Mitch Baker: Hi! I am Mitch Baker with American Plant. We are talking about great gardening tips for June.

Right now, we are going to talk about protecting your garden from deer. Now, when it comes to a vegetable garden which is a real target for deer, the absolute best protection of course is a physical barrier.

Anytime, you have an opportunity to create a strong physical barrier or fence of some kind, of course, that's going to be the best protection. It just makes it inconvenient for them to get into the vegetable garden, and often that's enough, they'll move on to something that is more convenient.

A fenced-in area like this has the added benefit of keeping rabbits out as well. The other option is to use Deer Netting. Netting is a flexible plastic material that you can drape over or wrap around plants to protect them from the deer, to keep the deer from browsing on the plants. It may sound unattractive, but it actually tends to disappear in the garden and it's not so noticeable. It's an effective way to prevent or at least reduce deer damage.

Now some of that growth may emerge through the netting and that kind of growth can still be browsed by deer. But, overall it's a general protection for certain plants that deer target.

Now, our third option is a Spray Deer Repellent. This is something that you apply on the foliage of target plants. Those plants that deer tend to browse frequently. It's not 100% effective, but repellents are another tool that we have to use to help reduce the damage caused by deer.

Now, repellents have to be applied regularly. When I say regularly, that maybe once every two weeks, depending upon temperature, humidity, rainfall. Early in the season, when plants are putting on strong new growth you may have to spray more often.

As we get into our hot summer months now, growth is going to be slowing. You can reduce the number of times or the frequency of application when it comes to deer repellents.

Now, the fourth option and my favorite is something we called Sticking, and this is a very simple method of using thin bamboo sticks inserted in among the foliage of target plants like Hosta. These sticks basically just prevent the deer from getting his or her head close enough to the foliage to actually browse.

These sticks are thin enough that they don't show up in the landscape from a distance. You can barely see them, but they are very effective.

So, those are four options we have to protect our gardens from deer. Next, we'll talk about June Lawn Care.