Deer control/deterrence options

For those of you who seeing a deer in your yard isn't a novelty, and in fact makes you see red since they seem to love the same plants you do but in a different way, what works?

Hanging bars of soap doesn't seem it will be fully effective.  Anything that needs to be reapplied after a rain seems like it would be a hassle for anything other than the smallest yards.  Deer barriers (8' tall, usually made of chicken wire) seem like they work, but depending on how much you want to block off from the walking lawn mowers, that seems like a lot of material.  

The interwebs are telling me that fishing line (strong stuff I assume, not like the stuff you'd use for your 5 year old to catch sunfish with his Mickey Mouse fishing pole) is supposedly a good option.  The poles are still needed, but instead of yards and yards of chicken wire, supposedly securely tying fishing line at certain intervals are enough to convince them to find easier salad bars.  And since they have a hard time seeing the fishing line, they are also supposedly too timid to attempt to jump over it since they can't see how high they have to clear even though they know SOMETHING is there since they bump up against it while walking.

Does anyone have experience with this?  Too good to be true?  Or yes it works but needs a lot more maintenance since you need to monitor the lines and replace them as needed?

And is it true that deer don't like lavender, or does it just take them a little longer to eat it than it does regular plants?

As far as my peony goes, that thing is getting a steal cage around it LOL, it was my great grandmother's and it is still going strong (knock on wood) so even though I'm told that deer aren't particularly fond of them, I'd rather not take any chances with that one.  

Fear not, your peonies will be ignored. I have deer daily sometimes a dozen in my yard.  I've taken to defensive planting. I have had peonies untouched for over 20 years. Plant as many daffodils as you like. Make it look like that scene in Dr. Zhivago. Keep in mind that what the deer don't get, the woodchucks will but I can often deter them as well.

I haven't tried any netting. Just gave up on roses and lilies.

You can plant monkshood. It is poison and grows several feet high and is handsome.

Lobelia was avoided, columbines or aquilegia as well. And of course peonies.

I believe Rutgers publishes a list. I'll check. Lots of tips online.

Hmm picture is not posting.

I'm sorry, I should have specified, I'm mostly interested in planting edibles (no, not THAT kind LOL) so picking deer resistant species won't get me too far, though I have been thinking of that for my decorative plantings.  But even that seems variable, some people report that Mountain Laurel won't be touched by deer, while others report their Mountain Laurel were stripped to bare stems by the greedy buggers.  And the the lavender piques my interest and I want to try that because I love the stuff and it can be made into other things like dried bouquets, sachets for the linen closets, etc.  But I'm hearing about deer stripping down and killing young fruit trees, decimating veggies gardens, etc.  Driving around we saw arborvitae that were stripped bare from the ground to about 4' or so high.  The branches are all still there, grey and bare, but every single bit of greenery is gone, meanwhile once you get above where the deer can reach the very same arborvitae is lush and full and doing fine.  I'm worried about taking the time and effort to plant a plot of any significant size in the hopes of getting tomatoes, carrots, and such, and then having naught for my efforts except piles of deer poop and hoof prints in the bare dirt where my garden used to be.

Interesting thought about the woodchucks.  I hadn't thought of them.  Maybe a dog is in my future after all    I currently garden in my mother's yard, and she has a wild rabbit hanging out there, but that one seems to prefer clover over everything else and it doesn't touch the veggies at all.

Though I may end up with the same physical deer barrier that I've seen in other yards (they is probably a reason why they're so popular) I'm interested in other methods like the fishing line one since it would be less expensive and also slightly less obtrusive visually. 

Morganna said:

Hmm picture is not posting.

I've had that issue on and off, especially when posting from a cell phone

spontaneous said:

Morganna said:

Hmm picture is not posting.

I've had that issue on and off, especially when posting from a cell phone

It was my laptop. By the way did you get the house?

Morganna said:

spontaneous said:

Morganna said:

Hmm picture is not posting.

I've had that issue on and off, especially when posting from a cell phone

It was my laptop. By the way did you get the house?

Not yet, still under contract.  So far everything is going well (knock on wood) and we have the inspections scheduled for this Saturday.  My biggest issue that would have been a make or break item was the underground oil tanks, but a sweep came up clean and the sellers have also supplied paperwork showing the proper removal of TWO underground storage tanks.

I was at town hall and was asking about fences.  Up to and including 6' without a permit.  I asked if a 6' fence would keep out deer, he laughed and say no, though I already knew the answer to that one.  So I said that to keep out the deer I would need a permit, to which he replied, "well, if you want a fence, yes, but if it's just for deer then you put up a deer barrier."  ???  He pointed to a home that backs up to the municipal property that has what appears to my suburban eyes to be a fence, but explains that since its made of chicken wire or other thin gauge wire, and not chain link or wood, it's not a "fence," but a barrier, and they don't give those a second thought.  I have soooo much to learn    and I now have more sympathy for the Brooklyn transplants who didn't realize that they were supposed to shovel their sidewalks or the one family who posted a few years back asking how to contact the zoo after hours because there were deer in their backyard and they thought they might have escaped.

