Tips To Keep Deer Out Of Gardens


Deer are beautiful, majestic creatures, but having deer in your garden is an entirely different story. Hungry deer can be destructive and relentless. Master gardeners have been trying to keep deer out of their yards for years, says Ann Waring of Breton Bay.

The Master Gardener Program at the University of Maryland Extension began as a way of extending their horticultural and pest management expertise with the general public. Participants in the program become master gardeners, who agree to work in their communities to teach Marylanders how to cultivate gardens and landscapes. Their mission is to reduce fertilizer and pesticide use and learn the least toxic solutions, in efforts to improve soil and water quality.

The master gardeners often exchange ideas about how to keep deer out of gardens. The fresh vegetables and cultivated landscaping prized by homeowners are especially enticing to deer. "The stuff we have in our yard is ice cream to them," George Timko said, assistant deer project leader with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources' Wildlife and Heritage Service. With the deer population in Maryland at 230,000, the number of complaints is impossible to count.

People will try just about anything to keep deer out of their gardens. Some people resort to gas exploders that detonate at regular intervals. Master gardener Bryan Siebert has tried a variety of measures. "Deer seem to wait until green apples turn red to raid the trees,” says Siebert. He installed physical barriers, driving metal stakes around his fruit trees and encasing the tree with netting. “This works, but [it] is much trouble to do and keep up as the trees grow."

Siebert has also tried scaring off deer. "The outside motion-detector lights do not scare away the deer unless you see the light come on and rush outside to scare them away,” he says. This method involves a lot of hard work, especially since deer feed at night.

When food sources are scarce “…the deer will move to where it's nice and succulent, and that'll be people's gardens, unfortunately," says Herbert Reed, the agricultural and natural resources educator with the University of Maryland Calvert County Extension Office in Prince Frederick. Plus, hungry deer are relentless in their quest for food.

Many gardeners have found that using a deer repellent is the best way to keep deer out of gardens. The most effective deer repellents target a deer’s keen sense of taste and smell. A mixture of ingredients including putrescent egg, garlic, and capsaicin have been found to work best. The hot pepper flavor of capsaicin harmlessly irritates, sending deer elsewhere to forage. Putrescent egg and garlic mimic the stench of decaying animals. Deer believe there’s a predator nearby, causing them to flee. By spraying a dual-action deer repellent on plants, people can create an invisible layer that protects them.

Master Gardeners are also conscious of the deer repellent’s environmental impact, by preserving the soil and finding the least toxic solution. Organic deer repellents are all natural and break down into components that plants can use to grow. Only products with the Organic Materials Review Institute-listed® (OMRI) seal are certified organic. These deer repellents have no chemical pesticides and are safe to use on edible plants.

When gardeners have had enough with the deer in their gardens, a deer repellent is an easy, economical, and fast solution.

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