I've never tried any of them. A scent product called Scent-inal seemed to work well if refreshed weekly.

Very true, but deer only bother a few things that I grow in my garden like beans and cukes so protecting them for a season with $10 worth scent made more sense then spending much more on 300' of fencing. That being said I think I'll finally build a fence this off season.

No doubt fence can work best when done properly. A few years back I looked into the cost of fencing in a 20x20ft area and it was about $300 not including my time and labor. Not to mention in this soil for every fence post I would certainly hit a rock, some are huge. That was the reason I didn't ask about fencing.

With that in mind I decided to try one of those sprinkler motion sense things since I was going on vacation I thought it's a 2-fer-1. And it did work with 2 caveats. It would turn the sprinkler on when direct sun hit it. I tried turning it around then it seemed like it was the heat of the day setting it off. But it would go on for no reason when there was nothing moving or flying thru the garden. It stayed in use until the water company called and sent me a letter - they thought I had a water leak. No leak and caveat #2 - the bill was $300. Not worth it for tomatoes.

So that came down and never went back up. I then tried using some old 4ft fencing by laying it down on the path they were coming down. Deer don't like things on their feet. Yea, I do realize they could jump over it or go around another way but that also worked for awhile too. Now its a cat n mouse game so I thought I'd try something else but now realize even if noise did work they would prob get used to that too.

While scents may be something else for me to try this has been the most rainy summer in recent memory. In fact, it is pouring buckets now for the 2nd time this hour.

So back to the farmers market.

I use posts with 70 lb test clear fishing line. I zigzag the posts and the fishing line randomly at several levels. Deer don’t have good vision, especially 3D, so if they run into something that is difficult to see, they don’t know if they can safely jump it and tend to avoid the area. I also use Mylar pinwheels in the garden. The random movement and flashing can startle them.

I used Plantskydd spray last summer and was amazed by how much better it worked than other sprays I'd tried over the years. I sprayed it once on the bark of the perimeter trees in my yard and the deer didn't bother my plants for a couple months.

Used coyote urine from Home Depot to protect my daylily patch after they were devastated the previous year. Sprayed twice during the season and it worked great!

From my experience a chained dog doesn't work. They knew how far she could get and would walk right past that circle. A nine foot fence doesn't work. 12 foot seems to work. The deer here seem to be very tame. I sit on the porch and talk to them 40 or 50 feet away. They bed down 75 feet away. During hunting season they have bed down under a pine tree 10 feet from the house, more than once. I've seen that trick at several locations. They find a dense hideout near a house and either stand frozen or bed down there.

I've used Bonide hot pepper wax animal repellent for years. It was originally marketed to repel Japanese beetles, and I wondered if the hot pepper would work on deer, and it did. Recently they changed it into an animal repellent. The only problem with it is that if you have a fast growing plant, you need to remember to spray weekly. The deer love my garden phlox, and if I forget to spray every week they'll come along and munch off the freshly grown tops.

if you have the ability to dedicate a water source (hose or hose splitter), you may try the motion-detecting sprayer we are using for our hosta beds. We got it on Amazon, and it was called the "Orbit 62100" - been working great for 3+ years, and doesn't seem to have the glitch that poor Gumby experienced!