Deer are beautiful creatures, but they can be frustrating pests in the garden.
Become a better gardener! Discover our new Almanac Garden Planner features for 2024. It’s easy, fun, and free to try!
How to Identify and Get Rid of Deer in the Garden
How to Identify Deer
Deer are lean and graceful, with a reddish to grayish-brown coat. Bucks have antlers and does do not. Bucks weigh between 200 and 300 pounds, while does weigh between 120 and 175 pounds. They stand at three to four feet tall and live about 16 years in the wild. The distinguishing characteristic of the white-tailed deer is a foot-long tail with long white hairs on the underside, which they raise and wave when frightened.
Although deer are usually quiet, you might hear does make barely audible mews and grunts to fawns. Bucks and does both sometimes emit a whooshing sound when startled. You also might see their cloven hoof prints or bean-shaped droppings.
Deer Damage in Your Garden
Deer will leave jagged damage on your plant leaves. They show distinct preferences to certain types of flowers, so be extra wary of damage to some plants in particular. Plants that are soft to the touch with high water content (like hostas) are favorites, and so are buds, roses, and rhododendrons. Deer don’t seem to like plants with coarse, bristly, fuzzy, or spiny textures, nor do they enjoy those with intense aromas. That said, deer will eat anything if hungry enough.
How to Get Rid of Deer
There are many techniques you can try to deter deer from munching on your plants. Try some of these methods for your garden:
- Spray flowers and shrubs with a deer repellent that contains a mixture of dried bovine blood, sulfured eggs, and garlic. These repellents are available at most home and garden stores. They will not harm your plants and are usually effective in deterring deer.
- For another natural deer repellent, combine 1 raw egg, ½ cup of milk, 1 tablespoon of dish detergent, and 1 gallon of water. Lightly spray the mixture over plants. Respray after rain. Or, mix two tablespoons of Tabasco sauce to a gallon of water and spray the foliage and fruit. If it rains, reapply.
- Use scare tactics. Try putting several metal posts 4- to 5-feet-tall around the garden. Attach a metal pie tin to the top of each pole with twine. The least bit of wind makes the pine tins clack with a noise that the deer don’t like.
- Put a transistor radio in your garden and keep it on all night. Switch the station when you think of it. The noise will keep deer away.
- Set up an inexpensive motion detector in your garden. When a deer triggers it, the noise will scare the deer back into the woods.
- Drape fabric netting over plants and (most) deer will stay clear.
- For a natural deer deterrent, scatter dog or human hair around your garden, or hang human hair in pantyhose or mesh bags in trees. Find human hair clippings at a barber shop.
- To keep deer away from apple trees, hang nylon stockings filled with human hair from the limbs so that the clumps of hair are suspended about four feet from the ground. The hair and hose should be changed often.
- Scatter or hang bars of deodorant or cheap motel soap around the garden; if you leave the wrappers on, the soap will last longer. Irish Spring is particularly recommended.
- Mix rotten eggs in water (a dozen or so per 5 gallons) and spray around the perimeter of the garden.
- Spread kitty litter around the edge of the garden.
- Soak old socks in Lysol, spread around garden’s perimeter, and hang from a tree limb or stake.
- One reader, Rick, says, “Smelly old shoes can be used as a deterrent to deer. Just stick the shoes on top of tomato sticks, and watch the deer walk a wide circle around them. My shoes usually last from mid-May until about mid-August. That is, they keep the deer out of my garden for that long. This depends on the amount of rain and how much your shoes smell.”
- You can also drape your unwashed laundry around a low fence, or make a very pungent scarecrow of your unlaundered clothes.
- For a real odor offensive, use predator urine; wolf and coyote urine are sold commercially in most garden stores. (Note: Use a responsible source for predator urine, to make sure that the animals are treated humanely and the brand complies with state and federal regulations.)
Prevent Deer in Your Garden
- Make it tough for deer to browse. Trim off lower branches of trees. No deer wants to waste time picking through your scare yard if there are lush bushes next door.
- Clean up your yard. Don’t leave acorns, rotted fruit, or leaves on your lawn; they are an open invitation to hungry deer.
- For your garden, choose flowers and shrubs that are unpalatable to deer, such as forsythia, lilac bush, marigolds, zinnias, daffodils, lavender and snapdragons. Contact your local cooperative extension for suggestions in your area.
- Put strong-smelling plants that deer don’t like on the outside of your garden and smaller plants that need more protection on the inside. Deer tend to stay away from poisonous plants, strongly flavored plants, and plants with hairy or furry leaves.
- The most reliable method is to fence in your garden. Put up a strong, 8-foot-tall metal fence.
- See our complete chart of deer-resistant plants!
Catherine Boeckmann
ADVERTISEMENT
I have..rather..HAD a beautiful, large and bushy spearmint plant in a large container in my open garden area which is completely fenced in.. During the night some critter this last week devoured parts of it to the point that the soil is not exposed..no more mint. It’s not possible for a deer in this area to have stuck a long neck over the fencing and thru wires above it. Our deer are smaller Cous deer. Elk? Yes..
But what animal likes mint?????
Perhaps a smaller mammal, such as a rabbit or groundhog/marmot, is the culprit. Could something that size fit through your fence?
Deer topped off my tomatoes, cukes and sunflowers! Grrrr! I make bustles for costumes with nylon net....light bulb!! I used leftover net and covered my crops, a clothes pin on the tomatoe cage holds net in place. IT WORKS!! deer have not returned. Net color doesn't matter, I've got lime green, purple, white whatever you like. WALMART 97 cents a yard.
I realize that they are harmless, but we have one that is very annoying. I fear that he may find a way to get in our basement.
Effective fences need to be tall— maybe 8 foot. A less expensive effective repellent useful from frost to frost in zone 5 is a motion detector impact sprinkler. Repositioned every 2-3 weeks, it frightens deer, raccoons, and other uninvited guests. Mine can be set for night only, day only, on all the time and off. It can also deliver 30 minutes of watering with the push of a button. Runs on batteries—several 1.5 volt does the trick, and several can be run off the same single hose bib.
I have tried several concoctions of spray, soaps, odors, scarecrows etc. all with little or no success. The one item has give a fair amount of success is a fence made by stringing monofilament fishing line around the garden plot. String 30 to 50 pound test monofilament line from "T" type fence post which are located about every 20 or 30 feet. String about 4 or more lines about a foot apart. When the deer touch this invisible (at lest to them) line they tend to be spooked and run away. You might have to replace any broken lines but the monofilament is cheap less than $3 for a 300 foot roll at your favorite discount store. Deer have poor eyesight so they cannot see the monofilament line. If you like you could hang some of the other deterrents suggested in this site.
Do a search on using monofilament line. There are several good articles about its use.
Electric fence ,one wire about six inches from the ground to keep out possums and coons out of your grapes.Second wire about three foot to keep the deer out.Coyotes ,deer and coons will destroy a watermelon patch..
The line "For your garden, choose flowers and shrubs that are unpalatable to deer, such as forsythia, lilac bush, marigolds" the deer here in central Ohio have eaten my lilac & forsythia bush & for 2 years they have eaten my marigolds.
I know, it's gross. But shortly after moving to a deer infested area, an old timer told me that a sure proof method of keeping the deer from eating your flowers is to save your urine in a spray bottle and use it. It works!
I've had a huge problem with deer moving through my backyard this fall. I live just outside the city, and have a large garden, and a decorative pond in my yard. I'm not sure why this year, but the deer seem obsessed with drinking water from my pond. I'm losing up to 4 inches of water a night.
Im going to try the spray listed above to see if it works.
