- [Male Announcer] Growing a Greener World is made possible in part by: - [Female Announcer]: so you can roam the Earth with a lighter footprint.

- [Male Announcer] And the following: [gentle instrumental music] - [voice-over] I'm Joe Lamp'l.

When I created Growing a Greener World, I had one goal.

To tell stories of everyday people.

Innovators, entrepreneurs, forward-thinking leaders who are all, in ways both big and small, dedicated to organic gardening and farming, lightening our footprint, conserving vital resources, protecting natural habitats, making a tangible difference for us all.

They're real, they're passionate, they're all around us.

They're the game changers who are literally growing a greener world and inspiring the rest of us to do the same.

Growing a Greener World.

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[gentle music] No matter where I go, without a doubt, one of the most common questions I'm asked is not so much a gardening question per se but how do you control all that wildlife that sees our garden as an all-you-can-eat buffet?

So it does pose the question, how do you control all that wildlife, why is it so hard, and how do you even know what's causing the problem in the first place?

It's the million-dollar question.

How do we manage to have the garden or landscape of our dreams while keeping these creatures from devouring our plants and ruining our yards, and do it in a humane way?

Well, experts like Prof. Mike Mengak, University of Georgia's wildlife specialist, are bust researching the answers to these very questions, and thanks to them, we learn which solutions work best.

- Wildlife populations are more abundant then they were years ago, especially wildlife populations that can adapt and survive and prosper around humans.

We've built houses in areas up against forests, we have urban areas, suburban areas that have expanded.

We take those urban and suburban areas and we create wildlife habitat.

We create plants, we water them, we fertilize 'em, we create a food source that wildlife responds to.

- At the turn of the century, deer were a lot less numerous because of habitat changes and wildlife management laws.

But today, they're a lot more numerous because of these suburban environments that we've created.

The deer have adapted very well, and they're a lot more comfortable around humans.

Plus we've knowingly and unknowingly fed them, which leads to a lot of problems, not only with deer but other wildlife as well.

- My role is to help people find ways to deal with wildlife problems in their back yard, either through research or outreach and education.

We try to test products that are on the market.

We're not really developing products or inventing things, we're more testing things that are already out there, looking at questions like, do they work, do they not work, under what situations will they work, what alternative means are available.

So we come up with other methods to try to deal with homeowner issues.

But our mantra is to strike a balance between the needs of wildlife and the needs of people.

We both wanna be in the backyard, and we don't wanna eliminate either people from the habitat or wildlife either.

- So the bottom line is, try to find some natural solutions that you can apply to your own backyard.

First, avoid lethal methods such as poisons.

Lots of issues there, including the residual effects to the environment.

Nor do you wanna be putting poisons into the backyard, where maybe you have children or pets, just as we don't wanna be out there poisoning wildlife that are going to have some kind of secondary effect on the songbirds.

Instead, try habitat modification.

Suppose you have squirrels getting onto your roof.

A simple technique of habitat modification would be to trim the branches off the trees so the squirrels can't climb the tree, leap from a branch onto your roof, and then chew holes into your attic.

Some other techniques that you can try are scare tactics.

Although the results are usually temporary, simple things like a scarecrow or more sophisticated methods like motion-activated water sprays are worth a try.

And the same for repellents, chemicals that aren't deadly nor even harmful but still offensive to the animal in smell or taste so they don't eat your plant and they go feed someplace else.

And finally, exclusion or barrier methods, which are fences.

Of these things, scare tactics, repellents, and physical exclusions or barriers, the only thing that works in all cases are the barriers.

And according to Mike, people are always looking for that magic bullet that they can apply over their whole yard to keep all the animals away, and you know what?

It just doesn't exist.

When it comes to critter control, people have tried countless methods to keep them at bay.

But even some of the most popular solutions don't have a great track record in the field.

- Things that don't work, coyote urine, peeing on your plants, going to the barbershop and getting hair, soap, pie pans.

Now, these things can work occasionally for a little while, especially things like pie pans, which work like a scare tactic, just like a scarecrow.

But if you don't move 'em around, the deer or any animal are gonna become real accustomed to them very, very quickly.

Things like human hair, I always tell people, you're in your yard and your dog is in your yard and you're working there all the time, so it's just not logical that you'd go to the barbershop, get some hair and stick it in your garden, and all of a sudden that's gonna scare deer when they're used to your smell around there all the time anyway.

