Argh! I came out today and half of my lettuce plants had been eaten down to the soil! And something (I suspect a deer) and chomped on the tomato plants! This was no hornworm - too much of the plant was gone. ARGH.
So, after looking around my big box garden store for awhile trying to figure out what to do, I settled on 8 foot tall tomato stakes (the kind with the metal core and plastic coating that are normally used for tomatoes), plastic mesh deer fencing, heavy-duty twist ties, velcro cord organizers, and landscape fabric pins. This photo shows a pretty good picture of it:
So, I was standing on a ladder with a rubber mallet while the SO was holding the ladder steady. I was driving the stakes into the clay soil with the hammer about a foot. Once those were all done, we unrolled the plastic fencing and cut the length we needed. Since the fencing is 7 feet tall, and the stakes were 8 feet tall but hammered into the soil 1 foot, it worked out perfectly. I started at the end with the gutter and used lengths of the heavy-duty twist ties to attach the fencing to the stakes. However, you will notice colored ties right by the gutter. In that area only, I used the velcro cord organizers so that I could easily undo the fence from the stakes so that I can have access to the garden. Nifty, huh?!?
Then I continued using the heavy-duty twist ties to attach the fencing to the stakes. I put more twist ties towards the bottom since there are bunnies around here and I didn't want them getting in. Then I took the landscape pins and used them to hammer the bottom of the fencing to the ground. I used about three in-between each two stakes (again, to keep the bunnies out).
However, before I did all of that, I set up an automated watering system for the garden. Even though I have a way in & out of the garden, I knew that I was not going to want to mess with it every day before going to work. The former owners of the house were kind enough to leave a very long hose and a couple of digital water timers. There were also two soaker hoses buried around plants in the front yard which were totally unnecessary. So, after looking around the local big-box store at their automated garden watering section, I decided that I had plenty of materials to make my own setup. Basically, instead of burying the soaker hose in the ground (since I have a container garden), I just draped the hose over the top of the plants and threaded the hose between plants to try to keep it in place. Also, I had the landscape pins that I tried to use to stick the hose to the soil in the containers (which didn't work great since the soil was not filled to the top of the containers which is where the hose was). I connected the spigot to the timer, connected the hose, and connected that to the soaker hose and gave it a test run. Of course, there is water that is kind of going all over the place (that's what soaker hoses do), but overall it did a pretty good job. You can see the gray hose going into the lettuce plants (under the fence) in the photo above. Below are some other pictures showing the black soaker hose in the plants (you can also see the silver landscape pins keeping the hose in place in the lettuce):
WHEW! I NEVER thought I would have to put up a deer fence. At least the automated watering system will save me some time!
