Garden Warfare: Deer
June 11, 2009 at 2:43 pm 1 comment
One of my gardening clients has a terrible deer problem. The deer have a taste for her phlox. The entire property is surrounded with wild phlox, but the deer would rather destroy the domestic ones in her garden. They just have a bad attitude.
I told her that Irish Spring keeps deer away. It’s not surprising, given the smell. I would stay away too. Just use an old stocking to tie the soap to shrubs that are a problem. She wasn’t interested in decorating her garden with soap (again, I don’t blame her). You can also string fishing line around the garden, because it confuses the deer when they walk into it. But if you’re like me, you’ll probably also walk into it yourself.
Human hair is also a good solution. Sprinkling it around the garden means that the deer are deterred by human scent, and your plants get nitrogen. But unless you have a deal with a barber, or spend a lot of time cutting your hair, a fresh supply of human hair is hard to come by.
The thing that finally worked was so simple it’s absolutely brilliant. She cut a small hole in a little garbage can, put a radio inside with an outdoor extension cord running through the hole, and tuned it into the CBC. Unlike some fear-based deterrents, the diverse range of music and talk radio changes enough to keep the deer away. For now, anyway.
Entry filed under: Garden, Garden Warfare. Tags: deer, deterrent, fishing line, garden, hair, Irish Spring, nitrogen, Pest Control, radio, soap.
1.
artnik | June 12, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I find CBC has that same effect on me. Perhaps the deer have stopped eating the phlox because they all nodded off to sleep while catching up on their listening to “cross-country checkup”.