Scarecrow Motion-Activated Sprinkler

So last year I put up an electric fence around our garden to keep out the deer and raccoons. It sounded like a good idea and it seemed to work well enough for my parents in IL. Well after raccoons eat all of our corn I knew we needed something different. I'm not going to build a 10 foot tall electrified monstrosity of a fence like Joe Lamp'l on DIY.

So I when I saw this motion sprinkler I new I had to give it a try. At $60 it's a little pricey but I'll tell you that after using it this year it's definitely worth it.

I only had one problem and I'm not really blaming it on the sprinkler. I have brass quick connects on all of my hoses and they didn't play well with the sprinkler. I guess it was more that I was disconnecting the hose from the sprinkler daily to water and this was trapping air in the sprinklers valve causing only a little water to come out when it switched on. The solution was to run my hand in front of sensor switching it on before I connected the hose so that the water could run through the valve.

Now that I know this will keep the animals out the engineer in me is ready to take it to the next level. Our garden is about 60x30ft so one sprinkler doesn't cover it. Once I get the permanent fence in and I plumb for irrigation I'm going to setup about 6 sprinkler heads and a couple motion sensors that will switch on all the sprinklers. That should keep the deer out...