How To Keep Deer Out Of Your Planter Box Garden

Living right in the middle of Pennsylvania Country Game Lands meant I would frequently enjoy my morning loving cup of java while watching a family of deer drinking water from the pond at the bottom of the thou.

I don't know how many speckled fawns I watched chasing each other across our yard, and later that year, meet they had turned into sturdy bucks.

In late fall, when hunting season arrived, I would admonish them all to stick close to the house.

Just when information technology was fourth dimension to put in the garden, their cuteness wore off real fast.

As anyone who lives where deer are prevalent will tell y'all, keeping the buggers out of your garden and flower beds is a job unto itself.

In that location is nothing more infuriating than coming out to your garden and finding dark-green nubs where your healthy plants used to be. It's plenty to brand you want to get a hunting license and make room in the freezer.

Thankfully, we two-legged critters have become pretty resourceful when it comes to keeping iv-legged critters out of our gardens.

From simple solutions using everyday household items, to more permanent fixes, right on up to high-tech gadgets, I've got several ways to help yous go along Bambi and his pals abroad from your vegetables.

And at the end, I'll fifty-fifty share with you lot my dad's surefire fashion of keeping deer out of his garden. He stumbled upon this solution past accident i summer and has used it successfully every twelvemonth since.

I'll start with how I dealt with the furry onslaught of nibblers every year.

Living in the woods, I had more than just deer to bargain with; rabbits, woodchucks, and fifty-fifty the occasional bear were frequent visitors. One summer, I had a blackness acquit who thought the hummingbird feeder on my porch was his personal drinking fountain.

i. Put Up a Fence

The easiest and the best solution I found to keep my garden intact was to put upwards a debate. Something permanent is going to be your best bet. However, my partner's only request was that I come up with something that could come down in the autumn. So, I invested in some metal stakes and several tall rolls of wire fencing.

Each leap, once the garden was tilled, I would pound the stakes into the ground, nigh four' apart, and then zip-tie the wire fencing to the stakes. I would leave a little makeshift gate at one corner. This worked uncommonly well.

I did two things that were key to my temporary fencing success. I fabricated sure the debate was at least 3' loftier to prevent deer from jumping the debate. I also left a 2' perimeter of lawn effectually the garden inside the debate to keep it out of reach from long necks. This made a great path inside for working in the garden, and the grass was easy enough to manage with the occasional pass of the weed trimmer.

At the cease of the growing season, I simply pulled upward my stakes and rolled up the wire to exist stored for the wintertime.

I know that putting up a contend isn't e'er practical, but it certainly does the trick.

If fencing doesn't work for you, read on for more than ideas.

Deer are pretty skittish animals. They are prey to many and predator to none (except your garden). So, y'all can use this to your advantage to keep them at bay.

The thing to recall when dealing with deer is to switch it upward. What seems to become them to respond is the unexpected. Simply if relied on as well often, deer will adapt to whatever noises or tricks we take cooked upwards to scare them away.

2. Plant Heavily Scented Herbs and Flowers

Herbs similar lavender, chives, mint, and marigold are all great options.

These pungent plants work in two ways. Deer will avoid walking through heavily scented plants, equally they selection up the odor on their fur and are more noticeable. Not what yous want when you are prey wandering around the wood.

Scents similar lavender and mint in the air likewise mask the olfactory property of delicious vegetables coming from your garden.

While you don't need a perimeter debate made entirely of lavender, it's still a good idea to put a few of these more noticeably scented plants effectually the edges of your garden and belongings. And there are so many things you can do with lavender, having a few actress plants is always a good idea.

3. $5 Invisible Fence

Because they are prey, deer take eyes on the sides of their heads. This allows them to take a wider field of vision. They are very good at picking up movement in their peripherals. However, their eye placement ways they have a harder fourth dimension with depth perception. Hither is where adept ol' fishing line comes in.

Pick up a roll of the inexpensive stuff; you want about 10-15 lb test. (Test is only the measurement used for how much forcefulness it takes to intermission the line.) Using stakes placed effectually your garden, line the perimeter with the fishing line. Yous'll want to practise at least two different heights. If you have small pets, make sure the beginning line around the perimeter is loftier plenty up the stake and so that they tin pass under it without getting caught.

The deer will castor up against the line-fishing line contend, and because of their vision, they can't tell what is stopping them. Having something they can't come across brush up confronting them is usually plenty to spook them and ship them running back into the wood.

