Iris, I have studied this and tried many things. I still go without a fence because I don't want my garden fenced in -- just an aesthetic thing. So I use many methods and normally do pretty well (knocking on wood) though there is some sharing with the deer.

Here are the things that have worked for me:

Dry repellants that are spread in a band around the garden. These are normally based on garlic, pepper, dried blood. I stay away from anything that has predator urine in it because I consider it inhumane to the predators who are "donating" the urine.

Liquid repellants sprayed on the plants. Normally based on rotten eggs. These can be sprayed around the perimeter as well. It's good to use two different repellants and interchange them. (use one, then a couple weeks later use a different one.)

There is some predator urine that is very effective, and humane: Any meat eater (that is, mine, my husband's, house guests . . .) and my dog's. We rarely have deer grazing when we're here and I'm dumping diluted buckets of pee around the perimeter in the evenings, and the dog is marking around the garden beds. And the one year I started feeling silly about the pee buckets and quit doing it, we had much more deer damage.

I also use hoops and deer netting over particularly vulnerable plants like beans and sweet potatoes.

When we leave (which we do for weeks at a time) I set up a baited, one strand electric fence. It cost a couple hundred dollars--much less than an 8 foot fence (which I also looked into).

What has not been effective: baited individual electric shocker things. They seemed to work the first year, then I think the deer figured out not to sniff them.

I hope this helps!

I've gone with the scarecrow type motion activated sprinklers. I use more than one, and have them on a water timer so that the water is on during the critical times when they get in the yard, and not on when it is hot out during the day and hoses can burst. If it ends up not being enough, I may add some motion detector lights and/or a radio. The one sprinkler I had last year made a difference in the area where it was located, which lead me to set up a better defense strategy for other critical areas. Overall, I just hope it will be effective.

How big is the area you want to protect?

tj

I find a spraying of fish emulsion generally effective. If it sits in the sprayer a couple of days it is even stinkier. I apply it in the early evening when I am about to go inside because it really, really stinks. I have used bird netting over certain things and that of course helps. Row cover fabric helps too. As above, urine collected in a milk jug and poured around the perimeter helps some. None of these work completely but have minimized the damage. The absolute worst time for me is in the winter when they chew on trees. They destroyed a pine tree, completely blew me away, I thought that was safe.

I did not have much luck with the scarecrow sprinkler, unfortunately because I really wanted to like it. We think that the problem was at night when the temperature would drop significantly (desert mountains, so we could see a 30 degree drop easily) that the batteries would stop working. This year we hope to put up 7 foot tall deer netting until we figure out how we want to fence some areas.

I would just get a fence. Do I want to deal with pee buckets, urine concentrate, rotten fish spray.... on my beautiful plants, all the time, and only hope that it works?

No. Just have to figure out the most cost effective deer fence, that is all.

Maybe I'm just not as creative and patient as you folks are!

I think the size of your garden area will help us help you. When I was living in Wisconsin we had a small herd of Whitetail roaming the neighborhood sampling everyone's gardens. I grew mostly in containers(living in a townhouse type apartment)and the big doe of the herd would actually come up the walk and look into our kitchen while she was browsing my plants. I found through trial and error that the deer didn't like the(Safer brand) sulfur based fungicide I was using so I used it for a repellent. It didn't smell as bad as some of the homemade ones that kept you from sitting outside and enjoying your garden and it didn't harm the plants. I did have to keep up with it after a rain though. Eventually I was able to put in a small raised bed, about 4'x 12'. I tried covering my plants with inexpensive tulle, but during the heat of summer the deer just bit through it trying to get to my(still green)toms. I eventually put up some 2"x2" posts and surrounded my bed with 1" black nylon deer netting. My toms were finally safe. The deer couldn't see it, but they could feel it when they approached and would turn away. IIRC, the netting was only about $8 for 7'x75'. It wasn't real strong...one of our cats ran right through it when we first put it up because he couldn't see it, but I just tied it back together with some yarn and it was good. Hope this gives you a couple of ideas.

As DRN said, I've also gone with the scarecrow type motion activated sprinklers. They work for me and I had really bad problems before. I can go out every morning and see tracks close to the garden. They stop and run when they get close enough to set them off. The only time that they have gotten in mine was when I let the battery die on one. They pigged out on that side but left the other part alone since the battery was till good in my other one.

Agree with bardamu - "Just have to figure out the most cost effective deer fence, that is all."

The costs of all the other products can easily exceed the cost of installing a basic deer fence, the most effective option.

Depending on the size of the area to be contained one can buy 100' roll of 7' tall plastic deer netting for as little as $25 from suppliers like Gurney's Deer Netting (with current coupon) and add in the cost of a few wooden or metal stakes.

Dave

An electric fence works. They're easy to put up, take down, and a whole lot cheaper than a permanent fence. You could go w/solar or standard.

I got the deer netting for less than $20 at Amazon. For the record though, stinky fish stuff also serves as a fertilizer, so it is dual purpose. Actually, because the perimeter area is where I have wood chips, the urine is dual purpose, too as a nitrogen source to help break down the wood chips and build soil (eventually).

Our problem with fencing other areas is determining where the fences goes as we are on acreage and we would rather figure it out and do it once than rip it out and do it again (and DH is very indecisive). In the mean

Several years ago, I purchased the inexpensive deer netting (around $15 for 100 x 7 feet) locally and set up a fence around the main garden area. It would keep deer out, although they ran into it and tore it away from the stakes a couple of times requiring repairs.

