Moving is not an option for me because I not only wanted a lot of land to plant I wanted privacy. I live in a suburban house and I just do not want to be that close to my neighbors. I had great neighbors but I love the privacy.

If you are willing to do a lot of work to deter the deer, groundhogs, rabbits, squirrels and still willing to lose a few buds here and there it can be done. Just as others have told me a hungry animal is going to eat no matter what.

Everyone told me you have to train them not to come to your yard for food. Once they do not like what you have they do not come as often. My property was vacant and there is a orchard so they knew food was here and they were free to roam.

Start spraying early....as soon as anything peaks out of the ground. Spray every week. It really is not expensive if you make your own mixture.

I purchased...
Wolf urine that I put in a spray bottle and Spray that occasionally on grocery store plastic bags and hung them on the fence where I see they may have been by the poop evidence.

I put some of the Sweeney's Deer Repellent gadgets. They are covered containers that you put on a stem. That is suppose to trigger flight response to the deer. I suspect it is a wolf urine concoction. Home Depot purchase.

Homemade spray. Onion, Garlic, hot sauce, wolf urine, egg, mixture. (if you want my recipe I will post) I am on 4 acres and this mixture does not cost more than $10 for a season.

Biondi Deer off work for my deer. I tried every one on the market. Every area deer are different. I do think you have to try them all to see which one your deer do not like.

Nite Guard system. It is a flashing red solar light to fool the deer that they think danger. Of course near that area I spray the wolf urine. So it is a site and smell fix I am using.

I have herds of deer not an occasional walk through deer problem. When I see deer it is 10 or more. I have had as many as 20-50 deer in the front yard at one time.

I have also sprinkle Millorganite 3 times a year.

Finally, there path I have picked up pallets from the grocery store for free. They have trouble walking on these because their feet go through the slat space and fall down. I have watched them limp away after falling down when they step out of the woods heading for a meal in my yard.

As you can see I have done everything short of a gun. So far for 5 yrs of growing seasons only one hosta has been eaten I have 100s. So I am not sure if that was deer, rabbit, groundhog, etc. since it was only one hosta.

Cinta

I too have LOTS of deer. When I go out I have to stop and wait for them to cross the road. honk,and they just stand there and take their time. I have a small fish pond in my yard which I suspect draws them, but then again there is a yr round creek just up the road from me, can see it from my front yard, so why on earth they would rather have my pond water as opposed to fresh running creek water I can't imagine.

YES< I do want any recipes pretty please. i thought about spraying hot pepper, but the problem is I have two tiny poodles and also small kids play here occasionally, plus of course I work in the garden myself, so not sure I want to spray that directly in the area. Thought about tying rags to posts. saturate them in a hot pepper peanut butter? maybe they will lick it? Have you ever tried the wireless deer fence? I think I might buy a few and see what happens.

How do you lay the pallets out? do you stack them? do you have pics? oh, please more details, inquiring minds NEED to know!

Okay the recipe is
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 jar of garlic (Dollar Store)
1/2 container of ground hot pepper (dollar store) or 1 tbl spoon of tobassco sauce
1 Tablespoon of cooking oil
1 Tablespoon of dish soap
Add 1 gallon of water and shake well. Spray or sprinkle on plants every two weeks or after heavy rain. Let it sit for a week so the eggs get real smelly. This is what the deer off stuff they sell you for 20 bucks.

This will not harm your children unless they are eating the leaves it might be a bit spicy.

;The pallets I just lay them on the ground face side down so they sit a little bit up off the ground. You can even paint them. I did not bother painting them because they are leading up from the woods and pretty much just blended in with the wooded rustic look. They look like a boardwalk walkway.

You might have groundhogs and they eat as much as the deer. For them I use the clippings from my Barberry bushes. When I trim them I lay the clipping around the garden. Good Luck....Like I said it is a fight but I am winning I only have an occasional nibble and not my entire garden gone in a night.

