what if ya planted stuff like sweet annie and things deer dont like around them. maybe that'd help.?? :'))

Hi! This is an excellent question! I am sorry that I don't have an answer,but I did email my friend and asked her.Hopefully she will be able to get back to us on this one! I gave her the link to this thread in case she decided to answer this in person,so we may have an appearance from her to help us out!:)
If my friend isn't able to help us,then I guess we will have to do a little testing ourselves,which can be fun!
I was thinking of starting some kind of annual indoors and spraying it to see what happens,I figure if I spray them at different stages I will be able to determine if it is safe and at which stage.I will report back with whatever I find out and hopefully with an answer we like!:)
Who knows maybe my friend will pop in and answer it for us before it comes down to torturing baby plants!:)

Cool, I hope she does pop in herself-- this is such a fun crowd! :) If she doesn't know, I'll do the same as you and just try testing it on some of my plants at different stages, so we'll have two sets of results to compare. That other Bonnex stuff sounds great, but it seems like it would be sooo expensive when you think about how many plants WS'ing gives you.

medontdo, oh how I wish that would do it; last year I tried planting all sorts of things they supposedly don't like. Perhaps we have the gourmands of the deer world on our property, thrill-seekers out to find new flavors to enjoy, because they certainly did enjoy all my little baby plants! After the thrill of seeing all those little sprouts coming up in the milk jugs, it was a total bummer to lose them all to the Deer Buffet Hour. I'm actually being more conservative about how many seeds I sow this year, just because I don't want to go through that big a disappointment all over again.

But if this egg spray recipe works, my WS shall be triumphant! Our driveway will be completely overtaken by legions of milk jugs... the WS addiction knows no bounds! Mwahahaha!!!

LOL could that totally be an evil laugh?? LOL i know the feeling!! LOL have ya tried any hot pepper one?? less stinky!!

LOL...I hear you!:) Mine isnt so much a deer problem as it is a vole problem,and I say "a" because there is one that will eat my plants right in front of me and does not care that I am there at all,he will look at me while I am yelling at him and munch away without a care in the world! Not too many voles act like this,I never see the others except by chance.He has done quite a bit of damage!I also have a rabbit that has turned everything I heard of that is supposed to keep them away into a myth,he also eats my plants right in front of me.He enjoys my Marigolds,Portulaca,and Snapdragons,again doesnt touch the Salvia! The occasional deer really dont do much...yet! I am adding more than I ever had before and I am scared to death...lol...I am really hoping the egg spray works also,that would be awesome! No more worries!:)I did what you did and seriously cut back on everything,didnt buy things I really liked because I knew it was just an expensive lunch for them,but I am hoping this year will be different!(Fingers crossed)

Medo,I have tried stuff like that for various critters,and it seems like they wont eat that particular plant but still get to the ones they want,but there is still something there in the end and not an empty plot!So planting deer resistant plants amongst the ones they like is a good idea,just as long as they follow the rules!...lol...

It will be nice if this time next year we are praising the egg spray for saving us heartache!

Medo,My friend said that this was much more effective than the Hot Pepper spray,she said she tried everything,and this has been the best so far for her.She has been gardening in deer territory for a long time,and has many of these battles,I am hoping her advice puts all ahead of the game! And who could beat the price of eggs?:)

Does it work for rabbits? I have a serious rabbit problem. They nibble on everything in my yard. I can't seem to find anything to deter them. Any suggestions besides a fence?

Lucas

Hi Everyone,

The 20% egg spray has worked equally well against rabbits, mice, and deer. The Colorado Extension Service bulletin (where I got the recipe) stated it was also very effective against elk, which I understand are worse than deer for browsing plants.

Honestly, it is the only thing I've tried short of expensive, stinky sprays, that works and works WELL--it has given me a new lease on growing things I'd given up on years ago.

The smallest plants I have used it on have been newly set out transplants and I have also sprayed direct-sown annuals as soon as they germinate with no ill effects.

