The deer won
The deer have officially
won the war of the early summer garden. It pains me to admit defeat...but the
parts of the fencing delay that I could have changed (Mark enjoying six
weeks filming with graduate students, a trip of a lifetime to visit his
brother out West, Mom coming to visit our new digs, my writing taking
precedence over all else), I wouldn't change. And the parts we couldn't
change --- health problems, weather craziness --- well, we
obviously have to roll with all that.
Which is not to say that
the garden was a complete loss. We ended up eating a lot of broccoli
and lettuce, a couple of cucumbers, a few handfuls of peas, and various
herbs. But all of the parts that are uncovered are now pretty much
kaput.
I'm disappointed,
obviously. But establishment years always have unexpected hurdles to
overcome. And our soil is clearly improving, as evidenced by the fact
that our plantings suddenly became tasty enough for the deer to eat as
soon as our topdressed manure began to sink in.
Meanwhile, I'm singing
the gardener's endless refrain: "There's always the next garden in the
fall." If I plant now in flats, maybe we will have managed to fence in
the garden when the time comes to set out....
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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So sorry about those eaten-up plants!
I wonder if any of the plants can regrow any of their leaves...sort of an experiment, I guess.
I wish you could use a mousetrap on those deer!
Have you thought to try to use one of the community gardens?
My folks in central MN have now retired from growing a large garden as it's too much physical work anymore, but as a kid growing up we just did not have the predator problems, deer were not as prevalent, we would lose some stuff to rabbits and my father's main scourge, the woodchuck each year, but nothing was totally wiped out.
Towards the end of the gardening dad quit growing sweet corn as he just could not keep up with the devastation the Raccoons would cause, and it seemed the rest of the pests got worse. Without a fence such as yours it is nearly futile to try growing things there anymore!