4 Tips To Keep Deer From Eating Your Garden
While looking out the window and seeing wildlife in your backyard can be very relaxing, seeing rabbits and deer eat the fruits of your labor in the garden is not. Here are four ways to keep deer out of your garden.
1. Use Liquid Fencing
You can buy prepared chemicals to use around your plants. Unfortunately, while it is marked as safe for use on fruits and vegetables, you're still using chemicals on the things you plan on eating. It must also be repeatedly applied. When most home gardeners are trying to be organic, repeated applications with chemicals, no matter how supposedly safe they are, isn't something most want to do. And when you consider they are made to smell awful, relying on putrefied eggs, garlic, and blood, their use becomes even less desirable.
2. Use Scare Tactics
Scarecrows will help with avian predators, but they won't do much for rabbits and deer. A water sprinkler with a motion detector can be helpful in scaring away animals, as can hanging white streamers around the garden. This will serve as a warning similar to the flick of a whitetail deer's tail when presented with danger. Unfortunately, most deer, especially if they are in an urban area, quickly learn there is no real threat.
3. Use Plants As A Border
Just like people, deer have food preferences and dislikes. Planting asparagus and rhubarb patches around your garden can help keep them out. Garlic, oregano, and rosemary are other plants they don't care for. Unfortunately, if deer are hungry enough, they will eat whatever they can find.
4. Build A Fence
After trying many deterrents, such as hanging a scarecrow or scattering mothballs, most gardeners who live in a heavily deer-populated area eventually realize fencing is the only sure option.
Building a fence around your garden won't deter deer who are accustomed to coming into your yard from still stopping by. Deer can jump extremely high. In order to prevent a deer from leaping over your fence, it will need to be a minimum of eight-feet high.
While you can have a fencing contractor construct your fence out of metal mesh no larger than 8x6 inch grids, a solid wooden fence is best. If a deer can't see what's on the other side of the fence, he is less likely to leap over it, not knowing what he is getting into. A solid wooden fence will also keep rabbits out. Be sure the contractor knows you want a deer exclosure fence; they can ensure the posts are deep enough to prevent some critters from digging under the fencing to get in.
For more information, contact a company like Askatu Construction.