About 15 miles from me, there is an apple orchard. They sell wholesale and also have pick your own. Every tree has a bar of soap hanging in it. I don't recall it being Irish Spring and the wrapper is left on. It must work.

I forgot to add that I do use soap in my garden. I save all the scraps of soap and place in an onion bag and place them on posts here and there in my garden. It does keep the deer out. It didn't keep the bunny out of my beets though.
After the bunny ate my beets, it started on my spinach. I cut a piece of chicken wire into 16" to 20" widths and as long as I wanted and stapled each long side of the wire to a 2"X 2". I then place each 2"X 2" along each side of the row and created a hoop. I just pinched the ends together. It worked perfectly. My rows are only 10 feet long so it was easy.

Any "sure thing" recipes for raccoons? I have a good sized apricot harvest coming.

Bejay

At least I'm not losing my mind. Fedup posted the same message over on the vegetable forum and I responded to both. Just now noticed the double post.

More relevant to the Pest Control forum too.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Clinic - Pests & Diseases

Raccoons, trap and relocate..

Ken said:
"Raccoons, trap and relocate.."
I'm adding......."..to the bottom of the pond!"

:+)

Deanna (into permanent solutions here)!!

Yes, but I was trying to be nice. It was worse, but quick for that big fat woodchuck however. He was done in a spilt second by a Conabear trap #330 model. It takes 60+ pounds of pull on each of the two big springs and once set, could snap a mans arm in half.

So far we've caught 3 woodchucks in the havaheart trap.We give our woodchuck visitors "religion". My son baptizes them in the pond, The burial ground is behind the compost pile.

Woodchucks, pigeons, squirrels, and chipmunks are great as fertilizer around my blueberry bushes. Today, the next door neighbor had all the big trees cut down that shade my whoel garden after 3PM. I hope that this will improve my berries. I also have a bunch of honey berries that are ripe now, birds don't seem interested, but they do have some mild flavor. If the critters are still kicking, I use my very powerful pellet rifle, that offers an 800 ft/sec muzzle velocity, close to a .22 in speed, but with no gun powder needed. The pellets can go right through a squrrel!

Well, after 2 straight days before posting this message I was growing my beans for deer food...I decided to try the Irish Spring soap. As of 7 days later nothing has been touched!!! Maybe the deer went on a.. diet. Or the soap worked? Just thought I would let you know...

I tried soap one year. There was enough soap in my garden to bathe the whole county. Where there wasn't a bar of soap there was an aluminum pie pan swinging in the breeze, clippings from my hair cuts. It didn't stop anything from consuming my veggies at will.

For deer, liquid fence (or electric fence) and follow directions exactly. So many people say it doesn't work but when you ask them how they used it, they were cheating a little because it's expensive. So is losing a thousand ears of corn.

For chewing critters, I used a contraption that consists of a motion sensing flood lights setup, also wired to a very loud untrasonic device. The lamps would only switch on at night, and would also sound the loud annoying sound generator. The device shuts off after 5 minutes. Its helped save my cantaloupes and watermelon from total destruction and several other plants near ground level. My peaches were all eaten by something, but it could have been deer.That area had no motion sensing devices, but I planted the melons near the peach tree this year, just to offer more coverage. I've been lucky, corn has not been damaged.

We live right on the path that the local deer use for their daily browsing. They sleep in the olive grove to the south of us and gather in the olive grove to the north to spend the day. They had noticeable paths through our property when we bought it. I found a homemade recipe for liquid fence that really does a good job. It even kept the deer out of my corn field.

Copy Kat Deer and Rabbit Repellant

There is a version of "Liquid Fence" on the market. I found this works just as well, just you have to use it more quickly due to it not having the preservatives in it. It smells bad when you apply it--this is your warning!! You will need 5 one gallon containers to mix this up. Fast and easy.

4 to 6 eggs(I use 8)
1 lg head of garlic, chopped
5 gallons of water
Any hot pepper you may have in the house

Put eggs, garlic and pepper in a blender with some water and blend until well mixed. Empty mixture in one of the gallon containers. Fill the container with water and mix well. Distribute the mixture into the other 4 containers until all 5 containers are equal. Fill all 5 containers with water and set in the sun for 3 days to "ripen".

Sprinkle around the perimeter of the area you want to protect. You can also strain some mixture and put it into a spray bottle to spray on plants that might need extra treatment. Retreat every month or after a hard rain.

I fought the deer for years, and tried all the supposed remedies. They'll work for a while, and then, all of a sudden, they don't work any more. Irish Spring soap is made from beef tallow, which, theoretically, shoos away the deer. I think it's because the perfume stinks, but hey..... I put that stuff all around, and I still find bars of it, 10 years later. Has a half life of at least 10 years, I'd guess.

Anywho, along the lines of the spray recipe posted above, I use something similar, recommended by the local Division of Wildlife. 1 egg, 1 teaspoon chicken bouillon, whirr up in a blender, strain into sprayer (or it may clog), dilute to a gallon or so, and spray all over foliage you want to protect. This works for a few weeks, or until it rains, or until new foliage grows, etc.

I finally put up a deer fence around my 3.5 acres, but they still manage to jump it, or crawl under it, but not nearly as frequently as they used to. I'll still spray that egg stuff on small fruit trees as they're budding out, roses with new, May growth, and tulips.

Tulips, I always remember the morning after they show up.

Yesterday, driving the highway to the town over and doing 65 mph down a hill, I had a deer jump over my car hood. I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, and hit the brakes, or she'd have hit the wind shield. Maybe I should hang a bar of Irish Spring from the rear view mirror.......

I hung it on my young fruit trees the year before last and they still ate them up, not to mention the lilac bush and azaleas also. They even dug through snow to get to the strawberry plants that were just getting leaves and they are in raised beds. One of them did leave behind an antler which is now on the fireplace mantel though!

No luck here with soap either, or with hair clippings from the barber either. Dad's old 303 British seems to work best, except for that pesky little requirement called "deer season".

I now have 40 acres, with something like a mile and a half of fence. The blasted deer climb/jump/run through my barnyard fence, GO INSIDE THE BARN and lick the mineral blocks placed there for my cattle. They eat my hay all winter, tear down the fences year round and generally cause havoc and those are the ones that don't get hit by cars. Pah. Rats on Hooves. I keep hoping the local black bears would eat them, but nooooooo, they like the suet cakes people put in bird feeders. (grin)

A large, loud, free ranging dog works pretty well for my garden, at least. I'm glad the neighbor has one!

Annie