So that stuff's just not proven effective.

There's no evidence that it works.

That we recommend sometimes as a harassment or a scare tactic for birds, not so much for rabbits and deer.

It really doesn't seem to have a lot of impact on those animals.

One common product that's easy to find in home and garden centers are these ultrasonic repellers.

They're sold for moles, voles, cats, cockroaches.

There's no evidence that they have any usefulness at all.

They're, in my opinion, useless.

A lot of wives' tales, lot of urban legends, but we don't recommend those kind of things that haven't been tested.

- As far as creating that deer-resistant garden, I'm not so sure we focus on the favorite plants of deer, because depending on the part of country and how hungry they are, they'll eat just about anything, right?

- They eat hundreds of species of plants, depending on the part of the country, the time of the year, the density of deer.

- So we focus on what makes a plant resistant, then.

- Resistance comes from a couple of different categories, physical resistance like thorns on locust, spines on blackberry, the hairs that would be, say, on a stinging nettle that would irritate the tongue or the mucous membranes of the deer.

And then the other category would be chemicals, alkaloids, resins, tannins, alkaloids that would be toxic and bitter, resins that, again, just give the plant a foul taste, tannins that interfere with digestion.

These would be found in things like nightshade, lupines, fiddleheads, those kind of plants would be deer-resistant from those chemicals.

- OK.

So the question then is, really, is there any such thing as a deer-proof plant?

- Yeah, one that's behind a good strong fence.

- [laughs] I was afraid you were gonna say that.

[bright music] So let's get right down to the thing that we all wanna know.

We're at home, we have a deer problem, and we don't want those deer eating our plants.

We've learned already that physical exclusion is pretty much the only sure-fire way to make sure that's not gonna happen.

- Can be.

- But we're talking about a fence like this.

This is here out at your research property.

- Right.

- You've got some sort of orchard growing in the background.

And it looks like so far, so good, no damage.

- So far it's working pretty well.

It looks like it's keeping the deer off there.

They're not eating them, they're not rubbing their antlers on 'em, they're not tearing 'em up, knocking 'em over.

It's working pretty well.

- Because the fence is keeping them out.

- Right.

I wanna go up about, that's probably a 10-foot post, so you have two feet in the ground, and you want about seven or eight feet of wire on the fence.

- I was looking at this fence earlier.

In fact, if you come down here, you can see that it's really taut in the ground, like it's buried.

- That's critical.

You wanna either bury it or have it real tight to the ground.

You don't want any gaps under it.

Deer would rather go under a fence than over it, so any place you have dips in the ground, any culverts or any low spots, you wanna make sure that the fence is down tight to the ground, even if you have to bury it or stake it down to the ground.

- Now, they're not diggers, but they'll look for that low dip.

- They look for that low spot.

It's easier for them to get in, it's safer for them to get in.

You take a deer going under a fence, there's not much chance of injury.

You take that same deer and he leaps a seven- or eight-foot fence and lands on the other side, there's a high risk that he's gonna break a leg, and that's not a good thing for him.

So they don't like to jump.

They're capable of it, but they'd rather go under.

- Now, as effective as these tall fences are for keeping just about any animal out, they're not very practical in a neighborhood setting, to say nothing about the aesthetics, especially in the front yard.

In fact, most neighborhood covenants and restrictions wouldn't even allow such a fence.

Fortunately, new barrier options are being trialed and the results look promising.

So this is the fence you wanted to talk about?

- This is the other kind of design that we were speaking of.

- All right.

This looks really simple, this is something that I could easily do.

Tell me about what we're dealing with here.

- Well, this is a three-strand fence.

It's sold as livestock protection, but it works very well for deer in our test.

It's a post in the ground.

This is a wooden treated lumber post.

It could be fiberglass, it could be metal.

The insulator is attached to the post.

Just simple wire, long spools, very inexpensive.

The first strand's 18 inches off the ground.

On the second fence, the bottom wire's 10 inches off the ground, the top wire's 24 inches off the ground.

And what's critical is the depth, about three feet apart.

- And the reason for that, explain that.

- Well, deer, we think, don't have very good depth perception, they don't see depth the same way we do.

So it forms a visual barrier to them.

They don't understand that they can leap across this.

They tend to hop inside and get stuck, and then it scares them and they hop back out, so they don't see it as something they could cross.

They see it as more of a barrier than it really is, but it's effective to them.

