Recipes for Deterring Pesky Critters

Whitetail Deer: Lovely to look at, Devastating to the Garden

Arrgh! Those pesky deer cruised through and ate all my… Yikes – my new broccoli plants vanished overnight! What happened to my tulips – the buds are all chewed off!!

Do any of those exclamations sound familiar? Almost every gardener, at one time or another, finds their prized plants chewed, nibbled or devoured by some pesky critter. It could be squirrels, gophers, deer or rabbits doing their sneaky tricks while your back is turned or you are sleeping.

What to do is the big question, and unfortunately, there are absolutely no definitive answers. Trap and release? Deterrents? Scare devices? 8 foot fences? All work and none work, depending on the problem beast, the hunger and the bold brassiness of the pest. What one deer refuses to touch, another will look upon as the most delicious meal.

However, here are a few recipes you can try. I’ve found the first one to work, deterring deer from devouring all the new red leaves on my Photina shrubs.

Deer Repellent:

• 3 raw eggs
• 3 tbls. of red hot sauce (the hotter the better)
• 3 tbls. of garlic juice or minced garlic

Add enough water to a blender to process and mix well. Add this to a gallon of water and allow it to sit out in the sun for a day to ripen. Strain it, and spray on plants. You can make the spray last longer by adding Wilt Proof or a tablespoon of cooking oil  to it.

Here’s another:

• 1 cup sour milk, sour cream, or buttermilk
• 2 eggs beaten and strained
• 5 drops liquid dish soap
• five drops cooking oil or dormant oil
• 20 drops of essential oil of cloves

Top off in a 1 gallon container with water. Shake well. Spray as a light mist. Respray every 2-3 weeks.

If squirrels are chomping your tulip or other flower buds such as rhodos, try this. It should work to deter rabbits also:

• 2 tbsp cayenne pepper
• 1 quart hot water
• 1 tsp oil (horticultural or cooking)

Mix the cayenne into the hot water and let it cool. Strain it, put in a spray bottle, add the oil and shake. Spray onto buds while they’re still green.

And if you’re interested in scary tactics, here’s a device available on Amazon that has pretty good success:

GuardenerTM is equipped with 2 ways to deter deer. First, it issues an ultrasonic alarm which can only be heard by the animals, and a pressurized water jet that will scare the deer. The device uses a motion sensor to detect the presence of nearby animals. You can set the detecting area by adjusting the sensitivity knob. Detection range can be adjusted from 15 to 25 feet. Different weather conditions may slightly alter ranges.

A unique feature of The Guardener is that it uses both ultrasound and water blast to repel animals. The sprinkler can rotate up to 170 degrees and shooting pressurized water as far as 17 to 22 feet. It has a built in tank that can hold about 3.5 gallons of water. It is solar powered so there is no need for electricity or batteries.