Oh Deer!
By Jeff Garrett

The 2007 rose season began just like many others. We carefully pruned our roses, applied our favorite fertilizers, and began our routine spray program. The early spring weather had been very nice and our roses were growing well. Then came the Easter weekend freeze of 2007. Within two weeks we found ourselves back to square one as we were once again pruning our roses. After a lot of extra TLC, the plants finally began to grow well and set buds. We were starting to get really excited as there is absolutely nothing like the first bloom cycle of each year.

One morning, I was casually walking around the garden admiring just how strongly the roses had responded from that dreaded Easter freeze. We had always thought that roses were tough plants and now we had some proof. I proceeded to our strongest plant of Louise Estes, anticipating that it would be covered with soon to be blooming buds. As I got close to the bush, something didn’t look right. There were virtually no buds and all the stems were only about half as tall as I remembered them being the day before. After careful inspection, I concluded that something had eaten the buds and half the stems. Further examination revealed that all the roses in that particular bed had succumbed to the same fate as Louise Estes. The tracks in the middle of the bed made it obvious that our precious roses had been eaten by deer. I was devastated!

We had heard of other rosarians' encounters with the deer, but somehow we just never thought it would happen to us. Cindy and I put our heads together and wondered what we could do to get rid of these hungry varmints before they destroyed all our roses. Throughout the summer we tried numerous approaches to keeping the deer away and I want to share our experience with you in this article.

I carefully studied the deer tracks and concluded that the deer had attacked us by crossing the back of our neighbor’s yard into our garden. Therefore, I purchased an eight foot high black plastic fence designed to keep deer out from Holcomb’s Garden Center for about $20. I put the fence up in an area that I thought would inhibit the deer from taking this route to our garden. The fence is almost invisible, which gave me hope that the deer would wander into it and get caught, at which time I could then beat them to death with a ball bat. Boy, would that relieve some stress! The fence obviously worked as the deer stayed away. However, there is no way we can keep a fence up all summer in our back yard. This can only be a temporary solution for us.

The year before, Cindy had experienced a lot of trouble with rabbits eating her miniatures. She purchased Liquid Fence Deer and Rabbit Repellent, which was supposed to keep rabbits away. We remembered she had some left and so I got it out. Liquid Fence contains putrescent egg solids and garlic, among other things, that are designed to emit an odor that deer and rabbits don’t like. Let me tell you that it also emits an odor that no human on earth can like. When mixing and spraying, you must wear a mask to keep from passing out. You should also apply it when none of your neighbors are around, or you’ll have a very mad neighbor. After about 24 hours, the odor is hardly detectable to humans, but supposedly the deer and rabbits can still smell it. Our experience with this product is actually pretty good. It did solve the rabbit problem, and as far as we can tell, the deer aren’t too fond of it either. The biggest concern we have with Liquid Fence is the initial smell and the cost. A 40 ounce bottle of Liquid Fence concentrate will cost about $40 and make 5 gallons of finished product. It actually takes about 5 gallons to cover our rose garden of 450 plants. They recommend that you apply it every 3-4 weeks, so we quickly determined that this solution may be a little too costly for our budget.

We were also told that the deer only go out at night to eat. So we began leaving our floodlights on all night long. We got more bugs than you can imagine. We soon discovered that deer will visit your garden anytime they are hungry, including the middle of the afternoon. A neighbor actually found them in our front yard in the middle of the day nibbling on the Knock Out roses. I hate deer!

As we shared our deer dilemma with friends and neighbors, we heard many different solutions. One that we couldn’t resist trying was to put Irish Spring throughout the garden as deer supposedly don’t like the fragrance. We hung the bars of soap every 10 feet or so throughout the rose beds. I must admit, the garden did smell fresh and clean! This solution appeared to work until one morning I discovered that the deer had actually nibbled on a Marijke Koopman with a bar of Irish Spring hanging right over it. So much for the fresh smelling garden.

Upon hearing of our deer problem, Roy Guthrie asked us to try a couple of products that he is working on with Beaty Fertilizer. Beaty Fertilizer currently markets EasyTea 7-1-1 in a granular powder which is an all-organic product. It is mixed with water and applied as a foliar feed in your regular spray program. Roy is fortifying EasyTea with different additives that will not taste good to the deer and thereby get them to look elsewhere for their dietary desires. One mixture contains EasyTea and yucca. This product is completely safe and can also be used on consumables such as vegetables. The deer are dining on the succulent new growth, particularly the tender young buds. If we incorporate the EasyTea/yucca mixture in our weekly spray program, the deer will not be able to avoid tasting the yucca, which they do not like. We had good results with this product. The only downside is that for the deer to get a taste of the yucca, they have to nibble some. This means you will probably see a little damage from time to time. We saw places where the deer did indeed nibble a little and then apparently left looking for something a little tastier. Hopefully, over time they will decide that there just isn’t anything tasty in our garden. This product is also apparently very effective for rabbits. We applied it to the miniatures and even though there are lots of rabbits in our area, they left the roses alone. Of course, the EasyTea fed our foliage and we had the darkest green and healthiest foliage we can remember having. Late this summer, we pruned for the district show. As a result we had a lot of tender foliage growing at a pretty fast pace. To make sure our new growth wasn’t too tasty, we applied the EasyTea/yucca mixture twice a week. We will also use it twice weekly in the late spring when our roses are growing really fast. It is my understanding that Beaty Fertilizer plans to market this product as early as next season.

Roy is also experimenting with a mixture of EasyTea and bitrex. Bitrex is a compound that is extremely bitter. When I first tried this mixture, I accidentally got a good snort of it and I will agree that it isn’t too tasty. You also need to avoid getting any of this mixture on your hands as it takes a few days to wear off. My limited experience with this mixture was not quite as successful as the EasyTea/yucca mixture. While it does appear to work, the deer ate more before leaving. This product is not safe for use on any consumables.

Many rosarians with deer problems simply got an outside dog, which they report solved their problem. However, we do not want the responsibility of caring for a dog. Several of our neighbors have dogs, including a big black lab two doors down from us. Our neighbor takes the lab for a ride in the golf cart every evening. One evening they encountered some deer. The deer looked at the dog and the dog looked at the deer. That was about it. I guess you would have to get a dog that hated deer just like I do.

Well, there you have it. While we were not able to keep the deer completely away, we were able to keep them from completely devouring our garden. This sure has been an interesting year in the rose garden! Now where did I leave my shotgun?