- As for the success rate in trials, it's been tested with and without adding electricity.

Without it, it's simply a physical but effective barrier.

They hit it, and a lot of times they'll just turn and go someplace else.

In one study with the electricity, it kept the deer off the soybeans with very little browsing damage compared to unprotected soybeans on the outside.

It's not 100% foolproof, but it does the job.

And the electricity is really easy to add, even if you're in a remote location, because now there are battery-operated or solar-powered chargers.

In many cases, an eight-foot fence or even the three-wire trick simply isn't practical or attractive enough for the backyard.

So you simply use the deer's own weaknesses against them with thoughtful design.

Welcome to my garden.

It's about 30 miles north of downtown Atlanta, and I definitely live in deer country.

I'm in a wooded suburb, and this is a deer highway.

I have woods off in that direction.

I work from home, and I see deer walking right down this pathway many times during a month.

And they look in here, they never really stop, and they don't seem all that curious, but I'm always wondering what they're gonna do.

And surprisingly, they've never showed an interest in coming in here.

And I know what you're thinking.

You're looking at this fence right here and you're going, what the heck, Joe, you should know better.

That's a four-foot split-rail fence, and deer, we already know this, they could walk over this if they wanted to.

But they don't come in here.

And my thought when I designed this garden was, the bed layout, first of all, is kind of tight, and the pattern is perpendicular beds.

And we know that deer don't like to land in areas where they're gonna feel like they don't have a good place to escape, and they need a clear line of sight, and they don't wanna be confused, and then they have bad depth perception.

So when you factor in all those things, I felt like maybe that would work.

So I went on a hunch and I just went with the four-foot fence.

But you know what?

They say the test of a good decision is the test of time, and seven years in, I have never had a deer come into my garden.

If all else fails and you are having a deer problem, there are still ways to fight back.

What do you do if you don't have a physical barrier to keep the deer out, but you have a lot of pressure?

Well, let me tell you, that's the dilemma I face every day here at the garden farm, and it's very frustrating.

Now, you could hire somebody to do it, gets kinda pricey, or you could do it yourself.

That takes a lot of time, and time is something I don't have a lot of these days.

So until then, I use a liquid deer repellent.

And it's a good option, because there are a lot of great products out there.

They're designed to either taste so bad or smell so bad that the deer want nothing to do with it.

They're easy to apply.

You can use a backpack sprayer like this or a handheld sprayer.

And they come in ready-to-use-options, so you can just spray it on the plant, or if you wanna save a little money, you buy a concentrate, like I do.

But no matter how good the product, it's really important that you follow the directions as to when you apply it, how often you apply it, when you're using it during the season, the amount of deer that are out there, the palatability of the plants.

I mean, there are so many variables to consider.

But you just have to pay attention.

So no matter what you're using, what's in those products?

Well, some common ingredients include putrescent egg white solids and dried blood and plant-based oils like clove and garlic and capsaicin, that's the hot in hot peppers, and fatty acids and some other things.

And I'm just noticing some deer browsing damage right here, which tells me I wasn't out here as often as I needed to be to prevent this from happening.

So it has nothing to do with the product, it's more operator error.

But anyway, when you apply this product, no matter what it is, it's important that you start early enough in the season, like right after the new growth is emerging in early spring, and then you keep up with it.

Many products recommend that you do that every 10 to 14 days during active growth, and then as you get into the dormant times, you can back off to maybe every eight to 12 weeks, and that works too.

But the one thing that you need to consider about these deer repellents, they're pretty expensive, so when you go to price these out, you're gonna be blown away by the price.

But then you have to take that into consideration on the price of your plants, because would you rather have to replace your whole landscape or spend a little money on deer repellent?

So when you think about it that way, the deer repellent becomes a pretty good option.

But they're most practical in smaller applications, so that you don't have a big area that you need to cover, you can get out there and you can monitor the damage and you can apply applications according to the directions and you can stay on top of it.

But larger properties like this, that can be difficult to keep up with, unless you're spot-treating like I am.

I'm just trying to focus on some key plants and just keep it right there to protect my favorite plants.

But until I get a deer fence, deer repellent, that's my option of choice, and it's working pretty well.

[bright music] When we think about deer damage around the landscape or garden, it's usually associated with plants that have been eaten or trampled.

But there's another type of damage that happens to young trees, and it occurs each fall.

So this is damage caused by a male deer when they rub their antlers along the trunk of a tree.

