When you plant yummy vegetables in your backyard garden, there are any number of critters and pests that think your plants and vegetables are theirs for the taking. (“Thank you so much for keeping us in mind!”) I often imagine that there’s a Critter’s Craig’s List out there, cataloguing all the best gardens in the neighborhood. If that’s the case, I guess we should be proud that our gardens have made it into the big time!
In order to keep our overly familiar
four-legged friends at bay, we must plan lines of defense in advance to thwart
their inclinations to make our gardening investment into their lunch or dinner.
I’m sorry to say that hoping that animals won’t show up in your garden is not a
very realistic approach: one day your precious plants are looking good, and the
next you may wake up to partial or total devastation, with either leaves or
fruits eaten away and gone for good. Months of planning and effort may thus be
lost in the blink of an eye. This gives a whole new twist to the expression
“ripped-off.” It’s not a good feeling.
So, what’s there to do? Fortunately, you
can plan reasonably effective defensive strategies to keep critters away from
your plants. Let’s begin by discussing the biggest animal problem that you will
most likely face – namely,
deer.
Dealing
with Deer
Deer
are actually quite lovely animals: as tall as a man, majestic and graceful in
stature, with beautiful doe’s eyes, graceful in movement, swift and elegant
runners, and able to leap tall fences in a single bound! When we were young, we
could see them on trips to the mountains or at the local park zoo. Meeting them
was always a pleasure – we could even feed them grass and weeds through the zoo
fence, which they would eat directly from our hands! It was a novel and
exciting experience.
Today, seeing deer – lots of them – is
hardly an unusual experience. Walk out your front door in the early morning (or
actually, any time of the day), and you can see one or two or an entire family
of deer walking calmly down your street or munching grass on your lawn. And, if
you have a garden, you may also see them eating the leaves, flowers, or fruits from
your cherished plants, or the damage they’ve left behind. Despite their lovely
visage, deer also bring feelings of dread and animosity to the dedicated
gardener.
The
natural habitat of deer – woodlands and open fields – has been somewhat usurped
by urban development; and so the deer have simply moved into our relatively new
neighborhoods, coming by every day to snack on the wonderful edibles we have
planted for them! The deer living in urban settings have no natural enemies,
and so there has been a population explosion. In our neighborhood, seeing a deer
outside your home is almost as common as seeing a rabbit cross your yard.
So, the burning question is: how do you
keep deer out of your garden and away from your plants?
Build/Install
a Fence
There
are several things you can do to discourage deer from entering your garden
space, but building a fence is by far the most surefire way of keeping them
out. If it’s a good fence, once it’s up – you’re set, and you no longer have to
worry about deer in your garden.
However, not every fence will do. Deer can
easily jump over fences that are even six feet high, so the fence must be
higher than that. What are some of your options for building such a high fence
that can surround the entire garden?
1) Buy an eight-foot tall “deer fence.” This
is definitely the gold standard, and it was only this year that I saw such a
fence, which my gardening friend had installed. He has a very large garden and
just got fed up trying to keep the deer away. This year he’s home free and has
a magnificent garden. The fence is set back three feet from any growing plants,
so there’s no chance of the deer even getting close. The drawback of this kind
of fencing is that it is pricey: My friend spent over $1,000 for his fence. The
perimeter of his fence is quite large. Nevertheless, this expensive option is
not for everybody.
2) Enhance a five-foot-high chain-link fence. If you have a
chain-link fence around your yard and around your garden plot, this is a good
thing for you! Although deer can jump over a five-foot fence (the height of
most chain-link fences) you can enhance your fence by building it higher in a
simple and inexpensive way:
You will need wooden stakes about four
feet in length. You can attach these stakes to your fence using zip ties, with
each stake about two feet apart from its neighbor. The top of the newly
attached stakes should be at least two feet higher than the top of the fence.
