Fall Chores ~ Deer Proofing

 We have been doing fall garden clean-up and protecting everything that needs deer protection in the winter.  We put one fence around all of the front shrubs,  There isn't much here that the deer like to eat but they will still taste things.  Last winter the fence sagged between the T-posts and they did jump over several times.  They didn't find anything they wanted but they don't need to be tromping around in there so this year I added some garden stakes in between the T-posts just to stiffen the fence and hopefully they won't see the center as a weakness.

Every year they eat the myrtle ground cover which doesn't really hurt it or bother me but last year they couldn't believe it was all eaten up so they kept excavating in there every night, digging holes and throwing mulch in the lawn.  The only way to stop that is to lay wire fencing down on the ground to stop the digging.  I pinned the corners with earth staples.  

There are several plants that are evergreen through the winter and even if they're not appealing in the summer, when you've been eating nuts and twigs for three months and you come across green leaves peaking out of the snow, it doesn't matter so much if you like the taste.  The Penstemon has gotten big enough that the wire squares I put over them the year before were too small and inadequate so I left them uncovered last year and they were decimated.   It took them longer than usual to start looking nice in the spring so I didn't want a repeat of that.

I cut larger squares of 1" hardware cloth but pinning the corners down to rock and landscape fabric isn't easy so I'm trying a single landscape spike with a washer driven into the center of the plant. 

 The washers I had on hand were a little too small, but use what you have... so I added a square of corrugated cardboard which should hold up enough to keep it pinned down under snow.  If not I can get larger washers.  The spike is in there pretty good and doesn't come out unless you pull straight up.

The deer are starting to try things that they have left alone up to now.  The Supertunias got munched on so those got pulled out.  I can see the tracks in the dewy grass each morning and I see blooms missing here and there, but nothing major.

When I walked past this hot pepper plant today I saw hoofprints in the grass and an empty stem.

Right there.  Empty stem. 

They bit off just one pepper?  Surely they didn't eat a hot pepper...

Oh here it is.  Right here on the ground with tooth marks in it.  

A little too hot was it?

Note to self.  Grow more ornamental hot peppers.

Beans, Peas, Tomatoes

 Today I uncovered the second planting of pole beans and installed the trellis that they climb.  This stackable, expandable "pea fence" from Gardeners is a pain in the neck to set up but it works great.

I used to grow Wando peas on it because those crazy peas would just keep on growing until they outgrew the five foot fence and I was using a step ladder to harvest them.  I used to make bean teepees out of bamboo or conduit until I found that the bean plants would much rather climb this pea trellis

I am pretty sure I have confirmed that the culprit that was eating the bean leaves just as soon as they developed was the little brown locusts.  They are shy and elusive, but some of them were sitting on top of the row cover wishing they were inside destroying my crop before it grew.  They will be happy to eat the leaves now that they are uncovered, but the plants will outgrow the damage.  It is the beginning stage when all that is available to eat is the little growth tip that the bean plants are most vulnerable. I tried to get a good photo but they are classic "no-see-ums"

Anyway, the bean plants are doing well now and they will soon begin to climb up the wire fence.

I am pretty happy with my Durango Marigolds that I seeded indoors the first of May.  I have been growing this mix for years to fill in spots around the garden.  I dislike the Tangerine color of all  Marigolds so much (and they seem to be most prolific) that I buy the color sorted seed so that I only get the Yellow, Red and Bolero  colors.

Durango Bolero

I am counting the days until my Penelope Peas are ready to start harvesting.  I have sampled a few but they are not quite big enough to make a good harvest yet.  I planted four thick rows because I need to restock my seed inventory.  I have been saving my own pea seeds for five seasons now.

They are heavily loaded with pods.

The Tomatoes are also setting fruit.

My Orange Hat Micro Tomatoes are just turning,

I replated the Sweet Potatoes after the Racoon destroyed them.  One of the missing plants has reappeared.  See that little guy?  It really wants to live,

My Strawberries are still producing.  I have enough batches of freezer jam put away to last the year, and a few berries just in the freezer for miscellaneous uses.  These are for snacking.  They are so sweet!

It seems that I spend as much time and money (and brain power) in defeating the deer as any other thing in the garden.  The deer have been coming through, trimming the lower leaves off of the apple tree and then cutting through the Dahlia bed.  Hey! You don't need to be in there!

I drove some conduit in the corners and clipped some bird netting in a band around the Dahlia bed.  I didn't unroll it completely because all I need is a barrier to divert them around the bed and I am tired of trying to fold that stuff up after I use it.