It's called rutting, and it typically happens between September and November during the mating season on trunks with a diameter of one to four inches and especially with smooth bark.

And they also do it to mark their territory, because it is mating season and they wanna let the female deer know that they're around.

Now, the problem is, as this bark is removed, there's a nutrient transport system underneath called the cambium layer.

So all the water and nutrients are passing through that cambium layer, and if that's removed all the way around the trunk, there's no way for this plant to survive, so it will die.

Now, you can buy products to protect this trunk, whether you wrap it around or you stack them, and those work OK, but they can add up in price, and they come in fixed sizes oftentimes, so they're not that flexible.

Or you could just make your own perimeter barrier with a simple fencing system that works just fine as well.

Now, for simplicity and convenience, I've found that this corrugated drainage tubing is a great option that can be used year after year.

It costs about $9, and it's a 10-foot length, so that will serve about three of your trees, and it's so easy to work with.

All you need is a tape measure, a marking pen, and a saw that's suitable for cutting plastic.

The first step is to measure the height from the ground up to the first set of branches and mark the length to make the cut.

With a hacksaw, cut across the tubing at the appropriate length.

Then use the colored stripe to guide your long cut.

Now, carefully insert the shield around the trunk, being careful so as not to damage the bark as you install it.

By winter, you can remove the shield, but just be ready to have them close at hand by next fall, when you'll need to install them again.

Of course, deer aren't the only wildlife problem for gardeners, and to win the war, you have to know who you're fighting in the first place.

All right, so you come out in the morning to admire your plants, just that leisurely stroll, and uh oh, you see some damage here.

Now, in this case of the hostas, you're gonna ask yourself, well, what caused the problem?

Well, I know that this is a deer problem.

How do I know that?

Because of the jagged torn edges.

When a deer bites down on a leaf and pulls it away, they don't have any teeth in their upper jaw, so as they pull it away, it just creates that jagged edge.

Rabbits, on the other hand, the other likely source here, well, they do have teeth in their jaws, both upper and lower, so when they make the cut, it's like scissors.

It's a clean cut, and you don't get this jagged edge.

Now, another problem is, most of these animals do their browsing at night, and you're never gonna see them, so you need to look for clues.

Other than this, what else can we find out?

Well, we might wanna look for tracks.

But this is a mulch bed, so you're not gonna see any tracks.

So I'm gonna look for droppings.

Rabbits, their droppings are about the size of peas.

Deer, on the other hand, more like kidney beans.

So that's a good way to check it out.

So put your detective hat on, gather up as many clues as you can, and be a Sherlock Holmes in your own garden.

So we've learned by now, there are a lot of pests that enjoy our gardens as much as we do.

But there's one in particular, the squirrel, that's everywhere.

Now, it doesn't have a terribly bad reputation for causing a lot of damage, but there's one thing it does really well, and that's digging up all those bulbs we spend all those Saturday afternoons planting, only to discover on Sunday morning they've all been dug up.

And that's the squirrel.

So here's an easy solution to solving that problem so we can enjoy those bulbs next spring.

Get some wire.

Now, this happens to be chicken wire, but it's called poultry wire, and you could use hardware cloth.

The key is to make a piece large enough to cover the area that you've planted and that the holes are big enough so that that emerging foliage next spring can get through those holes.

But plant your bulbs as you normally would, and then put the wire down.

And hopefully you're using mulch, because mulch is good for so many things, and if you are, go ahead and cover up the wire with the mulch.

And then anchor it down if you choose.

It's that simple.

Now, in a couple months, you wanna come and remove the wire.

The key is to allow the wire to stay down long enough so those bulbs form the roots.

But if you forget and you see the foliage emerging in the spring, that's a good cue to remove it them, and you'll be fine.

But that's all there is to it.

You can walk away and enjoy the fact that you'll have those bulbs blooming in the spring, just like you wanted, and it's one victory we can claim over those pesky squirrels.

When it comes to critter control, two common pests around the home setting, moles and voles.

Now, they're found in the same part of your yard, their names are even similar, and they even look alike, but the damage they do is very different.

- And the way we treat for them is different.

They cause a different kind of damage, and we treat differently.

- And you've got [laughs] some examples for us to look at here.

Now, this is the vole, right?

- That's our vole.

Some people call it a pine mouse or a field mouse.

It's just a short-tailed mouse.

- Where'd you get these guys?

- These guys come from the teaching museum at the university's natural history collection.

