Re: Our antlered "friends"

At 09:06 PM 7/27/97 -0600, Marte Halleck wrote:
>Neither seems to relish Alliums either, tho some have been stomped in 
>the eagerness to get at the Coreposis or other delectable. And neither 
>deer nor elk will eat my nemisis, the thistles!
>
>The deer-proof lists I see in magazines & catalogs vary a lot but then 
>deer are goats & will eat practically anything if they're really hungry. 
>Elk are a tad more selective but their feet & bodies are so much bigger 
>they devastate garden areas just investigating to see what they *might* 
>add to their diet.

I can second that they will eat anything at all.  This spring they were
hungry enough to eat (and trample) my Pseudacorus, Beardeds and Siberians.
All they left untouched were the JI's.  The only really consistently safe
plants here are the daffs and japanese barberry, which is quite thorny.

I live in a clearing in the woods and have tried all kinds of things to
keep them away.  The only consistent success has been from two large dogs
(now deceased) and fencing.  I've found that they get used to any kind of
scent deterrents rather quickly.  They ate daylilys, which had a bag of
dried blood within inches, right to the ground.

Some months ago (as an exercise in html) I put together several web pages
about deer deterrance and resistent plants.  You can find them at:
http://www.borg.com/~dennis/deer.html  You can download a long list of
plants categorized according to resistance from a sub page.  This list was
put together by a group of master gardeners in Westchester county in New York.

Dennis Mathiasen
zone 4b Central NY
dennis@borg.com
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index