Time to Fence the Veggie Garden

[MossRoad]

I was picking yellow raspberries today inside the garden and when I leaned into the row to get some from the center my foot went down a fresh groundhog hole... so much for the fence! :laughing: I joke with my neighbors that I don't grow vegetables, I grow meat.... groundhog meat, squirrel meat, rabbit meat, deer meat....

 

[fordmantpw]

I was picking yellow raspberries today inside the garden and when I leaned into the row to get some from the center my foot went down a fresh groundhog hole... so much for the fence! :laughing: I joke with my neighbors that I don't grow vegetables, I grow meat.... groundhog meat, squirrel meat, rabbit meat, deer meat....

:laughing:

This is our first garden at our new house, and so far, so good with the electric fence, plus another shorter fence inside the electric one. I have a peace offering of a deer feeding spewing corn all over the place 75 yards from the garden, hoping that is enough to keep the critters out of our food. Like the fence, I spend hundreds for corn to protect $30 in veggies. Of course, that corn fattens up the deer that later make it into the freezer...

 

[dickfoster]

Get a 410 shot gun and load it with buck shot and take that thing down. I'm up to around 30 here since I started shooting them. Big groups no longer come around. They die if they do.

Ralph

You'd shoot Bamby? LOL

 

[oosik]

When we had our garden - it was the pocket gophers that took it down. I had a woven wire fence around the garden and it seemed to work OK. I did one thing that might have helped a lot also. A single strand of bare wire - all the way around the garden on the top of all the posts. We hung aluminum stringers, Al pie tins, large tops of tin cans etc,etc on this wire and that seemed to discourage the deer. The pocket gophers just didn't seem to notice all my defensive measures.

I have deer in the yard every morning - helping keep the grass mowed and eating their favorite thing - the NASTY tops ( seed heads) of milk weed plants.

 

[TheSpoon]

I took these a couple weeks ago. Camera phone from about 300' away (in our house). Buck's in velvet, fawn was either early this year or a yearling, was hard to tell.

 

[Deere Dude]

I put a 6' chainlink fence around our garden and a 2' chicken wire fence wired to that. That keeps the rabbits and deer out, but mice and chipmunks are still a nuisance.

 

[MossRoad]

I shot a rabbit in the butt with 1 pump on my BB gun today. It didn't move. So 2 pumps. It hopped about 5' and looked at me. So I popped it again. It hopped 5' again. I did this over a dozen times. By the time it got to the back of the yard, instead of running away, it went 5' left. I popped it. It went 5' right, I popped it. Over and over again. I started laughing because it looked like one of those carnival shooting arcades. Finally, it hopped into the ferns to wait for me to leave. It was back out 10 minutes later.

 

[DrRod]

I've used the pie tins approach to keep the deer from damaging my chestnut seedlings and Christmas trees and I have to say it appears to work pretty well. Nothing short of fire power has worked on ground hogs. Had a bear cruise through my garden yesterday but he didn't seem to do any damage.

As for hitting a rabbit a dozen times with a BB gun -- I would say that is pretty good shooting. Don't know how that could be done on a windy day.

 

[Stimw]

I put up fence and barbed wire 8' high to protect my garden!
I got up one morning and the deer were in the pasture out my front window!
Saw a Doe, a Spike and two fawns this morning in the same area.

 

[MossRoad]

As for hitting a rabbit a dozen times with a BB gun -- I would say that is pretty good shooting. Don't know how that could be done on a windy day.

Only about 60' at the furthest. BBs are so inaccurate, but at low pumps, the gun shoots very straight. The more pumps you put into it the more curve balls you throw. Pellets are another story. Very straight shooting. Anyhow, its just a cheap, Daisy powerline 880. On sale for $35.00 for father's day several years ago.

I popped a young groundhog in the rear yesterday and he ran into his hole, so I started shooting a little spinner target I have near his hole. The groundhog came out and started looking at the target each time it spun. :laughing: