Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, Even With Wildlife

Good fences make good neighbors.

My battles with the wildlife have raged for years, with some years seeing me having the upper hand and others … not so much.

Banishing the bunnies with good fences

The first campaign was a clear win for the bunnies. I planted my first garden; they nibbled it to the ground overnight. I replanted, but it was slim pickings that year. It was obvious I needed some good fences. Next attempt? Raised bed garden with bunny netting. The hog panel (the rigid fence panels with the big square holes) is for trellising not animal protection.

Plan B – plus a bunny-bashing ally

The next year I planted three times too many plants, tucking them in odd places along the fenceline and behind the shed in addition to the garden proper, determined that some would escape notice. That’s the year my neighbor moved in with her tough and skilled barn cat.

No rabbit survived long enough to nibble a single plant. To say I overproduced would be the understatement of the century. I may have snuck bags of tomatoes onto people’s porches in the dead of night that summer — what’s the statute of limitations on that anyway?

While the cat was away, the bunnies did play

The Cat Years were the glory years; it took no effort on my part to keep my crops.

When the cat moved on, I tried other options. I’d heard human hair repelled rabbits … but I found a wad of it pressed into the mud by a bunny footprint when I tried it.. It was tempting to bring out the super-quiet, subsonic .22 rounds. I didn’t, as this was in town and breaking gun laws is not my groove.

The internet is replete with recipes for repellent sprays. The bunnies say: “Wrong, but thanks for playing.” I’m assured those do work if you get right out and spray after every rain; but I have this job thing and ‘next day’ isn’t good enough.

Fixing the fence by digging in

The next escalation on my part was fencing. It works, If…If you affix it to the ground, the bunnies can’t wiggle under. If you use wire fencing and not that oh-so-handy plastic stuff, those over-eared rats don’t chew through it. Well, at least the plastic fence worked well until late in the year when other food sources ran low and they got desperate.

Oh deer, oh deer, we really needed to fence our trees at The Place

The orchard at The Place was a similar story. I put in a bunch of trees, and got excited about them forming buds the first year.  It took another week for the deer to eat them to bare sticks.

Ah, pepper and garlic spray deters deer; everyone says so!  And I had plenty of hot peppers and garlic from the garden, so I applied one of those liberally to the regrowth: Did you know, too much of that can actually scorch leaves? And apparently my deer like their salads spicy.

Complete fail.

Human urine is supposed to repel the rascals — it should; humans shoot enough deer around here? Hoof prints in the morning right atop where the ‘repellent’ was placed the day before suggest the deer Don’t Care.

Sure, if you just shoot the deer and you’ve got the main course to go with the vegetables! Well, it takes one deer to trash an orchard, but two deer to maintain the deer supply, ( ← there’s some biological wisdom for you, my treat!) so deer hunting has value but it’s not an answer to orchard protection.

Fortunately Stark Brothers sells their trees with a one year replacement guarantee, with no limitations on the reasons for the loss, even lack of good fences.

The summer of woven wire and fence post installation…

So I spent my summer learning to put up good fences and replanted in the fall. Each tree gets its own three-post, 7 ft diameter, 2×4 inch 5 ft or taller welded wire enclosure.

Success!

OK, one tree’s fence got mangled, apparently by a deer that actually fell into it; but I didn’t get any tree damage all last year despite having frequent deer sign along the paths I mow so I can tend to the trees.

To protect against winter-desperate mice and other small critters, the trunks are wrapped at the base. I went with the soft fabric-like trunk wrap rather than the harder plastic scroll versions; it was slightly more work to put on (still only a couple of minutes per tree) at about ¼ the cost. There were no tooth marks on my trunks this spring, so I’m calling that a win.

Here’s my point

If you plan on growing your own food and you can’t afford to share with the four-leggers, do it right from the start and build good fences made of metal. That means you at least need to have all the materials on hand. Don’t forget the post hole pounder!

Bird netting is wonderful if you want to keep your berry crops. Bumbling around with less effective methods might make an entertaining story, but it wouldn’t be nearly as funny if I hadn’t had a farmer’s market as a backup plan come dinner time that first year of berry growing.  Suffice it to say the ‘scare away’ methods work…for about two days each.

A lot of people put heritage garden seeds in their preps, but don’t actually do any gardening now and don’t store things like garden tools and fencing materials.  Without the tools to get the garden in the ground, you can’t grow anything, and without fencing, what you do grow will likely end up inside of a four-legger not you.