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Maria Lane wrote:Hello!
I am building a one acre ish garden that encloses my property, and if we don’t get fencing in soon the deer are going to destroy everything.
Permanent fencing is too expensive right now. And electric fencing will not work for us for a variety of reasons. We also can’t install woven wire/rolled fencing for a variety of reasons so this has left us with only weird options.
I like the appearance of wire fences like they use for horses, just single strands spaced evenly apart up the fence. Or they use barbed for livestock (we will not use barbed wire, I cannot deal with a trapped half dead deer)
The fence lines are also sloped. Most of them. This design would remove all the issues with installing on a slope and be pretty easy for me to install myself.
What I wanted to do was single strand wire fencing. I’m just concerned the deer will try and climb through it or won’t see the upper strands well enough and try and jump it, becoming entangled.
Do you think (non-barbed) wire fence would work if the wire was close enough together? String between t posts, maybe wooden post for corners.
I had thought maybe wire every 6” up from the ground til your at about 3’ maybe then every 10’ from there to the top? 8’ tall. Would be even better if could use plastic garden twine or something for the top few feet considering it’s just a visual deterrent from jumping at that point and the wire is extremely expensive because of how many strands I would need and the fact that it would be about 900 feet of it.
Is there any chance it would work? Would they just try and bend the wires and climb through?
Thank you!
EDIT: Thank you for the suggestions of other kinds of fencing, but I have considered a lot of options and would like to hear people’s thoughts on making this one specifically.![]()
"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young
Judith Browning wrote:
Maria Lane wrote:Hello!
I am building a one acre ish garden that encloses my property, and if we don’t get fencing in soon the deer are going to destroy everything.
Permanent fencing is too expensive right now. And electric fencing will not work for us for a variety of reasons. We also can’t install woven wire/rolled fencing for a variety of reasons so this has left us with only weird options.
I like the appearance of wire fences like they use for horses, just single strands spaced evenly apart up the fence. Or they use barbed for livestock (we will not use barbed wire, I cannot deal with a trapped half dead deer)
The fence lines are also sloped. Most of them. This design would remove all the issues with installing on a slope and be pretty easy for me to install myself.
What I wanted to do was single strand wire fencing. I’m just concerned the deer will try and climb through it or won’t see the upper strands well enough and try and jump it, becoming entangled.
Do you think (non-barbed) wire fence would work if the wire was close enough together? String between t posts, maybe wooden post for corners.
I had thought maybe wire every 6” up from the ground til your at about 3’ maybe then every 10’ from there to the top? 8’ tall. Would be even better if could use plastic garden twine or something for the top few feet considering it’s just a visual deterrent from jumping at that point and the wire is extremely expensive because of how many strands I would need and the fact that it would be about 900 feet of it.
Is there any chance it would work? Would they just try and bend the wires and climb through?
Thank you!
EDIT: Thank you for the suggestions of other kinds of fencing, but I have considered a lot of options and would like to hear people’s thoughts on making this one specifically.![]()
I think this could work with several modifications.
Are you thinking electric fence wire?
I'm not sure what other gauge is available on a big roll.
I would go for a nine foot height. We had 8' steel posts which only stick out above ground six feet or so and then we added electric fence separaters to extend another three feet.
I think you would need to add some more verticle elements though to add enough rigidity to the horizontal wires for them to keep deer out...maybe cane, small bamboo, cut saplings, maybe mill ends if you have a saw mill near by?
This all depends on how refined it needs to look![]()
I'm not sure of prices either...that's a lot of wire and steel posts seemed way high last we priced them.
J. Syme wrote:there is an overlap between deer proof and people proof... fencing should be easy for you to get in and hard for pest to cross. I've tried tall fence short fence wolf pee hanging pie plates, cd's and other scary reflective things. all i did was create a better grade of ninja deer that don't care about wolf pee smell. eventually i got a sufficient food plot planted for the deer away from the orchard & garden that they now only come up occasionally to raid the garden. the trick is to make other food sources easier. one gizmo that was very effective in scaring the deer away is the motion detection activated sprinkler system. the draw back was it's also very effective at making a grumpy wet wife who just wanted to pick a few tomatoes for lunch.... that system has been abandoned and we're on the land of plenty alternatives method. the food plot took about 3 years to get well established, well worth the effort. good luck training your deer.
Love is the only resource that grows the more you use it.
David Brower
SKIP books, get 'em while they're hot!!! Skills to Inherit Property
See me in a movie building a massive wood staircase:Low Tech Lab Movie
we were planning on t posts every 15’ I wonder if that will be enough rigidity for that bottom 5’ of wire that they can’t push it down or climb through)
"We're all just walking each other home." -Ram Dass
"Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder."-Rumi
"It's all one song!" -Neil Young
Mike Haasl wrote:Where in the world are you located? Here I can get a 1/4 mile of electric fence wire for $40 (Fleet Farm).
