Mid-Atlantic Gardening: Happy birthday, DaylilyDiva219, 1 by DaylilyDiva219

DaylilyDiva219 wrote:
Judy, I love your idea of a repellent spray that is set on a timer! I say you go to work on that and patent it, and you can retire to a life of ease!

If we'd always had a deer problem, I certainly would never have gone whole-hog into the daylilies like I did. We live in a close-in, old subdivision, literally 8 miles from the Pentagon, well inside the Beltway, and they've just begun showing up on a much more regular basis. See the picture below for what blew my mind one afternoon in late November!!! I was coming down the stairs and looked out the window upstairs as I went to step down. Almost missed a step I was so stunned. Talk about a double take. And trust me, this photo does not convey how large this guy really was. :-(

Two bucks (young ones) had been coming through our yards on a more than daily basis back in 2009, day AND night, and my fellow gardening neighbors and I were on full alert, but of course, you can't be there 24/7. Unfortunately, one weekend, we came back from a quick trip to find my daylilies decimated. Of about 200 cultivars, only 20 or so had any buds left. To say I was sick would be an understatement. Since we've begun spraying, it hasn't been as horrible, but there's been evidence of damage, and there have been sightings. I do wonder if the 6-point buck in the photo is one of the young ones from the earlier visits. He was accompanied by two smaller deer, probably does. ARRRGH.

In any case, I've learned the hard way that evidently daylilies are like catnip (deernip?), or maybe caviar, to deer. They go right past the hostas and all other plants and head straight for the daylilies. So, as soon as things begin growing again this spring, I'll be spraying and I've bought one of the motion-detector water sprayers to set up as an added deterrent. We shall see.

I have a good friend in Davidsonville who has a huge garden full of daylilies, lilies and hostas and there are deer everywhere there, but her daylilies are essentially untouched. She sprays religiously, and it obviously works.

Sorry, didn't mean to go off on a rant there... ;-p