I live in the country in Magnolia, Texas where we are absolutely overrun whitetail deer. They eat EVERYTHING, including thorny shrubs and poisonous plants the nurseries promise me the deer won’t touch. (Ate them to the ground!) After 6 frustrating years that left me feeling like I was running an all-you-can-eat deer salad bar, I discovered something by accident that actually worked and I have flowers blooming in my front beds for the first time ever. Here is how to FINALLY stop deer from eating plants & flowers:
Stop Deer From Eating Plants & Flowers
Deer are beautiful pains in the rear. It seems the moment you turn your head, they munch your landscaping to death. Our local herd was eating every plant, even “deer resistant” and poisonous 4 o’clocks, to the ground. Let me jump right to the 2 things that finally worked to halt their incessant damage to our flowering plants:
Fake Flowers & Fish Foliar Feed
I know this sounds crazy but a happy accident turned out to be what finally stopped the deer from eating everything. I was doing these two things independently…until I discovered the combination STOPPED even hungry, pregnant deer from devouring our landscaping.
Step 1: Plant Faux Flowers
One January, after six years of the deer eating hundreds of dollars worth of all our spring-planted landscaping, I gave up. I ordered some cheery colored artificial flowers off of Amazon to liven up the front flower beds. THE DEER ATE THE FAKE FLOWERS, TOO. Or at least they tried to, nibbling off the plastic buds, which they spit out nearby, and fully ripping out some of the plastic stems from the beds entirely. The red and orange colored faux plants were hit the hardest. It was easy enough to put the uprooted picks back in the ground and chuckle at the prank I was playing on the deer. After two months, the damage to the faux plants fully stopped.
Step 2: Use Fish Foliar Feed
This is a fish-based organic liquid fertilizer you can apply to the leaves of all growing plants, whether ornamental, flowering, shrubs or garden veggies. Plants rapidly absorb the rush of nutrients through the stoma in their leaves and they LOVE it! Even better, the deer absolutely loathe the fishy residual smell that lingers on the plant for 2-3 days. After 3 days the scent is gone, which means deer will resume eating the plant, but it is very easy to apply again.
Fish Foliar Feed Recipe: 1 Tablespoon of the Trident’s Pride Liquid Fish Soil Enhancer fertilizer to 2 gallons of water. I add the 1 Tbsp in the bottom of a 2 gallon Behrens watering can then fill with water. Deliberately water the leaves of your plants to foliar feed them and leave a protective scent of fish on them! Foliar feeding is a way to apply diluted fertilizers to your plants and shrubs to rush nutrients to them faster than applications of soil-based fertilizers. You MUST dilute the liquid if using it as a foliar feed. 1 quart contains 64 applications, using 1 Tablespoon per 2 gallons of water.
The Happy Accidental Discovery
That same spring, after my fake flowers had been in the front beds for 2 months, I was being overrun by some blue (purple) salvia growing in my deer-proof fenced vegetable garden. A little was nice to help attract bees but I was uprooting whole plants that needed to go. I planted five of them in my side yard flower bed, figuring they would add some greenery until the deer ate them. I didn’t even bother to foliar feed them at all. The next week they were still there. Then they began blooming and were still untouched. Blue-purple blooms covered them by May and the visibly pregnant, ravenously hungry deer had not taken a single nibble.
Salvia is supposed to be deer resistant but our FIVE other salvia plants in the front bed had been eaten to the ground until they were killed. I finally realized I had planted these blue ones behind coordinating purple plastic faux flowers and the deer seemed to believe they were all fake. I had blooming bushes growing unmolested for the first time ever.
Testing my Theory
During this same month, I had a beautiful “Luscious Marmalade” yellow-orange flowering lantana growing in a pot on my back deck. It was getting a bit too leggy for the pot so I wanted to transplant it into the front flower bed. I prepped the front flower bed area by adding plastic orange and yellow flowers to the area. I then planted the real lantana plant, watered in, applied the fish foliar feed and waited.
Fake Plastic Plants + Fish Foliar Feed Worked!
The lantana remained untouched, even with it’s real flowers tipping the end of each branch. Again, lantana is supposed to be deer resistant but all nine of ours had been eaten to the roots in the past. Shockingly, we discovered volunteer lantana coming up in other random spots on our property, completely unprotected, and the deer were not eating them either!
Curb Appeal
I was pleasantly surprised that many of the faux flowers I bought from Amazon looked real from the street. Especially the flower tipped boxwood style and the wildflower mix style. I had neighbors texting me for weeks asking what flowers I had planted that the deer were not eating? (Everyone found it hilarious the deer were being tricked by the plastic plants!) There were no issues with the HOA because the flowers looked real and were tastefully arranged, interspersed around green, growing shrubbery.
Keep Up with the Foliar Feeding
The fish foliar feed has been my secret weapon. The fish smell stops the deer from nibbling and it also helps the plants grow rapidly to a size where they are more likely to survive a deer attack. Once the fake flowers convince the deer that all the blooms are fake, it is safe to plant your real blooming flowers. The fish foliar feed used on the real growing plants gives deer a reason to continue to avoid the flower bed altogether.
You CAN apply foliar feed to the plastic plants if you want to make the whole bed taste fishy and undesirable!
Continue to Plant Deer Resistant Varieties
Start with just the fake plastic flowers in mixed colors for 2 months so the deer believe all the flowers are fake. (This worked especially well when we did it in January because they were eager to munch and learned even more quickly.) After that, you should be clear to begin adding aromatic herbs, like rosemary, lavender and oregano, followed by deer-resistant flowering plants drenched in fish foliar feed. If you already have flowering plants you’re trying to save, feed them every 2-3 days with the diluted fish foliar feed and place plastic flowers in the same color in front of them. This combination should stop the damage quickly. (The deer WILL attempt to nibble the new plastic flowers then spit them out, which should help spare the damaged plants you’re trying to save so long as those have fish foliar feed regularly applied.)
Stop Deer from Eating Plants & Enjoy Your Success!
Within one spring season we went from sad-looking front beds to a pretty pop of color from artificial flowers and real flowers who were now free to grow and bloom. My landscaping dreams for next year are even bigger, now that I know how to “train” the deer! I hope by sharing my experience, you now have something new to try in your battle for beautiful blooms.
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