I have terrible deer problems. They eat young shoots and leaves when browsing but the worst damage is during rutting. I have probably lost 20 trees completely and have at least half of my trees with trunk damage. I had tries soap, hair, Liquid fence and homemade concoctions with very little effect. Last spring I bought some Plantskydd and sprayed it in late may when they started browsing on the new growth on young trees. It kept them totally untouched until late Sept. I then sprayed again at leaf drop and had absolutely no rut damage last winter. I am a believer. While it does stain clothes the smell is unnoticable after 2 or 3 days and all you have to treat is the area which is easily reachable by the deer, so fruit is not treated. Drawback is its cost. Its only dried pig blood. I sprayed it in the past but that takes a lot of straining. I'm going to try painting this yr. RED

Peas and other legumes are good at making their own nitrogen. Excess N lowers pod/pea production. Technically, it can be used, but unless your soil is extremely deficient in N (or you're planing in a "soiless mix") it's not of much use.

I have used blood meal for years. I tried to follow this thread in its entirety and thought I had a few things I could add. I noticed that using it to replace manure was mentioned. It is not a replacement for manure, but it sure does help when there is not enough manure. Manure and compost have the wonderful qualities of making the soil moisture just right. There is nothing to replace compost or manure except other compost or manure. I also live in a rural area and never had a buzzard show up for dinner just because I threw out a little blood meal. I do have pets though, and they all prefer fish emulsion over blood meal any day. Gee, anybody got any thoughts on why? If you can keep the pets out of the fish emulsion,it is the most perfect replacement supplement that I have found for manure and compost, but it is not a perfect replacement either. I have used blood meal in small quantities, large quantities and everything in between. I have never burned a plant root with it, and I am not sure why. I cannot burn plants with rabbit manure either. That is called a cold manure. Goats and sheep, I am told, also produce cold manures. It means that although they produce nitrogen in abundance, the jillions of creepy crawly things that break down the soil do it somehow differently that other livestock manures. I have certainly burned roots with chicken manure. Rabbit manure has more nitrogen than all of the common live stock manures found in North America, and I do not know any animal that produces more nitrogen in its manure than rabbits. I love the stuff, but we are not talking about rabbit manure. We are talking about blood meal which I also love. Also liquid blood meal was mentioned. Really? Couldn't you just do your own slaughtering? I do not know anybody that sells it that way and don't think I would buy it if I did. If you want to pour a store bought nitrogen rich liquid over a spot, use the fish emulsion that I just mentioned in a paragraph above. Just develop a good plan for keeping pets out of it. I don't have any because I do not wish to spend the money on other products that repel them. Those also exist. Just ask for them wherever you buy garden supplies. Let me add this about nitrogen's side effects. Nitrogen does indeed promote lush green foliage that may not be desirable if one really wants bigger fruit than plant, but I have to add that bigger plants produce bigger fruit. I grow watermelons on land that I inherited from my father. When I told my mother that I planned to do that, she was quick to remind me that my father never could grow watermelons on that land. (He would not listen to good advice because he thought he knew everything.) There were several reasons for that, but we are just talking about fruit size. His watermelons and at first mine were far too small, baseball or softball size, and part of the reason was because I did not know how to time watering or fertilization and such. Watermelons need the most nitrogen while the vines are forming and before the fruit forms. Then while fruit is forming, they need to receive the most phosphorus and potassium. However, this is not advisable if nitrogen has not been applied aggressively enough. Even as I write this I have watermelon flowers, but still have to apply nitrogen to get all of my melons on the same page. They are growing at different rates because they popped out of the ground on different days, and I replanted about a week after the first planting, and the second planting also popped out of the ground on different days. I also plan to sell them. So I have them in many stages. Some only have their dicotyledon leaves while others have long vines, but I am not satisfied with any of their growth rates because I know from experience that at present they are only long enough to produce baseball and softball sized watermelons. Therefore I am making amendments with Organic Miracle Gro Liquid plant food that has 8-0-0 and is made from sugar beets. If the smallest plants I have right now started making fruit at their present size, they probably wouldn't have anything bigger than marbles. I am sure that all of this applies to all fruit and vegetables. Bigger plants make bigger produce, but more phosphorus and potassium applied at the right times make more fruits and vegetables. I hope this has been informative. Grow something really grand.

Hi Kentstar: I'm glad to hear from you .... I like ALL of your posts through the past years in rose & other forums. You are always honest, informative, thus help others. Blood meal doesn't go stale on me ... I have one bag that I used for the past 3 years. Used that this year, and it worked great. Organics need heat and water to break down. If it's too cold, or too dry, then it won't work. This summer it's colder & drier than normal. I get better luck with organics when I soak in a bucket of water, and leave in hot sun for a few days ... be it banana peels for potassium, blood meal for nitrogen, or cracked corn at $2.99 for 10 lbs. bag from the feed store. The cracked corn is already broken, so soaking it released nutrients ... I already burnt my powerful flour-grinder by grinding crack-corn, so I don't recommend grinding corn. Soaking is far easier, it's breaking down organics in a form that plants can use: as a liquid. This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Mon, Jun 9, 14 at 13:21