Are the deer in your neighborhood driving you crazy?! Deer are a constant challenge for gardeners everywhere.  Some areas are more prone to these issues as the construction of new homes and businesses take over the grazing habitat of the wildlife community in general.  So are there ways to live peacably with the wildlife?  Yes and there are ways to protect the investment you put in your landscape as well without it looking like Fort Knox.  Below you will find some tried and true suggestions and solutions to the more common deer problems we find our local gardening public dealing with.  We have also provided you with a list of deer resistant plant material.  The deer palate changes from area to area and is dictated by the availability or not of food items in that particular region.  For example, in Cadiz they may eat the Holly bushes but in Wheeling they may not.  So look at what your neighbors have success with, as well as what they have challenges with and don't just go by the list of resistant plants alone.  This list is to serve as a guide for you. 

Let's begin with the deer eating the plants you already have.  There are several solutions varying in degrees of expense, labor intensity and effectiveness.  Again, solutions can vary from region to region also.  So be sure to check with your local garden experts here at Ferda's as well as friends and neighbors.

The most permanent solution with the largest investment, would of course be a fence.  Remember that a deer can jump 6 foot in the air from a  standstill and can fit between two rails that are no more than 6 inches apart.  Baby deer, like the one pictured here, can fit through a 3 - 4 inch wide opening without much trouble.  This baby is hunkered down in a groundhog hole entrance right beside an 8 foot tall fence.  As you can see, it can cross the boundary of the fence underneath without any trouble.  It's important to check your borders regularly, especially if you are experienceing damage in your gardens.

To protect shrubs in your landscape, you can use inexpensive deer netting to loosely cover over them.  Just remember to remove the netting periodically and readjust it so the shrub doesn't just continue to grow through the netting.  I would only caution the bird lover with this remedy, as shrubs in which the birds tend to harbor or which have fruit and berries as food sources, may trap our feathered friends.

Another preventative measure would be to use Liquid Fence, Deer Off or Deer Stopper, three very good natural sprays available here at the garden center.  These sprays have a combination of oils that have fragrance and that the deer find to be offensive like garlic, peppermint, rosemary and an cohesive ingredient to make it all stick to the plants.  There are several home recipes available across the internet if you wanted to try your hand at a homemade solution.  One of my favorites is from Jerry Baker's Great Green Book of Garden Secrets.

Still another preventative measure would be to install a single strand of electric fence along the border of the garden about knee high.  This will act more as a deterrent rather than a preventative measure.

There are small battery powered stakes with an apple-scented top that attract the deer to that stake and then give them a small electric shock when touched.  This can be enough to scare them off in some locations and in other locations, with more experienced deer, they will just simply eat the plant right next to the stake!

There are any number of motion detectors, coyote urine products, human hair in the garden tricks, red pepper treatments and rotten eggs to shotgun shells to solve your deer problems, however, we are listing just a few suggestions for you to try.  The most important things to remember are that, first, if you feed the deer with bait or wildlife feed in the winter, they will definately continue to dine on your property after winter is over and second, if the deer are hungry enough, they will eat anything!

Deer Resistant Plants

Deer resistant plants page 1

Deer resistant plants page 2

 Deerproofing Your Yard and Garden is a great paperback book of useful information available through Amazon or right here at the garden center.