last pic.. that pink glow is really cool ...

is feeding deer legal wherever you are??

go blue ....

ken

"Go blue," hah. :)

The devastation to your neighbor's hostas looks heartbreaking.

So, just to add another arrow to anyone's anti-deer quiver, I've found that a product called "Rabbit and Groundhog Out" works really well to keep deer away from my vegetable garden, which is up on a 12-acre piece of land across the road from my house (too much shade around here). Long story short, it's excellent deer habitat and I scare deer out of there on a regular basis when I walk up. But spraying early on and regularly with this product seems to do the job, and it doesn't smell bad, like Liquid Fence. They make another product called "Deer Out," but a call to the company by revealed that Rabbit/GH Out has all the same ingredients and a few more. I keep a quart trigger-type spray bottle up at the garden and grab it for a general reminder-spray after rains and when things are growing fast, even though this product has a "sticker" that makes it resistant to being washed off.

My friend that runs a nursery has been in a permanent war with deer for decades. He too has to spray regularly and uses this product these days, partly because Liquid Fence makes things smell offensive to customers. I've asked him before if there aren't some plants that deer avoid, and his experienced answer was that though they do seem to go for hostas first, there's nothing that's deer proof. (Maybe daffodils?) So even though I've never seen them eat on my tomatoes, I spray them anyway. They should leave spiny raspberries and gooseberries alone, right? Nope. And last year, for the first time ever, I lost my entire crop of beans, that they've never bothered before. Lesson learned.

Good luck with the daylilies next!

Omg, some cool hosta and photographing. One thing I benefit I guess from living in a city...

Must be so frustrating dealing with deer. I only have rabbits and chipmunks to worry about. What hosta is the last photo? Sooo pretty. Reminds me of Cameo which I really want.

Well Cameo is a mini and that last Hosta is large to very large so .... it's a sport of Sagae that looks like but grows better than Liberty.

Thanks Ken, sunset photography. Not being an Ohio native, I'll try to take your comments in the good fun that I'm (almost) sure it was intended.

I'm almost a Buckeye fan. I'll root for them or MSU or Penn State or USC or UCLA pretty much equally.

Deer do not eat buckeyes (until they do).

Thanks NG, always good to be aware of another product.

I've even got my deer trained to eat the "native" Hosta that was here when I moved in and leave my new cultivars alone.

We alternate sprays using some Liquid Fence but also a lot of Deer Off. It works well on hostas and daylilies. However, we spray twice a week when the daylilies are in bud and/or flower. Right now we spray any new buds obsessively. We even spray lots of the hanging baskets but a beautiful chartreuse potato vine got eaten by either a muskrat, groundhog or something else last week. He stayed in the pot munching until I went out into the yard and chased him away. Dogs don't deter the deer in my area. They know I won't let my large dog loose and then she's so gentle she would probably walk over and say hello! She's a Great Pyrenees with a heart of gold.

This beautiful Squash Casserole that I planted in front of my office building was turned into celery sticks by a deer who also ate all the daylily buds that night. I put in Wiereles Deer Fencing too late to save the Hosta, but the newer daylily buds grew and bloomed. I’ve used a few of these in my home garden and don’t have deer problems with my hostas there. I bought some more after this.

I think I'll try that next year. My deer seem very trainable.

Glad you are having success spraying. I use Bobbex concentrate and it has been completely successful keeping the deer from eating anything sprayed (they got some before they were even barely showing pips). I need to start really early season. Those beasts will eat almost anything. They had never touched Solomon's Seal, Veronicastrum, Actaea.... until I started spraying the Hosta.

The only plants I don't need to spray are Ornamental grasses, Coreopsis, Lavender, Salvia, Limonium, Aconitum, Oreganum and a few others. I wish I could put up a deer fence but it would need to be 12' and it would not really work here.

Happy to see you back Kathy!

Just an update. The deer had stopped eating the daylily bulbs but I had not seen the deer for a while so I wondered if the Wireless Deer Fencing was working or if someone in the apartment complex behind my office had helped themselves to some easily harvested venison. Late on Friday afternoon a young man killed the deer in the four lane road in front of my office. It ran right out in front of him. His airbag deployed and his car was severely damaged. I feel more sorry for the guy than for the deer. This area has been developed since 1985, not like we’ve just moved into deer territory.

Bottom line— I think the Wireless Deer Fence works.