Four Ways To Buck A Buck

O.K. That’s a corny title.  But hear me out.

When we bought this house, it was pretty much a house in a field.  There was little in the way of trees to offer protection from the wind or the sun.

So before we were even unpacked, we set about planting hundreds of trees.  Many of them white, blue and Norway spruces.  But some were ornamental flowering and shade trees.  We dreamed of how nice it would be in ten years.

Only, many of the trees took serious hits from the deer.

Deer would eat all the tender new growth in the spring.  And then in the fall, the bucks would rub on the trunks, totally decimating any branches that dared to grow.  Often, the buck would break the poor little trees clear in half!

So we declared war (insert Rocky song).

The first year of our war, we spread moth balls at the base of each little tree and even hung moth balls in fabric sacks from their branches.  We bought BOXES AND BOXES!  The deer didn’t like them much. 

But neither did we! 

One neighbor told us later he spent weeks trying to figure out what that smell was and where it was coming from!  Lol!

Then another year we tried soap.  Irish Spring, to be exact.  We did it two different ways.  Rubbing a bar on the trunks.  And then dissolving a bar in warm water and using a spray bottle to apply the  solution to leaves and buds.  (Great for Roses, btw.)

It worked, and smelled a lot better.  :)  But we kept having to re-apply it.  That was no fun.  Not with that many trees.

So I got to thinking.  What about dryer sheets?  I found the smelliest ones I could find and began ripping them almost in half lengthways to make long strips.  Then, we tied them onto the tops of the little trees. 

This time, neighbors shook their heads and asked us who TP’d all of our trees, lol!  It did look ridiculous.  But it worked!  The bucks bypassed our trees.  And the dryer sheets lasted much longer than the soap.Here’s a buck rub on a willow tree we didn’t catch in time this year.  The dryer sheets we hung have kept him from abusing it further.  But the damage is already done.

And finally, we have discovered that if you leave Christmas lights on trees year-round, the deer don’t like that either.  Yes, we do that! (Don’t worry, we stop plugging them in by Easter.)

If you have tender vegetation the deer keep damaging, perhaps one of these ideas will work for you! 

Bucking the Bucks works for us!

This post is linked to the Works For Me Wednesday Meme over at We Are That Family.