Frillylily said:http://www.amityfarm.com/ohdeer.htm

ok this guy uses an egg/water mixture and sprays his plants thoroughly and says the deer leaves them alone.
Anyone tried it?

sounds pricey if you are spraying several hundred plants.

Not too pricey. I use an egg or two, mixed with 2 to 4 cayenne peppers. Throw those in the blender, add water to get the blender half full or so, blend until very smooth. Dilute it further with a gallon or two of water, then spray it on your plants. If it smells horrible to you a few days after spraying, you can dilute it further. It stays repellent to deer for a few weeks in dry weather, but rain (or sprinklers) will wash it away. If you use a soaker hose or other drip irrigation that doesn't wet the leaves, the spray will remain in dry weather.

Another thing I've done is roll out wire mesh fencing material on the ground. Support it with old blocks of wood so it doesn't bury in the ground, but remains at or just above ground level. A 5 or 6 foot stretch of this stuff around the perimeter of the garden will usually keep the deer away (and rabbits and other critters as well). They don't like walking on the wires.

My neighbors have reported good results with a motion detector activating a radio. Deer and critters will get used to a constant radio playing, but if it turns on suddenly as they approach, that seems to scare them away.

THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

I am going to try some of these things...

Will experiment over the next few months and see what happens. Will report.

Had a mishap w a deer being hit by a van across from my house, a few nights ago and the sheriff came out and shot it (it was still alive sitting in the road an hour after it was hit ((maybe the law was eating donuts? I figure they took their sweet time hoping it would die and they wouldn't have to do it ))
anyhooo, shame the meat got wasted, I live right close to a zoo and you'd think the tigers would love that ? but I haven't seen anymore deer right here in this spot since then, maybe it spooked them off for a few days.

The premise of Deer Scram was that it smelled (to the deer, not to humans) like a dead deer so they wouldn't go near it. So I bought a huge container and used it to no avail. My friend, a mile away, lived next to the woods where deer roamed and the dead deer, 10' from her property line, never stopped them.

One person said to put down metal pipes where the deer enter. I had visions of broken legs or arms and refrained.

Instead in 2013 I had one garden done by pro'd with deer fencing and metal poles: so far it's working - no problems at all.

Then, last year, I enclosed all of the gardens closest to the house with 4' deer fencing, backed up by rebar and trellises with more trellises used as entry/exit points. People laughed but they still haven't leaped over or knocked it down.

I lived in the county for four years. I had four acres, about 1/3 lightly wooded. We fenced the whole property with field fencing. I had three dogs at the time. Every day we walked the fenceline. Deer came through my property all the time but they never stopped to eat! I think I was exceptionally lucky.

Jennifer you were lucky. In many places we have an over abundance of deer because of mild winters. If they can find better food somewhere else they eat there and will leave your garden alone.

With an acre of woods on my property and most of the houses in my area have at least an acre that they have let go wild and woody but it is not enough food to support the amount of deer we have.

I am sure some of my damage is also because of groundhogs. They eat as much as deer.

The reason I use so many different things is because deer react to different products that are on the market. What someone in another state say works wonders for them can be like candy to the deer in another state or area.

FL ...

I like to say that my deer fence is held up by wishful thinking. It is actually much more sturdy than it looks. It is basically 4 x 4 's with wire attached to the posts. Most of the wire is scrap wire. There is chicken wire, hog wire and other kinds of fencing wire. The reason that fence works is that on my side of the fence, the slope is covered by junipers and the deer don't think they have a place to land, so they don't even try to jump it ... at least until this year.

My neighbor's grape vine died and exposed the one spot where a deer might think it could jump the fence and land. When the vine died, the top rail of the fence fell and sure enough one doe saw that she could get into the garden. She did and ate quite well until I got the fence repaired. It took three trips for my handyman and I to find all of the other possible entries into the garden that she found and block them. Once she found food, she was going to eat it ALL ... Oh, well she's tried to find other entry points, but finally gave up.