But it did have its problems. In order to enclose the garden area with the fence and for me to maneuver around the outside perimeter of the garden, I had to put the fencing about four feet beyond the garden out into the yard. This made mowing difficult as I had to pull out all the stakes and reposition them at the edge of the garden to mow and then put them all back.

Also, getting in and out of the garden required having a "secret" entrance which ended up being problematic getting things into the garden area - garden hose, wheelbarrow and so on.

I found it was much better to cut the deer fencing into panels - mine were about 14 feet wide - and just drape the fencing over the plants. This worked well for most plants and stopped deer damage. Its very easy to pull the panels away to get to the plants when you need to. You do have to regularly pull them away from tomato plants or they'll find a way to grow through the fencing, but you'll need to do this any way to pick the tomatoes every few days.

Deer fencing panels are great for most veggies, but certainly not for vining plants such as pole beans or vertically grown cukes - the tendrils will grab onto the netting. For those, I rely on homemade deer spray. If you have some eggs, garlic, hot peppers and a few other common items, you can whip up a large batch of very effective deer spray at minimal cost.

Just be glad you don't have any groundhog issues. That's an entirely different battle.

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions, our garden is about 100 feet by 50 feet , we have peed all around the garden, I put a homemade scarecrow up , tied pie pans and aluminum foil to the posts we put around the gardn with CAUTION tape, letting it flutter and bang around in the wind,, irish spring stuck in pantyhose hanging from nearby tree branches. I don't mind sharing a little bit with the animals but last year they mowed down EVERY pepper plant I put out ( 25 + ) entire rows of green beans, cucumbers, ALL my Tromboncino squash plants and even chewed so hard on theZuke and yellow squash plant leaves it caused the plants themselves to be uprooted and eventually die a week later. It was heartbreaking. The only thing they left alone was the tomatoes but the deer or the squirrels did take out HUGE bites out of the tomatoes , seems nothing was spared last year except the herbs !

Those are some weird deer that eat squash and not tomatoes. I guess maybe there are regional tastes in deer?

Nitsua hit the nail on the head why I don't like fences -- I don't want it to be difficult for me to get in and out of the garden. But it sounds like your deer are out of control! How about a dog that stays out at night?

Don't do the dog thing, especially letting them run free, unless you have 100+ acres! My neighbor, rest his soul, always kept big dogs that barked all night, on his 25+ acres. Consider the broad range affect on your neighbors! The barking keeps other people awake, a free ranging dog destroys things on your neighbors property including their garden!

He said he kept them to run away the deer. The deer came, they ate his garden. But my sprinklers kept them out of my garden! And his dogs kept me awake all night even though they were over 300 foot away!

He would let them run free for a few hours every day. When he would let them out for their exercise...... Where did they go?
Straight to my garden, to dig, make "deposits" and run over my plants!
The trash can was fair game too!

Don't get me wrong, we were good friends, always helping each other. He was just stubborn on the dog thing!

I think that the deer were used to the constant barking, but the sudden noise from the sprinklers ran them away!

The deer don't mess with my tomatoes, they eat anything else that is young and tender. They also prefer legumes, I plant a lot of beans and peas so that is what they go after first.

After my neighbor died I asked his widow if she would mind moveing the dog pen to the other side of her house, with me doing all of the labor so that I could sleep. I gave her husband the same offer...... She said "I'll do one better than that, I'm giving them to my brother because I want some sleep too!"

After the dogs were gone she asked me to help her take down the 40 X 20 chain link pen and haul it off. I was so happy! I took it down by myself, very carefully, so it could be reused and I also found her a buyer. She smiled really big when the buyer was laying the greenbacks in her hand.

I supply her, her kids, and her grands with fresh veggies now, which isn't new...... When the deer ate their garden, with the dogs barking to run the deer away. I always gave them some of mine.

I know that this has turned in to a rant, sorry! But people need to keep their animals in control!

With a garden of that size, an electric fence sounds like the most cost-effective option. In my rural garden, I use a hybrid fence of electric fencing high, and chicken wire low. The wire not only keeps out the deer, it keeps the racoons out of my corn. To make an entryway, I just tie pieces of twine between two poles with quick-release knots... the deer could come through there, but once bitten by the fence, they don't seem to know the difference between wire & string.

But like almost any other method of animal deterrent, an electric fence is most effective when used proactively, to keep them out before they learn what's on the other side. If the animals know that something they like is inside, they will find a way through... so putting up a fence after damage has begun is less likely to discourage them.

"Those are some weird deer that eat squash and not tomatoes. I guess maybe there are regional tastes in deer?"
Mama deer teaches her babies to eat what she has developed a taste for.

I see this discussion has mostly landed on fencing the area as the only really dependable solution. But I still have to ask: has anyone had luck with (or even tried) a product called Nature's Mace? It comes in a granular form that doesn't wash away after one rain (so they say). And I'm hopeful that, combined with spraying with Liquid Fence (or urine, or stinky fish stuff), the combo will be effective enough.

We have a woodland vacation home in eastern WV (aka "deer wonderland"), and I have planted many "deer resistant" young shrubs near the home. Trouble is, the deer are not well informed about what they should not enjoy so they nibble (or decimate) everything. I had reasonably good luck last season when I was dutifully spraying LF about every 2 weeks. This year I'm not sure I'll be able to get out here as often to spray, and so am hopeful that this Natures Mace granular release can tide over the longer stretches between spraying. Did a search for the stuff here though -- nary a mention of it yet. Is it too new? Does it just not work? Please help; my hydrangeas, nine bark, witch hazel, and bottlebrush buckeye are at serious risk.