Good morning
I am hoping for some advice from more experienced folk on my lovely, but also slightly scary prospect.
Firstly, some back ground information. We live on a 15 acre smallholding. The whole plot pretty much gently slopes facing North. We are in a valley where the wind mostly comes from the West. The location is North East Scotland. For reasons that I don't fully understand we live in a micro climate in our wee valley. Slightly colder than surrounding areas in the Winter, slightly warmer than surrounding areas in the Summer.
For the past two years we have lived at the bottom of the hill in a static caravan whilst building our cabin half way up the hill. I sited my garden behind the static caravan where it is sheltered from the wind. We fenced it in from the chickens. Plot is about 80 metres long by 10 meters wide. Last year I worked on improving the soil as much as possible. The drainage is pretty poor after years of intensive farming, but I still managed to get good crops of reliable sorts such as potatoes, leeks, onions, kale, beans and peas. Beetroots weren't very happy, neither was carrots. I did manage to have one lush patch of parsnips, but ego got the better of me and I left them in the ground too long admiring them and they became very woody!
In front of the caravan I planted about 60 trees and shrubs. Mostly Apple, Alder, Willow, Hawthorne, Blackcurrant and Raspberries. All was going well.
This winter we have moved into the cabin up the hill, and the Deer have systemically destroyed a large portion of trees (despite putting covers on them.) And they ate my leeks, onions, my overwintering greens (most heartbroken about the broccoli) I was disheartened, but resolved to move the garden up the hill, closer to the house, following the permaculture idea of zoning. I planned to move my fencing and section off a similar sized plot to the west side of the house. There is running water in the form of a stream and a nice, sheltering bank of Alders in place. It is right back to scratch with tractor divots and compacted soil, and it doesn't feel right.
So I thought about deer fencing the whole of the old garden, taking in the static caravan and all the trees at the front. This would give me a huge area to play with, and would go some way to protect the surviving trees from the little darlings. BUT it is really expensive. I have been quoted 286 pounds for the materials, and it will be a pretty labour intensive job. I keep thinking that I could have a decent greenhouse for that money instead.
Here you see my dilemma.
In a nutshell: Do I move the garden up the hill and start again? Using my existing fencing and keeping costs down? Or, do I spend quite a lot of money and time fencing the existing garden?
Any advice would be most appreciated.
