Keep Deer Out of Your Garden

You’ve finally moved into your new home and you can’t wait for summer to come to plant an awesome garden. Fresh veggies all summer long! The neighborhood critters can’t wait for fresh veggies either. Anything from bunnies to deer are just lining up to eat and ruin all your hard work. How do you keep them out? There are some natural ways that may help bar these garden bandits.

·        While your planting all those delicious vegetables make sure you also plant some marigolds or lavender around your garden. Deer do not like the strong smell of these flowers as it interrupts their ability to sense predators and to find food for themselves. Herbs such as mint and oregano are also good deterrents and wonderful to have in your garden anyway.

·        Cut up some fragrant soap such as Irish Spring and place on skewers. Position the skewered soap around your plants. It’s the heavy fragrance that keeps the deer and bunnies away. Don’t use soap that has coconut oil in it though or you may be attracting deer!

·        Make a natural “pest be gone spray.” Mix together in a one-gallon milk jug, one cup milk, one egg, one tablespoon of dish soap and one (diced up) hot pepper and fill the rest of the jug with water. Make a few jugs at a time and set them outside in the sun to get extra ripe. Spray on your garden at night. This smelly brew should keep most critters away, it won’t harm your plants and is nontoxic.

·        You can create an “invisible fence” to help keep deer out with some fishing line and wooden stakes. Just get wooden stakes about 5 feet long and place them in the ground around the perimeter of your garden. Next, starting about 2-3 inches from the ground, string a row of fishing line around the garden and repeat about 3 times placing each line a foot apart. The deer will spook running into something they can’t see. And, since they can’t see it, they won’t attempt to jump over it. This invisible fence will obviously not keep the bunnies out unfortunately.

The wildlife in your yard is awesome to watch but not so cute when they are munching on your hard-earned produce! You may have to try several deterrents or rotate them because animals are smart and figure things out quickly, but all that fresh, yummy goodness is worth the trouble!