I live in Ne P.A and would like to plant some things without the deer population eating them. I could fence them in but decided I don't like the whole fence thing,
What kind of flowers, shrubs, bushes can be planted without fear of deer eating them? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Pluckey-
Deer Resistant Garden Specialists
I've seen that around. Big half-million dollar homes with gardens and front yards that look like prisons.
Chop down some norway maples. The deer will eat the maple leaves and leave your own garden alone. N-maples are exotic invasives in the northeast, and I'm sure you have at least a few around the house.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to tell apart sugar maples from norways. Norways have a much pointier leaf ends, and many more points in general than sugar maple leaves. Norways also grow in very dense shade. The bark of a norway maple is beige when young to gray when older, whereas a sugar maple's bark is a lot darker. The best time to tell them apart is fall, when norways become brown & gold, with no red. Sugar maples have at least a tinge of red in the leaves, but chopping norways in fall doesn't exactly help plants now during the summertime ;) Makes for good winter firewood, though....
Leaving flat chicken wire 6"-12" high in a radius around your plants will also deter deer. They cannot escape quickly, and their legs could be trapped in the chicken wire, so they avoid it (unless there's unnaturally large (20-30) herds of starving deer walking around your area, in which case they'll risk just about anything).
Black plastic netting on the plant itself will also help, but the netting drags down the plant itself. Just about any repellant will eventually wash off, nor will new growth be protected from being eaten.
Dan
Plastic ones. I am not kidding. When hungry enough deer will eat anything. The only things in my yard they have spared is spruce trees, but others have reported problems there also.
My problem is mainly in the winter. I use deer netting on my evergreen plants such as rhododendrons and conifers. I have to remove it in the spring before they start growing or they grow through it. The deer netting works for me. The deer are always trying to get under the fence and I am always find better ways to use the deer netting.
The best repellant is a good dog. All of the others work for a while but when the deer get hungry, they don't stop them.
I thought that the plastic "deer netting" was the answer until last winter. Those ****ed deer chewed holes thru the netting and proceeded to not-so-nicely prune my globe and emerald arbor vitae. By the way, a staple food of our deer in the winter are the evergreens. I commonly see them browsing on lower branches of my mature red pines. Also, they completely destroyed a sunflower seed feeder outside my window. They are getting as bad as the squirrels.
Bill in far NW Wisconsin
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We've got the same problem in NJ...the "Governors 2002 Report on Deer Management"cites an alarming increase in deer populations all over the state. The report cited over a half dozen significant problems in deterring deer population explosions from all corners of society.
For one, the suburban population is exploding, so deer tend to stay near housings, a place hunters cannot go. Many other landowners declare "wildlife refuges", so deer can camp out in these areas. Legal obstacles include a 450 foot radius around every residential structure forbidden to hunting, which, not including the above, effectively wipes out two-thirds of NJ's land mass for hunting. Rifle, muzzleloading AND bow hunting must be 450 ft away from residential structures...the bow restriction is particularly absurd.
The last but not least factor in deer pop. explosions is the decreasing number of hunters. They are either getting too old, or don't feel like fighting PETA every step of the way for the rest of their lives. Nor do they enjoy having fake-blood splattered on their homes every time "Bambi" or "Smokey" comes back in their trunk.
Animal rights advocates are not "environmentalists". If they were truly environmentalists, they would view overpopulation as a direct threat to native plants and the ecosystem in general. Their view on wildlife is distorted and threatens our environment.
Dan
I've witnessed deer attempt to trample housecats that got too close. They can be very aggressive.
Dan
We have a severe deer problem too. The local officials banned deer hunting due to the 9-11 incident. Now we are seeing deer during the day and they seem to know people are not going to hurt them. Last week there were 9 deer grazing in the backyard and I'm in the middle of the city.
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Even human hunters are distorting the population, taking the strongest and leaving the weakest (inverse-darwinism). Introducing wildcats or cougars back to the environment is out of the question, since they cannot be trained to avoid adults as well as children...after all, who's ever heard of an "obedient cat"? ;P Even so, I'm sure some PETA extremists are working toward that goal (on the other hand, many would look upon one animal killing another animal for food, especially young, sick and old members, as "bad"...so predators are "bad" according to the logic of "ethical" animal rights activists)
The only other predator of sick or weak deer would be wolves, and they aren't very adaptable to human settlements, either...especially livestock areas. It's ironic and hypocritical that we preach that places such as Africa should keep their predators alive, whereas we've virtually wiped ours off the face of the continent.
Dan
In Pennsylvania, the white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, herd has gotten so overwhelming that doe and small bucks are being harvested than bucks. Hunters usually aren't very selective. Hunters harvested 5 deer from our property (10 acres) last fall and they didn't even make a dent in the local number of deer. Each year hunters harvest about 500,000 deer in Pennsylvania (165,000 antlered and 350,000 antlerless). Predators kill about 120,000 each year and automobiles kill about 30,000 each year in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania has about 3,500 wildcat or bobcat (Lynx Rufus) and a few Canada lynx (Lynx Canadensis), but they don't have a very large impact on the deer population. Since food for the wildcat is so plentiful, they don't bother man.
Fortunately we have the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and the gray fox (urocyon cinereoargenteus) and the eastern coyote (Canis latrans) also. On the down side, these and other mammals help spread ticks. Perhaps the deer is the worst offender in spreading ticks.
check out mice.
"Stephen M. Henning" wrote: Perhaps
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