I think that if you do 10' t posts (2' in the ground) and run this wire every 6" low and every 10-12" up high, it should work just fine to keep deer out. They're most likely to try to go under it. I think you can use fewer t posts if you make some sort of wire holder in between the t posts. It could just be a piece of wire that's staked to the ground, runs up and loops around the lowest wire, goes up to the next one and loops tightly around it, then up to the next one, and so on.
SKIP books, get 'em while they're hot!!! Skills to Inherit Property
See me in a movie building a massive wood staircase:Low Tech Lab Movie
Mike Haasl wrote:I know. This is just the galvanized wire that can be used to convey electricity. But it also works as just cheap wire.
Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Crazy idea, but I wonder if UV-glow fishing line might supplement your fencing and make it appear taller / deeper.
This is the stuff they sell to bass fishermen for night fishing -- the lines glow like a Christmas tree in UV light. Cabelas/Bass Pro usually carry it.
I've used this successfully to keep birds from crashing into my windows. Birds, bees, and deer can see much further into the ultraviolet than we can. That's why deer are on the move at dusk -- they can see better than their predators.
An important distinction: Permaculture is not the same kind of gardening as organic gardening.
Mediterranean climate hugel trenches, fabuluous clay soil high in nutrients, self-watering containers with hugel layers, keyhole composting with low hugel raised beds, thick Back to Eden Wood chips mulch (distinguished from Bark chips), using as many native plants as possible....all drought tolerant.
Cristo Balete wrote:Maria, I put a detailed description of the chicken wire fence I've used for 30 years in the description below. If you are going to put a real commitment into a garden, then put a real commitment into a fence. It's not fun going to bed at night willing your plants and food to be there in the morning. Odds are, slowly but surely, they won't be, unless you do it right.
The initial investment may seem like a lot, but it lasts. I'm near enough to the coast to get salt water mist that the fog pushes inland at night, and the first sections of chicken wire lasted 7-10 years depending on the manufacturer, which we can't really know about. 100 feet of my original fence is still up from 2006, not rusted. Replacing it in sections is pretty easy.
I get the most damage from little critters: packrats, rabbits, foxes, so I turn out the bottom edge of the chicken wire about 6 inches and let the weeds grow through it to hold it down, then if they find a way in there will be a little trail that's obvious and you can find it quickly.
Your questions about posts in the ground, the wind is an issue. You wouldn't think that chicken wire would resist the wind, but it does. So go deep with the posts, and do a lot of reinforcement on the corners. Check out cattle fencing for corner post design. It's designed to keep in cows, about 1500 pounds apiece, they do a lot of pushing, and rubbing,
I couldn't find a way to put a link, but you can search on this:
Forum: permaculture, Living fences for intense deer browse?
How's your owl population? Our little things are far more inclined to dig under because they're likely to get picked off if they go up. I would go out 6" and up at least 2 feet to accomplish this effect.Maria Lane wrote:I wonder if it would be worth putting chicken wire on the bottom 1.5’ to 2’ on top of the wire, to still keep the deer from digging under but also block some of those small things. Do you think those small animals would just climb over it if it’s just the bottom couple feet?
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Jay Angler wrote:
How's your owl population? Our little things are far more inclined to dig under because they're likely to get picked off if they go up. I would go out 6" and up at least 2 feet to accomplish this effect.Maria Lane wrote:I wonder if it would be worth putting chicken wire on the bottom 1.5’ to 2’ on top of the wire, to still keep the deer from digging under but also block some of those small things. Do you think those small animals would just climb over it if it’s just the bottom couple feet?
An important distinction: Permaculture is not the same kind of gardening as organic gardening.
Mediterranean climate hugel trenches, fabuluous clay soil high in nutrients, self-watering containers with hugel layers, keyhole composting with low hugel raised beds, thick Back to Eden Wood chips mulch (distinguished from Bark chips), using as many native plants as possible....all drought tolerant.
An important distinction: Permaculture is not the same kind of gardening as organic gardening.
Mediterranean climate hugel trenches, fabuluous clay soil high in nutrients, self-watering containers with hugel layers, keyhole composting with low hugel raised beds, thick Back to Eden Wood chips mulch (distinguished from Bark chips), using as many native plants as possible....all drought tolerant.
An important distinction: Permaculture is not the same kind of gardening as organic gardening.
Mediterranean climate hugel trenches, fabuluous clay soil high in nutrients, self-watering containers with hugel layers, keyhole composting with low hugel raised beds, thick Back to Eden Wood chips mulch (distinguished from Bark chips), using as many native plants as possible....all drought tolerant.
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