My new plants are all gone!!!

[Marisa6826]

The deer!! They ate EVERYTHING. They even came up onto my front porch and ate my hostas!!!! Some guard dogs I have. x( x(

It wasn't bad enough that I seemingly couldn't communicate to Jonathan the importance of heavily watering plants while I lay in bed on bedrest. So what's left is dying!!!!

AGGGGGGGH!!!!!!!!!

-m

[amp]

Ack! My mom has this problem and she's spent the last 2-4 yrs trying to find out what she can plant that they won't eat. She knows they don't like anything with fuzzy leaves, but she's still working on the other stuff. Bad deer!

[miki]

I feel your pain. We moved into our house in the spring and I was so happy to have pretty flowers already blooming in front of the house. They were all eaten by rabbits within days. You can't even tell there used to be anything there. Hmmph.

[JMS]

Same boat.
We moved into our new house last fall and the landscaping was something I was so looking forward to.
I planted so many white impatients. Well the deer waited until they were at their prime and then ate all the white flowers and buds off.. so now I have high green flower-less stalks.. nice :(

My MIL told me to hang bars of ivory soap in pantyhose in my trees.. even DH rolled his eyes.. I think that would be even more unattractively then my flower-less impatients!

BTW, any of you living in FL (and maybe other southern states) there is a time-released fertilizer you can buy at Home Depot called Dynamite. For some reason I can't find it in my local HD's (NJ and PA).. My parents live in FL during the winter and bring it back North with them in the spring.. it's incredible.

[Marisa6826]

I'm in NJ and leave the fertilizing to the lawn guys that come every week ;).

I have a very good friend that is an aborist from Italy. He said that all the European nurseries hang tallow-based soap in their trees/shrubs and the deer stay away.

I bought a bunch of Dial, just haven't put it out yet!

-m

Oh, and for some reason they went for my hostas and not the impatiens (yet!).

[pritchettzoo]

That sucks!

Can you send Jonathan out there at night to pee around everything? You know, like in Doc Hollywood?

Anna

[peasprout]

I'd love to know how well the soap works! Is there a reason they deter deer? I wonder if I can just scatter chunks of soap on the ground instead of hanging it in the trees?
JP

[jbowman]

I'm really sorry Marisa, that's terrible!

[Marisa6826]

They supposedly don't like the taste/smell of the tallow in the soap.

I thought about doing the chunks, but I'm not willing to sacrifice my new Wustoff knives to find out if it works ;).

Also, wouldn't the soap melt faster if it was in chunks?

-m

[StaceyKim]

Hi,
I feel your pain! Our house backs up to a forest preserve and there are TONS of deer and they eat up our pretty plants and flowers. I heard that deer don't like hair (thinking about asking my hair stylist for some!), urine and soap. I also bought this

http://www.improvementscatalog.com/product.asp?product=121624zz&dept%5Fid=17000&subdept%5Fid=17110&macs=macs=MP4WGGL

and I am waiting for it in the mail to see if it works.

My landscaper has been spraying a deer repellant that has worked pretty well but we didn't start using it early enough in the season. I haven't used the hair, urine or soap method yet but I hear it works.

[starrynight]

Urgh! We had deer really bad when we were living in Georgia, they ate up everything on base! I have heard spraying red pepper mixed with garlic and eggs will keep them away but you have to spray at least once a week because new growth will attract them and they will just eat the new stuff that isn't sprayed so you have half eaten plants.

[cinrein]

Oh no! Between the deer and the rabbits, I have very few flowers too.

Hostas and azaleas are probably their favorites, also tulips and crocus. Nothing eats daffodils though, so I have a ton of those in the woods behind our house. Too bad they don't bloom year-round. They usually don't bother the daylillies too much either--only when the first fresh shoots poke out of the ground. I've used Hinder before mixed with Wilt-Pruf and it kept the deer away from my stuff. Bad part was you had to keep applying it, which is too much for me. I just planted stuff they don't like to save myself the extra work.

Cindy and Anna February 2003

[alkagift]

Marisa,
I'm so sorry! It's so hard to keep those devils off your plants! I thought I would attach this link to show what plants you can replace them with, if it helps. I know this is for Georgia and you're not ;-), but Southern NJ is only one zones up from GA and many of the plants have a good range on them (except maybe Gardenias). You can also plant things with huge thorns (dog hobble, evil roses, etc)!

http://www.ces.uga.edu/Agriculture/horticulture/deer.html


Edited to add this link from Rutgers, which is more in your neck of the woods!

http://www.ifplantscouldtalk.rutgers.edu/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsnumber=FS432


Allison
Mommy to Matthew Clayton, 5/19/03

[abigailsmom]

Down here in Deer Country, USA (Georgia): My moms friend who has a georgeous yard uses little wisps of hair from her hair brush scattered throughout the yard. It's not so incredibly noticible and she has blond hair. This has been the way to keep the deer out of her ornamentals and her veggie garden.

HTH