The only thing it may have damaged (and I'm not sure it was the egg spray) was the new spring foliage on my baptisia Purple Smoke--the foliage turned black--but it also may have been something else, possibly a late spring frost.

I have never sprayed seedlings in jugs and don't know if that would have any effect (would the heat build-up be an issue with extra humidity from the egg spray?), but it might be a good idea to spray when the sun is not directly overhead to minimize chances of an adverse reaction.

I hope you have as much success with this spray as I have!

Kate

I hope I'm not throwing out a suggesiton that anyone has tried and failed at, but flakes of 'Irish Spring Soap' repel bunnies, and I have read that deer hate the smell as well. I've read that suspending bars of the original green on tomato stakes and cages will keep them away.
I grate the bars around my flowerbeds to keep the bunnies away from my newly sprouting tulips.
Needs to be re-grated after a rain, but it works. "manly yes, but I like it too!".

i don't have any problems, but ya know i am the curious type!! LOL i have some castor beans for the vole, isn't that a mole?? don't laugh, i don't have problems with these critters yet, which is amazing considering that i live in basically the country and have alot of trees!! LOL but they do not come around. so i'm lucky so far. except i'd had a problem with the mole, and he tore up my yard! and so i got some castor beans, it was funny, one day i went out to get some "soil" and the ground was moving, talk about freaking out!! i mean i grew up basically in town!! LOL and then to see that! whew!! so i pick talla up and get her outta there and call grant at work and tell him, God only knows why?? LOL and he laughs at me, LOL so that's my story with that thing!! now i have none, and now my yard is gonna look pretty!! talla is thrilled!! cuz her fairie garden is gonna go up and a friend sent me some sea shells so we're putting them in there too!! and of course the best!! angie!! WOO HOO!! talla is on cloud 9!! LOL so now i have to keep all these wierd things in mind for sprays, LOL :'))

Here is a spray that I have used for the last 3 years. I found it on the internet. It works for a while until the deer get used to it. I alternate it with blood meal-the deer hate that. You don't have to spray right on the plants, just spray around them and the deer stay away. I used it around my first veg. garden and it kept the deer away from the corn. They would gather together about 20 feet away. You could almost hear the saying"I'll go if you go first" but they stayed away. All my neighbors would joke about it.
Donna
Copy Kat Deer and Rabbit Repellent

There is a version of "Liquid Fence" on the market. I found this works just as well, just you have to use it more quickly due to it not having the preservatives in it. It smells bad when you apply it--this is your warning!! You will need 5 one gallon containers to mix this up. Fast and easy.

4 to 6 eggs
1 lg head of garlic, chopped
5 gallons of water
Any hot pepper you may have in the house

Put eggs, garlic and pepper in a blender with some water and blend until well mixed. Empty mixture in one of the gallon containers. Fill the container with water and mix well. Distribute the mixture into the other 4 containers until all 5 containers are equal.

Fill all 5 containers with water and set in the sun for 3 days to "ripen".

Sprinkle around the perimeter of the area you want to protect. You can also strain some mixture and put it into a spray bottle to spray on plants that might need extra treatment. Retreat every month or after a hard rain.

I have also mixed in onions. I dont know if it helped or not. I think the eggs and garlic is enough.

Woo-Hoo Kate made it! She is the friend that gave me the receipe that I shared! Thanks Kate!:)

The egg/garlic/pepper spray works great. The only problem I have had with it when I used to make it is that the egg solids clog up the sprayer. It works as a systemic as well as the horrid smell. The deer hate the taste and whenever they are around anything with a strong odor, they stay away because it interferes with their sense of smell -- they can't smell real danger.

I now use Milorganite. It is cheap and much easier to use and the deer stay away. I only use it twice each season since it is a slow release product. I put it around the perimeter of my beds in early spring and again in late fall.

