How our garden become a food plot for deer !! --- Chad Brock ---- Red Bird Mission

    There are very few things that frustrate a gardener like coming to find what yesterday were beautiful healthy tomato plants turned into little ugly nubs and the ends eaten off of all your ears of corn. Here at Red Bird Mission we thought we were ahead of the deer issue but found ourselves wrong. In the matter of 3 days deer had found their way through our small 4ft fence, that had worked for a month or so now.

    Like a lot of the information I have found, there are many deterrents for deer, such as human hair, soaps, moth balls,or even old sweaty shirts hung around the garden. Many of these remedies just work for awhile; until the deer get accustomed to it, and then just help themselves to your plants.  So the question is, short of a twelve foot fence, how do you keep this predators from turning a very successful garden into a food plot for deer.


One article I read talked of using your standard size electric fence wire and some metal stakes to make a simple fence. This model of fencing is simply two strands of wire around 3ft high with one 3ft inside the other with ribbons hanging from each line about 2ft apart making both lines visible to the deer. We all know that a deer could easily jump this fence but the article stated that deer have poor depth perception and become sort of confused by this. ???

      Another repellent that I have found on several sites, is a combination of eggs, water and pepper, and garlic applied every 4 to 5 days, or after a rain.  Another method is using deer repellent plants.
 Deer do not like plants strong in odor or rough in texture. Some of these plants can be planted around the perimeter of your garden; a row of chives and a row of Maximilian sunflowers planted close together and pruned off in the winter.

Although all the methods I have researched state that the only sure way of keeping them out of your garden is to construct an 10 to 12 ft high metal fence and this is a method that is very unfeasible, we are going to be proactive and try a variety of these things to do all things possible to save our garden.