I use a very fine Deer Netting - costs about $15 for a 7x100 foot roll of it at our local garden store.

Holding it up with rebar works well - one post every five feet or so.

I haven't put the netting around the main garden yet - so I don't have pictures to show of it. I do have it around the grape trellis - but no pictures there either. I may post some on my blog in a few days with my typical updates to show.

The netting is so thin that it is barely noticeable - so that is a good thing.

Here is a link that might be useful: BsnTech Gardening Blog

The easiest and cheapest way is to use T-stakes and galvanized wire fencing. You could install it yourself in a weekend for a few hundred dollars. 4" Ã 4" mesh is good enough to keep deer out. 6' tall has been enough to keep out our large deer population. A very large area might require a taller fence.

Depending on what kinds of other critters you have, you may need to put in finer fencing and/or trench it into the ground. I'd start with a simple deer fence and see how that goes. I wound up having to trench in a vole fence, which was quite expensive, but you may not have them.

Hint: Keep your grass cut short, and remove brushpiles from anywhere near the garden. That will reduce habitat for animals that may want to invade.

Another option: If you're not growing a vegetable garden, consider planting only deer-resistant plants, and dispensing with the fence.

Oh, I'm going through a similar situation as you are. I noticed deer tracks all through my garden this spring. They also started eating all my strawberries!! Blasted things!! I put up bird netting around my strawberries and so far it's enough to prevent the deer from grazing on my plants. But I knew I needed to put up a fence around my main garden if I wanted to have any kind of vegetable harvest this year.

I've been working on putting up a fence for the last few weeks. I decided on 1-inch poultry netting that's 5-feet high. To really keep deer out I would need a 8-foot fence, but I'm hoping this 5-foot fence is enough...they just need to STOP grazing on my garden! The fence cost $150 for 150-foot roll. I used 6.5-feet T-posts to hold it up. They cost about $4.50 per post. (To hold up an 8-foot fence you would need 10-foot posts pounded in 2 feet...THAT'S a lot of work and the stakes would get pricey.)

I looked into welded wire fencing and that stuff rusts really fast. Just say'n.

Here is a picture of my garden in mid-fence construction.
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I have a website where I do talk about and post pictures of my garden fence/gate project if you are really still interested....www.catherinesteele.com

Good luck!
Catherine

Electrified Fence baby!!!! then you can have bbq'd bambi to go with the veggies!!!

That is a great setup you have there Catherine, though with all that land, I would make it much bigger :)

You can go the medieval route, planting milk thistle or what ever thistle you like in a fence around your garden, you can plant hedges, but it will take years to establish.

I started a thread in the Potager forum called Medieval Gardens, and it shows some nice articles on how they used thistle and picker bushes or canes, briars of any kind to make a fence around the garden area.

You would have a really pretty garden with it trimmed in roses plus get some nice rose hip tea, Prickly rose is the best variety grown for rose hips, but there are many varieties.

You can buy a few rose bushes, propagate from each one until you get enough to go around your yard. I did this once, cutting into the side of a rose cane, wrapping moss around it, wrapping the moss with plastic wrap, and watered it for about 6 weeks. It created a nice little wad of roots, I planted it, but a few weeks later it died, might have been the area I chose to plant it in. I would imagine each bush will make one cutting every 6 weeks, so in a years time about 5 plants would produce enough roses to make a fence.

But if you want instant first year fence, try the milk thistle.

Here is a link that might be useful: Medieval Garden

Hi Catherine,
If it turns out the deer get in and ruin your garden this year, take some 3/8" rebar or anything similar (bamboo,emt...etc etc) rebar just last the longest.... and "zip tie" them onto the poles and go purchase a bag of deer netting, use scissors to reduce the size to 3' and run it around your perimeter, I like to tie ribbons every so often ,because the deer fencing really is invisible ,and I want them to know it is there ;-)

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catherine - To add to what jon said, if you keep the top of the chicken wire loose, it's supposed to help keep out climbers like raccoons, since it'll flop over on them when they try to climb. And they supposedly don't like climbing something that feels flimsy, so keeping the whole thing kinda loose probably helps too. And about a 2 foot apron on the bottom should help with diggers. My chicken wire fence is only 4 foot tall, with lines from my trellising system a few feet inside. And I don't think many deer will try to jump it, since it's hard to see a safe way over, with a good spot to land. I've got at least one herd that likes to graze around my garden. But so far, no hoof prints inside my garden.

