Gardening with Pat Munts: Defend plants from deer, moose and rodents
While no fence or spray known to man is going to keep a hungry moose from trashing your trees, you can keep the deer, gophers, squirrels and mice from taking advantage of your garden in the next few months.
Gophers and squirrels are active whenever the weather is mild and the ground is thawed. Squirrels will forage for the seeds and nuts they stored over the summer and, in the process, discover the bulbs you planted and cheerfully dig them up. Gophers forage underground eating whatever roots and plant material they run into including the roots of trees and perennials and – you guessed it – bulbs.
To keep squirrels from digging in bulb beds, cover the areas with chicken wire, which will thwart their efforts or at least slow them down. Some gardeners have had good results by also dusting the area with really hot chili powder. Gophers are tougher to control. Bulbs can be planted in commercially available or homemade 6- to 8-inch-deep hardware cloth wire baskets. Dig up an area, set the basket in the ground and cover the bottom with an inch of soil. Space your bulbs and backfill with soil. The gophers can’t chew through the metal. Cover with chicken wire if the squirrels are also present.
Gophers and mice can also chew off the bark at the base of trees, girdling the trunk and possibly killing the tree. This is more of a problem when we have deep snow for a long period. The mice will make tunnels along the surface of the ground under the snow and eat whatever they come to. Wrap the base of the trunks with metal trunk guards set into the top of the soil. These guards will also prevent damage from weed whackers in the summer.
Deer are a major problem throughout the area. During the winter their eating habits change from leafy green forage to twigs and branches from both deciduous and coniferous plants. The only dependable way to keep them out of plants is to wrap the plants with wire or deer netting during the winter. I had deer browse on Douglas fir and spruce trees last winter so I am putting a 7-foot barrier of heavy deer net held up with T-posts. If you have a lot of plants, the area should be entirely fenced.
There are a number of commercial deer repellent sprays that can be applied to plants but you will need to reapply them every two to three weeks. Commercial repellents have a fixative agent that keeps the spray on the plants during the winter snow and rain. Remember though, if it’s a hard winter, they will still eat anything.
Pat Munts is co-author, with Susan Mulvihill, of “Northwest Gardener’s Handbook.” She can be reached at pat@inlandnwgardening.com.