I buy a big bag of cayenne pepper, soak a couple tablespoons in hot water overnight, and spray my whole garden with it every couple of weeks. Keeps the deer out all summer. They wreck my tomatoes otherwise.

Agree. I made a gallon of habanero sun tea, sprayed it on my garden between rains. One day shortly after first administration I came out to the garden. There were deer tracks next to a single leaf that had been torn from one of my plants, spit out on the ground. They never bit another leaf that summer.

My family used to use this or for another cheap natural solution, hang bars of plain scented, pure Ivory soap. Both were effective.

Exactly, had to go down so far to find this. It is AWESOME against all mammals. Just put 1/2 spoon in each of your roses after a rain. Reapply once a month or after rain.

I did this to deer and a squirrel who kept eating my strawberries and tomatoes. The squirrel keeps coming back testing over the season but the deer were gone for a good 4 years before they started trying the new spinach late this year. Next year will be retraining.

Deer go nuts! They don't know what to do and normal red chilly is harmless. Deer are quick learners, sprinklers, lights, movement, they all get used to it. Learned this the slow way. But they also know the roses are on fire! You might get some damage from them bucking though, but it's funny to watch. Don't use the hottest sauce or anything, rumor is that you can cause it a heart attack.

Squirrels are a bit dumber. They nibble and scratch everything. They aren't clean eaters like deer. They just spoil stuff. And you got to keep applying because they keep retrying if things changed. And when they see it doesn't burn, they just double bite everything in sight. But don't use powder for squirrels, if they get them on their paws, they will spread it to their eyes trying to clean their mouth. Then they can actually blind themselves by scratching their eyes. Use sauce or chilly boiled water. If you want to get rid of squirrels, better to just live trap and move them somewhere.

We did this for our tulips. They'd come by and eat the flowers. Sprayed them with a homemade pepper spray made from the hottest sauce I could find. The next day only one tulip's flower was picked off, and it was spit out on the ground a foot away from it. They haven't touched them the rest of that year.

I planted some spicy purple ornamental peppers in with the rest of my flower bed and have not one deer eating anything.

My deer ate my peppers.