Plant these to keep deer away
Q. The deer are eating everything I want to plant. What can I plant to have a beautiful garden that they won’t eat.
Jen from North Jackson
A. Like me, you have heard it before and maybe fell for the promise, ‘Deer will not eat this plant.” Then, you purchase, you plant it and you wake up one morning and the plant has been chewed to the ground. Nothing is more frustrating.
Truth be told, deer will eat just about any plant, but they do have menu likes and dislikes. What you need are zone 5 hardy perennials and annuals that are not Bambi favorites. Send those deer back into the woods or at least off your property. The strategy – build your plant library with varieties that are not deer favorites.
First know what they really like to eat. Apples, rhododendrons, hosta, tulips, and roses are at the top of the yummy list. Deer will feast on vegetables, flower beds, shrubs, trees, leaves, grass, fruits, berries, and even fungi and lichen. A deer will consume five to 10 pounds of plant material per day. Deer are big, smart, quiet, and efficient at scouting out food. They can remember past experiences with food. They easily become unafraid of people, cars and pets. They feed all night, in the morning when they see you and you chase them off, they have full tummies and don’t mind heading back into the woods or across the road.
So, what don’t they like? Highly scented and strong-flavored plants are not favorites. Maybe those old-fashioned stinky marigolds are a good garden perimeter after all. Perennials they will shy away from are daffodils, hyacinths, yarrow, ferns, columbine, foxglove, iris, lavender and peonies. More perennial deer non favorites include bee balm (great for pollinators), blue bells, coreopsis, blanket flowers, sage, asters, black-eyed Susan, catmint, chamomile, lungwort, lily-of-the-valley, meadow rue, rosemary and sea holly. A plant they really hate is garlic. Asparagus is shunned by deer – they will walk away. You might try a garlic or asparagus boarder around your garden and be able to harvest some good eats for yourself. They also don’t much like lilac, buckeye trees, butterfly bushes, and viburnum. Annuals they shy from are anything with a rough texture, like heliotrope, ageratum, zinnias, and sunflowers. Also, plants with milky sap are not first choice – like milkweed.
I like the natural ways to deter deer, I shy away from using chemicals in my garden even to deter deer, so I use a marigold rim method. I don’t like their fragrance; neither do deer.
You might try installing fence at least 8 feet high. Most materials are expensive, but 8-foot deer netting is not too bad. Repellants and sprays can be reasonable, but most must be reapplied after each rain. I collected hair from the salon and spread it around, wind blew it away. So, I don’t recommend that.
We may not win the war with deer. However, planting perennials, annuals, and shrubs that are not deer candy just may win a few battles. For a list of plants by deer rating, visit http://go.osu.edu/deerrating.
Marilyn McKinley is an OSU Extension master gardener volunteer in Mahoning County. Winter hours for the Plant and Pest Diagnostic Clinic vary. Submit questions to the clinic at 330-533-5538 or drop samples off to the OSU Extension Office in Canfield.