Deer and Animal Damage - How to Protect Your Trees and Plants

Travis McDonald from Davey's South Minneapolis office shares advice on protecting your trees and plants from deer and animal damage, such as physical barriers, repellents and deer and animal resistant plants.

In this episode we cover:

• How Travis started his job (0:51)
• Deer guidance (4:10)
  • First step to keep deer away (4:56)
  • Physical barriers (5:48) (13:18)
  • Repellent (7:28)
  • Deer resistant plants (11:32)
  • Deer damage by area (12:38)
• Investing in your trees and plants (15:03)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

To learn more about protecting your trees and plants from deer, read our blog, Managing Deer Browsing on your Property.
To learn more about keeping deer from rubbing their antlers on your trees, read our blog, Keep Deer from Rubbing Antlers on Trees and Fix Damaged Trees.
To learn more about trees that deer most likely won't damage, read our blog, Fast Growing Trees that Deer Likely Won't Damage.
To learn more about protecting trees and plants from rabbits, read our blog, How to Protect Small Trees and Shrubs from Rabbits.

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company

Transcript

Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Companies podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster, each episode showcases one of Davey's certified arborist sharing advice with everyone about caring for your trees and landscapes. We'll talk about everything from introduced pests, seasonal tree care, deer damage, how to make your trees thrive, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at The Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer. Our guest today is Travis McDonald, he is a district manager for the Davey Tree Expert Company in Minnesota. Travis, how are you today?

Travis McDonald: I'm doing well, Doug. Good morning.

Doug: Good morning, we're talking all about our favorite topic which is deer and I'm in deer central but before we get to that, we talked earlier this week. I really wanted you to tell people how you came to this job and why it's so important to you.

Travis: Absolutely. I've been with the Davey Tree Expert company for over 12 years and I'm originally from New Hampshire. I found out about this particular company from one of our vice presidents of the Davey Tree Expert company. He asked me if I ever thought about potentially becoming a consulting arborist. They told me about what Davey Tree does and explained what we do as a company and how we take care of people and we try to do the right things.

During that time I said, well, I always thought about trying to move into trying to make a difference for people. Whether that's in their landscape or some type of construction trade, that's just what's always driven me to the passions that I've always enjoyed. The reason why I joined initially the Davey Tree Expert Company is because I was able to go out and maintain clients and visit people's properties and help care for their landscape and guide them in the right directions on the things to do.

One of my main passions behind that is that I had an aunt and an uncle who were like grandparents to me. My uncle was pretty passionate about trees, just in general. He had an orchard and he would teach us about fungicide applications and how to do proper pruning. When he passed away, my aunt had tried to hire landscapers to try to care for the property and take care of the orchard and stuff while I was off at college.

Well, during that time she would constantly get taken advantage of by landscaping companies, just people that took advantage of her based upon that she didn't actually know what needed to be done and she always looked for their guidance. During that process, they would always charge her through an exponential amount of cost to do that, which was just completely unfair. When I got out of college, I started taking care of the orchard and so forth.

During that time, numerous different landscape companies would overcharge her, tell her that she needed to plant these things and do certain things. When I got this job opportunity with Davey, it was a way for me to actually take care of people that didn't understand how to take care of their landscape and be honest about it. Guide them in the right direction on what truly needed to be done and how to protect their trees.

I've always admired working with an older generation of clients to where they looked for us, the Davey Expert Company to guide them in the right direction and tell them what they needed. That was awesome to be able to do day in and day out and maintain these clients' properties, but yet make sure that we're doing the right thing for them and guiding them in the right direction.

Doug: Well, it's time for you to guide this old guy into keeping these deer off my trees and shrubs. I'm in Pennsylvania, the deer problem is terrible. All over the country, they'll eat just about anything. When you go to a landscape and you see these plants getting devastated by the deer-- Someone sent me a picture today, wondering what happened to their Azalia, I just planted it. It's just a little thing and I just looked at it right away. The deer just ravaged every bud off there just took everything. She was thinking like, is this vandals? I said in a way, yes. What's the first step to keep the deer at bay in the landscape?

Travis: Yes, I know deer are an extreme problem just in every state. We deal with it pretty heavily out here in Minnesota but how to help combat rodent and deer issues from deer browsing is many different facets that you can do. You can install deer fencing and netting to try to keep them from forging and feeding on those particular plants during low food inventories. Another way is to also do applications of certain products that would repel deer and rodents from wanting to eat those plants because of the taste and the smell that is applied to that plant.

Doug: All right, let's first talk about those physical barriers. Most of us can't fence out the entire yard, in my case, I'm on four acres, so that's not going to happen. Can I just do groups of plants or separate plants and just maybe put some stakes around it, how do you do it?

Travis: There's many different ways that we go about doing it here. I get it, with large properties, it's hard to put fencing around every plant that the deer might graze on, but plants that they're acceptable to deer browsing like arborvitae for instance. They love to nibble on arborvitae, like Techny Arborvitae. If you have those as a privacy screen, you're going to see deer browsing like the first four to five feet up on those plants on really hard winters.

Usually look at the most valuable plants that you're trying to really truly protect and maybe wrap those in a deer fencing, away from the plant to keep the deer from actually encroaching over and feeding on those plants. Netting, burlaping, a lot of the time on say crab apple trees, for instance, during the winter months, you'll get a lot of rabbit activity that feeds around the base and they'll actually girdle those trees. What we do is we apply burlaping around the base of those plants, because rabbits don't like to nibble on the burlap. What we end up doing is applying repellant application. On top of not chewing on the burlap, they also don't like the smell of that area or the taste.

Doug: Let's talk about that, next is using some type of repellant. For the deer and for these other problems, I was just thinking deer, but now you're bringing up rabbits. What else do we need to talk about before we get to those repellants? What else have we tried to repel?

Travis: Voles, those are some of the main issues during the winter months too, cause they do like to feed around the fibrous roots of those plants but rabbits are the main issue along with just deer in general. When deer are hungry, they're going to nibble on-- They're going to go around and use your property as a buffet and they're going to try different plants and we always find that there's certain species of plants that they enjoy more like the arborvitae I keep referring back to. Those are a big issue that we deal with consistently on trying to protect those plants.

Doug: What's funny about that is that at some point people were saying arborvitae was a deer-resistant plant, but that's certainly not the case in my yard.

Travis: There's certain species of arborvitae's that deer don't enjoy as much but they will eat on just about any arborvitae that I have seen in the landscape. That's why we do try to fence them. The fencing does work well. It is a little bit labor-intensive, but once you invest in the fencing and the netting and you just have a plan in place yearly, it's fairly easy to install. You just have to store it throughout the summer months but that is a good barrier to put up if you're truly trying to protect your landscape plants.

Doug: Then what stuff are you guys spraying on the trees and shrubs because you can't be there like we are every day. You've got to spray something on there that's going to stick and stay for a while, right?

Travis: Exactly, there's a lot of over-the-counter products, such as Deer Off, which you go to the local hardware store. You can buy that and you apply the application to the plant, but that has a residual, maybe three to four weeks, depending on the type of weather conditions that were within those couple weeks. If you had a lot of rainfall or heavy wet snow, you might get a week and a half of repellent out of that. There are some other products out there that we use that have somewhere between a three to a five-month residual. Works quite well and it also provides an anti-desk into the plant as- well to help it from getting Winterburn throughout when the ground is un-fine but yet it's fully not completely un-thawed and your plants are actually starting to require moisture.

Doug: What kind of stuff are you guys spraying?

Travis: We're using certain products called DeerPro, for instance. DeerPro is a great product. It's got a four to a six-month residual. The only difference with DeerPro versus Deer Fence is DeerPro actually goes on as a green application color. You have to be really diligent on how you spray that because it can stain the side of your siding without being immediately wiped off or washed off, and that's hard to do during the winter months. The Deer Free product, for instance, goes on transparent where it's a clear application. We've had pretty good results with it and that's something that a homeowner can buy over the counter and go buy a little two-gallon pump sprayer at Home Depot and go ahead and apply those products.

