A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Vegetable Gardening Corn and Deer?

It's too late this year, but just wondering for next. can you grow corn in pots? we live in a very wooded area, so we have lots of deer. it is almost impossible to grow corn around here unless you have a very high fence and electrify it. I joked the other day about growing it on the roof next year. today the kids club house caught my eye! ha ha. I could get up there easily enough and grow some in pots!?! any ideas? I also heard that deer won't hop a fence even if it is low if they can't see where to land on the other side? but then again, what do you do....plant 4-5 ft of shurbs on the other side of the fence? anyone grow corn in an area with lots of deer?

My opinion is that you would have to have ALOT of pots. Corn has to be grown in a larger area to produce well. Have you tried a motion detector sprinkler? All animals are scared off my getting sprayed.

Pots would be tuff if you want any kind of quantity and getting good pollenation. We have deer issues also-mainly when corn is just getting started the first month. The deer like to chew it down to the dirt. We've had good luck with a product called Plantskydd. Its main ingredient is bovine blood. Its all a dry powder just mix with water. We spray all the plants with a pump sprayer. It lasts through quite a few rainfalls/waterings. Its easy to see when its time to reapply. I believe it works on other critters too, I don't have the package in front of me at the moment. We buy it a the local farm store.

Good luck in your efforts wildlife is very frustrating at times.

well, I don't want to spend a lot on motions sprinklers. for that cost I could probably fence and electrify.
I've only tried corn out here once. and they did eat it down when it was nice and young and tender? anyone else used this 'Plantskydd'? 'our' deer eat my zinnia's and 4 oclocks and loofa's.

Oh...what I wanted to ask also was... if you get through the period of time when the corn plant was young and tender, would the deer more than likely leave it alone? (maybe that's a dumb question - deer like corn)

you can do it in pots, a cluster of 5 gallon buckets one stalk per. bunch the buckets in groups of 4-7

or

put in a raised bed close to the house for your corn and beans. put the beans in after the corn gets growing, and let them use the corn for the trellis. you get a two-fer that way, and it looks nice. closer to the house, you won't get the deer as bad.

also, you can surround your corn with sunflowers, it helps some.

I had sunflowers a few years back in the yard but RIGHT on the edge of our front porch. the deer ate them. ha ha

There are motion detector sprinklers around $50 and you have them year after year and they can be moved. I am very happy with mine (once I stopped the little leak) and love that it is humane and works on all animals. One sprinkler would cover a normal size garden (not too big).

I had a hooting owl motion detector once, worked great on keeping the cats out so I can definately see that a water detector would work even better for any animal.