Fruitgirl, Our property can't be fenced. The cost would be prohibitive. Using a fishing line would also not be a solution. The reason is that the plants I wish to protect are all over the place on the property which is slightly over 300 feet wide and 100+ feet deep and has the strangest ups and downs, granite boulders here, another there, etc. Dibbit, Thanks for the idea about the Butterfly Forum. Feel kind of silly not having thought about that. I'll certainly post over there. I also understand that dogs are not effective. We have a Valley Bulldog and a Black Lab. The deers know that we keep the dogs inside during the night and that's when they decimate the gardens. You should see what they did to two holly bushes this winter!! pls8xx, There is no doubt in my mind that it was the onions. When I first started gardening here in 2001, there was not a plant to behold. The bones such as some rock walls and mature trees were there, but nothing else. Until last year they did not touch the gardens. I had noticed that some Alliums had shown up here and there in the gardens, and left them. In the spring, I decided to dig up some plants to sell at my daughter's spring school fair. I targeted the plants with the Alliums thinking I would replant the bulbs in the following week. DH was cleaning and disposed of the Allium bulbs. I had placed them in a bag, and he thought they were garbage. Two weeks later, the deers started showing up. I soon made the connection, but in the fall, when it was my intent to order Alliums by the hundreds, life made me take another turn. So, until I can plant members of the Onion family in droves in the gardens - and I intend to, I have to find another solution.

OK. How do you GET coyote urine? Even if you buy it in "granular form", if that exists, how the heck do people get it in the first place, cause I can't imagine. Coyotes are wild. No one can capture their pee. If they are in a zoo, still, how would anyone capture the pee and get enough to sell. I'm almost laughing. Please tell me. Would my husband do? Could I send him out to "protect" the bushes with his coyote urine?

I live smack dab in the middle of a small town and we have developed quite the deerherd that comes down from the woods and roams the streets (when, I don't know, probably early early morning since I have never seen a deer, only the nibbled plants that they left behind) and dines at their leisure. Since fencing my yard was not a practical option I tried a number of folk remedies including moth balls, hot pepper, "Not Tonight Deer", etc. As far as I could tell, none had any long term effect and the munching continued. The day before I ordered my Ouzi and camos, I attended a Spring plant day organized by my local Cooperative Extension and picked up a couple of newsletters. One had a very simple remedy for a deer repellent in it. Damage was beginning to escalate since I apparently had the tastiest selection in the neighborhood. I decided to try the repellent recipe. I bought one and one half dozen eggs and cracked them into a bowl. I beat them enough to break the yolks and mixed the white and the yolk thoroughly. I stretched a piece of cheesecloth over the mouth of a jumbo size mayonnaise jar and held it in place with a large rubber band (final container has to hold a little more than two quarts of liquid). I poured the eggs through the cheese cloth. The cheese cloth caught the big slimy bits and I threw it away. I added two quarts of water to the beaten eggs in the jar and mixed them together. I used a funnel to pour the egg mixture into a cleaned out Windex sprayer (any sprayer that can be adjusted to spray a mist can be used) and sprayed every plant in my yard, leaves and all. I didn't drench the plant, I just tried to leave a light coating on most of it up to the height of a tall deer. I refilled the bottle and kept spraying until I used all the egg mixture up. I swear I had no more deer damage at all the whole summer. This stuff lasted through rain just fine and I have not reapplied it. Why did this work? Well, the guy who submitted the recipe said he thinks it's because deer have a very keen sense of smell and rotting eggs don't smell very good. The smell to humans is very faint to begin with and non existent after several days. I did not have to reapply for the same reason you have to scrub so hard to get eggs out of pans . . . egg really sticks and it's hard to wash off! I also applied it on a clear day and the egg had a good few days to dry and get adheared before it rained. I should point out that dried eggs are the basis of "Not Tonight Deer" but I found it very expensive and hard to mix and apply. The man who submitted the recipe has a commercial Christmas tree grove and suffered costly and unsightly damage to his trees every year until he tried this. He sprayed only the surrounding outside row of trees and claims that three years later deer still avoid his trees to the point that they won't walk past the smelly outside trees to get to the untreated inside trees. Sorry to write such a long answer but I wanted to be clear on how to try this. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to this guy as he really saved my whole yard and garden. I wanted to pass it on. Its such a wonderful solution . . . it's organic, it's earth friendly, it's long lasting, it's cheap and it does not involve hurting or injuring the deer.

To make my cages, I bought a roll of 48" wire fencing and rolled out a 14 foot length of fencing, cut it so the ends stuck out, made a roll and tied together with the ends. It produced a cage a little over 4 feet in diameter. I also made some cages from a 15-16 foot lengths. For the first cages, I anchored them to the ground with wood stakes, eye screws and shower curtain clips. This proved to be unnecessary. I tried using some drip irrigation 1/2 inch tubing to help the cages maintain their shape, but it wasn't worth trouble. The cages can be lifted off the bushes, but most of the time it isn't necessary. Any thing that sticks out over the top is too tall for my deer and they are welcome to whatever sticks out of the side of the cages.