Oh, deer!

Over the years, Brian and I have faced a variety of pest threats in our vegetable garden. We had to go through several iterations to develop a fence capable of keeping out groundhogs, and we gave up on eggplant in 2012 after losing our entire crop — four tiny eggplants no bigger than my thumb — to squirrels. We've battled with varying degrees of success against rats and, of course, against the pesky squash vine borers that infest our zucchini. (We're hoping that we've finally managed to foil them this year with Bt spray.)

But the one four-legged pest we've always thought our garden was fairly safe from was deer. Not only was the garden itself fenced against groundhogs, but it was in a back yard surrounded by four to six feet of chain link fence on all four sides. And, on top of that, deer just didn't tend to wander into our neighborhood, which is about a mile from the park and wooded areas they call home. In the 14 years since buying this place, we'd seen deer only a handful of times on our property, and only once in the back yard.

But alas, that is no longer the case. Over the past few years, the deer population in our area has steadily grown — a trend that was apparently accelerated by the pandemic, which cut down on their main predator (traffic). And as they grew more numerous, they started ranging farther afield in source of food. So in the past year or so, it hasn't been uncommon to see deer walking through residential neighborhoods and browsing in yards. We've spotted them several times in our front yard eating grass or browsing on the lower leaves of the plum trees, but they didn't impinge on the vegetable garden until last month, when Brian went out to water and caught one red-hoofed eating our beans. When it saw him, it leapt over both the garden fence and the chain link fence behind that in a single bound, as easily as you might step over a crack in the sidewalk.

It's not clear how long the deer had been out there, but it had managed to do quite a bit of damage. It ate all the pods off our snap pea vines and most of the vines themselves, effectively eliminating any chance of our getting more of a crop than the three measly ounces we'd managed to harvest so far. It also ate quite a bit of lettuce and nibbled off the tops of a bunch of the green bean plants and a good portion of one pepper plant. The only things left unscathed were the prickly squash and cucumber vines, the highly aromatic herbs and onions, and the tomato plants, which I guess just don't taste very good.

So at this point, two things were clear. First, if we wanted to have any sort of harvest at all, we'd have to find some way to keep deer out of the garden. And second, trying to fence them out of the entire back yard was more or less useless. The chain link fence was no barrier to them at all, and even if we were willing to go to the trouble and expense of installing a stockade fence high enough to deter them, it would block out the sunlight our plants need.

Since our makeshift invisible deer fence has been pretty successful at protecting the flowers in our front yard, I was all for trying to figure out a way to add something like that around the garden enclosure. But Brian was convinced that wouldn't work. In the first place, the posts at the corners of the existing fence aren't tall enough, and even if we could extend them somehow, we'd have to leave a gap where the gate is so we could get in and out, which would also leave an opening for the deer. And besides, they would still be able to see the lower portion of the fence, so they wouldn't hesitate to jump over it.

Brian thought our best strategy would be to block their access to the back yard from the side yard. Although deer could get into our back yard from either of the neighbors' yards or from the parking lot behind us, he thought the side yard was probably their primary route of entry. There's only one barrier for them to jump over there (the garden gate), and it's not a particularly high one. But what could we add to that area that would be a barrier to the deer, but not to us?

Brian's makeshift attempt at a solution was to grab a handful of long bamboo stakes we'd originally bought for staking the taller plants in our flowerbed (spoiler alert: that didn't work) and use them to increase the height of the fence in the side yard. He did this by threading them into the existing fence along a diagonal, creating a crisscross pattern on top. This design raised the height of the fence by a foot or so while still allowing the garden gate to swing open. The flimsy stakes wouldn't actually be much of a barrier to a determined deer, but he hoped they'd form enough of a visual barrier to deter them from attempting the jump.

Alas, this was not successful. Early this morning, he spotted another deer in the garden and ran downstairs to chase it away (first arming himself with one of our patio chairs, lion-tamer-style). To evade him, the deer first jumped right over the remaining chairs and table on the patio, then sailed over the garden gate, right between the gaps in the bamboo stakes. He has since attempted to reinforce the crisscross pattern with a few more stakes pointing straight upward, but frankly, I'm not optimistic.

So I'm now looking into other strategies for keeping deer away. An article at Savvy Gardening proposes several strategies:

1. Plant only deer-resistant plants. Since we're selecting plants on the basis of what we want to eat (and are capable of growing), that's not a good approach for us.
2. Use deer repellent sprays. The problem with these is that, in addition to needing to be reapplied "religiously," they generally smell vile and would be equally effective at deterring us from entering our own garden to water, weed, and harvest. Some that don't smell too bad are bars of soap, bags of human hair, and predator urine, but the author says these also don't work that well.
3. Scare them away. Shiny and noisy things don't work for long, but the author says motion-activated sprinklers will genuinely freak the deer out. But they'd also be a big hassle for us to install and move around frequently as suggested, not to mention we'd frequently get sprayed by them ourselves. And they'd use a lot of water.
   
4. Build a fence that works. This could mean:

• A fence they can't see through, since deer will only jump a fence if they can see what's on the other side. This doesn't work for us, because it would create too much shade.
• A barrier of "large, irregularly shaped rocks," which deer don't like to walk on. The problem here is that we're not that crazy about walking on them ourselves, and we would need to in order to enter the garden.
• An electric fence. Not crazy about this option, since it's a lot of work and also poses a hazard for us and other wildlife.
• A double fence. This seems like the most feasible approach. Basically, it would involve erecting a second fence four to five feet outside the existing garden enclosure. A single four-foot fence isn't a barrier for deer, but two fences that height are too much to clear in a single bound and too close together for two.
  

So our next garden project is likely to be the construction of an outer fence, probably just a simple one made from posts and deer netting or chicken wire. This one won't need to keep out groundhogs, so it won't need a skirt or a baffle like our current groundhog fence. It also won't need to go all the way around the garden on all four sides, since the shed and the rear fence form a barrier on two sides. We can just run the fencing from the back fence to one post on the left side, across to a second post on the right side, and then back as far as the shed. And, of course, we'll need a second gate in front of the first so we can get through.

This is a big job, so we probably won't get started on it until next weekend at the earliest. Watch this space for news of how the construction goes, and how successful it is (or isn't) at foiling deer intruders.