One for me. One for the birds. One for me. One for the birds.
That's the mantra my mother taught me when we planted seeds in the vegetable garden. She didn't mind sharing her garden with the robins and to a degree, I go along with that idea.
Maybe deer and rabbits didn't get the memo, however, because between them, they eat everything I plant in two gardens both in the city and at the lake.
In my home garden the rabbits are already nibbling away at the daffodils. Every evening they hop in and chow down. It can only get worse as the summer progresses. Anyone whose mother ever read Peter Rabbit to them knows how much rabbits like lettuce. Very likely even that darned old Mr. MacGregor knew, rabbits chew everything right down to the ground. First they eat the daffodils, then the daisies and later in the season, they are not above digging up a carrot or two. I imagine a nice pink petunia or an orange nasturtium makes a nice change of diet for them come mid-summer.
We have a vegetable garden at our lake lot northeast of St. Albert. Every May for 30 years I've planted vegetable seeds. Every year for 30 years the gophers, mice and deer ate most of it.
I discovered gophers don't like onions so one year I planted a pea seed and an onion so the row had a pea and an onion a pea and an onion. The next week I hurried out to look at our country garden and saw a row where all that remained was a hole and an onion, a hole and an onion. We had lots of onions that year. No peas.
Gophers, or Richardson's ground squirrels as they are more properly called, also don't like potatoes. They don't eat the plants at all. Many times in the fall, however, we would go out to dig our spuds for the winter and find potatoes all over the garden with one bite taken out of them. There were no witnesses but I'm still blaming the gophers for that one. I've speculated they took a bite, spit it out and then used the potatoes as footballs.
A few years ago a friendly owl took care of our gopher problem but then the deer moved in at about the same time as we had grandchildren.
Here's how it goes these days. "Ssh! See the deer! Aww! Oh look! Take a picture! There's a spotted fawn too! Ssh! Aww! And double aww! In fact, awws all around from grandma and grandpa and everyone else too. "Aww!" Nothing gets an aww and a photo like a doe and a fawn nibbling the veggies in the garden.
Last year I tried planting two rows of beets because beet greens are the deer's absolute favourite and, of course, I kept thinking of that old mantra of my mother's. It didn't work. The deer simply ate two rows of beet greens and then progressed to the peas and the beans. It's noteworthy that deer seem to like bean sprouts better than peas and they don't like the onions or potatoes any better than the gophers did.
Pepper and pee
There are commercial deer and rabbit deterrents available. Products such as Skoot, Plantskydd and Bobbex discourage deer and rabbits but I don't grow a big enough garden to resort to chemicals. Tree growers do use the products to keep the deer from eating bark through the winter.
A number of phone calls this week to rural greenhouses showed that most garden centre owners, especially those concerned with food production, share my sentiments. Still they also suggested a few old folksy remedies.
"If you want to discourage deer, hang hair on the fence," said Lily Lemiski of Lily's Greenhouses. "Last year we went to a local beauty salon and asked for some hair clippings then we stuffed the hair into some pantyhose, hung it on the fence and we haven't seen a deer since. It worked."
Fencing is effective too if it's high enough. Deer can easily jump six feet and fencing is expensive if all you're trying to save is a row of beets. Dogs help keep both rabbits and deer away, Lemiski said.
Deer seem to be most put off by dog or human scents so that may be why the hair works. Urine is said to be another deterrent, but who could pee on their own vegetables? Coyote urine is an ingredient listed in some commercial products but that just brings other questions to mind. How the heck do they get coyote urine?
Some rabbit deterrents involve lots of cheap powdered cayenne pepper sprinkled liberally near the daffodils. Just don't lean over yourself to inhale the perfume of your own flowers as you may ingest the red powdered hot stuff.
"Try cayenne pepper for the rabbits. It works for cats, too, said Anne Bolton, of Bolton's Nursery. "But I've heard that if you grate something perfumey, like Irish Spring soap and put it here and there in the garden in little jar lids, that will keep both rabbits and mice away. Mothballs deter mice and probably rabbits, but if you have small children around you wouldn't like to put mothballs in the garden in case they pick them up and eat them."
One Internet remedy is intriguing but with every solution it seems, there are drawbacks. The old-time suggestion from the State of Arkansas suggests keeping deer away by coating the leaves of your plants with a potion made by beating an egg into a quart of water together with a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and a tablespoon of liquid detergent. You spray this concoction onto your leaves and soon the sun will make the egg turn rotten and it will stink. If the deer gets past the rotten-egg smell, the theory goes, it may still bite the leaves but the cayenne will burn Bambi's tongue and put him off beet greens forever.
Throw in a tablespoon of urine, your own or a local coyote's, and it's a done deal. No more deer.
Well, it might work in Arkansas. Then again, I could just plant three rows of beets and hope for the best.
