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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Sweet Potatoes and deer
  • Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 11:14:29 -0400

Try a little blood meal scattered over the leaves; deer don't like the taste. (Not if you're intending to sell sweet potato shoots, of course; people don't either!) Needs to be re-applied after any significant rain; though if you have it on most of the time, the deer may not notice short stretches of no protection, as they may have already decided "those don't taste good, go eat somewhere else" and may not try them again for a while.

Fish emulsion sprayed on the leaves may also do the job.

What are the wire deer guards?

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale


On Jun 15, 2008, at 9:40 AM, Dave & Katharine Campbell wrote:

Wrong!  I set out my sweet potato slips about 2 weeks ago and THE VERY NEXT NIGHT the deer came thouugh and neatly nipped off about a third of them!  Moral: put out went the wire deer guards right away!
==davec / Tiffin IA / Zone 5
-------------- Original message from Allan Balliett <aballiett AT frontiernet.net>: --------------


> >One thing we do have a clear memory of is the deer eating off the sweet
> >potato leaves.
>
> hopefully, they won't do that at the slip stage! I'm going to try one
> of those Premier 2-layered fences around the sweet potatoes and a
> small bean field.




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