Picture of a random google image result of a deer barrier.  Not sure why it isn't a fence, but apparently it isn't   

I found groundhogs to be more destructive than the deer at my house in PA.  It may be because the groundhog family complex was in the woods on my property while the deer ranged over a wider territory. For some reason the groundhogs liked to dig right by my stone foundation and I didn't like that. Savaheart traps work well.

Both critters ignored the peonies that grew at the edge of one wooded section.

Country raccoons are just as devious and destructive as suburban ones.

Yeah. Raccoons suck   

We had raccoons in the attic. No trees touching the roof, couldn’t figure out who they got in. Then one night I happened to surprise one who was skimminging up the downspout. And the little bastards had torn a hole in the roof to get in. We used Dave DeCastro to repair the damage, but first had to wait a week with the one way mesh to make sure no one was in when he repaired it since they would just destroy the roof trying to escape

That deer barrier picture you post is the type we see upstate where people are growing food. I believe six feet is tall enough. Deer can jump pretty high!

I want to start a garden, too, and the work of erecting these fences is pretty substantial, but it seems to be totally necessary. And to keep out ground animals, we may need to plant the fence a foot or two deep.

http://www.rose.org/an-almost-invisible-deer-fence/

OP alluded to this.

"12 lb."

We have a local deer herd on our block, that will eat everything.  My vegetable garden is raised and surrounded by railroad ties.  We have four tall, sturdy stakes at the corners, connected to each other by cross beams at the top, making a fairly rigid structure that can't be kn ocked down.  We have stapled heavy mesh--plastic--to all of the stakes, effectively closing the area in.  There are a couple of ares where the mesh is hooked, so that we can get in to tend the garden.  We successfully grow  tomatoes, cucumbers, and some herbs like basil, oregano and thyme; also marigolds.  The deer can't get in.  We also spray the stakes with deer repellent.

This doesn't keep the deer out of mt hosta, which we spray constantly, and they have totally destroyed all of my ivy.  It also doesn't keep out other animals--the squirrels, the groundhogs, the chipmunks,the raccoons. We spray everything that we can with deer and squirrel repellent, and I have been known to run shrieking after a squirrel that stole my best tomato.  However, this year, my son and his family have moved in with us with their big dog, and our neighborhood has a resident fox, so I have hope that the garden stealers will find somewhere else.

I figure that each luscious tomato that land on our plates will cost us about $70.00.

I have a fox that hangs out in the yard. The deer ignore him. I wonder how the woodchucks will respond.

lizziecat said:

I figure that each luscious tomato that land on our plates will cost us about $70.00.

when I dug up hundreds of day lilies from our garden in Maplewood to bring to our new house in Ocean County, where we had not been bothered by deer — I thought deer were all Bambis.

That view has changed and each year I stay awake scheming about ways to keep them away from my flower beds. The stinky sprays are disgusting and don’t work after rain.

The day before our first nor’easter I strung  a plastic flag banner (think used car lots) about 2 feet high around the new greenery popping up. The banner is attached to hanging basket poles and I laid a few empty metal baskets on the ground which keep the banner secure as well! The banner has survived 3 storms and is still intact. No sign of deer damage so far. And the flapping flags are not scaring birds.

I planted a narrow garden alongside my house with butterfly bushes, roses of sharon and I hang many pots of annuals (begonias, petunias, parsley, basil, other herbs, etc.)  The deer are chomping down my rose of sharon bushes, which I'd never heard of.  The other plants are (knock on wood) untouched.  I'm researching deer-proof netting to surround the roses of sharon, since all of the stuff, liquid and solid, I bought to chase the deer are useless.

I've been relatively lucky in my mom's yard.  She has a ton of squirrels, and the one wild rabbit.  They don't take any of it. Add to that that the tomatoes overproduced.  It was cool at first, but eventually we couldn't give the damned things away.  I ended up neglecting the tomatoes towards the end of the season, and wasn't the best at cleaning up the raised beds.  The next spring we had hundreds, literally hundreds, of unknown varieties of tomatoes that had self seeded.  I gave them away for free by the dozens, and still ended up having to pull most of them.

The only real pest issue we had at my mom's was slugs.  And not full grown ones, but baby slugs, they were scooping out sections of my strawberries.  Each time I'd pick one and see a little tiny hole scooped out I'd look carefully and there would be a teeny tiny little slug in there