I went out of town for 4th of July last year and left our house and pets with my daughter's friend as house sitter. I told her to help herself to the veggies as they were in full production at the time.

When I got back and went out Monday afternoon to water and harvest I was in for quite a shock.

First, I noticed that there were no tomatoes. When I left, there had been nearly 50 cherrys and 20+ heirlooms in various states of ripeness. The plants were not just stripped bare, they were ripped from their trellises.

Next, the okra. All the leaves were gone and the pods nibbled.

Next, the squash. What squash? It was gone, and I mean GONE. No squash, no plants, just bare ground and a neat grid strung along the beds.

No veggie went unmolested. Everything was gone.

You've probably guessed by now, but the next discover was deer poop! A herd must have come by during the weekend and gorged. I threw up my hands in despair and abandoned the garden for the season.

So ... Anyone have a recommendation as to a good fencing system? My layout was done with a fence in mind, but deer are really good at jumping (they had to jump 2 fences just to get near my garden) and I'm not really interested in a 10 foot tall fence with sniper towers in each corner.

Does anything actually work against deer?

The man down the road hangs up pie tins to clatter in the wind and sits a radio outside to play at night. He claims to change the station every so often to keep the deer guessing. Does it work? Probably not, but they stay in his yard and not mine (we have a 6 ft fence and a deep/wide creek bed protecting ours), so I don't question his methods. :)

The next year, we had a dog, and, we strung up electric wire at 3 ft and 4 ft heights, and, flagged the wire with bright yellow flags so children (and forgetful adults) would not get hurt.
So, the deer came by anyway, got barked at, knocked half the fence down, evidently got a large spark, and did not return. Tracks all around, but no deer actually in the peas. Since then, common sense and bad backs has prevented us from planting 300 ft long rows of peas!

But I recommend a loud dog, a hot wire, and flags on the wire.

Of course that can be expensive, and annoying for you as well. I go with the sniper solution! Maybe you could use some sort of intimidation or something, and just catch one, and hang it up in your garden to warn all future miscreant deer of the consequences of trespassing.

Personally, I can empathize with you. I don't have deer, but I do have birds, squirrels and rabbits that cause me trouble. I just deal with the losses, and hope for the future! Of course, I don't lose my entire garden to them. There aren't that many of them, and they don't eat that much.

I used Liquid Fence for 3 years and it helped a lot, but this past year not so much.

My neighbor put in a garden and he put up a 6 ft. fence with barbed wire around the top foot and yellow pieces of flagging and I don't think he ever had a deer problem. So I'm trying that this year.

Andrea

This year I found some recipes online ... mostly what DF posted above, but I added some milk and use it at a higher concentration. I sprayed it every 3 days at the beginning of spring when the hostas started growing from an old windex bottle. I keep a gallon of it outside to get ripe in the sun. Now I'm down to spraying the hostas and my brand new garden this year (still down at the bottom of the yard) about once a week. I spray with Neem oil once a week, too. Don't know if that's helping or not, but we had deer in our backyard last week standing right next to the garden in the middle of the day (we were shocked to see them there from our window) and they didn't touch a thing.

Rotten eggs, sour milk, hot peppers, and garlic apparently are not appetising to deer tastebuds.

-Veronica