On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 16:44:28 GMT, "pluckey" wrote:

I live in Ne P.A and would like to plant some things without the deer
population eating them. I could fence them in but decided I don't like the
whole fence thing,

I've seen that around. Big half-million dollar homes with gardens
and front yards that look like prisons.

What kind of flowers, shrubs, bushes can be planted without fear of deer
eating them? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Chop down some norway maples. The deer will eat the maple leaves and
leave your own garden alone. N-maples are exotic invasives in the
northeast, and I'm sure you have at least a few around the house.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to tell apart sugar maples from norways.
Norways have a much pointier leaf ends, and many more points in
general than sugar maple leaves. Norways also grow in very dense
shade. The bark of a norway maple is beige when young to gray when
older, whereas a sugar maple's bark is a lot darker. The best time to
tell them apart is fall, when norways become brown & gold, with no
red. Sugar maples have at least a tinge of red in the leaves, but
chopping norways in fall doesn't exactly help plants now during the
summertime Makes for good winter firewood, though....

Leaving flat chicken wire 6"-12" high in a radius around your plants
will also deter deer. They cannot escape quickly, and their legs
could be trapped in the chicken wire, so they avoid it (unless there's
unnaturally large (20-30) herds of starving deer walking around your
area, in which case they'll risk just about anything).

Black plastic netting on the plant itself will also help, but the
netting drags down the plant itself. Just about any repellant will
eventually wash off, nor will new growth be protected from being
eaten.

Dan