The Minnesota Knitters Guild picnic was last night — it was great! Really good food and lots of knitters — both newbies and not so newbies. There was such a positive vibe in the air.  And I received three more shawls for Wrapped in Care — we also had ten afghans ready for the Project Little Lambs program. You rock, MKG Members!!
QUESTION: How do you keep deer from nibbling the !##$%^%$&* out of your plants? We have one little deer (very small deer tracks) that nibbled a huge chunk out of a newly planted tree in our front yard. I do not want to lose our tree!
I taught a knitting class for another teacher tonight. It was fun to get back into teaching mode again. It has been a while! Too long a while. It was a beginning cable class. It’s always fun to see the lightbulb go on when they see that cables are really just about knitting the stitches in the “wrong” order — and that you don’t do much of anything in between. Lots of bang for the buck! Not that cables can’t be complex, but they don’t need to be hard to have a lot of impact. I think my next big project will have to be Am Kamin!
Sally should be back soon and may have some stories to share. It sure seems like summer is moving at a lightning pace, doesn’t it??
To keep deer from nibbling your shrubbery… go to a store that sells hunting stuff. Ask for Coyote pee or some other pee that will scare the deer away. When you get it home, put on some latex gloves and put it in a small spray bottle then spray all around the plant with it. The deer will leave it alone, as will anything else that smells it.
Comment by Lynne — July 17, 2008 @ 11:06 am
Try sprinkling the tree with cayenne every so often.
Comment by Cadi — July 17, 2008 @ 2:13 pm
I must say I took classes years ago that included cables, entrelac, fair isle, and pattern reading. It was a great deal of fun and the small, intimate, group of us quickly became friend. I miss it! I often think I should sign up just for the sheer fun of it (along with designated knitting time) but the classes are sooooooo expensive that I just cannot justify spending the $$ when I really don’t need the actual lesson.
Comment by Michelle — July 17, 2008 @ 4:00 pm
We don’t get much deer around here 😉 I sure wish I could take a class from you!
Comment by Carol — July 17, 2008 @ 4:02 pm
Hey Susan:
We lived on a hilltop with a large garden and a herd of deer. We found that the predator scents didn’t work for very long. The most effective device we found was a sprinkler with a motion detector. Spooked the deer every time. Connects to a regular garden hose. Noisy, with a fairly dramatic stream of water which goes off for a minute or two and then turns itself back off. We moved it every three or four days. Stick it into the ground facing the tree about six or eight feet away. Works anytime you are not in the garden, and sometimes when you are – occasional showers when your forget feel pretty good this time of year. They can be purchased through various gardening catalogs and sometimes at a Home Depot or Lowes. Good luck.
Comment by Jane — July 17, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
deer, deer. just thought about those critters today. all of the “keep ’em away” things work. . .a little. . .until the rain comes. then it is do-over time. i’ve moved the stuff deer love close to my house (where they wouldn’t dare nibble) and stick to plants deer won’t eat for all the other spots. they love tulips but won’t touch daffs, for instance. oh, and they hate pinwheels!!!!
Comment by sheila — July 17, 2008 @ 6:21 pm
As deer repellant, my friends swear by hanging up little cloth sacks (or easier if you’ve got ’em, pantyhose feet) containing human hair trimmings (if you ask at a salon they probably won’t be surprised). One farmer I know hangs old clothes at the end of every long row of veggies – again, the human smell. One person told me doing that *plus* spraying deodorant *on* the clothes does the trick. Apparently deer (at least the ones after *his* garden) don’t like the way humans smell, *or* the way they smell when wearing deodorant so they won’t smell to each other 🙂
Personally, I stay away from the predator urine repellants, because I just don’t like the idea of wild animals such as bobcats and coyotes being held captive in cages so that people can collect and sell their urine. The image makes me feel sick. But that’s just me.
Comment by quinn — July 17, 2008 @ 8:02 pm
I’m ba-a-a-a-ack!
Comment by surly — July 17, 2008 @ 9:37 pm
Back in the 1980s they sold stiff plastic made in a spiral, to be wrapped around young fruit tree trunks, which are like candy for deer. I don’t know whether they still sell it. The spiral shape meant it would expand as the tree grew, so it was no-maintenance.
Comment by =Tamar — July 18, 2008 @ 3:03 am
We live in an area with a lot of deer. I see them very frequently. There is one group with about nine. I do a lot of gardening and when we first moved here, not knowing there were this many deer, I planted hundreds of azaleas – a favorite of deer. At any rate I had a huge problem. I will never forget the morning I woke up to find that all the day lilies recently planted, which were blooming the night before, were totally gone. The product that has worked extremely well for me is called Deer Off. I recommend it highly. I believe it works with rabbits as well. It lasts about three months. One nursery owner told me that he thought that deer were more attracted to younger plants – something about the fertilizer… Which answered a huge question – many of my neighbors had very mature azaleas untouched by the deer – but my newly planted azaleas were looking like twigs with no leaves. My goal was to get the azaleas from the youngster stage to more maturity. And I met that goal.
