Hart - DeerProofing Your Yard and Garden

Deerproofing Your Yard & Garden

RHONDA MASSINGHAM HART

The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by
publishing practical information that encourages
personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Charles W.G. Smith, Gwen Steege, and Carleen Perkins
Cover design by Kent Lew
Cover photograph by Janet Haas/Index Stock
Text design by Jennifer Jepson Smith
Text production by Jessica Armstrong
Illustrations by Elayne Sears
Indexed by Jan Williams
2005 by Rhonda Massingham Hart

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other without written permission from the publisher.

The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without guarantee on the part of the author or Storey Publishing. The author and publisher disclaim any liability in connection with the use of this information. For additional information please contact Storey Publishing, 210 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247.

Storey books are available for special premium and promotional uses and for customized editions. For further information, please call 1-800-793-9396.

Printed in the United States by Versa Press
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hart, Rhonda Massingham, 1959
Deerproofing your yard & garden / Rhonda Massingham Hart.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58017-585-2 (alk. paper)
1. DeerControl. 2. Wildlife pestsControl. I. Title: Deerproofing your yard and garden. II. Title.
SB994.D4H375 2005
635'.0496965dc22 2004025042

WHEN GWEN STEEGE of Storey Publishing called to ask if! was interested in revising this book, my first thought was what has changed? You might be surprised. Deer populations have continued to grow over the past 10 years and the damage they inflict has increased exponentially. While we remain aware of the consequences of encroachment on deer habitat, a lot of people are desperate to protect their own habitat. So we agreed, an update could really help a lot of people.

Then she asked how Id feel about sharing the rewrite with a thorough researcher and accomplished writer Charles W. G. Smith. She felt he would bring a tremendous amount of insight and fresh perspective to the project, and was she ever right! What a wonderful blessing his input proved to be. Charly and I worked for months, chasing down promising new ideas, many of which turned out to be nothing more than flagrant exploitations of gardeners fear and frustration, a few of which show genuine merit. We challenged every deterrent, so-called deer-resistant plant, and new product, until we narrowed down the list to those that have proven themselves in the most circumstances.

If youve ever participated in a big pot-luck dinner, you already know what it takes to put a book like this together. Everyone brought something valuable to the table. Gwen set us up for a feast, Charly and I brought the meat and potatoes, and dozens of others pitched in all manner of tasty items. Numerous gardeners, extension agents, researchers, and wildlife biologists from around the country contributed their specialties until we had a veritable banquet of ideas. Finally, Carleen Perkins, whose wit and good humor served as the perfect dessert after gorging ourselves on all that information, made it all digestible with her concise editing. My sincere thanks to all who made this spread possible.

Finally, no one deserves acknowledgement for enduring the process of this revision more than my daughter, Kailah Hart. She heard nothing but deer talk and saw nothing but the back of my head (as I was typing away) for months. Thank you, Munchkin, for putting up with me.

by JIM WILSON, former host of The Victory Garden on PBS

FOR MORE THAN 25 YEARS, my gardens have been ravaged by deer. I suppose my situation vis-a-vis deer is pretty typical. Our log-cabin home stands on 15 acres bordering a university town in central Missouri. From a hilltop near our home, we can see the campus; between it and us is a solid carpet of housing. Behind us, farmland stretches seemingly forever. Not surprisingly, we have resident deer. A doe and two fawns, now yearlings, are so accustomed to us that they hardly look up from vacuuming birdseed when we peer at them out our back windows.

We have about a quarter-acre in flowerbeds and a new 1,000-squarefoot fenced food garden. To date, we have been able to protect the plant species most attractive to deer hostas, daylilies, phlox, etc. by regular spraying with Liquid Fence. Our decorative fence around the food garden is not high enough to keep out deer, so we are considering ways to correct that shortcoming.

Gardeners like me are all too aware of the damage that can be wrought on landscapes and food gardens by deer. Some also understand the profound, long-term damage to local ecosystems by hungry deer that are driven to foraging on forest-floor wildflowers. Years ago, Lori Otto, a legendary environmentalist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, walked the woods near her home with me and pointed out the almost complete extermination of ephemeral wildflowers. Without these early-blooming flowers, early hatches of insects have no food, and early-arriving, neotropical, largely insectivorous birds have little or no sustenance to fuel their northerly migration. Without insectivorous birds, insect pests can multiply uncontrollably in our gardens, fields, and forests.

Society has exacerbated the deer problem by allowing, even encouraging, urban sprawl, which has extended homes and gardens into country that once sustained deer. Gardeners have unwittingly magnified the problem by feeding and irrigating lawns and gardens. Especially during dry weather, when grasslands and wild brush have withered, deer will be drawn to the succulent feasts laid out for them by homeowners.

Long ago, I should have studied the habits of these pesky critters, so I could have done a better job of outsmarting them. But I never came across a definitive reference book on the essential nature of deer. Oh, I had read many anecdotal recommendations on how to control them, but most of the advice contradicted my own experience. So, I adopted a Sez who! attitude ... until now, that is.

When Rhonda Massingham Hart researched this book, she did the next best thing to pulling a deerskin over her clothing and mingling with herds. First, she consulted zoologists and game management specialists to understand the social structure of herds, feeding and mating habits, seasonal variations, and deer-human interactions. Then she interviewed horticulturists at public gardens who have to cope with deer day in and day out, all year long. Finally, she put it all together in an honest, thorough, highly readable book that is appropriate in every corner of the United States and southern Canada.

Other than very high fences, Deerproofing Your Yard