Hi! I’m sure this is a well covered topic and I’m happy to receive links. But I didn’t find too much info here with a couple searches.
What have you found to be safe, reasonably safe, and unsafe, to plant out in areas where deer browse?
I don’t have tremendously heavy deer pressure, but enough to lose trees and plants. I feel very safe planting pomegranates and citrus unfenced. I get occasional browsing on figs, but nothing that I worry about.
So far, pawpaws and feijoas seem safe to plant out. I’m guessing that opuntia/prickly pear will be safe. Blackberries seem to do fine. Other berries?
In one of my searches here I saw someone state that persimmons are pretty safe around deer, does anyone else find that to be true? Or false?
I also read here that mulberry and jujube are not safe. True?
Stone fruit and pomes seem to be unsafe, but there’s so many wild plums in my area that there is likely some variation on that. Maybe just babied, cultivated trees are more appetizing.
I think I planted avocado and they were not safe from deer, but I don’t remember well.
Does anyone happen to know how some less common subtropicals do, like white sapote and cherimoya?
Here in north Alabama in my experience they -
Never eat - persimmons, blackberries, poms, cacti, pecan, black walnut, pineapple guava
Rare nibble - fig
Damage if young but don’t seem affected when more mature - mulberry, chestnut, plum, blueberry, pear
Eat aggressively - apple
They can sure do a lot of damage to trees with their rubbing.
That’s very similar to my experience. I’m really encouraged to hear they don’t hazard your persimmons. Do you grow American, Asian, or hybrid persimmons?
My mum (in Australia) grows something called Kei Apple from South Africa, Dovyalis caffra, with intense thorns and quite productive of apple like fruit.
Sea Buckthorn is a productive nitrogen fixing berry with serious thorns too.
You said… Blackberries seem to do fine. Other berries?
We have lots of deer and here in Southern Middle TN they do not bother my Blackberries (thorned illini or thornless ouachita) Raspberries — all of mine (Red, Gold, Blacks) have thorns… and no deer issues so far… They have never bothered my blueberries either. Very little damage on strawberries either. My deer may be kinder than some others. We do eat them on a regular basis…
There is so much green lush stuff in my fields and woods… I think that makes a difference. Less pressure on your garden / orchard.
If your garden / orchard is about the only green lush stuff around… yes… you will have a lot more trouble with deer and other critters.
In the fall they will rub about any tree from 1-3 inches in diameter. Especially if it has an odor to the bark.
Deer will browse just about anything, especially if it has been fertilized.
I grow both asian and american persimmons. I’ve got a graft of a hybrid but it’s small so no idea if it matters. Of course, we have wild persimmons all around and seedlings popping up everywhere.
My deer adore blackberry leaves, and hosta, and gooseberry, and blueberry, and raspberry. They don’t eat tomatoes, but they taste and ruin them. They do not go for the figs, so I have the apple surrounded by fig as well as fence. The black raspberry is left alone, but I have so much wild stuff I wouldn’t notice anyway. Wild-type pear they did not like, so that is left in the drainage swale and grafted high. Maybe it’s just because deer. And they currently sleep back there, so they might want shade.
I have been fighting deer for years. In the end I wound up putting cages around the trees until they were tall enough to make it. I just used cheap farm fence. Cost a little more, but ends all of your thread worries. After they were tall enough I shrunk the fence circle 2/3 to prevent buck rubs. A lot of the smaller fruit plants have thorns or nasty sap like figs. Fig sap is like super glue.
I agree, and used to do the same. Now I have a number of trees planted within deer fencing, which works great. But I much prefer the esthetic of an orchard without all the wire fencing. And so many fruits can succeed this way. Makes the thread worth it to me
You could have an entire plot of 30 different things; a moose will come in and take a bite at every single one of them whether it likes it or not. Heck a coworker planted a tree that was supposed to be unpalatable to moose. One came in in the yard, they watched it as it approached the tree, proceeded to take a nibble at a branch, and then (I kid you not) reached for the top and pulled it down until it snapped the tree in half. The nursery was 100% right, it did not like that tree.