Thanks for dropping by and enlightening us, Kate! :) I'm definitely going to try this recipe when I plant out my WS babies this year. I'll report back with results. Mostly, though, I'm just happy at the thought of my garden actually having a chance at survival (oh yes, medontdo, that WAS an evil laugh... although I guess the only ones to suffer from this plot will be the deer, when they discover their yummy-looking buffet has been doused with stinky egg spray, haha!) Yay! Thanks kate and agirlsgirl!!

You are so welcome! I cant wait to try it this year!I think I am going to start by spraying exsisting plants before I plant my new babies,maybe that would get a little jump start on keeping them away.I am also going to start putting my cotton balls soaked in peppermint oil around the area they do most of their damage.I am armed well this year,and hoping to win this battle!:)
These other recipes sound interesting also.I have tried hot pepper and garlic for the voles,it doesnt work on them(at least my little "buddy").He doesn't seem to care that it's there at all,ornery little thing!
Medo,moles and voles are two different creatures,voles are the ones eating your plants.Moles eat insects and usually only damage plants by running into roots,bulbs and such.I have had no damage from the moles here,and I have lots of them.
Well, I wish us all the best of luck!And thanks again to Kate for dropping in with her always wise words!:)

I'm going to tell you a little story about deers.

In 2001 we moved here. There was not a flower, not a schrub. Nice bones though. Two weeks after the move, we finally transplanted some perennials we had brought over from our last property. My new neighbours chuckled and told me it was only a matter of time before they became deer food.

Until 2004, the deers didn't bother the gardens, yet they ate everything in sight in all of our neighbours' yards. That same year, I took divisions of quite a few plants to sell at my DD's spring fair at school. I had noticed during the last couple of years that small alliums had been growing among the gardens. They were cute, so I let them be. In most areas, they were growing right in the footings of the Phlox Paniculatas of which I had many. These were the ones I targeted for the fair.

In so doing, I unearthed all the alliums, so I set them aside thinking I would replant. I placed them in a paper bag which DH eventually found. He thought it was garbage, so out they went. I didn't get upset about it. Actually, I never thought twice about it. Never thought there might be a connection between the lack of deers and the alliums.

In late 2004, I noticed that the deers had discovered our peoperty. By 2005, the damage was starting to get bad. We live on a peninsula where no one is allowed to hunt because the bullets would be too close to homes even though some acreages are a fair size.

In 2006 and 2007 the hosta gardens became prime targets as well as parts of the perennial beds - especially the Phlox which I love so dearly.

I finally put two and two together and realized that in the first few years the alliums had kept them at bay. They hate onions, and garlic, and such, and if the scent is strong enough for them... Well, that's why they never bothered in the first few years.

Last fall I planted loads of Alliums - all kinds - everywhere in the perennial beds. I also planted Fritillarias which they hate. I am also on the lookout for Egyptian Walking Onions this year.

I like to enjoy the gardens and having to walk around with a spray bottle every couple of days is not my cup of tea. I've tried Deer Off and multitudes of things including Jalapeno peppers blended with garlic sprays. Nada. I also wonder about the smell of those sprays being an effect on Butterflies and such. I stopped spraying in early June last year and a month later saw more Bees and Butterflies than I'd seen when spraying, and when you are raising Monarchs such as we are, well, that's something to think about.

Only time will tell if the investment in Alliums and other such plants will deter them. The dogs sure don't and we have two big ones. The deers learn the routines of the dogs very quickly too.

If this ploy doesn't work, I will continue to plant deer resistant plants of which there are many beuatiful ones!

OK, so my story wasn't really short after all. :O)

This info is great, thanks !! I have a bunny that sits with me while I garden, and it is amazing, he will sit with me inside my beds, but so far he goes out in the yard and enjoys the dandelions and clover...maybe not keeping the grass, all grass, is a good thing...LOL ( sounded good anyways..LOL)

Hey medonto....ya need more seashells ?? If you do, just let me know, we live on the water, and can send shells to you for the garden...and maybe even some sea glass..

