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How To Keep Deer Out Of Your Cannabis Garden
Deer love gardens full of weed plants. These herbivores will munch away at your cannabis crop, and can quickly ravage your carefully laid plans. Fortunately, they're easy to repel since they're timid and fearful of lights, open spaces, and certain smells. If you know deer psychology, you'll be able to get your garden deer-free, post-haste!
Could anything be more adorable than a young deer? Maybe not, but if they start rooting around in your weed, they’ll suddenly be looking a lot less cute. Deer have a taste for cannabis, more than most herbivores, and as shy as these creatures are, they’re not too shy to come by at night and munch down all your buds and leaves.
What’s the relationship between deer and weed? How can you plan your garden to prevent a deer attack? And, if you’ve already got a hungry deer prowling your bud, how do you scare it off?
DEER AND WEED
Deer have developed quite a fondness for weed. Animals tend to find the taste of cannabis unpleasant; as the terpene content of your plants increases near harvest time, most will start avoiding your crops. Deer, however, will keep munching almost right up to the harvest itself.
Why do deer enjoy cannabis so much? Could it be that they’re trying to get high? Animal researchers say this probably isn’t the case, especially since THC’s psychoactive effects are not “activated” until cannabis has been decarboxylated (heated) and cannabinoid acids turn into active constituents. That being said, some weed growers are convinced the deer are loving it; Oregon's Richard Davis has made friends with his local deer “Sugar Bob”, who loves weed and seems to enjoy the pleasant sleepiness it brings.
Deer are forest dwellers, and will likely only consume your weed if your garden is surrounded by trees. If you want to keep the deer at bay, try to find a clearing for your garden. Deer are timid and will likely decide that running through a field isn’t worth the risk, even for that sweet, sweet bud.
The timid nature of deer is also a key factor in getting rid of them once they’re already a problem.
REPELLING DEER
You wake up one morning and find your weed garden is a mess. Several seedlings are uprooted, stems strewn across the soil, leaves and buds gone but for some scraps. Some of the larger plants have buds and leaves chewed to the quick. You scan the wreckage with sharp eyes, and there’s your clue: deer prints and droppings.
So, deer are eating your weed plants. There are a few ways to get rid of them, some involving more work and some less, some more and less pretty. We’ll start with the most obvious.
BUILD A FENCE
If you’re building the fence out of wood, make sure there are no spaces between slats or under the fence for the deer to shimmy through. Deer can jump up to eight feet. If you’re going to keep deer out with a fence, it had better be tall. Unless, that is, you make it electric.
ELECTRIC FENCE
Once you’ve got your electric fence set up, smear some peanut butter at the base of the fence before nightfall. The deer will come by, try to get at the sweet snack, and get a shock. Continue applying peanut butter until the deer stop eating it—shouldn’t take more than two or three times. Once the deer fear the fence, they’ll stay away from your garden.
INSTALL MOTION-DETECTOR LIGHTING
Connect some motion-detectors to a high-wattage bulb so that whenever deer approach your garden, they get a blast of light. Make sure to position the lights strategically so they won’t be pointing at your plants—this can adversely affect their life cycle. You want them to be facing the deer’s potential point of entry, so as to send them hopping.
INSTALL MOTION-DETECTOR SPRINKLERS
Same idea as above, except the deer get sprayed with water as they approach the garden. Look into “scarecrow sprinklers”, which will hit your deer with a blast of high-intensity water.
SCENT REPELLENT
Deer are skittish, and can easily be scared away by the smell of animals they fear. Luckily, one of these is humans, so you can scare them away with bits of your own body. Drape human hair over your plants and leave jars of urine around the perimeter of your garden to repel with human smell.
You can also buy predator urine from coyotes, foxes, and bobcats. Spray this around the perimeter and deer won’t dare approach.
Make sure to re-apply these scent markers after rainfall.
OTHER REPELLING SCENTS
If using animal musk is too much for you, you can use a different kind of scent to repel deer. One plant-based option is to crush garlic and hang it in nylon around your plants. You can do the same with mothballs or scented bars of soap. You can also hang dryer sheets around your plants.
If you’re looking for an intermediary level of grossness, combine 20% rotten eggs with 80% water and spray it all over your plants. The deer will find this every bit as repelling as you do.
KEEP THOSE DEER AWAY!
Deer are a nuisance, but if you take the proper precautions, they’re not hard to get rid of. They could get used to any single form of repellent, so you may need to switch things up once in a while to keep them away.
Solving a deer problem feels great. Once you’ve gotten them safely out of your weed garden, you can go ahead and appreciate them from a distance, free from mixed feelings!
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