I knew the first year for our little garden was going to be a struggle, and I knew it was only a matter of time before the deer realized that I had planted a smorgasbord for them. I woke up Saturday morning and stood at my bedroom window, gazing down lovingly at my little garden, when horror seized me -- the sunflowers were NAKED! Those pesky deer had found my garden! Isn't it enough that they have tromped all over my daylilies and robbed many of them of their foliage? Or relentlessly nibbled on my nandina until there are scarcely any leaves left? Or trampled my fresias so that they won't bloom? Must they defile nearly every plant on our property?! Sarah had planted the sunflower seeds so carefully and watered them diligently in hopes of feeding the birds with the seeds this winter.
All that is left of the sunflowers are stems! Even the few leaves you see in this picture disappeared the next morning. :o(
I threw on my yard work clothes (remembering to tuck my pants into my socks lest the ticks try to suck my blood) and made haste to my little garden. The evidence was everywhere -- those monstrous deer had tracked all over my garden. The tops of several of my pepper plants had been bitten off, as well as the tops from a few cucumber vines. Furthermore, those mongrels had knocked my largest ripening tomato off the vine! This means war!
The best solution to my deer problem would be to fence in the back yard. However, there are a few other home improvement projects that need to take precedence over fencing in the yard. An Internet search suggested cayenne pepper as a deer deterent. That sounded easy and cheap, so I decided to make that my line of defense. I liberally sprinkled all of the plants in my garden with cayenne pepper, hoping to give those irksome, four-legged creatures fiery dragon breath. My efforts were rewarded the next morning when I discovered new deer tracks through my garden, but my plants were all intact! YAY!
As I was sprinkling the cayenne on the plants leaves, there was a nagging question in my mind. Cayenne is a very potent substance, capable of burning flesh, both human and animal, so what about plant leaves? That question was answered this morning, when I went out to water the garden. The first thing I noticed was that wherever the cayenne concentration was the greatest, those leaves were turning yellow and looked as if they had been burned. So much for cayenne being my line of defense! I gave the garden a deep watering which left all of the leaves free from cayenne residue.
Every day, I do a morning and evening inspection of my little garden. Last night, my inspection revealed a near-ripe tomato that I was inclined to pick, but decided to let it hang on the vine overnight, and I'd get it when I did my morning inspection. I went to bed thinking about that succulent tomato, and how wonderful it would taste with fresh basil and mozzarella! There were fresh deer tracks this morning, and wouldn't you know that those blasted creatures ate my one ripe tomato?! In addition, they knocked the largest, not-yet-ripe tomato off the vine!
Now what?! Well, if I can't fence in the yard, at least I can fence in the garden, but I needed to do so quickly and inexpensively. I knew that it would only be a matter of hours before those greedy beasts were traipsing through my garden again. After dropping Sarah off at horse camp, the boys and I headed to Home Depot. After surveying the lumber stock, we decided on 15 - 1" x 2", 8 ft. pieces of wood that we had cut in half. Our strategy was going to be to put 30 - 4' stakes around the garden, and tie 25 lb. test fishing line between the stakes. There are probably more effective methods of fencing, but this one is the quickest and least expensive. The boys did a great job of sinking the stakes and tying the line around the garden. However, the verdict is still out on whether on not this method will keep the white-tail at bay.
There were 134 visits to this blog last week -- surely somebody out there is a gardener and can leave a comment with some sound advice on deterring deer!
And speaking of comments, with 134 visits, surely somebody has something to say! (Thanks to the Howland's for leaving a couple of comments!) As the family historian, I really just write this blog to journal for our family. I would write it even if nobody ever visited, but knowing that you do visit means a lot! (We're pretty boring -- don't you have something better to do?)
We celebrated Christian's birthday on Friday with a dinner of chicken and dumplings (from scratch, starting with a whole chicken) over mashed potatoes (freshly dug from our friend Larry's garden), squash from our garden, and the "best carrot cake I've ever had" (Tom's declaration), for dessert (Debbie Field's triple layer recipe - incredible!).
Christian with his birthday cake
Saturday found us cooking and cleaning in preparation for guests coming to dinner on the Lord's Day. The Upton's joined us for lasagna and fellowship following the morning worship service. I meant to take pictures, but I was enjoying myself too much and forgot!
