Maarten Smet

Kena Landry wrote: Otherwise, what would be our option?

You could use clamshells (the ones you purchase strawberries in). You simply cover the fruit and snap the clamshell shut over the branch (so if the fruit falls, it stays in the clamshell as the clamshell is held up by the branch).

Works well for:
Groundcherries (voles love them, when the groundcherries drop, they are protected by the shell)
Strawberries (protection from voles, you take it off once the strawberry is ripe and put it around the next batch of ripening strawberries)
Grapes (protection from birds)
Apples/pears (protection from squirrels)

The only one where the critters have had success to eat the fruit was with pawpaws. My assumption is that the fruit was just too sweet to ignore, so they ripped open the clamshells. Adding tape around the clamshell protected the remainder of the pawpaws.

It is hard to do it for a full orchard, but if you want to protect some fruit you would love to taste, it is worth it.

M

Jay Angler wrote: But I don't get a more than 3 cherries a year do to all the critters that love cherries and are willing to grab them ALL!

Try Clamshell guards https://www.gardeningcharlotte.com/spring/2021/6/5/clam-shell-guards

I started using these this season and it has helped a lot with my small fruits (grapes/strawberries/ground cherries). Nice thing is that if the fruit drops, it stays in the clamshell, away from critters' lil fingers.

M

"After several people mentioning deer, I now feel very lucky that the deer don't seem to be an issue for me (unless they've come in only at night, and somehow not left a single track.) My only guess is they're less comfortable coming close to my living space, because it's not like there's any shortage of them in the area. And a proper deer fence is probably even more expensive than a rodent fence."

I hope you have lots of adjacent gardens or lots of corn fields in close proximity to your property, because if not, to paraphrase Fields of Dreams, if you build it, the deer will come.

I have lots of deer pressure, so I build a double 5-foot fence (4 feet distance in-between), with T-posts and chicken wire, not cheap, but does the work just as much as a proper deer fence and much cheaper.

I have a vole problem, but by "feeding them" abundant sun chokes, they only cause me issues with other root crops and when I plant seeds, they leave my trees alone. So, I just have to: 1) have a special place for my potatoes they cannot access and 2) knock their population down with traps/... just before planting season. They don't bother me the rest of the year, so I leave them alone the rest of the year, actually I'd prefer to have a big population the rest of the year, as it attracts its predators, so hopefully at some point I will stop having to knock the population down myself and they will do the job.

So, for me, a deer fence makes sense, a rodent fence does not. But your circumstances may differ, or differ for now .

M

Josh Warfield wrote:I'm in my first year of gardening, but did a whole lot of reading before I ever planted anything, and got completely sold on the "landrace gardening" concept.

Part of that concept is that plants should evolve pest resistance if you just don't bother protecting them from pests. Sounds great to me, so I left my garden completely unfenced (besides the cattle fence at the property line). Then I met the rabbits and the pack rats. They eat every single sunflower as soon as it gets to about 6 or 8 inches tall. Beans are gone before they grow their second set of leaves. Lettuce gets wiped out when it's barely done germinating. All but one melon plant was gone within a week of sprouting, and then the one surviving plant had all its flowers eaten. I wouldn't mind a very low survival rate in the first year, but it sucks to have to start from scratch on multiple entire species. The only plants I grew that I'm still fairly hopeful will produce seed are the squash; I guess they just don't like the hairy leaves or something. Some of the casualties are certainly due to my inexperience as a gardener, but that will be less of a problem next year, while the critters are gonna be the same.

So apparently, I was way too optimistic about this. Did I just have really bad luck, or did I fundamentally misunderstand what's meant by pest resistance?

On a related note, is there any such thing as an affordable rodent-proof fence? These pack rats are particularly aggravating, due to their habit of cutting down a plant and then just leaving it sitting there, not even eating it. WHY?!?

