as a maintenance gardener on a small island, i have made use of this spray for 5 years with dramatic results .. just want to pass it along .. 1 tablespoon of baking powder 1 egg yolk 1 litre of water blend gently, put in sprayer, spray all plants every 2-3 weeks (regardless of rainfall), or when thoughts of deer come to mind .. you'll be so happy ..
I understand that there's a sound system (actually a small tuner/amplifier hooked to a small speaker speaker that plays the growls of a hungry cougar, which discourages Bambi from hanging about) and that it's available in the States. I contacted a nursery down south a couple of years ago and they had it but I didn't buy it at the time: now I can't find an address. Also the net has no record (or one I can find) but that's where I first ran into the device. If anyone knows of the product, where available and if it works the deer would hate you but you'd earn my everlasting love. Cheers Rockand in Victoria.
I use a deer repellant spray in my nursery. My sister on Van island has also used this to ward off the deer from her hostas. The trick is to be consistant. Spray every 2 weeks if its raining (usually when plants are actively putting on new foliage) and every 6 in the sunshine during summer. In a 1 gallon sprayer, put 2 beaten & strained eggs (strain them or they will plug your sprayer). Add 1 cup of milk, yogurt, sour milk or the like 1 tsp of liquid dish soap ( can use safer's soap if you have a bug problem too) 1 tsp of liquid cooking oil (helps it stick and stay on the plant) 30 drops of essential herb oils (can buy a 2 month supply size vial from most health food stores or the health isle in the big stores. Buy 'essential' oils as they are the most concentrated.) Top off the tank with water and pump it up. You only need to mist your plants and don't have to spray them until run-off. The trick to this recipe is that deer hate eggs and milk and most herbs. I use clove, oregano, and found they don't like the smell of eucalyptus or cinnamon oil also. Every so often I vary the smell with a different herb. I can mist my whole nursery and the trilliums in my 3 acre forest in under 1/2 hour. Apparently you can add 1 tsp of hot tobasco to this for rabbit problems but I found it pugged my sprayer. The deer were eating all of my seed stock trilliums planted in the forest. I started using this spray and the first year the odd one still was eaten or a bite taken from the leaf. The second year, just the odd bite. The third year, I was slow in getting out to spray the trilliums and thought they would all be eaten but the deer had associated the smell with the trilliums and the trilliums were safely blooming away in the forest! Of course I still spray them as new deer coming into the territory won't know about the smell and I don't want to take any chances!
This formula had worked for us for two years, when all of a sudden, this summer (the third one), it ceased being effective. The damned deer are munching on our hostas even though sprayed as in the previous two years. Do the critters eventually get used to it ? Or perhaps the dry summer here in Québec has caused low food production in the surrounding forest, and they stomach the taste of the spray out of starving desperation ? Are there other animals that like hostas besides deer ?
