My friend Grace and I were nosing around at the Fiber Farm a few weeks ago, checking out Susie’s plantings. We saw a little bit of deer damage starting on the shrubs in front of the house. That was no surprise—deer are absolutely rampant in this area, a formidable opponent to gardeners everywhere. The poor things have lost most of their natural predators and seem to constantly be on the verge of starvation. Unfortunately, that has led to great boldness on their part and widespread destruction in practically everybody’s gardens.

Anyway, we were looking around when we saw a most intriguing planting under a tree. An intense back and forth ensued as we tried to identify the plant, which had not yet flowered. Our first thought was tulips, but that was clearly impossible—these plants were in easy reach of any deer passing by, and tulips are deer candy.

Back home I discovered a similar mysterious planting in my back yard. I plant stuff all the time and then forget about it, but I couldn’t figure this one out. But all became clear once it flowered:

Susie and I both successfully grew tulips this year! How Susie did this, I just don’t know. Apparently she is under the protection of the plant gods. I, however, happened to put deer repellant down in the area of the tulips—pure chance, I was trying to protect other plantings there. A deer repellant that can protect tulips is a powerful repellant indeed!

For years I did not use deer repellant at all. Too expensive for one. Then I started using a homemade repellant. It was clear to me the stuff would not work—after all, if it did, everyone would use it.

And then, a miracle. I continue to field questions from the neighbors as to why the deer don’t bother my lilies, my hostas, all my plants that normally would make up a deer salad bar. My recipe for homemade repellant is below. It is important to start application early in the season, before deer have gotten in the habit of snacking at your house every day. (They will even teach this snacking habit to their children, and pass down info about how tasty your yard is from one generation to the next.) I apply repellant weekly, and rotate the homemade spray with a commercial repellant from week to week. I like to use Deer Solution as my commercial repellant because it happens to smell like cinnamon, but any spray should do in the rotation. You just don’t want the same thing every single week—the deer will get used to it.

Deer Repellant

2 eggs

1 cup skim milk

1 cup water

2 TBS liquid dish detergent

Beat the eggs a little and strain them through a sieve. Straining them will help keep them from clogging your spray bottle.

Mix all the ingredients together. Store in fridge in a spray bottle, and apply to plants weekly, or after a heavy rain. No need to let the eggs or milk turn bad and start to smell! It works fine with fresh ingredients.

Some people like to add a little vegetable oil to encourage better adhesion to the plant leaves. Brad Roeller of the Cary Institute has done lots of research on deer damage. His green landscaping tips can be linked to from this page, including his own version of homemade deer repellant.

A final word of caution—deer will eat anything if they are hungry enough! I hope you have great luck if you try the repellant spray, but unfortunately there are no guarantees…

Anybody have any favorite tips for dealing with deer?

And now for today’s unrelated goat photos: