Deer for sure.
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Haha - Same here on the vocal tirades. I’ve caught myself looking around to make sure nobody was within earshot after a few of my distasteful outbursts.
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Heh, yes, thankfully being out in the country, we don’t have many close neighbors. I guess the only person I worry about hearing me is my wife, and she’s usually in the house when I’m out doing my inspections.
I think the maddest I ever got was last year, when we had a newly planted Winesap tree that we put in the ground around April. It was a big tree we got from Lowe’s, about 5ft tall, a very nice tree. Usually when I plant a new fruit tree, I put up a welded wire fence around it just because of deer. I had just bought some new fencing and knew I had to get it put up around that and a couple other bare root apples.
I had to go see the doctor one day, and wasn’t feeling good. When I got home, I thought, I’ll go check out the trees, just in case. Wouldn’t you know it, the Winesap had just about all of its leaves and a few blooms stripped off its limbs up to about 4ft, plus a branch was snapped.
Oh my, the rage welled up, and like a volcano, out burst an eruption of expletives that anyone within a hundred yards would’ve heard. I think my dog cowered at the outburst… I think it was kinda like how you felt, I had the fencing, but delayed just a couple days, and it cost me. Even tho I felt awful, I dragged that 100ft roll down the hill, and put up the fencing around not just that but five other trees.
I never knew they would be such a menace to all my planting, veggies or fruit, but I think I somewhat have a handle on their incursions.
Do you live out in the country, or is there just high deer pressure where you live? I know some folks in the 'burbs have deer issues.
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Yes on both. This property is bordered by Army Corps of Engineers land on two sides and very much in the country. If a vehicle is approaching of someone who isn’t family I can be 95%+ sure that it’s either our mail lady or the ups guy. Too many deer to be sure. The interesting thing about this experience is that I decided to double down on planting. I just put up 80 ft more of trellinet for beans and seeded a bunch more. If those deer are thinking they can foil my plans for a successful garden they can think again. 8 ft fence going up Tuesday evening. 
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I recall you have lots of juju’s. How do you protect those, or do the deer leave them alone?
All our veggie plots have a fishing line “fence” around them. So far so good this year. But, I was out in the tomato patch today, and the dirt is still soft from all the rain, and I thought I may have seen a deer hoof print deep in the mud, but also saw dog paw prints, too. So, I’m curious about that, but I didn’t see any other deer prints. Maybe it was just our dog tramping around in there. There wasn’t any damage to any of the plants that I could tell.
What kind of beans are y’all trying? We have a couple 50ft rows of half-runners, and another row of Rattlesnake pole beans.
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Hahaha - That’s very funny you should ask. The bigger plants (8 or 9 ft) are deer immune now. Most of the plants are smaller and have been suffering from some pretty severe deer browse. I put so much time into starting some new vegetable plots and really neglected the jujubes. They’ll be ok but I really do need to help protect them for a couple of years. I’m planning on putting 4 ft tree tubes on a lot of the smaller ones. I was thinking about using welded wire cages but decided on the tubes instead - just waiting on them to arrive now. I’ve pretty much decided that every tree I plant from now on will be getting a tube.
I thought about the fishing line but went with the bailing twine instead - not sure which is better.
Here are the beans I’m growing this year - all from Baker Creek which is not too far from here:
‘Beurre de Rocquencourt’
‘Blauhilde’
‘Borlotto Bush’
‘Brown Lazy Wife’
‘Trail of Tears’
‘Dragon Tongue’
‘Fort Portal Jade’
‘Good Mother Stallard’
‘Haricot Tarbais’
‘Magpie’
‘Mayflower’
‘Monachelle di Trevio’
‘Nonna Agnes’s Blue’
‘Rattlesnake’
‘Red Swan’
‘Snow Cap’
‘Tuvaglieda’
‘Jackson Wonder’ Bush Lima
‘Christmas’ Pole Lima
‘Dixie Speckled Butterpea’ Lima
‘Red Noodle’ Long Bean…
And then about 16 varieties of cowpea…
Let’s give a big round of applause for beans!
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Wow, that’s a lot of varieties of beans! Have you grown any of them in the past, or you saw them in the BK catalog and said, “those sound good, maybe I can try those, and maybe those…”
What will you do with all those, can? Sell? We just hope to get enough to can maybe 50qt this year. The last couple years of bean growing have been pitiful here. Bad soil, weather, weeds, etc. Our first planting year (2014), we had a bumper crop of half-runners, and even some corn. The next two years, not so much.
That’s a lot of cowpeas, too. You must like hummus!
Yes, I know Baker Creek is just off US 60 at Mansfield. When we drive home to Tulsa, sometimes we take that route, and I’ve always wanted to stop there, but never had the time. It must be a veggie nerd’s paradise. Perfect for me!
