Dealing with Deer

A fluttering movement beyond the deep green of the plum trees near the lush asparagus fronds caught my eye as I wandered out to my garden in late summer. Ah, how sweet, I thought, surmising that my nine-and ten-year-old sons were playing a sort of hide-n-seek in the garden. Perhaps they thought I hadn’t seen them and meant to spy on me as I wandered among the fruit trees and peered at herbs and flowers and vegetables. I began to wend my way down the center path, succumbing to the wonderful spell of warmth and growth in a sunbathed garden. Suddenly strong, springing leaps startled me out of my reverie, and I smiled wryly as two deer dashed out of the garden, white tails waving their guilty goodbyes.

When I began gardening on my own over a decade ago, I never imagined that my greatest difficulty in achieving a harvest would be the herds of beautiful white-tailed deer that rambled through our farm. “Aw, let them have some; they’re hungry too,” said a friend when I complained about their eating of my gardens. I’d have willingly shared with the deer, but, unfortunately, the deer didn’t see any need to share with me. So together, my husband and I work out strategies to protect our vulnerable crops, and we live in relative harmony with the deer.

An ideal thing to keep deer out of a garden is a good old farm dog that takes his responsibility seriously, patrolling the yard and chasing away unwanted garden pests. Unfortunately for us, our dog trials didn’t work out very well, and we had to come up with other solutions.

Having had no prior experience with deer, and optimistically imagining that deer wouldn’t be a constant nuisance, I dug up patches of earth and planted with abandon, scattering my garden over four plots and adding to each frequently. This poor planning rendered building an eight-foot fence around a consolidated garden area an inconvenient solution.

One summer my husband drove T-stakes around our orchard garden. Here grow our fruit trees, as well as annuals and perennials in the open spaces around the trees. He carefully strung four strands of fishing line completely around the garden. The idea behind this is that the deer will be spooked when they come against this invisible barrier in the dark, and leave the garden alone. This solution worked surprisingly well. It was inconvenient, though, for we hadn’t left an entry. Crawling through the strands of fishing line with an armful of produce left me feeling anything but dignified.

Growing strawberries was especially discouraging, for I discovered that strawberries are deer’s favorite food. The first season I attempted to grow them, the deer destroyed most of the plants. In time, I began to hoop chicken wire over the rows of plants, pinning it down every few feet with earth staples. This was a brilliant solution that was easy to manage and kept the deer from eating the plants, allowing them to grow and produce a harvest of berries.

Motion-detecting sprinklers were another discovery that worked extremely well. These sprinklers send out a vigorous, erratic spray of water when their sensor detects movement, the shock of which deer find insulting enough that they keep their distance. My husband bought several sprinklers and connected them with garden hoses, setting them strategically to protect certain crops or the most likely entry places the deer would use. These can be set for daytime, nighttime, or always. The nighttime setting was my preference, having wandered lazily through the garden searching for the first cucumber and dreaming of canning green beans, only to be thoroughly startled into dodging a spray of water. No wonder it works so well. I used these to protect the strawberries during the growing season, hooping them with the chicken wire to keep deer from damaging the crowns once the frosts returned and we stored the garden hoses and sprinklers for the winter.

Over the years, I noticed that while deer voraciously ate tender sweet potato leaves and nipped off the tops of corn and green beans, they didn’t touch the tomatoes and potatoes. There are plants deer aren’t interested in eating, at least not until they’re starving. These crops can be planted near the edges of the garden or grouped together in places that won’t need such vigilant protection. Many herbs and strong-smelling plants are unattractive to deer, such as lavender, mints, anise, hyssop, sage, and oregano. I like growing these plants around and under my fruit trees. They repel deer, attract pollinators, and are simply beautiful when in bloom.

I’m expecting a new little apple tree to arrive in the mail in a few weeks to replace a deer-rubbed, water-starved tree that didn’t survive the winter. This time I am planning to pound in three sturdy T-stakes around it and wrap fishing line in a triangle around the baby tree, a method I recently heard of someone else using with success. I can’t wait to see what happens.

In a few years, fruit trees grow tall and sturdy enough to withstand a few nibbles from curious deer. Chicken wire protects strawberries, and sprinklers scare deer from beans and corn. While a sense of ire still rises within me at the sight of a darling plant nibbled to the ground, I know that the deer are here to stay, and if I risk leaving that vulnerable plant unprotected, it may end up in a deer’s stomach. I do what I can, planting my gardens strategically, and turn my back and walk away at the sight of a chewed-up plant.

Then, one morning in May when the sun shines warm and golden on a deep green garden, I lift to my lips that first crimson strawberry, its flavor bursting in all its sweetness on my tongue, and know that last summer’s work of stringing up garden hoses to sprinklers and rolling out hoops of chicken wire was worth it. Every bit of it.