It can be a real challenge to keep deer from eating the plants in your garden. As a rose grower, I hear the horror stories about deer chewing young roses down to nearly the crown – but growers of veggies and other ornamentals don’t have it any better! In this video I’ll discuss some of the classic approaches to stopping deer from damaging your garden plants: deer repellants, perimeter fencing and planting deer-resistant varieties. I wish I had a better option, and as always, if you have some techniques to share I’d sure like to hear about it in the comments.
Here’s the Garden Fundamentals (Robert Pavlis) video on low fencing: https://youtu.be/igyXcblysjU and here’s the one I mentioned from Farmer Dre: https://youtu.be/S1f5rdJJp_0
00:00 Intro
00:56 Repellants
04:11 Perimeter Fence
06:34 Deer Resistant Plants
08:54 Plant or Small Area Protection
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Photo credits:
Deer at compost by Scott Darbey CC BY 2.0
Deer in flower patch by Alboychenko08 CC BY-SA 4.0
Deer Fence by Valenta CC BY-SA 2.0
Peony flower by Retro Lenses CC BY-SA 4.0
Perovskia by K M (Flickr) CC BY 2.0
Tomato Cage by Rex Hammock CC BY-SA 2.0
16 Comments
All this talk of deer eating everything is giving me gardening PTSD. 🙁
Great video however and I always enjoy your content. 🙂
No mention of having a guardian dog? Surely that would test their desire to jump a small fence.
Double low fence does not work. The deer quickly learn to hop one fence then the other in quick succession. Once one deer has done it, the entire herd has learned to do it. Speaking from experience on that one. Row cover doesn't work. Deer will tear right through it or nose under it to get to what they want. Again, speaking from experience on that.
Yes, rugosa roses are less palatable to deer, but it's not due to the thorns, but rather the taste. Deer eat my climbing and hybrid tea roses, thorns and all without hesitation.
The only thing I did that worked was an 8' fence. The problem with fences lower than 8' is that the deer get injured on them. An injured deer is a dead deer. The adult deer can stand next to a 6' fence and hop over it without even needing a running start. The younger deer can't always make it, and get tangled in the top of the fence. A 7' fence is just tall enough for deer to attempt but not necessarily make it. I watched a deer try to get over a 7' fence, snag a hind quarter on the top, get flipped over and take a hard landing, then limp off. I added a top wire at 8' as soon as I could. With an 8' fence, they don't even try. I also mark the fence with lengths of white cotton string so the deer know the fence is there.
Now I finally have a garden, plus a deer path along the outside of the fence. Both the deer and my desired plants are safe, and that's a win. Save yourself the trouble and do it right the first time. 8' fence with heavy duty plastic deer mesh with ground stakes at the bottom, held by a top and bottom wire and 10' posts going 2' into the ground and you're set for decades.
I had luck with homemade repellant – six eggs, ten crushed garlic cloves, a few drops of dish detergent, a liter or so of water. they say to spray, but I put mine in an empty dish soap bottle and squirted it around the yard, plants and any wood surfaces that would absorb it. The deer would walk right past my yard, they hate eggs., and no, my yard didn't smell like rotten eggs!
We have flower planting each spring.. have about 1+ acre ranch fenced property in Oregon. When we had a 90 lb Akita/Siberian dog which looked like a wolf type and was psychologically highly predative, we never had a deer issue. Our dog passed and since then deer are an issue. So territorial dogs are one answer. When we walked out in the BLM, we'd come across hunter deer kills and he'd insist on bringing the cut off fore legs home in his mouth. One time he brought the whole deer hide, still bloody, from a hunter's kill. No deer, cougar or coyote problemos then. Now I have high blood pressure chasing the deer with a long pole banging on the trees to herd the buggers out of the gate. My wife and I make a real comedy of our selves. But then we are in our 70s and don't care.
Here’s one control method not mentioned… not available in all areas of course but… 🥩🍽️ Thats a tying point for humans I think 🤣
Another thing to consider is tall electric tape fence. This is what I am looking into on my tree farm – 5 strands of 3/4” (I think?) wide electric fence tape. Top strand at 8’ bottom strand at 2’ (to avoid tall grass)
How about providing the deer with sacrificial plants they prefer? What's a plant that they really like, but that can survive their attention? Alfalfa?
15 foot fencing. Even then. One will still find its way in. Haha
I have tried everything you mentioned with little success, it only takes one night to destroy a summer's growth. We have a 4 acre orchard and garden so I have resorted to 6' horse fence and electric wire on the outside, one at nose level one at the top to prevent them from standing up and gauging the jump. It works pretty well. I might get one deer a year that makes it in but they get shocked either way and want nothing but to get back out. I started with 4' fence and electric up to 6' but they would get in about once a year, especially if they were able to damage the electric wire and I didn't notice for a few days.
Oh deer… it’s a never ending battle and what works in one area, won’t necessarily work anywhere else.
Our experience here is if they’re hungry enough, they’ll eat anything and they try everything to figure out what they like.
We have a solid cedar fence (not super tall) but with an opinionated 50lb dog. Works well in the summer but I noticed some dropping in the yard last winter when the pickings are slim and the tops of the brussels sprouts were missing 🙃 so we’ll see how it goes this winter.
Thanks for the video, my go to deer resistant plants are the fragrant herbs lavender, rosemary etc and rhododendrons are also popular
Hi Jason! Happy snowy day! Let's have some coffee or hot tea with biscuits!
I use the hanging Rescue fly traps. The smell is horrible, it has the added benefit of attracting flies, but they are expensive. I have found that if I’m in my garden every day and move something around, the deer are deterred for a few days. I also use any type of shiny object hanging in my fruit trees and inexpensive wind chimes, but as I have noted, they have to be moved around from fruit tree to fruit tree.
Jason, as you know my yard is edged by the woods, so deer and any other critters are a problem. Mostly in the veg garden but I did have some hydrangeas topped off this year. They did it early and I lost several flower buds. The way I deal with it is, I want the flowers but I also want to see the deer in the yard so I accept them chewing on some plants. So far they have only effected a few plants, but last year I plant 27 fruit trees and they destroyed about 10 of them. That was an expensive loss but I still enjoy having the deer.
One thing you didn't mention is giving the peer what they are looking for. You can do that by planting things they like to eat on the boarder of your property. Do that together with making it look uninviting past that point. That may be as simple as open spaces or gravel making it harder to walk with perhaps some plants they really don't eat. I had success with this for rats which were coming from a railway line though my property to get apples & water. I found their normal route and just cleared our stuff then place rose cutting along it and removed water sources.
I'm not sure how effective this is, but what about planting a garden for the deer to eat in a far away spot? If you take something they really like and plant a lot of it, they'll just eat that and not bother the other stuff. The only problem is if they tell their friends and now there's too many to feed and they end up coming back to your garden anyway.
I have resorted to no planting until the perimeter electric fence goes up. I grow approximately 2500-3000 sunflowers a year commercially and they love the young sprouts. As long as I don't forget to plug in the fence every night, I'm 100% successful. I have to apply this same tactic to anything I choose to grow in my yard, such as my roses. Cost is very low, maintenance can be a challenge with the Florida weather, at times. I use the plastic push-in posts with guides placed every two inches on the posts.