2025 10 04 - Raising the fence

Fence and damage

After putting up a <> 5 foot high fence this spring, the garden seemed mostly safe this summer.

We had lost three plantings of brussel sprouts, two plantings of peas, carrots and beats plus a few pepper plants. And we lost lots of sunflower plants, last year I planted about 100 and ended up with less than a dozen, I didn't keep track of how many I planted and lost this year.

There is a picture a few posts back that shows quite a few sunflowers in this part of the garden all thriving. Now they have either been chewed off knee high or some have died, maybe because it is nearing the end of the season.

The beans in the lower part of the picture were also growing well, and producing. But the deer got in and chewed the tops off.

A couple of weeks before I saw that they had been in the garden, I had seen the top fence for free at a garage sale on our street. Didn't know why I would want it, but the price was right. I could have grabbed more but really had no use for it. What I grabbed was only enough for about half the garden so I went and bought another 50 feet to finish off around the garden.

The fence there is now about 6-1/2 foot high. Posts are 7-1/2 foot. If this keeps the deer out now, I plan on replacing the plastic netting with fence similar to what is on the bottom.

The other garden only has a 2-1/2 foot fence, a bunny fence. So to bring that one up to 7 foot I will need to get all new posts. For some reason the strawberries did not do well this year. But there seems to be enough that the deer are eating off the tops of them.

Bean stalk

This is the base of the pole beans that were growing 10 feet high. The wire fence is behind the stalk.