I DE-CLARE WAR on deer and rabbits!

I DECLARE WAR on deer and rabbits!

Score:

Deer & rabbits – 4 (number of times I’ve had to replant my beans!)

Ria - 0

About 15 years ago my husband hand turned and tilled a 20’ x 15’ garden bed for me for Mother’s Day. It was the best present ever! Sadly, that garden returned to turf over the next few years as garlic was the only crop the deer and rabbits wouldn’t eat. I grew tomatoes in the bed adjacent to the back of the house until deer found it, too. More than once I looked out of my kitchen window into the very guilty eyes of Deer-zilla.

This year the fever hit again. The Grow It Eat It frenzy proved contagious to me too. I planted 2 Maryland Salad Tables™ and 1 Maryland Salad Box™. Sadly, there was no sunny deer-free place to put them since building a new deck is this summer’s home improvement project. So they look pretty awful in the shade, under the overflowing gutters. Major bummer!

Taking pity on me, my husband comes to the rescue and surprises me by tilling a new garden – 35’ x 15’ – much larger than the last one. But this is the Friday of Memorial Day weekend and we’re leaving for the long weekend. He returns the tiller acknowledging that 10 more feet need to be tilled so there will be enough sun in the actual growing part of the garden.

Um…when do I get to plant the garden? We’ll be out of town most of the next few weekends and we have to solve that nasty little 4-legged varmint problem before we can plant. Then we go on vacation the end of June.

Jon said he’d sell me his electric deer exclusion fence since he was putting up a more substantial fence. Oh, no…with all of the GIEI classes going on, Jon doesn’t have time to put in a new fence after all! Now what? No problem, I’ll take care of the deer thing… I work at the Home and Garden Information Center after all! Hmmm…but I live in Columbia with strict enforcement of covenants. No problem, I’ll just chat it up with my neighbors and promise to share the harvest with them if they don’t rat me out.

My husband’s one request was that I plan everything out before I plant the first plant or purchase and install a fence. No problem. I carefully designed my garden complete with 3 foot mulched walkways around the perimeter and between the twelve 4’ x 6’ plots. Then I researched all of HGIC’s literature and consulted with Jon but I just couldn’t quite figure out this electric fence thing. The kits on-line weren’t exactly right. The local hardware stores each only had some of the equipment. The big box stores didn’t have anything for electric fences. Not as easy as I thought to plan everything in advance.

I had one weekend to act, June 6 - 7; my husband was out of town. I bought mulch and Leafgro from the local hardware store. I lowered the blades of the lawnmower and scalped the remaining 10’ x 35’ area that Neil wanted to til. HGIC was promoting lasagna and no-till gardens and I thought a comparison of methods would be a good thing. I put 3” of mulch over news

paper and/or cardboard on the walkways and 4 bags of Leafgro in each 4’ x 6’ plot without newspaper or cardboard. Nothing planted but it looked pretty good and so far I had honored my husband’s request.

So what kind of posts for this fence? Metal U-posts, fiberglass step-in posts, white or black plastic step-in posts…none of which sound attractive. What do you think? Eventually we chose wood posts for the corners and black plastic step-in posts in between. The white polytape proved too unattractive. Replaced it with polywire, added 3 extra strands at the bottom AND wire fencing inside the polywire. I'll probably be very sorry I put this in print but since July 19 I haven't seen any additional deer or rabbit feeding damage.

What are the rest of you doing to keep out deer and rabbits?

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