I have a new addition to my garden this spring: Bamboo stakes.
They’re not exactly an ornamental feature. They’re sticking out every which way from my hostas and hydrangeas in the hope of protecting them from the deer that snack on my yard. I’m hoping the stakes will poke the deer in the nose and deter them long enough for the plants to grow up and cover the bamboo.
I got the idea from Lynne Zema of Green, one of the readers who responded to my request a few weeks ago for deer-repelling strategies. She said she and a gardening friend cut bamboo stakes from a garden center to the height of their hostas’ full size and stuck them in the ground at angles to foil the deer, and it worked. Even after the plants grew up, the deer remembered the discomfort and left them alone.
“People laughed at us at first,” she said. “But when their hostas were chewed down to the nub and ours were beautiful, they stopped laughing.”
It does seem a little comical, the lengths people will go to in their efforts to protect their prized plants from deer damage. But hey, if they work, why not?
Liz Robinson of Kent relies on black pepper, which she buys whenever the cheap brands go on sale. Every other night, she’s out in her yard, sprinkling it on her tulips and the other plants deer like.
The method takes perseverance, “plus it’s tiring,” she said. But it did manage to save an aster last year.
Chris Leidy and Marge Rearick, both of Bath Township, swear by Irish Spring soap, which they grate and spread on the ground near the plants they want to protect.
Rearick said she replaces the soap after every rain, but Leidy said a well-timed application will keep the deer away all season.
Leidy grates her soap in a food processor and casts it like grass seed when the hostas first start to emerge in spring. You might have to repeat the application in early July, but after the first year just the spring application should suffice, she said. She’s even able to skip the application every third year.
Rearick also uses the soil conditioner made from composted sewage at the KB Compost Services facility in the Cuyahoga Valley.
She’s found the deer don’t like the smell of the soil conditioner, which is sold under the names Soil Magic and TechnaGro. But I didn’t have the same luck when I used it in my garden a few years ago — proof, I guess, that deer differ in their reactions to repellents.
Sagamore Hills residents Rose Mary Snell passed along her recipe for a homemade repellent, which she sprays faithfully on the more than 100 hostas that grow on her property at the edge of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Snell mixes four well-beaten eggs (remove the white membrane attached to the yolk first) with one cup of any kind of mouthwash, and then puts the mixture into a gallon jug and fills the rest of the jug with water. She lets the concoction sit a few days before she puts it into a spray bottle and sprays it on her plants.
It stinks — so much so that she wears rubber gloves to keep it off her hands. But it works, she said.
The only catch is, like most repellents, it has to be reapplied after each rain.
Other suggestions:
• C.F. “Andy” Anderson of Richfield uses small, perforated bags of human or dog hair, hung from tomato stakes or laid on the ground around the perimeter of the garden. Anderson pairs that with a 6-foot scarecrow with sleeves and pant legs left loose for movement and aluminum pie pans hung from the sleeves for additional motion and noise.
• Fred Kunig of Norton recommended the extremely bitter substance denatonium saccharide, available under product names including Bitrex and Aversion.
• George Newberger of Shalersville Township mixes a homemade repellent of 2 tablespoons hot pepper sauce, 1 tablespoon liquid soap, 1 teaspoon garlic powder and 1 gallon of water. It needs to be reapplied after a rain “and almost daily anyway,” he said.
• Nancy Alvarez of Canton grinds equal parts blood meal and whole cloves in a coffee grinder and sprinkles it around her plants, repeating after a rain. The mixture repels rabbits, too, she said.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com. You can also become a fan on Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/mbbreck, follow her on Twitter @MBBreckenridge and read her blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/mary-beth.