"elfa" wrote in

I'm in the city limits but the city limits include lots of undeveloped
open
space with lots of wild life. Being only 1/4 mile from hills loaded with
wild
oak trees etc, we get everything from deer to possum to skunk to racoon.
What
was left of my roses got hammered again last night and so did my
neighbors.

elfa

Hi elfa,

We too have deer and because of my distraction
with other things we were paid a very unwelcome
visit by them about three weeks ago that decimated
an extraordinary show in all of the beds outside.
My fault for not spraying but I was working on
something else and everything was so luscious
and beautiful that deer was the last thing from my mind.

Here is what has worked for us. It is similar to a brand
named DeerOff and it works. At least it has worked when
we sprayed it ;)

3 eggs left outside at least for a couple of days in the sun
2 heads of garlic (not two cloves, two whole heads)
1 small bottle of Tabasco

Put the eggs in a blender with the garlic and the Tabasco
and add about 1 and 1/2 cups of water and blend at
high speed to make a liquid formula of it. Strain carefully
(it stinks but it works and that is what counts) into your
sprayer and add enough water to the sprayer to make
one gallon of liquid. ( You can make it weaker than this
by adding another half a gallon of water and still will
work, but I like to keep them way away from the whole
garden so we use it concentrated to a gallon ) -

It will stay on the roses even after rain, and the noxious
odor will disappear to a human nose in a couple of hours
but the deer will still smell it for at least 4 weeks. At least
here. We spray ours in the evening to avoid any kind of
disagreeable smells to us, and since the deer visit at night
they learn that the place is covered with something they
don't like and stay away.

Good luck and I hope it works for you as well as it has
for us when we remember to spray it ;)

Allegra