Very nice setup, jon.

Since my area that I protect are usually not very big, the deer won't jump over the fencing - never had any problem with it. The deer fencing I put up is about six feet tall - but I could make it up to seven feet.

As Jon said, you barely can see the deer netting. They don't like the feeling of it on their nose from what I understand and it keeps them away. Even though the netting is easy to break and not terribly strong, deer don't seem to try and bust it down.

You really have an investment in your garden there - three blocks high, all of the soil to fill it.. wow.

Here is a link that might be useful: BsnTech Gardening Blog

We don't have deer problem here in Phoenix but we do have enormous gopher/rabbit/bird problems...at least where I am. I used 2" pvc that's painted with a protective coating. The wire is "stucco wire" which is actually cheaper than chicken wire but basically the exact same thing. It comes in 3'x150' rolls for about $40. The expense came with having to buy the 5-way T's and other uncommon fittings for the pvc. We had to custom order them because most home depot type stores didn't carry them.

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Wow... Nice set-up King Kong.. Awesome ;-)

Thanks Jon! Your set-up is great too! I actually watched your videos while designing mine so thanks for that :)

Our property is surrounded by woods and we have had deer problems. Year before last I put out about 30-40 tomato plant and all looked great until the deer discovered them. We may have harvested 3 tomatoes. They even ate the green ones off. So last year we decided to try Deer Off spray since we didn't want to put up a fence. I must admit I doubted it would work. We had NO deer problems at all on any of our vegetables. So we are using it again this year. I hope it wasn't just luck but I don't think so since we have seen as many as 9 deer at one time on our road.

Hi all -

Photo of the grape arbor in the front with the deer netting I was discussing. 7-foot by 100-foot roll was purchased at the local garden store for around $15. Rebar was $20 for four posts. So this cost $35 to put up around the arbor - and I still have netting left.

Around the main garden in the front, I'm using PVC pipe at less than $1 each as the posts. So netting around the front garden will be about $25 for PVC pipe and another bag of deer netting (which I recycle year over year and re-use).

You can just barely see the netting below.

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Here is a link that might be useful: BsnTech Gardening Blog

Guaranteed to stop deer in their tracks.

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These are my trellises, but it would be easy to use the same concept to make a tall fence. Electrical conduit is about $1 per piece, and fits quite snugly into holes drilled in basic $1.75 2x4 studs. The conduit is held upright by 2' lengths of rebar pounded into the ground. I spray painted the conduit flat black, and stained the studs to give it more of a Craftsman look. You would need to use metal fence posts or 4x4's every 20' or so to keep the whole thing sturdy.

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Those are great lantanascape! Not only functional - but very attractive. You extra effort with the paint and staining really paid off!

lantanascape - You just gave me an idea for my new fence. I wonder if that conduit would be strong enough to hold up a chicken wire fence. I have a new garden I need to fence this year, and I want the fence to be floppy. And 1/2 inch conduit would probably be floppy. And I also need the top angled out at about 45 degrees, and that conduit bends pretty easily. And it's about 20% of the cost of t-posts. I think I'll experiment.

Lantanascape, how do you have the twine portion secured to the conduit? It looks like there's some sort of black flexible material wound around it. Do you have any more photos that are a little closer up? I'm trying to figure out what the underside of those 2x4's look like. Did you use a regular wood boring bit to make the holes in the wood? If not, what kind did you use? Did you have any problems with the wood splitting when drilling through it? Are there eye hooks on the bottom edges of the 2x4's? Was the netting purchased, or did you string it up by hand (seems like that'd be really time consuming)?

Are you sick of being inundated with questions yet?

Lol. Your trellises look most like what I'm hoping to make this week, but I've been struggling with just how to put them together, so having yours as examples have my mind racing.