In article , Janet Baraclough
wrote:
The message
from (paghat) contains these words:
The next few seasonal cycles will be a learning experience for me. So far
the deer have never really much bothered rhodies, but go for berrying
shrubs & roses, & of course the lawns which they're welcome to crop to
heart's delight (or hart's delight).
What shrubs/foliage they eat isn't enough to be a serious problem,
the real damage deer do in a garden is bark-rubbing when their new
antlers are itchy with velvet....they can completely de-bark the trunk
of youthful trees, and kill them; or at least spoil enough branches to
wreck a magnolia etc.
This has already been done to some birches, stripped halfway around from
rubbing. I kind of was "glad" of the excuse to replace a couple of those
too-many birches with broader trees anyway. Of all the trees that might've
been rubbed, the birches were the least consequential so the best choice
for getting damaged. But if/when the day comes that the same thing is done
to trees I planted, that will be a less lucky happenstance.
Once they pick on a tree as a rubbing-place, they
keep going at the same one, so at the first shred you need to protect
the tree with wire, brush, spray, hanging a sweaty T shirt on it, or
whatever.
I'll bare that in mind, though the so-called repellants seem to be awfully
hit-&-miss judging by sundry on-line reports with many folks whining that
no matter what was sprayed on a tree the bark got rubbed.
The other damage is when stags paw the ground at each other. That can
chew up a fair bit of lawn in a night.
--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl:
http://www.paghat.com
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