While I was at it I expanded and re-netted the net room around the pear tree which has to stay on all year around until the pear tree improves in shape.  It is already filling out on the lower branches, but some of the branches were trying to push through the net and the deer nipped those off.  The shape is already beginning to improve.

And lastly the Triple Crown Blackberries that I planted last fall are blooming.  These only bloom on old wood, so only the two stems that each plant had on them last year when they arrived could produce berries this year.  I'll take it!

Pole Beans

 The last few years I have had a battle getting beans sprouted and growing.  Everything from the seeds disappearing completely (mice?) to the growth points above the cotyledons being chewed off before the leaves get very big.

Gardening is, in large part, an engineering challenge.  I finally decided that if the mice weren't stealing the seeds, then the little brown locusts were munching on the leaves as soon as they opened up.  So I brainstormed a better way to exclude these pests.  I threw a floating row cover over the whole thing and pinned down the edges, hoping that there were no little critters being trapped inside with my beans.

Underneath the chicken wire cloches that hold the row cover in place are rings from a croquet set to elevate the material up off of the bean sprouts.  These rings fit under the cloches just perfectly.  The cloches hold the fabric down and lengths of conduit seal the edges.

It worked pretty well.  Despite being difficult to water through, it seems to have excluded most of the pests.  I plant two thirds green Seychelles, and one third yellow Monte Gusto because the Monte Gusto out produce the Seychelles by a lot!  I plant in two stages, from the outside to the inside of the bed.  That way when the older bean stalks are done producing I can start pulling the row out from the ends towards the middle.

In about a week I will sow the middle of the row and protect that section the same way.

Gggrrrrr......

 When you look out the window in the morning and the flowers are no longer in a neat and orderly row.  

 I deal with this in one spot or another every year.

The plants should be OK, but the coons will be back for another look.

They always want to make sure.

I'm just glad they haven't done this to the main Dahlia beds (yet).  Or the combination planters.

Or the tomato plants.  I'll sprinkle some Repels-All to see if that helps, but coons will eat any nasty thing so stinky stuff isn't much of a deterrent.

Garage Sale Score

 We like to do a little garage saleing this time of year.  The other day I picked up a like new Big Lots $15 planter (price tag still on it) for 50 cents and a free aluminum scoop, but today I hit the jackpot.  We ran over to a nearby sale a few roads away and I scored two sets of brand new in the package grow through grids from Gardener's Supply.  Only, these were a few years old... pre-Tariff.  There were four, actually of the large 24" size and a full set of three the 18"so she had obviously purchased three sets and only actually used two rings.  The best part about it was the pre-Tariff thing.  They are the old, heavier gauge wire from China, not the new flimsy version from India.

New flimsy version on the Left, Old sturdier on the Right

I already had left a review on Gardener's expressing my disappointment on the flimsy thing.  These grids are an essential tool for me.  I have accumulated dozens over the years.  Not only do I use them as stem supports for my taller perennials, but I place them as a roof over Hosta plants to support the bird netting I use to keep the deer from munching on my Hosta.  They keep the netting off the leaves so the leaves don't get mooshed down and caught in the net.  It also gives me something to clip the net too..  Finding older, heavier sets was amazing!

I did get some of the 18" this spring, but decided to make do with what I had on the 24" rings because they have gotten so darn expensive.  If I ordered one set of each right now, with tax and shipping, it would have totaled $95.  Just one 24" ring alone, without tax and shipping would be $10 if you broke up the set.  And that is what I paid for the whole lot.  $10.

January Thaw

 We have had warm rain for several days now and although the ground is still frozen, I can see everything that has been happening under the snow.  It is nice to be able to walk around without bitter wind or rain or wading through snow.  It is a great opportunity to get out and check on the garden and my winterization efforts.  My most particular interest is whether or not the field mice have set up camp under the deck and used my favorite Prima Ginger Echinacea as a snack bar.  I amped up my protective efforts this fall but it doesn't appear that they are nesting there at all.  We have been keeping the deck shoveled and that might account for their abandoning the idea because there is more activity and it as not as sheltered as it was last year.

There is activity over by the strawberry bed.  You can see both tunnels under the snow and holes into the earth.  It does not appear that they have tunneled underneath the boards to the strawberry plants... yet.  The only way to exclude them is to create a raised bed with 1/4" hardware cloth on the bottom.  These are the problems that keep long term gardeners rebuilding and improving their infrastructure each year.