Couple of comments:
1) "should evolve pest resistance" You will still have to protect your plants from animals, unless you want to landrace towards plants that are inedible/poisonous to animals, and inedible/poisonous probably to yourself as well. Or you have to make your garden  area bigger, so critters can't eat it all. If you have corn, deer don't walk too deep into corn fields, so if you have a 50 row corn field, the outside rows are devoured, but the inside rows are safe. You seem to have a big garden area, so you could focus on low input seeding. For instance, sunflowers: buy a pack of sunflowers seeds they sell as bird food from the garden center, sprinkle it over a wide area and even if the birds eat 90%, you will still get a nice patch of sunflowers.
2)"while the critters are gonna be the same" Incorrect, critters will change each years, some will be there each year, like deer or field mice, but you creating a garden impacts the ecosystem, pests from last year will have attracted predators this year which may attract other animals that may become your new pests.
3) "I wouldn't mind a very low survival rate in the first year, but it sucks to have to start from scratch on multiple entire species." Yeah, that sucks, been there, but it will teach you the species that will thrive without neglect (hopefully without (2) changing the success) and the ones that will need a little more help during the season. For me, watermelons work really well, I can just drop seeds in the soil, no water/weeding, as long as I give them landscape fabric to climb over (as they have small leaves, they can't compete with my weeds). Squashes don't work well, unless I plant them on a place I buried compost or manure. Squash doesn't need landscape fabric as the big leaves dominate the weeds...

Good luck,

M

Florence Van Vorst wrote:My asparagus ferns block the sun from my strawberries.  My strawberry patch is now in the shade. We are from northern NJ.  

Actually, that seems to be the ideal: as the strawberries blocks the sun from weed sprouts, killing the weeds, the asparagus can establish themselves better, "closing the canopy" of the system the same way a forest does, but as a consequence of this succession, it also kills of the strawberries.

Maarten

Wish there was a "my chicken compost for me" option

M

Timothy Norton wrote:
If I get more comfrey started from these fragments than I need at the moment, I may plant a few on this hill. It’ll help with erosion; it doesn’t get cut super often; and it will compete well with whatever I plant there eventually.

Be careful with planting too much on a steep hill, as comfrey leaves die back completely in the winter (and since it kills off grass, there is not a lot of root mass to prevent soil erosion in the winter, as the big comfrey leaves killed off all vegetation under it). Now, if you put a swale at the bottom of the hill, with perhaps some fruit trees, if you plant the hill full off comfrey, those dead comfrey leaves will all collect in the swale and fertilize the fruit trees, without you lifting a finger.

M

What about fencing material or other protection against wildlife?

There is a big difference from growing a garden in an abandoned space next to 5 trillion acres of corn versus growing a garden in suburbia, where you garden is the only one around and all wildlife ravages your garden because there is no other food around ergo nothing remains for the gardener.

M

I'd recommend you use Joseph Lofthouse's method (he posts here as well), as described in his book "Landrace Gardening": Get seeds of a wide varieties of a vegetable you want to grow. Don't fertilize, minimum water, no mothering. The first year, only a small amount of plants will survive. Save the seeds of those plants, the second year you will have more plants survive, the third year, through the plants cross-breeding, you have a whole bunch of plants very adjusted to your garden and able to survive without fertility/water/maintenance.

To deal with the weeds, I would put down plastic in the fall, leave it on just before you put in your seeds. After you put in your seeds, your vegetable plants will have the same start as your weeds and the ones that outcompete the weeds are the ones you save seed of.

Another strategy is to mow your garden frequently the first year, this will avoid your annual weeds to set flower/seed. Next fall you put on the plastic which kills some of the perennial weeds so hopefully that gives your seeds an even better shot at survival.

M

I'd buy the "Permaculture Orchard" Movie prior to planting my orchard:
https://www.permacultureorchard.com

it is an instructional video on how to plant an permaculture orchard, very instructive.

In addition, I would graft more myself. Last year, I grafted 30 apple trees from $6 root stocks and $6 scion wood in early spring, then I planted them immediately. 28 of them took. So now I have 15 apple varieties and 2 root stock plants I can take cuttings from and make new root stocks and scion wood from, an infinite amount of future new apple trees. Note that last year was the first year I ever grafted, so even rookies can get good result with grafting.

Also, start with a whole bunch of different fruit trees to see which one is better adapted to your soil/climate. For instance, I now know peach trees are the best growing trees on my property, having a diameter the size of a small giraffe's neck (I know you Americans like this type of comparisons instead of centimeters ;) ) while all my other fruit trees are doing ok, buttery weak in comparison.

M