If you find a couple of 25-inch shovels out there, they're mine.
Spraying bug repellents as a perimeter around your entire patch will help keep animals like deer away for a little while.
Mixing eggs, blood meal, garlic cloves, cayenne pepper in milk will stink like Hell and that can be used to scare deer away.
I buried solo cups to ground level around one patch a while back and filled it with the witch brew mentioned and it does
work on a limited basis.
Smells like pure shit though. So don't spill any on yourself.
An Egg-cellent Solution for Keeping Deer out of Gardens
If deer are a problem, and you have access to deer blood, there would be no more powerful a deterrent than deer blood and fresh bones scattered about the place.
I have used cow blood and fresh cow bones hidden in the undergrowth, to cause a frantic stampede among cattle that were driven illegally into farmland, and I watched from a safe distance as the frenzied cattle went berserk and damn near gored the man who brought them in to destroy crops.
Obviously if you live in bear country, any type of animal remains would be verbotten.
Additionally, if there's a lady in your life, you can gather her discarded feminine hygiene materials, put them in a nylon stocking, soak them in water to make tea