Angie, and kate thanks for the info on the spray!

The biggest factor in what will be effective against critters is the density of their population. I live by two large wild life preserves and have a neighbor next door who feeds the deer, so the population is very large and completely unafraid of humans. Rabbits also have come to love the diversity of plants in our yard, and because we have several acres of woods (why don't they just stay there???), their population is abundant as well. I have used sprays containing bitters, peppermint oil, eucalyptus oil, and any other smelly thing you can imagine, have gotten hair from the barbers, used fox and coyote urine (expensive as all get out and so nasty to use), even went so far as to use mothballs before I found out how toxic they are, had the men in my family run out in the early morning and pee around the plants, tried interplanting with mint, garlic, etc., and nothing worked for more than a short period. And I don't think I have a single plant out of the hundreds I grow that has not been browsed at one time or another, regardless of how many Pest Resistant lists they may be on.

Soaps are effective if your critter population is not too large; contrary to what most folks think, it is not the perfumy smell of Irish Spring that repels, it is the tallow (fat) content of the soap. A friend who runs a commercial apple orchard tried it over the winter with absolutely NO success and felt it was actually detrimental in keeping pollinating bees away the following spring.

Pepper sprays are a taste repellant--if you have a lot of deer or rabbits, they each need to take a bite of the plant to realize it's been sprayed as they don't tell each other that what you've sprayed tastes nasty, which means if you have lots of pests, they will still eat down your plants before they all become aware they've been sprayed. Actually, the one time I used a pepper-based spray, the rabbits ate everything I'd sprayed overnight--I think they thought it was a flavor enhancer.

Several years ago I used a garlic based spray but there were certain things such as zinnias and sunflowers that were eaten off despite it. By early August the critters were used to it and ate anything and everything I had sprayed, and the only thing it continued to do was give me a huge craving for garlic bread every time I applied it.

I have heard that Milorganite does work well as a repellant; however, it is not considered organic (it contains sludge), so I've never tried it.

One of the great things about the 20% egg spray is that if you whir it up in a blender and spray it immediately, it will not clog up your sprayer. There is no need to ferment egg sprays--it is not the stink that keeps animals away, it is the smell of the protein from the eggs (if stinky smells kept rabbits/deer away, I'd simply drape my husband's socks around the yard). And at a concentration of 20% eggs, the spray does not wash away as quickly as one with a lesser content which means applications can be less frequent (you will need to experiment to determine what is necessary with your garden). Plants (such as lilies) which are deer and rabbit magnets I spray after every hard rain; other things get sprayed I would guess maybe every six weeks.

The best testimonial I've had for this spray is from a friend of mine who lives on an island. Years ago a rabbit farmer on the island gave up his business and released dozens of rabbits, which, well, bred like rabbits. There are no natural predators on the island so the rabbits have destroyed almost every plant, even girdling large trees. I gave her the recipe for the egg spray and she has a garden again. She makes up several gallons of the stuff and sprays EVERYTHING. She even uses it over the winter, spraying in late fall and on days in the winter when the temperature reaches above freezing. The neighbors she has passed the recipe on to have had great success as well, and she kids me that they are going to erect a "St. Kate" statue in my honor, lol.

I have also not seen any effect on wanted wildlife, such as bees, butterflies, frogs, toads, walking sticks, etc. I spray it on the plants next to the water garden and it has no effect on the tadpoles, polywogs, and dragon fly larvae. Of course, this means it will not be harmful to bad bugs either--you'll still have to use something to control insect damage (I use organic products with Neem oil for that).

Forgive me if I sound overly enthusiastic about this, but it has worked so well for me and has made gardening fun again. I can go outside in the morning and look forward to seeing what is in bloom, NOT what has been eaten off during the night.

Here's to a great gardening season!

