Tag Archive for 'Deer Repellent'

Deer Repellent

Published on April 3, 2008 in deer herd, gardening and recipe. 2 Comments

I tie on bars of Irish Spring soap to deter deer, while Bob uses a less subtle approach: he sprays the foliage with a product called “Liquid Fence”, layering the chemical soap scent with the odors of rotten eggs and garlic.   

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 The price tag on this gallon jug reads “$124.99″.  He must have bought it when he bought trees, because that’s the only way he could have justified the cost.  Our deer herd could take down a young tree overnight, and this is the only deer repellent I’ve seen with a money-back guarantee (and it’s organic).  This is the second year he has been using this single gallon, and it’s still 2/3 full.  Liquid Fence’s motto is “It Really Works“, and it does… so when you think of it as a garden-saver, the $40 of Liquid Fence Bob sprayed on the foliage last year was a bargain.

Meanwhile, two longtime gardeners I know swear by their old-time homemade deer repellent:  

Beat together 2 eggs, a cup of milk, and a few cloves of pressed garlic.   Add a dollop of cooking oil and good squirt of dish soap, shake it well, and put it in a tightly capped jar for a few days of sun.  When it is ripe, add it to a gallon of water; spray liberally on any foliage you want deer to avoid.  (Vary by adding a tablespoon of cayenne.) 

When I read the fine print, it turned out that the ingredient list for Liquid Fence is putrescent egg solids, garlic, sodium laureth sulfate (soap) and potassium sorbate, a preservative.   So Bob paid $125 for a jug of rotten eggs, garlic and soap, the exact same deer repellent that our friends make in mayonnaise jars.  Woops!

It makes me think that while the people at Liquid Fence use the motto “It Really Works” on their label, they might have a different motto in-house.  I’m guessing it’s something like “I can’t believe that people will pay such inflated prices for rotten eggs and garlic.”  Of course, now that I have the recipe we’ll never ante up for Liquid Fence again.  And now you have the recipe, too. 

Excellent recipe. 

Why I love Irish Spring soap

Published on March 25, 2008 in deer herd and gardening. 3 Comments

In the arid West, deer pressure can be pretty intense.  People live on most  of the acreage near the waterways, they’ve diverted most of the water, and the areas that aren’t next to the streams and rivers are often too dry to be very productive.  The deer can get fierce in their need for the plants that you’re growing… and since it was their land and water in the first place, I sympathize to a point. 

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I’m happy to have a deer herd around, but I don’t want them browsing my gardens.  So I try to work with them.  I grow plants that they don’t like to eat, mostly cultivars of native species and old favorites.  Daylilies, lavenders, mints and hyssops work fine, and so do lilacs and potentillas.  I used to get plant lists from the state agricultural extension service, and now you can find lists of deer resistant plants online. 

Bob regularly sprays the twigs and foliage with an appalling mixture of rotten eggs, sour milk, garlic and red chili pepper (more on this later).

And I do love that Irish Spring soap.  On every newly planted tree, I tie a bar of Irish Spring in a knee-hi stocking at deer-nose height.  When it rains, that Irish Spring perfume works its way down the trunk and coats the surface of the ground… and deer detest it. 

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Here’s a bar of soap that made it though the winter, and to the deer it still stinks.  The bears hate Irish Spring too. 

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Here’s a bar of soap that a bear ripped out of its stocking and buried under a red twig dogwood.  I dug it up when I was weeding a few weeks later, and put it back up in another stocking, claw marks and all.  I think Irish Spring is one of those anti-deer miracles. 

If people say it doesn’t work, it’s because they haven’t tried it.