Although you got to make sure you mix it appropriately and then stay on time with the application. Making sure if you're starting to see a lot more activity in that area to put down another application. They give you a window of how long that product's going to work but you need to pay attention to your yard for the activity as well.

Doug: All right. Let's talk about deer-resistant plants. I just need your list of the 10 things deer won't eat. I'm going to plant those and I think I'll be okay.

Travis: [laughs] I wish we could give you those, but, unfortunately, it's pretty hard to be able to find trees and shrubs on a landscape that deer won't graze on. It doesn't mean that they will devour them but there are certain plants that they actually enjoy more than others. We find when they're hungry in the middle of the winter, when there's no food they're going to nibble on just about anything to try it out. There are certain plants that I do find and do see that they don't feed on as heavily. If we lead into some shrubs like some common shrubbery that people plant around their landscapes that I don't see much activity take place where there's boxwoods, like a smoke bush, spideria, rhododendrons. We've always had pretty good luck with those. A common lilac even. That's a pretty common plant that people love. We've had pretty good success with those.

Doug: Do you see where in different areas one plant might be devoured and then maybe the next county over that herd doesn't attack it in the same way?

Travis: Yes, you see. Depending on the population in that area and where that property is actually located. Does it have native area fairly close by to where the deer can go back and hibernate to or is it actually right in the middle of the heart of the city and suburbs to where those shrubs might not get touched nearly as much or at all because there's no deer activity.

Doug: Let's go back to the burlap. Especially in our climate, there're colder climates in the East here, I'm always surrounding my hydrangeas with burlap to keep those buds from freezing out but as a dual purpose.

Travis: Sure.

Doug: It's also keeping the deer off those buds because the deer love my hydrangea buds. You're using the burlap also, like you said, for the rabbits. Does that work for voles too or for the voles you're using some kind of repellent?

Travis: Voles a lot of the time it's right up before the ground freezes we'll put down a granular application around the base of those plants. That deters the voles from coming in to feed on those fibrous roots beneath the ground but when that ground freezes those voles will come up and actually feed around the base of those plants and actually feed on the cambium aspect of those. That's usually why you see decline or complete girdling. We're using burlap to try to control as far as them feeding and chewing on the bark of those plants.

Doug: Same for the rabbits. You just put some burlap down on the lower part.

Travis: Yes. We wrap the trunks with burlap and then we treat it with one of our application products to help have a repellent there as well.

Doug: We should mention that voles are different than moles. We're talking about voles with a V, and they feed on plant material. That's why we're worried about them during the winter, right?

Travis: Exactly. A lot of times when they have that snow cover is when you'll see a lot of activity beneath the ground of girdling and chewing taking place on the base of those plants.

Doug: It must feel pretty good for you, as we talked at the beginning of the podcast, to be out with those clients and protecting their trees and shrubs from deer, rabbit, and voles and doing it the right way.

Travis: Absolutely. It's fun to be able to protect people's investments. A lot of people take great pride in their property and invest a lot of money into their landscaping. The best thing that we can do here at Davey Tree is we try to protect their landscape and give them sound advice that's been practiced for generations, what we use. We feel confident in using to where we're going to protect our landscapes. We're not throwing the money away that they invested in those plants, by deer browsing, rodent issues. A lot of the times you do have to invest a little bit in order to maintain that, and that's what we find.

Doug: Thanks so much, Travis. Great to keep our landscapes safe from the deer, rabbits, and voles. One thing, when we talked earlier this week, that we find out we had in common. Neither one of us has ever caught a muskie, which is a big fish.

Travis: [laughs] Absolutely. One day I hope to but we shall see. It's been really fun talking with you too Doug, in regards to just talking about how we could protect people's landscapes during the winter months.

Doug: All right. Thanks again.

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Travis: Absolutely. Take care.

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Doug: Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from The Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host Doug Oster. Next week we'll talk about doing a winter walkthrough on your property and discuss what to look for. Remember, on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

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