My sympathies, growgreen. We used to have major problems with them, too. For the cleared part of the property, 80 ft. from the house, we use 5' tall livestock mesh (4x4 mesh w/2x4 at the bottom ft.) and it seems to be sufficient. We border DeSoto National Forest, so there are lots of deer hereabouts - but haven't had near so many problems after the highway dept. planted the new access road banks with crimson clover - they're usually busy out by the road in the clover. But we also have 3 noisy barking dogs (herding breeds & rat terrier), so that may help. And I have been using worm castings made with rabbit manure pretty heavily in my garden, so all or any of these may be a deterrent.

And unless you are independently wealthy, chainlink high enough to keep deer out ain't likely to happen. Although I saw a little pic and blurb sent in to either OG or MEN that had one man's ultimate solution - he grew his sweet corn in a tall (6 ft or more?), large covered chainlink dog kennel. No deer, no racoons, no nothin (other than earworms, perhaps).

Were I in your situation, I'd investigate high-tensile electric fencing, possibly using a solar charger. If you use high-tensile, you can run the fence much higher, more affordably than chainlink, it looks less intrusive, and you can get away with only electrifying certain strands, as in a few at the bottom, and the top two or three strands, letting the non-electrified high-tensile be your main part of the middle. That's not an uncommon method to keep livestock in, so it should also help keep deer out. The biggest drawback to this method is keeping the fence line weed free - if your garden is moderate-sized, I'd cardboard and heavily woodchip mulch the perimter of your fence. Which leaves the problem of small animals. You could always use a shorter small mesh (I'd use chicken wire, but I'm not that concerned about aesthetics where I am) at the base (on the inside maybe?) of your electric fence. In my reading up on user ratings for solar fencers, I've read it's better to get a beefier fencer than what is recommended for the area you're planning to cover. (We will probably get a 10-mile rated solar charger for our 3 acres.)

I've read something similar to Major's trick (same place I read the dog kennel thing) - only instead of using chicken wire (which rusts and doesn't last long in contact with the ground here), the guy went to his local appliance graveyard and got metal refrigerator racks (free?), enough to surround his fence (chicken coop in his case too). He laid them on top of the ground around the edges of his fence, and used the weedeater to trim the grass that grew up and disguised them. He said they lasted for many many years before having to be replaced.

Now our biggest problem is stinkin' rabbits in my unfenced herb garden. They eat my eccinacea to the ground. Trying to figure out an attractive short fencing solution for the front herb bed. With my luck, I fix that problem, then I get deer up there.

Ok Major where DO you get those additional icons??!!

Ah, one thing I forgot to mention. I can't attest to the efficacy of this method, but it was mentioned in Gaia's Garden. Trap crops. Hemenway mentioned using thick hedges planted around the property - the outside of the hedges were planted with things that tempt deer and other wildlife: persimmons, crabapple, clovers, etc...
The inside was planted with thickly growing thorny plants that made a living fence of sorts. You might not wish to plant bushes, but you could look into making a foodplot perimeter well away from your garden.

And there were 2 other things. One (OG or MEN again) was to chop up rhubarb leaves, buzz them in the blender, and fling/smear the resultant mash on plants to deter deer and moose. But that was on tulips, not sure how well that would work for edibles.
The other thing would be to try hot pepper wax.

quote:

Originally posted by d in dixie:
Snip...

Ok Major where DO you get those additional icons??!!

I get them here:

http://www.clicksmilies.com/

Pick the category you want from the list on the upper left side and that one will display in the right hand window. Find the one you want in the right hand window and click your left mouse button on it and the code for that smilie will appear in a window type line near the bottom of the right hand side.

Copy that line and paste it into your text here in the OG forum and you will have the additional smilie (Icon). So, there you go. That’s all there is to it.

Have fun.

quote:

Now our biggest problem is stinkin' rabbits in my unfenced herb garden. They eat my eccinacea to the ground.

So, d, I guess y'all have some pretty healthy rabbits down there, huh?

Up here, though I live in a smallish community (by my standards at least), the latest problem is people. My yard seems to have become a magnet for drunks and bored teenagers.

P.S. Cool, Major!

Do you reckon that my problem with beans could have been rabbits or some other low grazing animal? My Pole beans didn't take off until they got up on to some string that held them 4-5 feet off the ground? Maybe I need to protect that garden from rabbits too. I have wild ones as well as tame ones. I think my 5' fence works because I have the back yards galvanized fence on one side and a relatively steep bank of oregano on another side of it. If these darn deer don't get enough to eat from all the clover I have in my back yard and whatever else I let grow up... well... I'd like to learn how to shot them with bow and arrow!

Alas Deer hunting is a very big business here in KY, WV, and Ohio. So the deer run into town to get away from hunters.

Thanks, Major! I didn't know there was any way to get variation from the rather limited smileys on this forum. Much appreciated! (Do you know if anyone has come up with a "DOH!!!" [a la Homer Simpson] icon yet?) Tres cool, Major.

Unfortunately, we do have rather healthy rabbits down here. The biggest upside is they are leaving huge cocopuff piles out in the herb garden for me to sweep up and feed DD's little red wiggler bin. (She's raising redworms to feed her mountain horned dragons instead of buying bagsful of expensive pet store crickets that die the next day.) And I certainly hope they're healthy - I am trying to edumacate myself on how to make a decent snare. Been trying to dissuade the nassssty little boogers for almost a year now - - perhaps I should just wait 'til cold weather and invite them to supper.