4. Cat Food Burglar Alarm

If yous want to get artistic, string a few tin cans together and hang them off the fishing line. When the deer bumps the monofilament, the cans volition make noise sending Bambi fleeing into the night.

five. Windchimes

To proceed fruit trees prophylactic, hang a few different sizes of wind chimes from the branches. Apply metal as well every bit wooden chimes to create different sounds.

Remember, you have to keep them guessing. Once the deer get used to a sound, the effect volition wear off. Y'all can besides tie balloons on strings from the branches. The air current volition cause the balloons to move eerily in the trees.

six. Switch It Up

Rearrange your backyard ornaments from fourth dimension to fourth dimension. Deer are highly suspicious of anything new. New sounds, new smells, even new objects unremarkably take them bounding dorsum into the shelter of the woods.

Consider playing musical chairs with your garden gnomes. Place a pinkish flamingo or two at the edge of your garden. Make upwardly a couple of scarecrows and move them around once a month. Annihilation out of the ordinary volition set deer on edge.

7. Shiny and Flashy

Hang strings of old CDs from tree branches or along line-fishing line effectually the perimeter of your garden. The racket of them banging together and flashes of light will keep deer away. Aluminum pie tins also work well.

My grandmother used to hang three disposable pie tins strung together, from the corner of each debate post in her garden. You tin even buy shiny metallic streamers to hang in your m and copse. The air current and the sunday create movement and flashes of lite, which deter non only deer simply birds too.

8. Watch Your Step

Proceed deer from setting foot on your property with an obstacle course. Deer look incredibly graceful bounding across a meadow, merely they aren't very practiced climbers. They volition avoid steep slopes and hills in favor of flat areas.

Stack your firewood in piles around areas where deer enter your property. Keep containers with plants and flowers upon your deck as deer are unlikely to endeavor to climb up to reach them.

9. A Smelly Solution

Like many animals who are casualty, deer have a peachy sense of smell. Make their trip to your grand an unpleasant one past scenting their favorite plants with something smelly.

There are a number of recipes for stinky concoctions to spray or pigment plants with that keep deer away. And while almost of these are harmless, I wouldn't put them on plants yous intend to swallow. I don't call up I'd want to eat a cucumber that'due south been sprayed with a mixture of cayenne pepper and rotten eggs.

Most of these recipes call for a mixture of milk, raw eggs, garlic pulverization, and cayenne pepper mixed with a gallon of water and then left exterior to get funky.

The resulting 'brew' is and so painted or sprayed on plants you desire to keep the deer abroad from. Here's a 'good' recipe for bootleg deer repellent.

10. Super Soaker

You lot can besides attempt a professional deer repellent similar TOMCAT Deer Repellent. Just retrieve to switch upwards what y'all use occasionally, to keep the deer on their toes.

A more entertaining option would exist to install a motility-activated sprinkler or 'blaster' or ii around the garden. These are often solar-powered and requite deer a watery surprise when they become too close. They might fifty-fifty go along pesky neighbors at bay, depending on where you prepare them up.

Equally you can meet, when it comes to deer, variety and switching upward your tactics are critical to keeping these large vegetable thieves out of your garden. And while some of these solutions are only temporary, most will work long enough to become you through the growing season.

And of class, there is always my dad's tactic.

11. If You Tin can't Beat 'Em, Bring together 'Em

My dad e'er made buckwheat pancakes when I was a child. These pancakes were darker and more substantial than the light, fluffy variety that was served up at the local IHOP. These things stuck to your ribs.

Anyway, dad got it into his caput that he was going to grow his own buckwheat one year and have it ground into buckwheat flour at a local manufacturing plant. The deer, notwithstanding, had other ideas.

Manifestly, dad had planted their absolute favorite affair to eat because dark after night, the deer would bruise through our garden full of tasty vegetables just to get to the buckwheat. Each morning dad would get out and re-stake the tomatoes and articulate up the carnage of trampled (but not eaten) plants and stand at the edge of the buckwheat plot proverb four-letter words. (No, they were not corn, peas, or okra. One of them might have been stew or meat, though.)

Needless to say, nosotros didn't grind our ain buckwheat that year.

We did, nevertheless, establish a 10×viii plot of buckwheat at the border of the wood every twelvemonth afterwards that. The deer were quite happy to stick to their personal salad bar and left the garden solitary.

Now, the woodchucks, on the other hand…