My second goal was to check that this raspberry plant was well watered.  It was.  It has been snowed on and rained on of course, but foliage can divert a lot of that away from the soil so it is important that any container plants are kept watered throughout the winter as well.  But you don't want it too wet either.  This container is up on pot feet to keep the drain hole from being blocked.

I see that the deer are still walking up to the pear tree and challenging my defenses.  I took the opportunity to rearrange the netting which had been somewhat weighed down by snow and needed to be pulled back up the poles so the snow pack doesn't raise the deer up to a level where they can reach over the top.

We had days of high winds last weekend.  These London Plane trees purge themselves of their interior branches as they grow  This makes for a nice airy canopy on the inside but pretty much guarantees that there will be sticks to pick up on a regular basis.  I got a whole armload.

I noted the munching activity.  The deer have eaten the tips off of every woody shrub.  I don't mind this much as I consider it size control.  I only have one covered because they worked on that one all summer too which is beginning to set it back.

I left the evergreen Penstemon uncovered this winter.  The leaves that are green all winter will look dull and tired in the spring.  They are not easy to clean up so I am trying the deer-pruning system this year to see how they react to that.  If it turns out to be detrimental I will have to put hardware cloth over them like I did last year.   If this is the extent of it I think it will be OK, but the deer will sometimes go too far and eat down into the growing portion of the plant as well.  They have no self control. 

It was a good thing I got my tour done yesterday because this morning we have a dense inch of powder snow over everything again and it looks like January.

Winter Wonderland

 The weather is cold and the deer are hungry!  When I got up this morning, it was somewhere between -1 and +4F depending on what source you consulted.  By the time I got bundled up and headed out for my walk the garden thermometer said 8F which is just about nose-hair-freezing temps, but since there was no wind and plenty of sunshine it wasn't half bad.  The roads were bare at least.  The weather was clear last night with a full super moon and everything was covered with hoar frost and diamonds.

The deer are getting desperate already.  This is really early in the season to be so cold and snow covered.  Every Oak tree in the neighborhood has trampled snow beneath it as they rummage for acorns.  They visit our landscape at night and try to dig through my wire cloches but I have them pinned down securely.

They've made a mess of the myrtle ground cover.  I don't mind them eating it but they will not believe it is gone and at this point they start digging deeper and damaging the roots and throwing mulch everywhere.  We put some fencing around to see if we can discourage them.  In my experience the only real way to make them stop at this point is to roll out hardware cloth or woven wire on the ground.

In the shrubby edges of our lawn we can now see how many bird's nests we have.  They each hold a top hat of snow for the first few times and then will dissolve and fall.  I counted about a dozen nests in the immediate area between our lawn and the neighbor's driveway.

The road wreath is snow covered.  Next year I am going to work some battery lights into it.  I put lights on the sled wreath and they are still going strong.

The Neighbor's Barn

The Off Season

 It can be tough to adjust from an outdoor life to an indoor life each winter.  During the summer, if we have a nice day with nothing planned, we will often just go outside, sit in the shade and enjoy the surroundings we have created.  During cold weather there are still some beautiful days when we just can't sit around the house.  On those days we go outside and sit by a fire.  It's time to get some enjoyment out of all of those annoying dead trees.

My husband is not programmed for building small cooking fires.  The only suitable fire is a ceremonial bonfire.  Watching flames is mesmerizing.  They are even beautiful when they have burned down.

I have continued to walk around and check on the garden.  The deer have adjusted to shotgun season by migrating into town for a month or so.  Therefore, nothing has tripped over any cloches or stuck their face through any netting.  However, with the mild weather the racoons are still awake and looking for snacks.  I'm not sure what kind of snacks they are looking for, but they are pretty systematic...

Random hole.... what did they think they would find there?

Some of my perennial plants look just as nice now as they do in summer.  Like the Penstemon.  They put on a lot of foliar growth in the cool season and then in summer concentrate on bloom stalks.

For Thanksgiving we are having dramatic weather.

We live in the orange area expecting 15" of lake effect snow.  We're headed out to a local restaurant for dinner, then coming home for pumpkin pie.  Everyone have a safe and relaxing holiday weekend.

Edited to Add:  Look who else is not asleep!  A neighbor five houses down posted this on Facebook this morning.  This nice young bear was up the tree at 8am this morning. I assume their Pyrenees guardian dog ran him up there.  The Oak tree is in their goat pasture just a hundred feet from the house.