Category: Deer

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Liquid Fence, a great product to protect plants from deer and rabbits

Readers know that ThisGardenLady relies on a product called Liquid Fence to protect my plants from the deer and rabbits who either live on my property or visit frequently.    TheGardenLady does not get any money from telling people that I use this product. However, if I find a product that works for me, I want others to know about it.

But what happens if a product you love comes in a container that doesn’t work? If you bought Liquid Fence recently,  you might have been as frustrated as I recently was with the nozzle. The nozzle did not allow the Liquid Fence to spray onto the plants. Presently my garden looks beautiful because it is loaded with late summer blooming flowers, flowers that are delectable especially to deer. I sprayed it recently, so I know nothing will eat the plants now.   My concern was how long these flowers will last if I cannot spray them again soon.

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Protecting Plants from the Wildlife

Family Dinner by anoldent

Once again, this GardenLady has been asked how to protect plants from all the wildlife that visit gardens and think they are their personal supermarkets. Sometimes it seems to me that we, the humans, are in the cage while the animals roam around enjoying the bounty that we plant.

Mostly, we have to learn to live with a certain amount of damage.

One suggestion, of course, is that we can install a fence high enough to keep deer from jumping over and deep enough in the earth from allowing animals to dig under. Some people say that deer can jump over most fences under 9 feet.

But to prevent woodchucks from burrowing under the fence one needs a fence that goes into the earth at least one foot deep or the lower edge of the fence should be bent at an L-shaped angle leading outward and buried 1 to 2 inches below ground.  See here.  And of course, the above ground part of the fence should be such that the woodchucks or rabbits cannot crawl through.

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Don’t Always Blame the Deer

I Blamed it on the Deer by mtsofan

TheGardenLady wrote a column about deer and specifically said: Any person who is knowledgeable about deer will never tell you there is a plant that deer will not eat.

Deer will taste everything and will eat anything depending on how hungry they are. Deer have favorite plants. The plants that deer love they will eat entirely to the ground UNLESS you have a fence or you spray your plants with a deer deterrent.

Some people will tell you that deer don’t eat their sweet pea flowers Lathyrus odoratus yet other people will tell you they love to eat their sweet pea flowers. Deer will eat sweet pea flowers. Because a plant is poisonous to humans does not mean it is poisonous to deer. Perhaps your deer have enough other plants that they prefer eating in your garden. Deer have their preferences.

But remember, there are other garden pests who enjoy your garden. Rabbits love many of the same plants deer like and they often like many plants that are not deer favorites. So do not blame the deer for all the eaten plants in a garden. For example, rabbits love sweet pea flowers. For a list of the plants rabbits prefer check out this site:

 

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Deer-Resistant Plants?

2008 10-04 caught in act Deer 23 by yeimaya

A few people have told me that they only grow plants that deer don’t eat. Sorry. As TheGardenLady understands it, no academic or scientific report will say that there are any plants that deer don’t eat or that are deer proof. There are plants that are highly resistant to deer damage. So it is always smart to plant these plants if you don’t have an 8 ft fence surrounding your plantings. But deer that are hungry or starving will seemingly eat anything if they can get to the plant. And sometimes deer will taste to see if a plant is worth eating.

That is how some of the products or recipes that repel deer work.  See here.  Many leave a residual smell that we humans can not smell but the deer can and find offensive. And they leave a bad taste in the deer’s mouth. But even they aren’t effective 100% of the time. They wash off or new growth isn’t smelly and bad tasting. Or the deer that are hungry learn to tolerate the repellent.

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Trying to meet the challenges of gardening

NOT ME!! I DID NOT EAT YOUR FLOWERS! by Snap-Smith

Gardening can be a serious challenge for the gardener.  Consider the weather.  Who knows what to do in a profound drought like the one the MidWest experienced this summer? You cannot water plants when the water level goes down too low. Who knows what to do in extensive floods like the ones the MidWest experienced earlier in the late spring/early summer? Consider the insects.  They either go after the garden, like Japanese beetles do, or they go after the gardener, like the mosquitoes or gnats.  Consider the wild animals.  Everyone knows about the problems caused by deer or rabbits.

But we humans are the smart creatures on this earth who should be able to solve these problems. Aren’t we?

We have had dry weather where I live, so I water my flowers daily. I am religious about this job. But the next day after I water my plants, they still look wilted and sad.  I tried holding some basil between my lips as I was told that Italian farmers did to prevent mosquitoes. I wasn’t bitten by the mosquitoes, so maybe the basil helped. And I sprayed my flowers with Liquid Fence to deter the deer and rabbits. But they, too, want what I plant.

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Battling Animals in the Garden – Part I

snoopy baby deer by AlicePopkorn

I wrote in a recent TheGardenLady column about the deer seemingly decimating my plants. For example, the hemerocallis or day lily shoots that have emerged this spring have been shorn aImost down to the ground. The same thing has happened to the leaves of the tulips that are emerging from the ground. It looks like they were mowed. I am hoping that the eating of the leaves will not affect the flowers which have not yet emerged. So I have sprayed a lot of Liquid Fence on these pathetic stumps of plants hoping to prevent more eating damage. There is other evidence of chewed plants. I based this blame on the deer because I have seen what looked like deer tracks in the mud and deer scat otherwise known as poop all over the lawn and garden.

But am I correct that it was the deer that ate my plants? I have a variety of wild animals residing in my gardens, so the blame could be on numerous animals. On the one hand, I am still excited whenever I see a wild animal on my property. But on the other hand, I am really upset when I see my plants eaten. I had written in one column that gardening is like a battle- a judicious battle.

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Dealing with Deer with Fences

Deer Jumping Fence by F-Stop Philm

If you are unlucky enough to live in an area where there are many wild deer, you are probably having problems with the deer eating your trees and plants.  You might also worry because deer carry so many Lyme ticks.

The most common deer is the white-tailed deer-Odocoileus virginianus, also referred to as the Virginia deer or the whitetail. This medium-sized deer is native to all but five of the states in the United States. Its territory spreads north through the southern regions of Canada in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario as well as south through Mexico, Central and South America as far as Peru. The white-tailed deer has also been introduced to some countries in Europe and New Zealand.

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Liquid Fence: A Good Deer and Rabbit Repellent for your Roses

”]Cropping the Roses by Beyond the Trail [Gary]TheGardenLady received this question from Bonnie.

We planted a knock-out rose bush this past spring. It started blooming and had beautiful roses. We noticed that the stems were cut. The deer are eating them. What can we do?

Deer love roses. It seems strange because there are thorns. In spite of the thorns, I guess deer like plants that humans eat. Rose petals  and rose hips  and  are eaten by humans.  See here, here and here.

I spray my roses and other plants that deer love with a product called Liquid Fence.  I have been using the product for a few years and my plants are not eaten by deer or rabbits. I think it is pricey because I use it much more frequently than recommended on the container. I have used it even more frequently this summer because of all the rain. Even though the product label says it lasts through rain, I am fearful of losing the plants. Because some some plants are deer resistant, I do not spray all the flowers I have. But I have learned that some plants that I wouldn’t think deer would eat, like sunflowers, will be eaten by the deer if I don’t spray. Liquid Fence stinks like the rotten eggs that is the major ingredient. That dissipates fairly quickly for the human nose; but the smell lingers for the more sensitive nose of the deer. The one thing that I dislike is that the leaves retain a white film from the spray. However, it washes off in the rain.

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Deer Proof Plants

Helleborus orientalis
Helleborus orientalis

As garden lovers are sitting around their hearth dreaming of the gardens they want, many of us have to consider the deer that can decimate their plantings. To that end there is a new website listing 300 plants that seem to be deer proof. Of course, if the deer are starving, they seemingly will eat anything. This site is interactive in that they would like you to tell them if these plants really work or don’t work in your garden and yard.  Here is their website.

The list is particularly good because it tells you much about the plant besides whether it is deer proof of not. For example, it tells you the color, where to plant – full sun or not – or height of the plant. Looking at the list superficially, TheGardenLady found that those plants that they said were deer proof were consistent with her findings. For example, TheGardenLady loves her Helleborus orientalis, Lenten Rose, Polemonium caeruleum, Jacob’s Ladder, Iris (several varieties tested), Lavandula angustifolia (‘Hidcote Blue’, ‘Munstead’, ‘Tucker’s Early Purple’ ) and English Lavender. They are among all the plants on the list. These plants are especially loved by TheGardenLady because they are never touched by deer on her property. And on this list they are listed as plants Never Browsed.

TheGardenLady also loves such plants as Hemerocallis (several varieties were tested) which is the day lilly. She knows how the deer love this plant so that if she wants it in her garden, she has to over spray it with a deer repellent or put a fence around the plants. This site tells you that Hemerocallis is FREQUENTLY Browsed.  So, unless you like challenges when you create your garden, you won’t waste money buying Hemerocallis.

Check out this site which gives you other information about deer and their habits. For example, you can spray deer repellents on plants so that the deer learn to change their destructive path.

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How To Reduce Fall Deer Damage

                                                   Photo by Worldman

Because male deer’, the bucks, antlers reach full growth in the fall, they want to get rid of the soft velvet that protected their antlers while they were growing. Early in the fall you may see a buck rubbing his antlers on the trunk of a tree or see evidence of the rubbing. Besides rubbing off the velvet on the antlers, later in the fall the deer can be marking his territory by rubbing trunks of trees. Bucks use glands in their foreheads to make scent markers on the trunks of trees. These rubbings are called  “buck rubs.” Look for buck rubs on trees, usually one to two feet high off the ground, from September to December.

Though most trees are resilient to the buck rubs, it can be bad for the tree, especially if it is a young tree- losing bark on the tree trunk can kill a small tree. Damage that completely encircles the tree’s circumference is more deadly than damage up and down because the tree’s vascular system is just under the bark. Young trees have very thin bark that offers no protection from such damage.

You should surround the tree with a sturdy fence or barrier that can keep the male deer away from the tree trunk. A 6-foot-tall barrier of welded wire mesh, supported by 8-foot-tall rebar pounded into the ground at regular intervals around the circumference is one suggestion to keep bucks from rubbing on young trees. Another option is corrugated plastic drainpipe that has been slit along its length and placed around the trunk.  While deer repellents can help prevent deer browsing, they are not very effective in controlling buck rubs.

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