Keep Deer from Eating Your Fruit Trees This Winter

Protecting your home orchard, grape vines, and other shrubs and perennials from hungry deer can be an exasperating undertaking. Deer want to eat the most tender shoots and twigs they can find, and quite often that is exactly what you have cultivated in your garden.

Clacking pans and blinking lights may work when there is plenty to eat during the summer, but when winter comes, especially after a snowfall, hungry deer will brave any threat for food. A couple of hungry deer can devour a half acre of young fruit trees in an hour. The time it will take you to start over will set your fruit production back at least a couple of years, not to mention the cost of buying new trees and removing and replanting them.

Make Simple Protective Cages
When you have small trees, the most effective and sure way to keep deer at bay is to use wire fencing around them. We use chicken wire, and simply tie it to some stakes or lightweight posts placed around each tree to make a little round cage. I pictured some grape vines above. They are almost dormant, and as soon as we have a temperature drop I'll add a little more clean wheat straw for protection from winter winds. The grapes are in an open area that gets some westerly wind, and since this is their first winter, they'll receive a little extra babying. Next spring I'll train them on wires and make them permanent. We make wire cages like this to protect young fruit trees, too. You don't have to fasten your cages to stakes, but if an animal runs through and knocks an unstaked cage over, it will take your tree over with it.

Deer will also just poke their heads down into the wire cage and eat whatever they can reach, so make lids for your cages. Cut a small piece of chicken wire and wire it to the edges of the cage to hold it on. The lid can be any shape. As long as it is large enough to be wired over the top of the cage, it will keep deer out. Leftover scraps of chicken wire are perfect for lids.

Help in Extreme Weather Conditions
If the weather forecast is for unusually cold temperatures or for ice, freezing rain, or other extreme conditions, I like to fill the cage with clean wheat straw as a buffer. Ice build-up on those tender tiny branches can do some real damage. I sometimes cover my baby trees and shrubs temporarily with plastic or paper bags. The cages make excellent frames to hold the bags away from the trees.

Remove the bags as soon as the weather settles. Moisture and warmth will build up inside the bag, and that can confuse the little tree's dormancy. I usually leave the cage about half full of straw all winter, and when the cage is removed in the spring the straw can be used for a first layer of mulch around the trees. Even dormant trees need light, so only fill the entire cage with straw during heavy snow or ice, and then remove some of the straw after the storm passes.