Keeping Deer Out of the Lilies
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- May
- 13
I inherited a few ever-expanding patches of day lilies. Like much of our old chicken farm, they were so covered with weeds, brush and collapsed fencing that I could hardly find them.
After many years of weeding and clearing, these swaths of day lilies have come along quite nicely. Here’s a look from last July.
But as any Hudson Valley gardener knows, a patch of day lilies looks just like a salad bar to deer. It seems they wait till just the night before the lilies come into flower to attack the buds.
In recent years I’ve put very simple fencing around the lilies in spring, before they grow too tall. It’s just clothes line rope around a few stakes.
Even though it’s just a foot or two tall, it spooks the deer and keeps them out of the lilies — at least for a while.
It’s a trick I learned from Brad Roeller of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook. Here’s a link to their Web site, with lots of good info on Strategies for Protecting Your Landscape From Deer Browsing.
Brad gives fairly frequent talks in the area on how to keep deer out of your garden and he’s got lots of tricks like this. Any sort of barrier can work to keep deer out because they don’t have good depth of field vision.
I also spray the lilies every two to three weeks with my own brand of deer repellent mixed in occasionally with commercial brands like Liquid Fence. You want to keep changing what you use so they don’t get used to any particular scent or taste.
While fencing the patch by the old outhouse …
… I remembered seeing the vague remains of a stone path from the back door to the outhouse when we first moved in.
We’re redoing our front bluestone walkway and on the hunt for good stones we can use.
Sure enough, we found a treasure trove of flat bluestone buried under the lilies. It’s amazing what you can do with a simple crowbar and spade.
And the tough old lilies? Completely unfazed by the digging.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 12:57 pm by Bill Cary.
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Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.
Great tips, thanks!
Here in Indiana, I use Milorganite to keep the deer off my Stellas and also away from my arbovitae.
The nice slow release nitrogen is good for as well.
AL