- Okay, so short tail, but they have the eyes, and they even have-- - They've got eyes.

Eyes and ears, their teeth, but they're rodents, so they have teeth like a rabbit or a squirrel.

They're not strong diggers, so you're so gonna find them in the layer of soil just under the mulch, in the thick thatch of your grass, under the leaf litter.

They're not gonna be deep into the soil, digging deep.

- Now, the damage that these guys cause, your plant looks intact, but it looks like it's dying, and you come up to the base of it, you shake it, and it's very loose.

That's because they've eaten away some of the roots.

- They've eaten the roots, they've stripped the bark off the root collars and the stems down near the soil.

The way to treat for those things if you're not gonna use chemicals or a lethal control like traps is use cultural methods.

Move the mulch away from the base of the plant so that you're creating a physical barrier of bare, open environment that they don't like to cross so that they won't get to the plant in the first place.

- And that exposes them to predators.

- Like hawks and owls.

- Uh-huh.

And that's your, what you call habitat modification.

- That's habitat modification.

- OK. Now, compare this to the moles.

- Well, the moles, again, we said they looked very similar, and they do.

Again, this is from our teaching collection at the museum.

Moles have these big, huge feet for digging.

Think of them as swimming through the soil and tunneling.

They're gonna be deeper in the soil, they're gonna make their own tunnels down in the soil.

These guys will use a mole's tunnel, but these guys make the tunnels.

These guys are meat eaters.

Moles eat meat, these are carnivores.

- -[Joe] And the meat that they're eating, earthworms and grubs?

- [Mike] Earthworms and white grubs and beetles, any kind of insect or insect larvae or earthworms that are gonna be in your mulch and living down in the soil.

- [Joe] Now, you know that you're gonna have a mole issue when you go out to your lawn and you see the mound, right?

- [Mike] Right.

- [Joe] So how do you deal with this?

How do you break the cycle and make these guys go away?

- Well, there's a couple of cultural methods.

A physical barrier in an area around your flowerbed, again, a buried fence might keep him out of the flowerbed-- - [Joe] To block them.

- To block them.

That's not gonna keep 'em out of your yard.

In your yard, some cultural methods that have been suggested are castor oil, a spray you can buy at garden centers.

- Which acts as a repellent.

- It's a repellent.

It's water-soluble, it's expensive and you've gotta keep reapplying it, but that's a condition of most repellents.

It's a difficult situation, because we want earthworms in our soil, we try to be gardeners to encourage earthworms, but if you're into using grub control, you can do that to get rid of the grubs.

If you're not into doing that kind of thing, one suggestion is watering brings the grubs and the earthworms closer to the surface, and they're following the food.

So by cutting back on watering, the food will go deeper, and then the predator will go deeper.

- So you don't get those mounds.

- You don't get the mounds as visible.

- [Joe] But the real issue here is, it's more of a cosmetic damage than anything else.

- It really is.

It's a cosmetic problem.

They're really not eating your grass.

Now, the mounds are cosmetically unattractive to your nice lawn.

- OK.

So if you can develop a little tolerance for imperfection in your lawn, then this is a nonissue.

- Right.

And they're actually good, because they're eating a lot of those grubs that come from Japanese beetles and some other things.

They're eating some earthworms too, but if you're doing a good job on your lawn and organic matter in your soil and your flowerbeds, you're probably gonna have enough earthworms for you and for them to eat.

There's enough to share.

[gentle music] - Well, I hope you learned a lot about controlling wildlife in your own backyard, but I bet you still might have some questions.

So until we revisit this topic again soon, you can find out more on our website, because we'll have a special link under the show notes for this episode.

And the address is the same as our name.

It's growingagreenerworld.com.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Joe Lamp'l, and we'll see you back here next time for more Growing a Greener World.

- [Male Announcer] Growing a Greener World is made possible in part by: - [Female Announcer]: so you can roam the Earth with a lighter footprint.

- [Male Announcer] And the following: [ambient electronic music] ♪ [male announcer]: Continue the garden learning from the program you just watched, Growing a Greener World.

Program host Joe Lamp'l's online gardening academy offers classes designed to teach gardeners of all levels, from the fundamentals to master skills.

Classes are on-demand any time.

Plus, opportunities to ask Joe questions about your specific garden in real time.

Courses are available online.

For more information or to enroll, go to: [funky techno jingle] ♪ ♪