We'll be picking up 370 plants from the two county conservation native plant sales this weekend. Oh boy, I hope we're ready.
First thing is working on "deer exclusion" (that's what the experts call it). Rather than fencing in a small garden area, we are attempting to keep the deer out of an acre or so around the house. About half of this fenceline is in the forest, with big and small trees and a fair amount of brush. In this area, Mark built an 8-wire fence, about 6 feet high. Deer can jump a 6-foot fence if it's out in the open, but we're hoping that heavy brush makes it impossible for them to get a run at it. We'll continue to add plantings along this fenceline, making it ever more difficult for them, we hope.
The other half of our fenceline is wide open, up nearer the house. This is where we've strung electric wire. We hope to someday replace most of the electric fence with our hedgerows: heavy plantings of mostly shrubs, forming an impenetrable barrier, we hope. In the meantime, we need zapping deterrent. We've tinkered with our electric fence this week and put fresh peanut butter bait on it. Look at these new posts - they are self-insulating, making those ugly yellow plastic insulators are unnecessary. Very nice, right? We may replace our .80 joule energizer for one with 5 joules - does anyone have thoughts on that? We want enough zap to make the deer remember.
The next thing is the weather. As you can see in the photos, it's not spring up here yet. Will we be able to get a shovel through the permafrost?
And then there's the question of soil. Did our sheet mulching turn into dirt? How's that hugelkultur doing?
Lots of questions. Few answers. Trial and error. Stay tuned.
Wire tape attached to the posts with a simple cotter pin:
Yum - peanut butter on foil strips duct-taped to the wire tape:
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