Jill Carter has big plans for her first garden in her Beaver Cove neighborhood, a tiny community located on Moosehead Lake, as long as she can stay one step ahead of the foraging wildlife.
“It’s famous around here for lots of deer,” Carter said. “They’ve become very tame and will eat everything in your yard.”
She’s not alone.
“Wildlife can certainly be a problem for gardeners,” Adam Vashon, a Maine-based wildlife biologist with the USDA’s Animal and Plant Inspection Service, said. “And every wildlife problem is species specific and location specific.”
From Kittery to Fort Kent, there are plenty of species who look at gardens such as Carter’s as delightful banquet spread out for their enjoyment. Deer, squirrels, rabbits, voles, mice, groundhogs and raccoons are just a few species that can nibble a plot of freshly sprouted seedlings down to bare dirt overnight.
“You really need to look at a host of parameters to decide the best alternative,” Vashon said. “My agency uses an integrated management program [and] try to use a variety of techniques in a ‘stepwise’ process once you know what you are dealing with.”
The first line of defense, according to Vashon, is just that — a fence.
“It’s exclusion,” he said. “Put up a fence to keep the animals out, [and] that is effective for deer and rabbits.”
Gardeners need to kick it up a notch for burrowing and flying foragers. Vashon said netting over a garden and fencing placed underground can help deter attacks from the air and below ground.
“From there, you can go really crazy with noisemakers to visual scares,” he said. “The sky’s the limit, [and] we like to throw a real suite of options for people to try.”
Vashon does warn gardeners to maintain a “buyer beware” attitude when it comes to commercially available pest deterrents such as predator statues.
“Don’t just buy things and assume they will work,” he said. “Like that infamous owl — most of these products must be used wisely and as part of an integrated plan.”
Anything shiny such as pie plates or foil ribbons hanging in a garden are an inexpensive and often effective deterrent, Vashon said. If those don’t work, Vashon said gardeners can get a bit more aggressive by shooting noisemakers to chase of the invaders. Some large scale growers go as far to use commercially made “rocket launchers” to make noise to scare birds off.
“That is really one of the best products out there,” he said. “But it’s also regulated by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives.”
James Dill, pest management specialist with University of Maine Cooperative Extension, is a fan of fencing and suggests using low voltage electrical fencing that will deter small and larger mammals.
“A lot of people hang small bars of soap around their gardens,” he said. “For some reason, deer hate soap.”
Human hair, placed in mesh bags and hung or strewn on the ground, also is an effective — and inexpensive deterrent, Dill said. Commercially available coyote urine also can be spread around the garden to keep prey animals out.
“You probably don’t want any of that in the garden,” he said.
“I like the fake owls you inflate,” he said. “You can go out and rent helium and use that to blow them up, so when you tie them in the garden, they float around like they are flying, [and] that can scare off a lot of critters like rabbits.”
Running thin fishing line or filament over seedlings is often enough to keep birds from going after freshly planted seeds, according to Dill.
“Just stretch it about 2 inches over the crop so when the birds try to peck at the ground, they hit that line first,” he said. “That really seems to annoy them.”
To keep the burrowing animals at bay, Dill suggests keeping the area around the garden mowed and free of long grass, as they tend to avoid open areas. Finally, if all else fails and truce seems impossible, Vashon said the pests may have to be captured and released far away — but not near someone else’s garden — or killed.
“We really try to avoid the lethal solution if at all possible,” he said.
Vashon also stressed that anytime residents are dealing with wildlife, they must pay attention to state and wildlife regulations.
“There are state specific and federal specific laws,” he said. “Make sure you understand them, [and] always check with your local authorities before you do anything.”
For now, over in Beaver Cove, Carter is sticking with her double row of 4-foot and 3-foot high fencing 3 feet apart around her tomatoes, peppers, carrots, green beans, lettuce and squash.
“The theory is that the deer can jump that high, but not high and wide,” she said. “We’ll see, they’re curious, but they haven’t tried the fence yet, [and] we love living with them but look forward to being able to have a nice garden, too.”
