They've been treating my Hosta and Tulip beds as a salad bar for years. I've been setting stakes and draping bird netting over them to keep the bastiges from eating them to the ground.

This year, they've started in on my day lilies, ate all my crocuses, and cropped about half the tiny little patch of bluets I've been nursing along for 4-5 years.

Spent the morning netting everything on the menu and putting out motion activated lights.

If they start on my Dahlias and Astilbe, there's gonna be a shooting war and game wardens be damned!

Crossbows. The silent deer deterrent.

Critters hate the smell of Irish Spring soap.

I understand your frustration.

They ate our ivy in our landscaping!

The nursery said the don’t eat ivy but yet the neighbors camera caught them on video.

quote:

Originally posted by h2oys:
I understand your frustration.

They ate our ivy in our landscaping!

The nursery said the don’t eat ivy but yet the neighbors camera caught them on video.

They cropped my Euonymus and pruned hell out of my yews. And here I though yew was poisonous...

We had tall and beautiful yew trees and they ate everything within reach and I mean standing on their back legs. Then their was the edge of a vanilla layer of a wedding cake my Mother set outside to cool. She was not pleased about that.

We go through this every growing season. My wife has extensive flower beds. The deer and bunnies just trash them.

There's a hanging deer repellent my wife buys at either Ace Hardware or Meijer. It triggers the animal's a flight reaction. The package claims they last longer than they do. We get about six weeks or so out of them.

She sprays Liquid Fence and puts down blood meal.

Those things altogether reduce the problem by as much as 75% or so.

Problem is: You have to stay atop replacing the flight-reflex things, re-spray the Liquid Fence every time it rains--or even after the irrigation system runs, and keep the blood meal refreshed.

P. Allen Smith has a home-made repellent one of my wife's friends claims really does the job:



She adds garlic to the mix. My wife is going to try it this season.

Good luck! Hope some of this helps.

On YT, I follow Gary Pilarchik / The Rusted Garden. He's outgrown his 32x80 fenced in garden and has been planting outside the fence for the last year or two.

In his 18x18 no dig garden, he shared his deer deterrent strategy which is black polycord between t-posts and bells hung from the polycord.

I'll take a few filets please.

My place is infested with deer, I can reach out the window and strangle them.

I put feeders away from the beds in hopes of drawing them away. I actually view them as part of the landscape, like wild birds, which I also feed.

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
Critters hate the smell of Irish Spring soap.

so does my wife... I may still have a few bars if you need them OP.