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I’ve grown ‘Trail of Tears’, ‘Good Mother Stallard’, and ‘Red Noodle’ - really like all three. Have also grown 6 of the cowpeas before (I believe hummus is made from chickpeas/garbanzo beans). I’m going to dehydrate a lot (I like dehydrating much more than canning) and then leave the rest for drying and saving. For me each new seed variety acquired seems like such a valuable investment. They’re like little jewels and very hard to resist.
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Yeah that is totally why. We are dry up here a few hundred miles north, and my plants look great. [quote=“subdood_ky_z6b, post:108, topic:10926”]
It almost seems a waste to try to grow them around here, considering the climate.
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You could try some of the dwarf tomatoes in containers with overhead protection to keep them dry.
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Sorry, I should have known chickpeas are in hummus. We buy lots of cans of them, because we like to make hummus, very tasty and healthy snack.
I don’t know if we could grow chickpeas here, I don’t if we have the right climate for them, but I’ll look into it.
I understand about acquiring seeds. Last winter (15-16), I went crazy with heirloom tomato seeds, I ended up with over 30 varieties from a guy in Ohio. I think I tried all of them last season! I’ve reined it in this year, we just planted 15 of our favorite varieties, two or three per type. We are aiming for more larger tom’s for canning, with a few smaller varieties thrown in.
Anyway, I agree seeds are very valuable, and will be worth many times more in the future. We grow our own to enjoy fresh food, but to also store for leaner times.
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While out on my daily inspections, it appears we had a deer raid in the cuke patch… Arrrgh!! We have about 45 or so hills that have been growing really well since planting the seeds about two weeks ago. Well, there were maybe 6-8 hills that were just stalks, no leaves at all, and maybe that many more hills with some stalks munched. There were devil deer hooves in the mud, so no doubt who it was. %#&@#-+$$@%#!!!
As mentioned before I am using fishing line as my fencing, and it had been working well. Yesterday, me and the wife were out in that same patch planting some cabbage, chard and spinach seeds, when I noticed the lower line of three had been broken. I don’t know how it happened but the ground was too muddy for me to get to it to repair then. So, of course it gets raided overnight or this morn. I didn’t see it until about 5 this evening. So, I re-strung the line, and added another just above it.
Thankfully, we still have some extra cuke seeds, and will replant those soon. We also had an incursion in the tater patch, and there were a few beans that were damaged, but nothing else that I could tell. I added another line to that fence, and to the corn/bean patch below the house. So, we’ll see how the new fences work out.
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Very nice tomatoes. Your limiting the number of tomato plants reminded me of my reducing the ones I grew to six (long time ago). My thoughts are that six well taken care of tomatoes will out produce thirty that get minimal care.
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Your season may be long enough for the traditional chickpeas. But if not (or if you just want to try something different) you can certainly grow black chickpeas; they do fine here in our short season. You plant them at the same time as peas, they are cold hardy. Taste is a bit stronger than the big white chickpeas and they are more pea sized, but the black ones make a fine humus.
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So that’s why you plant so much - attrition allowance!
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Yes, and after inspections today, that strategerie hopefully will win out. Some genius (me) left a couple fishing line “gates” open yesterday, and some creature sauntered into the tater patch, and took out about 8 Contender bean plants, and a few potato sprouts. Oddly, they didn’t touch the okra or peas. Plus, they munched on maybe 6 of 12 sweet potato plants that had been doing pretty well.
There were a few bean plants in another patch that were nibbled on as well. But, I think maybe a rabbit may have done the deed.
This is on top of having maybe 12 of 45 cuke hills raided Sun night.
So glad to help the local fauna to such a diversified diet of fresh veggies.
Not.
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decent plastic deer fence is a good investment. Check out deerbusters.com. I put up a barbed wire fence and the deer just slipped right through it. The plastic deer fence is amazing. No more deer damage! Even helps with the wild turkeys.
But, I have found that the deer fencing is worthless with rats and ground squirrels. They just gnaw their way in. I’ve started reinforcing the bottom 2’ of my deer fence with chicken mesh.
I can’t plant extra for an “attrition allowance”. In my area, if the deer find something edible, they don’t leave it alone until it’s completely gone.
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Thanks, Scott. They have some nice products, but I think I have a solution (besides closing the gates). If that doesn’t work, I might have to consider other means.
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I’m trying it. Excited.
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Hope it works for you. Just be sure and take it off after the seeds germinate and root themselves. Good luck!
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We have a bunch of tomatoes on our plants, since I’m not pinching off blooms. The biggest fruit is on a Siberian Pink, about the size of a tennis ball. Just about all the varieties have something on them. Nothing on the Red Calabash, Watermelon, Barao, Chocolate Cherry, Beefsteak or Pineapple yet.
Half runners are starting to shoot out vines, so I need to get the trellis set up. Most of our Honey Select corn is up, about a foot tall. Half of the Silver Queen is up, and virtually none of the Iochief came up, I suspect old seed.
Cukes are growing well, despite a deer attack last week, we still have maybe 45 hills that are intact. Hope to get some production within a month or so. Radishes are going crazy, and I’m surprised to see our lettuce and cabbage come up after a no show last year.
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