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One of the problems with having a nice food garden, is that deer and other pests enjoy it right along with you. If you have deer getting in the garden, read about what we have been doing to get them to stay out! I work far too hard to get big harvests, to let animals get in there and take it away. Here’s one way that we are keeping deer out of the garden.
Since we no longer have a dog here on the property, the deer have been getting into the yard again. They love to munch on our apple trees but I sure don’t want them getting into the actual veggie gardens. In one night, one or two deer could do a lot of damage and the work we have done would be gone, just like that.
There are several deer repellents on the market, but I am after something more permanent than that. Sort of a “set it and forget it” type of solution.
How to Keep Deer Out of The Garden
A friend swears by using yellow rope, something she has done for years. Apparently the deer don’t like the colour yellow? I am following her suggestion and asked Graham to cut some 2 x 4’s that we could screw onto the garden posts already in place. He did that for me and he also drilled 3 holes in each board.
We started stringing out the rope. Here’s a good money saving hint if you need to buy rope. Never buy just 20 feet or 50 feet. You will pay a lot more when you just buy part of the roll.
Always buy the full roll, and then make sure you get a good discount on it! I did that, following Graham’s advice and saved 30% on a full rope. Believe me, you will find a million other uses for rope on the homestead, whether it’s for tying down tarps, using when fishing or some other project being worked on.
We strung the rope through the drilled holes and went around the garden. Then around again. Then around once more. So here’s what it looks like out there now.
Those targets you can see on the garden posts? They’re for target shooting. Graham uses them to sight in his guns and it doesn’t hurt to be able to do some safe target shooting when the kids come for a visit.
Once we got all the yellow rope strung up, we went around and added chicken wire to the bottom of all the fence panels surrounding the main garden. We have seen a lot of rabbits this year and you know how it goes with rabbits. If you see one, you know there are at least 100 others out there!
So hopefully we are all set to ward off the deer and the rabbits. I am finding quite a few snakes in the garden though and although I know they are probably eating a lot of mice, I just don’t like snakes. I’ve been know to walk into the garden going the long way around, just so I don’t have to walk by a snake. What a sissy!
If you are looking for ways to keep deer out of the garden, give the yellow rope trick a try. You can read The Yellow Rope – an update to see how our garden did after the rope was up.
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Steven says
I would be very much interested to know if the yellow rope trick works. Please give us a follow-up on it once you’ve had a chance to observe the results.
LOL about the snakes. My wife loves them … we used to keep garter snakes as pets when we were younger. They’re very good to have around. We always take them as a good sign.
Annie says
Steve, I get what you’re saying about the snakes. We do have some mice and no doubt the snakes would help keep the mice population down. If we weren’t so jumpy around them, it’d be different. But, a couple days ago, we had a friend over for a beer on the porch. Cost for admission was picking up and getting rid of snakes 🙂
I will let you all know if the rope works. So far,so good!
Kathleen says
I hope it works! I will be watching to see if it does. We are afraid of having deer for the first time in fifteen years here, due to losing Nikita. This past winter we had a young buck under the apple tree digging under the snow for apples.
Annie says
If you have friends with dogs, have them over for an afternoon. Their scent will hang around for a bit. I guess I could put wire around my apple trees but I’d rather not have to do that. I think this last winter was hard on a lot of animals, looking for food.