Buy a utility rope and string the rope along the top of the stakes. Tie the
rope to the top of the stakes and reinforce with zip ties. Now your fence
barrier is seven to eight feet tall. The deer will think twice before trying to
jump this rope, especially if the coast is not
clear on the other side (with stakes and plants from your garden on the landing
site). I have used this enhanced chain-link fence method for years to keep out
deer, and it has been 100 percent successful.
3) Build an inexpensive fence. You can do this
if you are handy and like to build stuff. You will need to buy some heavy-duty
steel fence posts that are six feet high. Drive these into the ground at
intervals of four feet apart to a depth of one foot. Buy a roll of 48-inch high
plastic fencing and attach this fencing to your fence posts using zip ties. Now
you have a fence that is five feet high. (Don’t worry about the one foot gap at
the bottom; deer cannot crawl through it.) To extend the height of your fence from
seven to eight feet, use the same method described above for extending the
height of your chain-link fence. Leave a space for a “door,” i.e., getting in
and getting out. The cost of building this kind of fence will depend on how
long it is; but the materials are not too expensive, and it is hundreds or
thousands of dollars less than a professionally-installed fence.
I built this
contraption along the back of my yard where there was no fence and where the
deer would come in regularly. Since it’s been up, no deer have tried to breach
it! Of course, you can also build a fence like this to go around your
garden, especially if it’s a small garden plot (6 x 8 feet), leaving a two- to
three-foot space between the fence and the garden.
My neighbors have started gardening the
past few years (I think it’s my influence!), and they have put up make-shift
inexpensive fences to discourage the deer from coming in. Their barriers are
not 100 percent effective but they do work and do discourage the deer from
partaking of their plantings.
More
Anti-Deer Paraphernalia
Sometimes
it is simply not practical to build a fence: too much trouble, too expensive,
or perhaps not your property! Every year I grow squash vines in my neighbors’
back yard (they permit it, just so long as they’re gone by Sukkos!). However,
the deer come into their back yard and love to snack on the tender tips of the
squash vines. Is there anything else you can do besides fencing to let the deer
know they’re uninvited and discourage their culinary activities?
1) Anti-deer
spray/repellent: There are two products (among many) on the market that
I spray onto my exposed crops and that are fairly effective in keeping the deer
at bay: Liquid Fence and Bobbex (pictured here). You can buy these products in either
a ready-to-use form or in concentrate, which you will need to dilute and pour
into your spray bottle. Spray these solutions all around the perimeter of your
garden area and directly onto the plants themselves. They’re smelly to you for
about 30 minutes after applying, but the odor is detectable by the deer for
many days to come. Spray religiously at least once a week.
2) Install solar-powered motion-sensitive LED
lights.
Deer come around mostly at night. Placing these neat little lights strategically
near your plants will give your visitors a “deer–in-the-headlights” experience
that they will remember. Buy online.
A combination of all these deterrents –
fence, spray and LED lights – are your best line of defense against unwanted
deer.
Dealing
with Other Animals
“Other
animals” would include rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, groundhogs, raccoons –
and whatever else your neighborhood decides to serve up. B”H, I’ve never had a groundhog. I had a raccoon (with a voracious
appetite for eggplants) only once. In my neck of the woods, rabbits and
squirrels and chipmunks are more ubiquitous; of the three, I find it is the
squirrels that are the biggest pests. I call them the “garden saboteurs.” They
don’t really eat much, but they can cause a lot of damage to plants (shredding,
pulling them up, and just wanton destruction), whenever the spirit moves them.
In all of these cases, you can install
short (three-foot tall) temporary fencing to keep these animals at bay –
especially when your seedlings are young and vulnerable (see my modular fence
units described in a previous article). The best way to permanently dispose of
these animals is with a Hav-a-Hart trap, which neatly traps animals without
harming them. Once trapped, you can drive them far enough away (to unoccupied
wooded areas) and let them go their merry way. Google information as to how to
best bait these traps (which come in a variety of sizes) and catch your quarry.
See if you can borrow a neighbor’s trap instead of buying, especially if you
will not be using it on a regular basis.
Best
of luck with your garden venture and keeping pests at bay!
