I think I’ve become a crazy person. Seriously, certifiable. Last week I discovered that deer have been decimating my garden. No, I am not being melodramatic. They’ve hopped my 4-foot fence, stepped over my 2-foot garden fencing, pushed aside the wildlife netting and munched away to their hearts’ content. Buh-bye green beans, sorry squash, later tomatoes.
I even found hoof prints and many eaten plants to corroborate my story. Le sigh.
I’m cool with deer and wildlife. I try not to kill bugs outside because it’s their home, too. I even have an unspoken deal with the snakes that I find from time to time: Stay out of my house (which they always do — thank goodness), and I’ll simply relocate you so you aren’t in my way. I try not to tempt the deer with too many of their favorites, and I sure as hell thought Remmy would be a great deterrent, but this year the deer have my number. And my veggies.
So I am at war. And I think I’m winning. Muahahaha.
After finding my eaten garden and cursing up a storm, I promptly went inside to research how to keep deer away from my garden. There were lots of tips and tricks, so I got to work.
- Irish Spring soap: Rumor has it deer aren’t crazy about Irish Spring soap. Apparently, nor is Brian. I’d bought a bulk pack of the green bars that remained almost untouched, so I drilled holes and attached the bars of soap to my garden fencing. It now smells very fresh and clean out there.
- Bells: I made this one up myself. I read a lot about how noises will scare deer away. I thought adding bells to my tomato plants might frighten a deer away if they heard a noise while they were eating. The jury is definitely still out on that one. I may have added an old wind chime, too.
- Extra fencing: The deer thankfully have not attempted to hop into my lush tomatoes, otherwise I’d still be weeping. But in an attempt to further deter their snacking, I added another set of fencing in front of my tomato garden. It leans a little, so they can’t get as close. Can they still hop it? Oh heck yes. Have they, oh heck no.
- Tightened netting (not pictured): The deer plainly don’t care about the wildlife netting, but I tightened it nonetheless. So far, no netting breaches have occurred. On the other hand, I can barely get through the damn netting haha. It makes picking my produce quite difficult.
- Motion-activated sprinkler: The gem in my deer fighting arsenal, my motion-activated sprinkler stands guard just waiting for an unsuspecting deer to cross its path. Then BAM! SPRINKLER! It’s hilarious. I frequently get soaked. So does Remmy. In theory, so do the deer. It might be useless, who knows. But I sure get a lot of joy out of it.
You’ll also see in the above photo and old, sheer curtain. I was so pissed last week about the deer that the first couple of nights that I actually covered my tomatoes at night. Then it stormed in the middle of the night and I ran outside in basically my skivvies (does anyone say skivvies?) to make sure the wind wasn’t wrapping the curtain around the plants and killing them. Since then, I’ve forced myself to be slightly less neurotic (ahem, crazy).
All of my deer proofing seems to be doing the trick. Who knows if it is the soap or the sprinkler, but one way or another, the deer have stopped eating my garden. I’m happy to share a jar or two of pasta sauce with them as a thank you. Silly deer, Jess’ garden is for people.
Everything should be turning green/growing like crazy in the next few weeks. I harvested a zucchini, crookneck squash and cucumber already.
And the first of my tomatoes are turning red! I may or may not have squealed with delight when I saw this. And Brian may or may not have walked out of the house at that exact moment. Whatever, he doesn’t understand my garden love.
If nothing else, at least my added measures protect the garden from my not-so-ferocious dog. Except the soap. He likes to steal that.
A Smith of All Trades 