Garden Deer Fence

In this part of the state, Memorial Day is traditionally the garden planting day. Most people don’t put their tomatoes until then, because of the risk of frost. Saturday, we put the deer fence up. This time, instead of hand tying all the ends, I got gripples and wire vises from Kencove. Although I ordered the wrong gripples, I was able to use them by doubling up. It saves a tremendous amount of time and frustration.

For the garden, we used the 4×4 12ft corner posts just like the vineyard, and the 8 ft 4-5″ diameter treated wood posts for the horizontal brace. For the end of the H-brace, we had enough locust posts to use them. Almost all of the locust posts we used were straighter and nicer than the treated wood posts. They were also much heavier, which is perfect for the anchor portion of the H-brace. There are still plenty of straight, decent diameter locust trees on the property, so it might be possible to expand the deer fence for the vineyard by just using locust posts. The horizontal braces will most likely be purchased just because the CCA pine is lighter than the locust, and larger diameter.

In the picture below, you can see the assembly of one of the corners of the deer fence.

Garden Started

The weather forecast for Saturday called for an 80% chance of rain, with showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. We started early, plowing the new garden plot, then ran the cultivator, and then ran the tiller. The results were amazing. We were done before lunch, and the field looked great. Plowing takes a bit more attention to detail than I expected, but luckily, the tractor wheels are setup so that the right rear wheel is in tight, and the left one is all the way out. This is perfect for plowing. All I have to do is put the right front wheel in the furrow I just made, and it lines up perfectly. After lunch, we cleaned up some of the wood piles we stacked from the previous year, and then tilled around the unplowed area so that there would be less weeds on the deer fence. Then we marked the deer fence corners, and got 3 holes dug with the auger. The third hole proved to be a problem, with the drive shaft shear bolt breaking, and it took some effort to get the auger back out, which took us to the end of the day.

Deer Fence

The corner posts for the deer fence went up on Saturday. It was difficult to track down 10 and 12 ft posts for this. In the end, the 4×4 treated wood posts sold at places like Lowe’s and Home Depot were chosen. The deer fence that was used for the garden last year appeared to do a good job in keeping out the pests, even though we used a haphazard collection of locust posts harvested from the property. It’s from Benner’s Garden which is conveniently located in Pennsylvania. The corner posts are 12 ft long, and the post holes were dug to about 3 and a half feet. It would have been better to go another six inches or so, but the post hole digger did not have enough room to operate. The 10 ft posts will be placed at approximately 24 ft intervals at a depth of 2 and a half feet. The ground was still rather wet from the rain the previous days, and was most likely too wet to operate the tractor without the risk of getting it stuck somewhere.

A post level was used to make sure the posts were in straight.

The ground must slope more than it looks because in the one picture, they look like they are leaning.

Update:

The rest of the line posts were put in the ground, along with the 12ft for the upper gate. It was difficult to get a good picture in the evening, since the sun was actually showing through the clouds, and washing out the image.

The Garden

The garden this year did fairly well. There were approximately 20 lbs of very nice looking carrots, lots of snow peas early in the season, lots of peppers and tomatoes. The pumpkins were a bit small though, and the corn did not turn out so well. Next year, the garden will be in the upper field, and much larger, with additional space between the deer fence for the tractor. Hopefully, it will keep out whatever pulled the corn out of the ground last season. The next step is to put in a cover crop for next spring’s garden, and also put in some garlic and endive. It’s always important to mark where things get planted, especially if you are not timely in weed removal.