Deer me.

[kib]

After the -10F freeze killed of 50% of everything growing on this acreage including 9 full sized pine trees that serve(d) as our windbreak and privacy screen, I got very depressed, and then finally pulled myself up to get serious this spring about spending the time, love, money and precious desert water to create a really grand edible oasis of truly frost - and heat, and drought, and bug, and wind - resistant things. But I forgot about the deer. The garden is enclosed with a 3' rock wall topped by a 3' fence. I thought it was deer proof, but apparently the deer haven't scaled it in 2+ years simply because the salad bar wasn't enticing enough. This year they decided it was worth bothering over, and in 2 nights I lost just about everything, about 60 new plants.

Has anyone else just given up with the acceptance that they simply can't garden where they are? :( I'm just about done. Suggestions on the deer might rally me to one more shot at this, though ...

[redfox]

Venison makes lovely BBQ.

[goldensmom]

redfox's suggestion of BBQ venison sounds good. The deer in these parts taste pretty much like beef because they are corn fed. I've not found any product, plant, tree or homemade concoction that will really, really deter deer. Not even dogs will run them off. We have deer that sleep by our house. I've counted as many as 60 deer (yes, I stood there and counted them) in our hay field**. I've often given up but after a while I try again. Sorry no suggestions but I can empathize with you.

**Deer are beautiful creatures. No matter how destructive, I could never shoot a deer (even if I could aim a rifle) but I can eat venison.

[CathyA]

I'm so sorry kib! I know how much work you've put into growing things. Don't give up!
Deer fencing needs to be at least 9' tall. What kind of fencing is above your stone wall? Are you
sure its deer that ate your stuff?
Can anything get between the fence and the stone wall?
What some people do, instead of having a huge solid fence, is to put wire every couple of feet up to 9'.
Could you do that above your existing fence?
I live in the woods, and am constantly having to be smarter and more creative than the wild animals.........especially
with my chicken coop/run.
Also, After reinforcing your garden, could you plant some "sacrificial" plants around the outside of it, so maybe the garden marauders would fill up on that stuff?
Don't give up!

[Rosemary]

I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your landscape... and twice!
There are deer all over where we live, too, and they are hungry this time of year... especially this year, since it's the end of April and there are no leaves on anything yet!
There are lists of deer-resistant plants, but I know that your choices are already limited where it is so dry.
Could you add a deer barrier around the borders of the landscaped area? That's what we've done around our vegetable garden. gardeners.com sells some plastic deer netting that comes in 100' rolls and basically fades into the background - you don't really see it when you're looking around at a long focus. It's pretty sturdy in our climate - it's been there for about 4 years.

[pinkytoe]

Yes yes and yes. Trying to garden here in Texas is a constant struggle. If it doesn't freeze in the winter, it bakes to death in the summer. Now we are in a record drought and haven't seen any measurable rain since January. We are in the city so deer are close. If I drive one neighborhood over at night, there are deer everywhere munching on people's front yard plants. There was some talk by the city of hiring sharpshooters to thin the herds - crazy.

[fidgiegirl]

kib! You're back!

[Zigzagman]

I enjoyed the post. My DW is the gardener in our household and I've become the helper since my retirement. I think every gardener can relate to your post. How many times through the years has "I just don't know if it is worth it" been said. Digging in the dirt is addictive, the challenge is endless, and the hope of success never ends.

IMHO, I think gardening, both flower and veggie, teach life lessons of humility, patience, and perseverance. I doubt you will ever be able to "give it up". No matter where you live Mother Nature always has a few tricks up her sleeve that you will never be able to figure out. Drought, pests, deer, wind, hail, gophers, the list is endless. It seems like some years are good for one thing and terrible for another but it sure things taste better when you grow it yourself!

