Hey Jim, How do you keep the deer out of that beautiful garden? Just peekin at your pictures again. By the way how about gettin busy postin some more? Looks like a park at your place......Kirk

-- Anonymous, April 29, 2001

Answers

Glad you asked that question, Kirk, because I have an answer.

Fishing line.

Yep, fishing line. I don't know where I heard or read about it but this is what we did: Went to K-Mart and bought some fiberglass support poles that were in the gardening section. They're about 6 feet long and green in color. We bought 6 of them and stuck one at each corner of the garden and also put 2 on one side where we wanted an entrance into the garden (put those 2 at about 12 to 18 inches apart).

Then you take fishing line and attach it to the support poles running it around most of the garden and making a fence. We did this at three different levels on the poles (it should look like you have an electric fence around your garden when you're done). Make sure you don't attach the line around the ENTIRE garden as you'll have a difficult time getting into the garden. That's why you have those 2 poles that are placed 12 - 18 inches apart - don't attach lines between them as that's your entrance...

The deer can't see this fishing line when the sidle up to the garden at night to do their feeding. They bump into the fishing line, can't see it and are startled, thus keeping them out of the garden.

Now, I've only done this for one year so I don't know if this will work on a consistent basis but it's worth giving a try as you're not out much money in the process.

I had major problems with deer at the beginning of last year's gardening season but after I put this system up I had NO problems with the deer. Zip, zulch, nadda, nothing...

Now, gophers, rabbits and ground squirrels were a whole 'nother matter. I still had to use short runs of chicken wire around individual beds to keep those buggers out. Wish I could find an easy way to keep THEM out of the garden. (grumble)

BTW, thanks for the compliments on the garden. I sure am happy with the raised bed method. Most things did fantastically well in our garden last year. The sweet potatoes and the corn were the exceptions, though. Didn't get squat from either of them.

I need to install drip irrigation at some point because I found that when it gets hot and dry, the garden suffered. The raised beds drained quickly and this was a problem with the dry weather.

And yes, where we have the garden is a lot like a park. Lots of mature trees with lawn surround it all. It's a very peaceful place to have the garden. Most days the only thing you hear is the wind through the trees and the birds chirping. Heaven!

P.S. - I'll try to take and post more pictures this summer. I just need to talk Ruth into bringing home the digital camera from her workplace.

-- Anonymous, April 29, 2001

You know Jim I think thats the first time I've heard of fishin line fence! Sounds just wierd enough to work! Anyway thats one fine lookin property and I'll be watching for more picts!....Kirk

-- Anonymous, April 30, 2001

Jim, where are the pics? I must have missed something.

-- Anonymous, April 30, 2001

Hi David,

The pics are at Patty's MSN site: Countryside friends pictures:

I think you have to sign up to become a member before you can view any pictures. You sign up and then Patty will approve your membership.

This is link to my raised bed pictures:

Jim's Photos

-- Anonymous, April 30, 2001

Don't seem able to get there from here. Something about the CS friends page that our browser/MAC/OS doesn't like. We've tried before, get a blank page followed by a crash! Anybody have any ideas?

-- Anonymous, April 30, 2001

David: Not sure why you're having problems. May be that your Apple simply doesn't like the MSN network. :-)

If I have time I'll put up the pictures on the new Yggdrasill web site and I'll then post the URL here.

Gotta go, a thunderstorm is moving in and I've got to get offline and unplug the modem.

Bye!

-- Anonymous, April 30, 2001

OK, I did some quick HTML coding and put the pictures up on the web site. They are really bare-bones (no descriptions of what's growing in the pictures) but at least you'll get an idea of what everything looks like.

As a bonus I put up a few more pictures of the raised beds (I think I only had three pics up at Patty's site). I also have pictures of my three cats and a couple of flower shots that I liked.

Hope you like them...

http:// www20.brinkster.com/yggdrasill/picture_page.html

-- Anonymous, April 30, 2001

Absolutely gorgeous Jim!!! Thanks for reposting, I think I must be in hot water with the moderator of the other site, because I never got admitted.

-- Anonymous, April 30, 2001

Diane: Whats going on with Patti!! Anyway doesn't Renee also have some control over the site? .....Kirk

-- Anonymous, April 30, 2001

I don't know, maybe I requested wrong or something. It was just before the forums split and people were very unhappy with some of my responses to Doreen. Perhaps I should have tryed again, but decided it was not that important to me so I never did.

-- Anonymous, May 01, 2001

Loved the pictures, but Maya wouldn't come up. Is Ralf Siamese or part? My dumb cats always want to walk up and see what you are doing with the camera - lots of cat pics with toes in them at my house!

