Beans (left) and strawberries (right) were casualties of the deer.
All right, Bambi, I know it was you…and you’re in big trouble! Sunday night, I went down to the garden to pick some beets for dinner, and was horrified to discover the leaves on all my strawberry plants were gone. It looked like someone had mowed them down with a weed-wacker. The beans got it too, even though I managed to salvage some of them (shown on the left, the beans are “Royalty Purple Pod” and yes, they are purple, but turn green when cooked.) It seems deer also like tomato plants, because one of mine had the top eaten off.
How to get rid of deer? I’ve heard of some crazy solutions, such as sprinkling human hair around the garden, or shaved bars of Irish Spring soap. Any other ideas? If so let me know!
Oh deer! A tomato plant got eaten, too!
The evidence!
Aaaccckkk! Not good! I am so sorry this happened. When there are such setbacks for me, and I am always thankful that it is not 100 years earlier and I was not counting on that food for survival!
The exact same thing happened to my daughter’s MIL’s garden here in Co Sprgs which happens to be inside a six-foot deer fence (everyone told her she should make it at least eight feet tall, but she opted for six.) The deer got all of her strawberries (in a 6×6 foot raised bed, and a good portion of her beet greens. There seems to be a common consensus that deer have recently begun eating things that in year’s past were thought to be deer-proof, so planting those seem to not be a deterrent. (She also had a coyote defecate in the middle of here spinach bed. She was especially upset by that.)
Hope you guys find a solution.
How do you salvage the plants after that happens? It happened to me last night and now I don’t know what to do. It’s fairly late in the year (sept. 9.) so I’m not sure if the strawberry plants will regrow leaves in time to survive the winter. Any thoughts?
Hello Tristen, After this happened, I continued watering the strawberry plants in the hopes that the leaves would return and I would still get a late summer harvest. When I saw that wasn’t happening, I covered them with a bit of pine needle mulch (about 2 weeks ago), continued watering, and I have recently seen green leaves peeking through. I don’t know what next spring will bring, but I can only hope I will have strawberries. Good luck and let me know how it turns out!