Doh! A Deer!

DEER DEPREDATION DUE TO DROUGHT

— During last summer’s drought, when the tops of our 3-foot-tall hosta blooms were missing, I ruled out rabbits as the culprits (although I briefl y wondered if Harvey had moved to the neighborhood.)

But living in Fayetteville in a neighborhood not far from College Avenue, deer never crossed my mind as the bloom snatchers.

Our yard does not have golden arches out front but we have become quite the dining place for the ruminant rummagers.

Having a yard with fi ve oak trees means that the yard is more garden than lawn and dictates that garden plants must be shadetolerant.

My life is fairly high maintenance in some aspects, so when it comes to gardening, I tend to look to low-maintenence solutions. As in, I want to plant it, weed and water it occasionally and it comes back every year and looks pretty.

Hostas are troopers and fi t the bill. They survive well under trees, don’t have to be pruned and some varieties take up lots of space in the garden with leaves the size of dinner plates. Deer just think they’re dinner.

Five oak trees with a bumper crop of acorns in the past year, paired with dozens of hostas has made our place the deer buff et of choice.

Berni Kurz, the Washington County Extension agent staff chairman for University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Research and Extension, says hostas and acorns are among favored deer delicacies. Splendid.

Deer are browsers, he says, meaning they consume a lot ofdiff erent things - fl owers, corn and other produce, leaves, twigs, bushes and plants.

There are plants that they are not terribly fond of, but Kurz cautions, “When deer are hungry, they’ll eat anything that’s green.”

Cory Gray, Arkansas Game & Fish Commission deer program coordinator, said two factors come into play in deer getting comfortable in urban settings. He said since Northwest Arkansas’ population boom started, people are moving into deer habitat, forcing them to be around people.

The bigger factor right now, though, is drought, which hasbrought about “such a severe depredation,” he said. Quite simply, the vegetation deer usually dine on in the wild is dried up - unlike our yards and gardens that are watered and fertilized.

Kurz has a few suggestions for deterring the voracious vegetarians. They include sprays for plants made with cayenne pepper or a spray made of whipped eggs and water, or bars of Ivory soap hanging around the house and garden. “Stinky stuff ... things that taste and smell bad.”

To complicate matters, however, Kurz said that the antlered herbivores get used to the deterrents so they only work for a couple of weeks. “If you have four or five things to try in your back pocket, it may take care of them for some time.”

If deer have decimated your yard and you are looking to replant, before you hoof it to the nearest nursery, check out a comprehensive list of plants that deer don’t, well, fawn over on the UA Cooperative Extension Services website, uaex.edu.

Life, Pages 8 on 06/27/2012

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