Tom left on a four-day trip this morning, Sarah is going to horse camp every day this week, and I'll be doing some deep cleaning/organizing, and some preparation for our next school year these next few days. I'll post a deer update tomorrow!
Thanks for your patience with this windy post if you've made it this far!
All that is left of the sunflowers are stems! Even the few leaves you see in this picture disappeared the next morning. :o(I threw on my yard work clothes (remembering to tuck my pants into my socks lest the ticks try to suck my blood) and made haste to my little garden. The evidence was everywhere -- those monstrous deer had tracked all over my garden. The tops of several of my pepper plants had been bitten off, as well as the tops from a few cucumber vines. Furthermore, those mongrels had knocked my largest ripening tomato off the vine! This means war!
The best solution to my deer problem would be to fence in the back yard. However, there are a few other home improvement projects that need to take precedence over fencing in the yard. An Internet search suggested cayenne pepper as a deer deterent. That sounded easy and cheap, so I decided to make that my line of defense. I liberally sprinkled all of the plants in my garden with cayenne pepper, hoping to give those irksome, four-legged creatures fiery dragon breath. My efforts were rewarded the next morning when I discovered new deer tracks through my garden, but my plants were all intact! YAY!
As I was sprinkling the cayenne on the plants leaves, there was a nagging question in my mind. Cayenne is a very potent substance, capable of burning flesh, both human and animal, so what about plant leaves? That question was answered this morning, when I went out to water the garden. The first thing I noticed was that wherever the cayenne concentration was the greatest, those leaves were turning yellow and looked as if they had been burned. So much for cayenne being my line of defense! I gave the garden a deep watering which left all of the leaves free from cayenne residue.
Every day, I do a morning and evening inspection of my little garden. Last night, my inspection revealed a near-ripe tomato that I was inclined to pick, but decided to let it hang on the vine overnight, and I'd get it when I did my morning inspection. I went to bed thinking about that succulent tomato, and how wonderful it would taste with fresh basil and mozzarella! There were fresh deer tracks this morning, and wouldn't you know that those blasted creatures ate my one ripe tomato?! In addition, they knocked the largest, not-yet-ripe tomato off the vine!
Now what?! Well, if I can't fence in the yard, at least I can fence in the garden, but I needed to do so quickly and inexpensively. I knew that it would only be a matter of hours before those greedy beasts were traipsing through my garden again. After dropping Sarah off at horse camp, the boys and I headed to Home Depot. After surveying the lumber stock, we decided on 15 - 1" x 2", 8 ft. pieces of wood that we had cut in half. Our strategy was going to be to put 30 - 4' stakes around the garden, and tie 25 lb. test fishing line between the stakes. There are probably more effective methods of fencing, but this one is the quickest and least expensive. The boys did a great job of sinking the stakes and tying the line around the garden. However, the verdict is still out on whether on not this method will keep the white-tail at bay.
There were 134 visits to this blog last week -- surely somebody out there is a gardener and can leave a comment with some sound advice on deterring deer!
And speaking of comments, with 134 visits, surely somebody has something to say! (Thanks to the Howland's for leaving a couple of comments!) As the family historian, I really just write this blog to journal for our family. I would write it even if nobody ever visited, but knowing that you do visit means a lot! (We're pretty boring -- don't you have something better to do?)
We celebrated Christian's birthday on Friday with a dinner of chicken and dumplings (from scratch, starting with a whole chicken) over mashed potatoes (freshly dug from our friend Larry's garden), squash from our garden, and the "best carrot cake I've ever had" (Tom's declaration), for dessert (Debbie Field's triple layer recipe - incredible!).
Christian with his birthday cakeSaturday found us cooking and cleaning in preparation for guests coming to dinner on the Lord's Day. The Upton's joined us for lasagna and fellowship following the morning worship service. I meant to take pictures, but I was enjoying myself too much and forgot!
Tom left on a four-day trip this morning, Sarah is going to horse camp every day this week, and I'll be doing some deep cleaning/organizing, and some preparation for our next school year these next few days. I'll post a deer update tomorrow!
Thanks for your patience with this windy post if you've made it this far!
No comments:
Post a Comment