Rabbity, buns could indeed be your problem. See any cocopuff piles? Kind of a dead giveaway as to the culprit. Because we border a national forest, we not only have deer in the yard, we have had armed hunters trespassing on our property, and idiots speeding on our private road, saying "we were just tracking our dogs". (Legal to hunt deer w/ dogs here, unfortunately.)
Personally, I think the ideal way to deal with human pests would be a few strands of hot wire ankle, knee, thigh, & hip high... Unflagged, of course, except for the "no trespassing" signs posted 5 ft. away that they ignore.

As for the issue of fencing i suggest you read the book the $64 tomato so you will get and idea of what works and what does not with each pest type.

If you would like i will post a list of what is need to prevent each pest type in the mamal and bird catagory but i think an older og article did it best. I will post a reference for it when get chance since it will take me i little while to find it since at present i am reorganising my garden binders with their 1500 plus pages.


there 5 basic methods to deter mammal and bird pests each is specific to the pest in question.
they range from fencing and netting of several sorts,traps, scent barrers, and poisons that organic and nontoxic in any way to humans but toxic poisons for animals(yes there is such thing).

Hey grid... any positive information of detering the Critters, including birds would be helpful. The birds really attacked my tomatoes this summer.

I just spent this summer fencing in an acre with an 8 foot chicken wire fence because of baby rabbits at the bottom and deer at the top. It is the first time in 10 years that I don't have to go to sleep willing the vegetables and fruit trees to be there the next day. It was such a daunting project, and life had other interruptions, it took me this long to do it.

One thing I learned is about the quality of the chicken wire. There's chicken wire made for general purposes, and there's chicken wire made for constructing stucco walls on houses (and it's much cheaper, by the way ($34 for 150 feet of 3' wide without paper between the layers), which is built to the building code, and is much, much, much easier to handle, is nice and flat.

The general purpose poultry netting, as they call it now, can come off the roll stretched in places, and bulges in any number of directions, and it's not a glamorous fence, but it works and comes in 4 foot lengths. It's also practically see-through from a distance, and the imperfections of it are easily forgotten when you finally get some peace of mind.

Make sure if you bury it 6 inches in the ground, you till the soil to that depth before putting in the poles, and hoe out a nice trench. The chicken wire will bulge in a few places when you put the soil back in because it pushes it from both sides, but to have it solidly in the ground is a good thing.

Make sure you use metal fence posts that you pound in. I have hard, hard clay soil, and they went in just fine. You can attach the chicken wire quickly with plastic cable ties, which can help stretch it taught (but not too much or you'll over stretch it and it will bulge. Then go back and put wire ties.

The closer you put your poles together, the more tidy the chicken wire looks. Mine are 10 feet apart and it's fine for my purposes.

The green metal fence posts also have barbs on them that face up, and the ties need to be tucked into those barbs so gravity won't slowly pull the chicken wire down.

If you need to make the fence posts taller, you can attach the less expensive green garden metal posts with 1 metal hose clamp, and get it up to 8 feet. There's also a hole in the top of those poles that you can run a single wire around, which tops off the height of it nicely.

My husband is a saint for helping with my fence, and after I thought about it, we were actually trying to do three things: Construct a fence, keep our marriage together, and try to stay sane!!

I know this fence is good for at least 20 years, and I don't want to go back and mess with it again, except to fix places where the animals might find a weak spot. Chicken wire is about the same price as the plastic netting, and lasts waaaaaay longer.

PS. I also did not attach the top 6" of the fence to the posts so that when a raccoon climbs it, his weight pulls him backwards, and he can't continue. It looks floppy, but it's an effective way to do it. The single wire around the top makes it clear to the deer that that floppy 6 inches is not something they should consider jumping.

I on the other hand love chain link!
It's very durable (if you buy good quality posts & sink them well.) You can't get a better fence for the money & it saves me from having to have trelis! An 8 ft chainlink fence would mean you can grow very tall beans! The outside will get nibbled, but the inside will feed you!

chain link is expensive and limits expansion in garden. Also may times chainlink is anchored with cement anchored metal posts which are to permanent in my opinion.

I designed mammal and bird proof garden last year but do to time constraits i have not been able to impliment it.

birds best keep out garden with mesh deer neting securely roofed over the garden.

Thanks for all the info on fencing. You gave us lots to ponder. My husband wants durability; I like that idea but also want flexibility for expansion and aesthetics. We BOTH want vegetables! I can so relate to the poster who said they no longer go to bed at night wondering if they'll have anything left it the morning: I can't wait to get there! When my husband suggested I plant the second round of broccoli & brussel sprouts, I said, "What FOR? Why don't I just put the trays (with the potted plants) by the edge of the woods so he (woodchuck--one or two or maybe more) doesn't have to walk so far?!!" We were commenting on how demoralizing total wipe-out is.

By the way, we use deer netting to keep deer, birds, squirrels, and other unknown munching creatures out of the strawberries, blueberries, and ornamental plants. They're really small patches/groups of plants, so netting is do-able. It works really well. We keep it off/away from the plants by using T-sticks (my husband makes them from one long stick with a little stick at the end so they look like big T's). I get my deer netting online because the holes in the stuff sold in stores here are too big--critters can push it down onto the plants & munch away.

I've had one rabbit hanging around the back yard--not the garden--for over a year now. I like him, but my husband tells me I'm going to be sorry if he finds the garden. And, of course, I'm surprised there's still only one.


growgreen251

The og article i mentioned earlier is feb 1995 p 50-55

Growgreen, I'm going to amend that saying, never use "never" and "always" except for death and taxes, and I think it's worth adding, there's *never* only one rabbit!

I've posted in here before about the large king snake that got caught up in my bird netting, which may be smaller than deer netting. It took me an hour to cut him loose. One of my neighbors got a skunk caught in their netting, so it is a tricky proposition