(ARA) – Manners are lovely, but they just don’t cut it when it comes to preventing pesky deer from foraging in your foliage! Imagine this: You spend hundreds of dollars on loading your landscape with beautiful blooms, and you’ve spent months installing trees, shrubs and flowers just exactly how you want it. Then, maybe even without any warning, you wake up one morning and it’s ruined or worse — it’s gone! Spring is the time of year that deer damage is most noticeable, particularly as plants awake from months of being dormant and prepare to bloom. Homeowners are seeing deer in their neighborhoods that they’ve never seen before. Wide open spaces are quickly being replaced with huge developments, new homes and loads of new gardens. Deer are literally moving in, living and eating — right in your back yard.

From a distance deer may be beautiful, graceful even adorable animals, but at night they become garden bandits, flossing their teeth on the rose bushes while snacking through your snapdragons and shrubs enjoying a free meal.

So, how do you begin a spring-through-summer-season-plan to protect your gardens and trees from foraging deer? First, you have to understand the basics:

1. Learn and locate where deer eat.

Deer prefer to feed in open areas near cover. Parks and suburban neighborhoods are the perfect habitat, where rich mixtures of vegetation produce abundant food and cover; open lawns, succulent summer gardens and plentiful ornamental shrubs where patches of trees and brushes provide cover.

Deer opt for variety over quantity, and they prefer tender new shoots and lush foliage, which they find in abundance in your landscaped yards and gardens.

2. Determine the cause of the damage.

Damage to landscape plantings and ornamentals may occur at any time of year, but it’s most disheartening when established plants are hearty and in full display. You can determine deer damage caused to plants by the ragged, broken ends of branches of plants and trees that have been browsed through by deer. Deer do not have incisor teeth and the damage they do is easily spotted. The height the damage is found — up to six feet — off the ground is another indication that rules out smaller animals and points to deer damage.

3. Assault their sense of security.

As spring and summer set in, it also gives birth to fawns and their noses will lead them to return over and over again to areas where food is tasty, abundant and safe to forage. Their noses will also alert them to nearby danger. Disrupt their sense of security and you’ve achieved the primary factor for turning deer away. Deer have good memories and they learn from each other. When one deer is continually “turned off” to an area, other deer will be reluctant to enter that area as well.

There are tons of “remedies” to deter deer from wreaking havoc on your gardens. Some can be extremely expensive (fencing), and others are either non-effective or smell so bad we can’t bear to use them!

Messina Wildlife Management offers a pleasant smelling, organic (OMRI certified) deer repellent that is extremely effective at deterring deer. Deer Stopper (www.deerstopper.com) is an all-natural, biodegradable deer repellent that guarantees deer will stop feeding on your prized gardens, shrubs and trees for 45 to 60 days per application. Deer Stopper is a fully organic deer-control product that contains no harmful chemicals or toxins that could hurt the animals, environment and, most importantly, you or your family. Which means it can be applied to edible plants as well. The product sprays on and dries clear. There’s more good news, Deer Stopper actually smells like a day at the spa!

Remember — deer are creatures of habit. Once they’ve found a food source, they’ll return to it, time and time again. That’s why it’s important to act now to prevent damage by foraging deer. Breaking their pattern by applying Deer Stopper every 45 days to your garden and landscape will deter deer from your backyard all season long. Act now and your chances this spring and summer are great for protecting your prized gardens from foraging deer. And if the deer are bringing friends to dine at your buffet, Messina Wildlife Management makes a full line of repellents for rabbits, squirrels, moles, woodchucks and more!

Deer Stopper is available nationwide at lawn & garden and hardware stores. For more information on Deer Stopper and the rest of Messina Wildlife Management’s repellent line, visit www.messinawildlife.com.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

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Deer are herbivores, which mean that they are entirely vegetarian.  Because their teeth have specially designed enamel ridges, they are able to grind a variety of plants and leaves, thereby making them exceedingly well adapted to forage in a number of different locations, no matter what the indigenous vegetation may be. Yet unlike other grazing animals, such as sheep for example, deer are not content with grazing, but instead seek out the more nutritious leaves, plant shoots, twigs, fruits, and tender plants. What makes deer such incredible pests to the gardeners is their propensity for only taking one or two bites off a plant before moving on to the next one. This causes a widespread damage to the entire garden that is not limited to only a few species of plants or trees.

As a gardener you may now be wondering what you can do to get those graceful creatures to move on and leave your garden in peace.  While some may welcome this problem as an opportunity to replenish their venison supply in the refrigerator, others do not wish to harm these beautiful creatures.  For those in the latter category, there are a number of remedies, some of which sound a bit far-fetched, that some folks will swear by.  While there does not appear to be a tried and true method that will control your particular deer problem at a level of one-hundred percent, the remedies are so varied and inexpensive, that one is bound to work on your specific herd of invaders and aid you in deer-proofing your yard.

Many swear by the use of cayenne pepper around the perimeter of the portion of your property you wish to protect.  Be sure to use fresh cayenne pepper, and not the stuff that has been languishing in the back of your pantry since purchasing the spice rack thirteen years ago.  Odds are that by now it has lost much of its pungency and therefore also effectiveness.  Be sure to reapply the cayenne pepper after extensive watering and rainfall.

Applying a single strand of strong fishing line around the portion of your garden you wish to protect is said to confuse deer to such an extend that they will move on, since they do not seem to be able to figure out what causes the invisible barrier.  Of course, others have reported that this has led to deer actually attempting to jump over the invisible barrier, doing more damage to plants by trampling them in the process.

Deer have an extreme dislike for mint and sage, and inter-planting these herbs with your flowers may discourage deer from continuing to forage on your property.

Another method of deterring deer is to spread goat urine, but this might be hard to come by unless your next-door neighbor happens to raise goats.

Substances, such as “Liquid Fence Deer Repellant” may be sprayed on surfaces most likely to be chewed by deer.  Success is said to be rather high, but only if the substance is reapplied at least every two weeks.

Prune lower branches of trees that might attract deer.

Some swear by a substance known as blood meal which may be bought at gardening supply stores and which is said to frighten deer away.  Others report that the deer appear to be unimpressed by the substance and continue their foraging.

If the damage is so widespread that you will have to replant your yard, consider using deer-resistant plants.  While no plant is completely deer-resistant in the face of a starving herd, there are a number of plants that will convince deer to move on and look for vittles elsewhere. Amongst them are spruces, junipers, pines, rhododendron, hydrangea, ferns, ivy, echinacea, iris, lupines, and many others. Your neighborhood nursery should be able to give you more information on the kinds of shrubs, trees, and flowers that will grow in your area.  Additionally, most deer resistant plants are also labeled thusly.

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