Kate

I guess I am lucky as far as deer go. I had a minor run in this past summer where they ate the tops off a half dozen tomato plants, and a couple button bush. The soap on a rope did the trick for me.

Beets are an other matter altogether. Going to harvest my beets this past fall I found 2/3 of them gnawed. My guess is moles or voles. How do I deal with that???

I still managed to get 10-12 pints of pickled beets out of my beds, but I should have gotten closer to 50 pints out of my 75' row of beets.

sigh

sure we'd take both!! i just got some red clovers in trade, maybe your little rabbit wouldlike some, i'll keep a few :'))

i was watching a thing on pbs i think and they had about "follow if ya can, its not a good night for getting things out, LOL> a soap wash thing to keep the bugs off your vege's and such and its supposed to be good! you put it on after a rain. you soak your bar of soap in a gal of water overnight and then put like 1 t of vege oil in with it then put that in a sprayer hose thingi and spray your flowers and all your stuff. it gets rid of all the bugs ya need to. suposedly. i only tried it once. then i got a hole in my hose. it worked great! LOL :'>>
Rabbits

1. Tree guards: In fall wrap the lower portions of the trunks with commercial tree wrap, burlap, foil, or metal window screen. The wrapping should be 2' above the height of the deepest snow expected, rabbits can walk on top of the snow. Remove wrappings from the trunks in spring.

2. Sprinkle or hang cheesecloth bags of bloodmeal around plants. If sprinkled it must be redone after rain.

3. Vinegar: Soak corn cobs (cut in half) left over from a meal in vinegar for 5 minutes, then scatter throughout the flower or vegetable garden. Two weeks later soak them again in the same vinegar. You can keep reusing this same vinegar again and again.

4. Spray a tea made from cow manure and water as a repellent.

5. Soybean plants will repel rabbits or some say they attract them.

6. Onions will repel them. So will bonemeal.

7. Use red pepper, black pepper, cayenne, paprika etc. as a dust to repel. Rabbits are always sniffing so they snort this up and it sends them packing.

8. Mix 1 well beaten egg, 1/2 tsp. Tabasco sauce, and 1 gal. of water. Paint this on the tree trunks to prevent munching. This will not harm the trees.

9. Plant "Mexican Marigolds" (Tagetes Minuta) and garlic in the garden to repel them.

10. Set old leather shoes (from the thrift shop) around the garden to give it that "humans are here" smell.

11. Garlic Oil Spray may help to repel rabbits.

* To make: Combine 3 ounces of minced garlic cloves with 1 ounce of mineral oil. Let soak for 24 hours or longer. Strain. Next mix 1 teaspoon of fish emulsion with 16 ounces of water. Add 1 tablespoon of castille soap to this. Now slowly combine the fish emulsion water with the garlic oil. Kept in a sealed glass container this mixture will stay viable for several months. To use: Mix 2 tablespoons of garlic oil with 1 pint of water and spray.

12. Try planting some crops that rabbits will eat instead with, we hope, the intention of deterring them from your other garden crops. Try annual crimson red clover, planted as a strip border around the garden. Now even if it is not successful as a distraction the clover will up the nitrogen content of your soil. Soybeans are said to be good munchies for bunnies but some say they act as a repellant.

13. Pepper and Glue Spray: Mix together 2 tablespoons of ground red pepper or Tabasco sauce, 1 tablespoon of Elmer's white glue and a quart of water. Spray as needed but not right before you are ready to harvest as the solution may be difficult to wash off your produce.

14. A good rabbit repellent is a mixture of 85% raw linseed oil, 5% household detergent and 10% water. This can be applied with either a paintbrush or small sprayer. Use as a barrier spray but not directly on plant foliage.
hope this helps ya'll out, who know's i may actually have to use it this year!! LOL

/www.ghorganics.com/page6.html#Rabbits
here's the link to the rest of it for the other animals.