The deer fencing I have out in front of the house ... deer territory ... was really quite inexpensive. It's just T-posts with wire that was given to me.

Here's a shot of what I call the "street rose" because it is located in one of my street beds. The rose is young and will eventually fill the space allocated. It's real name is 'Linda Campbell'.



I had to fence the roses that Mrs. J had planted and which had been deer pruned for years. I used the same T-post and wire method. I cut openings on the lawn side of the bed, which are held closed with small bungy cords, so that I could get down into the bed to work on the roses. So far, these roses have been safe from the deer.



I also do everything I can to convince the deer that my property is hostile territory.

Over time, I've written about the call of the rabid goose. Here's a post I made with some links about a buck that had decided he liked my view:

http://garden.org/thread/view_...

I doubt if the deer wars will ever be over.

Thank you so much for the pictures Lyn. and the rabid goose advice

Your roses are beautiful! That buck in your yard was handsome too... if I were a doe ----

The deer have turned the back end of my yard into a deer potty. My poodle thinks it all very entertaining and goes out there to smell each present... with a very serious look on her face as if studying it... I am not even sure Foo could identify a deer... plus she is scared of the neighbors chickens, so who am I kiddin'

I do have fun writing about the rabid goose, but seriously it is an important part of my strategy to keep deer away from my garden. All that buck would have had to do was lean on my T-post and wire fencing and the roses would be gone. I had to run him off.

Town deer are used to humans yelling and screaming at them and just kind of look at you when you try to chase them off. The call of the rabid goose is a sound they have never heard. I may look like a human, but I sure don't sound like one ..

When I drive home, I can see deer grazing on neighbors' lawns, but rarely see them on mine. So, the hostile territory thing is important.

I really haven't spent much on my deer fencing. It's not pretty, but it seems to work.

Just something else to think about ...

Mine is quite similar to yours, Lyn.

Yes mine too. They are use to people. I stomped my foot at one when I first moved in and she stomped her feet back at me. I knew I was in trouble but I did not know how much trouble. I picked up a rock and hit her. She ran away. Came back in 10 minutes with five friends.

The property had been empty for a few yrs and there are a lot of fruit trees. They had claimed the property I was the intruder.

Oh, yeah ...

I used a sling shot the first few years I lived here ... Whatever works !

Cinta ... I forgot ... I think you need a rabid goose, too.

I wanted to throw in my no frills for Frillylily fencing. Say that 5 times fast.
My husband and I planted a large veggie garden behind our church. We took leftover rebar from building our house and spaced them out around the garden. Then we strung white string between the posts, and had aluminum pie plates dangling from more string. Probably 2-3 plates between each post. The theory being the deer couldn't see the string and would run into it causing the pie plates to rattle. We didn't use urine, Irish Spring soap, human hair, or any other kind of deterrent. The only damage to the garden was from pilfering low class human critters.

Kabby,

Seeing your post reminded me of one other thing that worked for me years back. I did something similar, but with Christmas tinsel garland strung between the posts. I had posts about 6 feet high, and 3 or 4 levels of the garland around the perimeter between the posts. The shimmery garland seemed to confuse the deer, and they stayed away from it. That was a temporary solution I had years ago at a house we were renting for only a year or two.

Hey that's good too Eric! We don't have deer problems, but before we had our fence put up some of my sapling trees disappeared. Of which I promptly accused my teenage son of subterfuge and I wasn't happy enough so I pointed my finger at my husband too.When I examined what was left of the trunk there were telltale signs of beaver chewing. Husband put out beaver traps and we promptly caught an armadillo. Word must have spread fast in the dillo community because they didn't bother us again for years.

RoseBlush1 said:Cinta ... I forgot ... I think you need a rabid goose, too.

Yes I could use your rabid goose for sure. My deer are not afraid of me.

Mine are ... and now I don't have to figure out where I left my sling shot ...