Peace

[CathyA]

Kib........I went to hear Martha Stewart talk once (don't hold that against me)......and I knew she had been having alot of trouble with deer eating all her hostas. I asked her how she handled it, and she said that she strung wire up around her trees that surrounded her hosta beds, at about 1,3,6,9' levels, and that kept them out. If you have trees around your garden you could do that to.
If not, you could put tall poles up and attach the wire onto those. But I hope those poles wouldn't be lightening rods! If you used tall 4x4 posts, you could add onto the tops of them with metal poles, to get the 9' height.
Another trick is to grow shrubs, etc., around the outside of the wire, so they can't get close to jump straight over. I guess its harder for them to jump 9', when they have to jump from further out.
How about a scarecrow, or hanging cd's around to blow in the wind. You could also try leaving a transistor radio on, on a talking station, in your garden all the time.
Keeping a dog outside??

[freein05]

One thing my brother did to keep pests out of his garden day and night is he mounted some motion activated sprinklers around his garden. He lives in Louisiana and has deer, Turkeys, squirrels and most any kind of animal there is. He uses raised beds for his garden. His method seems to work very good.

With this method there is no need for a fence and I would guess it is easier and cheaper then fencing and looks nicer than a 9 foot fence.

[daisy]

When we looked into putting up our garden fence, I read somewhere that deer don't like jumping into a fenced area that has obstacles to escape inside it. So we placed vertical trellises scattered throughout the garden, in varying lengths and heights, both parallel and perpendicular to the fence, along with the 40 or so tomato cages that get moved around each summer. So far <*knocks wood*> in the 5 years of having the garden, no deer have bothered it. The raccoons and squirrels are another matter...

[Brian]

You may be able to add some light electric fence lines on fence post extensions above your existing height without the serious investment in a new high fence?

We have a perpetual goat issue and I have seen goats perched on tiny stone shelf of top of 5' stone walls trying to work out how to leap the last fee feet of fence strands on top. Some allege that those who put up parallel fences (like horse fence, just wide enough apart they cannot set for a leap over next fence, but far enough apart not to take in one stride) do so as goat traps using their succulent gardens as the bait. Good wrapped up as a Roti...

Despite everything the feral goats, if hungry enough will leap all fences, even doing some of themselves harm in the act, and almost always stranding the kids behind in my garden, then bleat on as if it is my doing??

I have mentioned before that we plant xeroscape in the front yard and focus available water and fencing on the back yard that is productive... not to say pomegranates and bougainvillaea in front are not without merit but neither are they avocados or mangoes or onions or..... :)

Good luck Karen.

[CathyA]

That's a good idea daisy......about the obstacles. Maybe that's why they leave our's alone. We have a dilapidated 2 and 1/2' fence. It doesn't keep anything out. But we live in the middle of woods and fields, so I'm thinking there's alot of other things for these guys to eat and not just our garden.
We need to build a new fence, but we're usually lucky just to get a few seeds planted.

[Blackdog Lin]

At work my daily truck driver is a 70-yr. old "master gardener" - he raises ACRES of tomatoes and melons to sell to the area grocery stores. (He told me yesterday that he spent the day before with his wife putting in 150 watermelon seed-cups in his greenhouse!) Anyway, when he gives me garden advice I listen.

And I was telling him about DH having to put up a chicken-wire fence around the tomato plot, as the rabbits are bad this year, and he said oh! he wished I had mentioned it earlier, as he uses a product called "Liquid Fence" on his home garden.

He said Liquid Fence, and that he gets it at Ace Hardware, and that it's expensive but goes a long way, and that you can both spray it directly on the garden plants and spray it as a perimeter barrier all around the garden. And that it deters both rabbits and deer. He swears he's actually seen rabbits in his yard go up to the barrier and then just hop away in the other direction.

So while we haven't tried the stuff ourselves, I've filed this advice away in case the chicken wire doesn't do the trick, or proves too problematic to work around in the tomato plot.

You might try it. Like I said, this old guy really knows his gardening.

[ljevtich]

I was just going to post a question and came upon this thread.

We just moved into Grand Canyon National Park, Desert View for my season with the National Park Service. I was planning to put up a small garden (with pots) as I can not "plant" anything in the ground. Then I hear (from my new boss no less) that not only are there rabbits here, there are also deer, elk, and coyotes, that have no problem coming into the housing area. There are also mountain lions and black bear in the area!!!:0!:0!:0!:0!:0!:0!

