes — 1 cup
- Eggs, beaten — 4
- Fill a 5-gallon bucket half full with hot water.
- Shave soap into bucket and stir to dissolve.
- Place onions, garlic and chili powder in a large rag and tie up into a pouch.
- Beat the eggs into the liquid in the bucket, then add the pouch.
- Fill the bucket with 1 gallon more water. Cover tightly with a lid and place in lightly shaded area away from the house. Let sit for 1 to 2 weeks.
- Remove and discard the solids in the rag. Transfer the remaining stinky liquid to spray-pump containers. Apply directly to crops every 2 weeks and after each rainfall.
