The Deer Deterrent

We live in the country. We have deer. Lots of deer. We have entire deer families who come out and gambol across the lawn, and generally wreak havoc nibbling on our plants and trees. Pretty though they may be it's very annoying to have the last lovely bloom of your favorite plant plucked right off its stem by some pesky Bambi. For years we have tolerated this.

Finally I thought "enough's enough". So when the deer started in on MY DAYLILIES I decided it was high time to fight back. I took to the internets to try to find a cure and find it I did. I made up a batch of this thoroughly nasty mixture and splashed it on the plants. Then I made another batch and added some cayenne and chili powder to it for good measure. The end result? The end of the season plants are intact. The deer don't even come close to that flower bed any longer. Success!

Here's the evidence. You can see the stems where the deer started to nibble on the leaves of the Hostas.

After a couple of applications of the deer deterrent the Hostas started to leaf out again. Finally they bloomed with these big showy flowers.

This is a close up of one of the flowers. Its scent is reminiscent of honeysuckle. I have taken extra special pleasure from them this year since I had to fight for them.

The Secret Sauce:

1 TB milk or yogurt

1 egg

2 - 3 cloves of garlic, smashed OR 1 TB powdered garlic.(Warning: do NOT use garlic salt. You'll kill your plants. Only use garlic powder.)

1 TB chili and/or cayenne powder

Mix ingredients and dilute in gallon jug. If you used garlic cloves you'll need to just shake the mixture over the plants. If you used garlic powder you can probably get the mixture to go through a spray bottle. Apply to plants. Let dry (it's pretty stinky stuff). Since I was covering a small area I only used about 1/2 of the gallon jug. I applied the rest of the mixture a day or so later. The instructions I found on the internet said to reapply after a rain. I have not done that. The deer have stayed away since I put this stuff on the plants in July. I don't know if it's the stinky egg and garlic or the chili powder burn but they sure don't like it. Maybe next year I'll get to enjoy my daylilies a few weeks longer.

Good luck. I hope it works as well for you as it did for me.