So I was thinking of doing the pots situation, and putting it on a table so the rabbits would not get to it, but if I put them on a table, the deer and elk might get to them! However, I think I will invest in that liquid fence stuff. I was also planning to put the table right next to the RV.

Then I was also going to make chicken wire boxes to put over the pots - that way animals can't get into the young lettuces and other plants. That is my hope anyway. Maybe putting out marigolds and chili peppers might help too.

Thankfully, out here we are still experiencing sometimes below freezing temps, so I have a little while yet to figure it all out.

But do you think that something that repels deer would also repel elk?

[kib]

Thank you for all the responses! I know things always seem bleaker and more complicated from the inside, but this is such a frustratingly awkward space to me. One of the bigger challenges is the layout here. The property is a fenced in rectangle much longer than it is wide, and it runs lengthwise along the street. The house sits at the extreme back of this rectangle, and is itself a lengthwise-running rectangle with openings at the ends, like a saltine box. Adding complication, we don't really have a front door - one end of the saltine box opens into the kitchen and the other opens into sort of a storage porch. The same place I hang my clothes and grow my veggies is also the only practical entrance to the house. So the front of the property bordering the street for about 300' is also the veggie space, clothesline space, outdoor patio space. I've always wanted to do something to make the front both more attractive and more private, as it's really barren except for this wire fence which lets everyone see right into ALL our outdoor space. Even just a tall hedge of arborvitae or some kind of juniper would probably be effective in both keeping deer out and improving curb appeal, but getting the stuff to grow is ... sigh. I never knew how hard it was to get things to grow in the desert. I mean well DUH, that's WHY it looks like it does, scruffy and brown, but somehow it never occurred to me. Let's just say planting juniper will work out really well for someone's great grandchildren. I planted Nandina and some banksia and some honeysuckle, all of which grow much faster and are rather pretty to boot, but the deer ate it all - she said with an ironic eye roll. In the meantime ... Part of me wants to erect a nine foot electric fence - and another part is just appalled at the idea of what this would do to curb appeal of an already unattractive space. Maybe I will try the Liquid Fence on the front as I work on other ways to beef up the appeal, while fencing/wiring the less-visible back fence. I could probably even "plant" a few lawn chairs out past the back fence temporarily to create an obstacle course, didn't ever really think about that solution. Thank you again for listening and letting me know I'm not alone here.

[Rosemary]

Hedge of arborvitae = deer brunch.
We've been working on growing one of those for about 6 years. The deer prune them severely every spring.

[CathyA]

We have invasive japanese bush honeysuckle all throughout our property. The deer don't touch it. Nothing kills it, except pulling the danged thing out by its roots. Its covering alot of our 33 acres. Why won't the deer eat it???? :( Wish I could give it to you Kib!

[kib]

Lol. Thank you! I think the problem is that we're in a terrible drought, and a lot of things all over the region died in the freeze this winter. Between the two, there's just nothing else for the animals to eat. When I bought this property there were Old roses on it. Apparently for 15 years or more, nothing thought it could jump the fence to eat them, and roses are like deer dessert.

They come and eat one thing and don't bother something else and I think "oh, ok, so mint is deer proof. Oregano is a good choice. The leaves of the nectarine tree are not appealing. There's nothing left they'll want to eat." and then the next morning I wake up and that's gone. Rosemary seems to be the only thing that's truly off limits to everyone.

Thanks for the heads up on the arborvitae, Rosemary. One less item on the brunch menu.

[Mrs-M]

Rosemary. Re: your Arborvitae hedging, invest in a bottle of spray Plantskydd and treat your hedging with it (problematic seasons). They will not nibble again! Here is a link as to locations Plantskydd is available in the US.

http://www.plantskydd.com/retail.html

[The Storyteller]

Suggestions on the deer might rally me to one more shot at this, though ...

http://i394.photobucket.com/albums/pp29/storypage/TheBear.jpg