Homemade Deer Repellent

If you’re a serious gardener, then you know how challenging it can be to keep Bambi and other wildlife out of your garden.

While deer can be beautiful to look at, they are quite destructive when it comes to your yard, as they love to munch on your vegetable garden, flower bushes, herbs, and anything else you’ve planted.

To keep deer from destroying your garden, you could spray your plants with a chemical deer repellent, or you could try one of these homemade deer repellent ideas for keeping deer from making a buffet of your plants.

How to Keep Deer Away from Your Garden

Deer are a lot smarter than we give them credit for being. They can quickly learn your tricks, so the best strategy to keep your plants, trees, and gardens from becoming a deer’s lunch, is to keep them guessing and use several different methods to avoid developing a deer problem.

Here are some of the best natural deer repellent tips and recipes to keep deer away from your yard.

Use Physical Deterrents

Plant grasses and deer repellent shrubs in your yard that are bitter, spiny, or potent. Deer avoid eating foul-smelling and tasting plants and will move on to a more friendly environment.

To keep deer out of your yard, try planting lilac shrubs or deer resistant fast growing ground cover plants around the perimeter of your yard.

You can take advantage of planting some of these bushes and plants by choosing shrubs with flowers that not only serve your deer deterring purpose but are attractive and sweet-smelling for you, too. While deer don’t like them, bees and other beneficial pollinators love Bee Balm, Purple Coneflowers, and Foxgloves.

Planting any of these plants in your yard will help to keep the deer population at bay. Be sure to plant a few potent herbs and flowers, like rosemary, which is also great for keeping gnats away, lavender, thyme, and yarrow to keep the deer out.

Install Fencing

Even though a deer fence can be unsightly, installing a high fence is one of the most reliable methods for keeping deer out of your yard and to keep deer out of your garden, whether you are protecting flowers or vegetables and fruits. Fencing is especially helpful if you have a lot of deer nearby.

You’ll have to ensure that the fence is at least eight feet high, as deer can quickly jump over anything lower than four feet in height, and a barrier that is only six feet high can entangle the animal and cause injury.

You could also install a small electric fence around the areas where you want to keep the deer away. A low-volt electric fence will give the deer enough of a jolt that they will quickly move on to a more friendly area.

Keep Deer Away with Smells

You can use commercial deer repellent sprays, like Liquid Fence and Deer Off to keep deer away from your plants. Commercial deer repellent products are useful in obstructing a deer’s sense of taste and smell.

The commercial repellents that you find at the store emit a scent that reminds deer of a decaying animal, plus they taste like garlic cloves which are unappealing for the deer. You can also plant certain plants in your yard to scare away deer. Lemon balm is an excellent deer repellent but smells lovely to humans!

If you don’t want to use chemical deer repellents in your garden, you can also make a DIY deer repellent spray that will help to keep deer out of your garden.

Homemade Deer Repellent

You don’t have to pay a ton of money to keep deer out of your yard. With a few simple and inexpensive ingredients that you probably already have in your home, you can make an effective deer repellent that will keep these animals away from your plants and trees.

Add the milk, raw eggs, dish soap, cooking oil and cup of water to the gallon jug. Place the pitcher out in the sun to ferment and allow the aroma to start flowing.

Spray the solution around the yard, making sure to get your flowers, fruit trees, and vegetable plants to keep deer and other ground critters from destroying your plants.

You might even want to add some cayenne pepper or hot sauce to the mix for some extra deterring power. You’ll want to spray this solution on at night to keep from having to smell the scent of rotten eggs.

Use a Hot Pepper Spray

You can make a homemade deer repellent spray that from hot red pepper flakes. This is an environmentally friendly and safe deterrent that won’t harm the deer but will keep them out of your yard. You’ll want to cover the edges of your yard with the spray several times a month to keep the deer out.

You can also protect specific plants by spraying them with the spray. This hot pepper spray also makes a great squirrel deterrent, to keep these pesky rodents out of your yard.

DIY Deer Deterrent Spray

Using hot pepper flakes in this recipe is guaranteed to have the deer looking for a new place to graze. You’ll have an effective deer deterrent that will also work on other animals that you want to keep out of your yard.

In a large pan, add the water and the red pepper flakes. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 minutes. Add the liquid Castile soap to the mix. Let the liquid solution sit for 24 hours, then strain the solution into a plastic spray bottle.

Castor oil can also work in this recipe if you don’t have Castile soap on hand. Follow our method for a castor oil mole repellent recipe to keep all types of animals out of your yard.

Sprinkle Irish Spring Soap around Your Yard

Another excellent deer deterrent that can last for months is sprinkling handfuls of soap flakes around the edges of your yard. Deer dislike how bar soap tastes and smells, and will keep away from your yard and plants.

To create the soap flakes, you can try grating off pieces of bar soap using a cheese grater, or you can use a knife to cut a bar of soap into smaller pieces. Sprinkling a few generous handfuls of the soap flakes around your yard once a month to keep deer away.

Scare Deer Away with Human Hair

To keep deer away from your yard, you can spread 10-20 handfuls of human hair throughout your yard. Your scent will emanate from the hair which will have deer thinking twice before they enter your yard. You can also hang small sachets containing human hair and bloodmeal from the branches of trees and shrubs.

DIY Deer Deterrent

Deer will steer clear of any place that smells like humans, that’s why this tip works so well. By placing human hair in small little satchels, the deer will smell your scent and keep away from the trees and shrubs where you hang them.

Cut the fabric into four-inch squares. Combine the hair and blood meal and put about a tablespoon of the mixture in the center of each square. Bring the ends up and secure them with a rubber band or string. Hang the packets from the end of tree branches and in the shrubs.

Mark the Area with Dog or Coyote Urine

The scent that comes with dog and coyote urine is potent to deer and is a sign of a predator. When the deer enter your yard, they’ll smell the urine and flee.

You can take your dog out, or your neighbor’s dog, and have them mark their territory, or you can purchase a coyote urine product from your local home improvement or garden store.

Spread Coffee Grounds Around Your Garden

Coffee is a safe and environmentally friendly way to repel unwanted animals and pests from your garden. Coffee grounds have numerous benefits in the garden, including fertilizing the soil and repelling unwanted pests and animals, like deer.

After you’ve finished your morning coffee, take the coffee filter, and set it aside. When you have a decent amount of coffee grounds collected, sprinkle them around your plants and throughout your garden.

Deer can be incredibly destructive creatures and can quickly devour the plants in your yard and garden. These simple, yet effective natural, homemade deer repellent tips, and recipes can help to keep these pesky mammals out of your yard.

Make this the last year that deer destroy your yard. Don’t let your garden become a buffet for the local deer, utilize these tips to help keep deer out of your yard for good.

Recipe for Homemade Deer Repellent

We hope you enjoyed learning about the various ways to keep deer out of your yard. If you enjoyed the information in this article, please feel free to share these deer deterrent tips and recipes with your family and friends.