I like the way you have your beds laid out - I got the version with just pics to come up; so can I ask some dumb questions? What size are your beds? Looked like you had most of the beds planted to one type of veggie - how many tomato plants per bed do you use? And what do you use to support them? What kind of yield do you get with your bush beans, and how far apart are the plants in the bed? I planted green bush beans in one 3X9 bed last year and wax bush beans in the other one; both on 4" centers. Wax beans out-yielded green at least 2 to 1. They will still be in the long beds this year, but I am thinking about breaking them up into 3X3 squares with something else in the other parts of the beds. Thought they might get less leggy and yellow in the centers that way - or maybe I just had them planted too close?

-- Anonymous, May 01, 2001

PS - I didn't get admitted to the Countryside Picture site either, and I don't remember doing anything to make anyone mad. "Course, my memory ain't what it used to be .... if it ever was!

-- Anonymous, May 01, 2001

I just applied yesterday, so I have nothing conclusive on admission. But I think Patti mentioned several times something was going on with her that she didn't get around to reviewing the requests very often. Maybe she's behind again.

-- Anonymous, May 01, 2001

Jim, thanks for sharing the photos. I'll try to get some pictures of our garden spot to post somewhere. I'd love to see what everybody else is doing too. We're always looking for new ideas.

From a distance those pot plants look just like tomatoes! Heehee.

-- Anonymous, May 01, 2001

David: LOL! Shhhsssh... Don't say that too loud.

Polly:

Loved the pictures, but Maya wouldn't come up.

I'll look into it. It may be that Brinkster.com (which is hosting my pictures as well as the new web site) is having some troubles. I had trouble with the birthday cake image that I tried to post on another thread.

Is Ralf Siamese or part?

He's part Siamese and ALL stomach. I swear that cat can't get enough to eat so he's always begging. But I still love the little booger.

My dumb cats always want to walk up and see what you are doing with the camera - lots of cat pics with toes in them at my house!

I have lots of butt shots. The cats move and all I have in the picture is their tails and keisters. Sure helps when I can use the digital camera as it's very simple to delete those shots. (grin)

I like the way you have your beds laid out - I got the version with just pics to come up; so can I ask some dumb questions? What size are your beds? Looked like you had most of the beds planted to one type of veggie - how many tomato plants per bed do you use? And what do you use to support them?

Thanks, Polly. Your questions aren't dumb. All the beds are 4ft x 4ft x 6 inches high - I use 2x2's in the corners so the inside dimensions of the beds are a full 4ft x 4ft. There are 16 beds total and they're made out of 2x6 pine. And yes, I tried to plant one type of veggie in each bed. It worked well for some but not so well for others (I'll explain more below). I planted 4 tomato plants in each bed - think of the way the dots are spaced on the number 4 side of a dice to get an idea of the layout for the tomatoes. I had tried 5 plants but that was just too close for them and they suffered from disease (poor air circulation I think). I use those heavy-duty steel T-posts for the supports. That seems to work the best and I happen to have a whole wagon load of them so that's what I use. Ruth uses old panty hose to tie the tomato branches to the T-posts.

I'm planning on putting in more beds this year but the new beds won't be raised. I just plan on putting in 8 ground-level beds that will surround the 16 existing beds. These ground-level beds will be 4ft x 10ft. I really need these bigger beds seeing as I had trouble with sweet corn and sweet potatoes in the smaller beds. I also want the larger beds for dried beans. The 4x4 beds are just too small for any meaningful production of those types of crops.

What kind of yield do you get with your bush beans, and how far apart are the plants in the bed? I planted green bush beans in one 3X9 bed last year and wax bush beans in the other one; both on 4" centers. Wax beans out-yielded green at least 2 to 1. They will still be in the long beds this year, but I am thinking about breaking them up into 3X3 squares with something else in the other parts of the beds. Thought they might get less leggy and yellow in the centers that way - or maybe I just had them planted too close?

Oh dear, you want cold hard numbers, eh? Record keeping is one area that I definitely need to improve upon. I did keep some records but I've looked high and low and can't find them and my auxiliary brain (Ruth) is currently not available to point me in the direction they might be hiding. :-D I *think* I planted on 3" centers for the bush green beans so that would be 16 seeds per square foot.

I planted the entire bed to that type of green bean but found that it was very difficult to harvest beans from the center of the bed (the greenery was just too dense and it was like trying to find needles in a haystack). I think we got about 20 meals (for 2 people) from our 1 bed of green beans. We could have gotten a lot more but I got tired of trying to find the little buggers in all that greenery so just gave up and pulled the plants up. I plan on planting half beds of green beans this year to see if that will work better.

I had some trouble with yellow leaves early on but it cleared up when I started harvesting so don't know what the problem was. Let me know if you have any other questions or need clarification on what I've already posted.

-- Anonymous, May 01, 2001