I worry about the deer having enough to eat. I do spray my azaleas, day lilies and winter pansies. The rest, and there is a lot, they can have.
Comment by denise copeland — July 18, 2008 @ 8:16 am
My grandparents have trouble with deer nibbling on their trees. My Gram takes the small hotel size soap and cut it in half
and puts a hole in it. She uses string to hang them on the tree. It’s lightweight enough to not burden the small tree and
there aren’t any harsh chemicals for the little ones running around to be exposed to. And it’s cheap. 🙂
Comment by Janette — July 18, 2008 @ 9:49 am
The best way to deter deer is to rethink how you garden. Deer love certain plants (hosta, tulips) and hate others (daffodils, hemerocallis, bleeding heart, lamia). The trick is to outline your yard with the “yucky” plants that will deter the deer. Deer don’t like the feel of spiny leaves (like lamia or lamb’s ears). If it smells or feels bad to the deer, they probably won’t trespass up closer to nibble on the goodies.
There are several good websites and books that detail the deer- proof garden. They will give listings of appropriate plants. The MN horticultural society is a fountain of information as well. I plant my shady areas with lamia, bleeding heart, dead nettle, and lily of the valley. Sunny areas get peonys, daffodils, day lilies, deer proof grasses, echinacia, rudbeckia, and sedum. I gave up on tulips when those #$%^& deer ate $50 worth of bulbs up in one evening.
Comment by Celeste — July 18, 2008 @ 2:18 pm
We live where there are bunches of deer, huge numbers! When we used to raise and sell vegetables at the local farmers market, we stumbled on an effective method of deer protection: 4′ tall rolls of 4″ square woven wire fencing. No, you don’t fence the tree, you lay fencing on top of a few 2/4’s or branches, anything that will raise the fencing a few inches off the ground, to create an elevated ‘moat’ of fencing around whatever you are protecting. I guess the deer don’t like stepping somewhere that feels like it might entangle their feet (but I’m practicing deer psychology without a license here). We went from the deer taking out whole crops overnight to no deer damage whatsoever after we started doing this. Probably not attractive around an apple tree in your yard, though…
The spiral plastic stuff is still sold and helps protect against anything that might eat the bark, but won’t help with deer nibbling off the ends of branches!
Comment by Tess — July 19, 2008 @ 3:13 pm
Hair seems to be a good deterent. Both for deer and rabbits. And it’s free. Just call your salon and ask them to save you some. It will last quite a while before it loses its scent. I’ve used and it works for me.
Comment by Pam/2muchfun — July 20, 2008 @ 8:50 am
Susan- The great thing about summer going fast is all the new Fall magazines and things- prime knitting season.
When I first learned to cable I thought it was a miracle- I couldn’t believe it was that simple,
Comment by Lorraine — July 21, 2008 @ 10:56 am
Actually, all you really need is a male member of your household to pee around your tree. If you want to be more discreet (say you live in a neighborhood) you can give him a coffee can to pee into in the garage and then go sprinkle it around your tree.
Also, don’t forget to protect the trunk. Deer can kill trees just by rubbing up against the bark. They will rub the bark off and then the tree will die. You can split that black flexible tubing they use to redirect gutters lenghtwise and wrap a section around the trunk up to where the branches start. It won’t look fantastic, but your tree should live to see another season.
Watch out. We used to have 2-3 deer herding around our house. Now 8 years on they’ve multiplied to over 10 deer. Very prolific.
Comment by Lauren — July 21, 2008 @ 5:06 pm
I was told that a bar of “Irish Spring” soap, placed on the ground near the plants you want to keep, works wonders. I always knew that stuff had to be good for something…yuck.
Comment by Renee — July 21, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
I worked for the Virginia Extension Service when the study on Irish Spring came out of one of our horticulture stations. It is somewhat effective. I’ve had good luck with Liquid Fence, which is basically putrefied eggs and cayenne. But I don’t recommend making your own!
Comment by twinsetellen — July 21, 2008 @ 10:19 pm
Liquid Fence works! it stinks like rotten eggs for the first day but it stops the deer. If I dont use it they eat the flowers and destroy most of the plants- even the ones they are not supposed to like. I put it on once a week( more than you need to) since spring just becausese I am having a wedding here in August.I forgot to do one planter at start of June and they pulled all the geraniums out and ate the flowers . When I replanted them and used the stuff- no problems since.
Comment by kathleen — July 23, 2008 @ 5:02 pm