Jacob - I have had to resort to fencing and netting and chicken wire with t-posts. All of my gardens are enclosed this way. If not, the wildlife would win!

Sorry, I'm not getting a mental image of what you are describing.

However, the coons can still get in with my set-up if they wanted. And ground hogs have dug under the wooden border. It's a constant battle. That's when I spray with fish emulsion/seaweed.

Coons are not by biggest problem, thankfully, knock on wood.

a 7 1/2' plastic deer fence worked for me. 10' posts.

All my deer must be lazy as 6' non-electrified has worked fine for me for several years. They browse all around the gardens and nibble on anything that pokes trough or drapes over the fence but the inside stuff is fine.

Dave

My garden is in it's second year. Early last spring a good friend came and tilled the spot for me which I followed with my rear-tine tiller in neating up. I had it nice and neat and was excited to soon be planting. I walked out one morning to find what I truly believe was evidence of deer holding square-dance lessons in the tilled garden plot!!!! Deer tracks *everywhere*!!!! I knew I couldn't plant without some type of protection. I had been worried about deer being as the area has a very dense deer population but I really wasn't expecting what I saw. :(

I ended up enclosing the small 30x50 garden inside of a roughly 55x75 electric fence. The fence is four strands of polywire (synthetic twine with stainless steel strands woven in. Fence posts are metal t-posts and the top stand is roughly 4-1/2" high with the lower strand around 13" high. The fence charger is a Parmak Magnum 12v battery powered unit powered by a 24DC battery.

Initially I baited the fence with peanut butter smeared on tinfoil and folded over the poly wire...deer would smell the peanut butter and either stick there noses to it or lick...bad impression on the deer and I believe they spread the word not to hang out around my garden. No deer crossed over or crawled beneath the fence during the summer. BUT, in the fall I had some bean drying on a trellis for seed and looked out one morning to see a 4-point buck casually picking them one at a time...he cleaned them up by the time I saw him and yelled for him to get out of my garden. I have well-trained deer and the young buck immediately jumped across the fence with grace and ease. <duhhh>

This spring I decided to gamble and do nothing to enhance my fencing system. "Something" eventually started eating my Charantais cantaloupe. I couldn't figure out what it was. Then, one night when I had left the fence charger disconnected (grandkids were visiting a day or so earlier) the deer must have figured the fence was harmless. I walked out the next morning to find all the green and dried cowpeas GONE and the cantaloupe vines had been stomped and ripped. I had more or less written off the cantaloupe and cowpeas (especially the cowpeas as they were pretty much done). But what hurt was they mowed down the leaves on my small sweet potato patch that had been looking really nice.<sigh> It was partially my fault, as I had left the fence un-energized and it proved that the four-strands of electric fence *had* been keeping the deer out (except for one that I believe was slipping in and cleaning the ripening cantaloupes up). But, it showed me that I need to beef up my fence. Here is my next step...

I had researched this last year and found that a double electric fence is apparently very effective at keeping deer out of a garden or a large field. Deer's eyes are on the side of their heads thus causing them to have terrible depth perception. By placing a second fence anywhere from 30" to 36" outside the main fence perimeter and only 18"-20" high it confuses the deer to the point that they can't determine if they can jump both fences at once and whether the area between the fences is large enough to jump into and then to jump over the main fence from there. It's a psychological weapon. I bought some $2 step-in electric fence posts at Tractor Supply that are lightweight and easily moved, being as I'll be moving them to mow the grass every few weeks. I already had some extra poly wire so I'm good to go. I'm about ready to plant snap beans (hopefully this afternoon) so the double fence will be going up within the next few days.

Here is a link to a google search for "double electric fence for deer" that should give you an idea of what I'm going to be doing and maybe give you some ideas for your own fencing.

Best wishes, deer can be *highly* destructive...they're not the timid, cute little Bambi's portrayed by Walt Disney!!!!!!

Dirt tracker, funny how everybody that watches that movie (Bambi) thinks the hunters are so evil....If only those people had a garden!!

Your post was very informative. I am thinking of setting up exactly what you are planning on. I would buy T posts, but I have 10' tall wooden posts sitting in a pile that I will use. I was told that I can not run electric wire on it, but my dad says I can just run insulators on them. Sounds easy enough. I should get around 8' of post, with electric wire. I'll then use electric fence posts as you are and put another line outside of it....We already have plenty of electric wire in our garage, just not a charger.

I saw somebody that says they hooked a spark plug up to theirs, causing it to spark all over whenever the deer touched it. Has anyone had experience with this? I'd be afraid of a fire hazard.

susanzone5, I had some concrete wire tomato cages that I rolled up next to the electric fence where I figured the deer were coming in at. The next morning a couple of them were rolled about a foot, foot-and-a-half away from the fence...they still jumped, apparently.<sigh>

jacoblockcuff, sure you use insulators on a wooden post. Electric fences have been around long before t-posts and that's exactly how they were put up...mostly on creosote fence posts. I think the spark-plug is used to help drain off surges from nearby lightning strikes that could fry the charger. All you need to make the fence work is the fence itself, a good charger (deer have hollow hair so and electricity doesn't pass through them as well as a solid hair, thus you need a pretty hot fence charger. Chargers that run off of an a/c outlet tend to be hotter (more zap) than battery powered ones so if you're close enough to an electricl outlet I'd go with an a/c powered one. When you said you had wire on hand, is it actually wire or poly-wire?

Dirt tracker, it's regular wire. I have an electrical outlet right on the front of the house near the raised bed portion of my garden, so I can use an A/C charger. Thank you again. Great help!

Going to go drive my fence posts this afternoon. All I should need is the insulators and charger, as far as I know. We MAY need a little more wire, but I don't believe so.

We do have a baby (well, my brother) that runs around the house with me, so I will likely leave it off during the day.

"...drive the fence posts"...???? Normally metal posts are driven...wood ones, as far as I know, require post holes. Hope the fence construction went well!!!!

Ha! No, I meant digging the hole and putting them in. Actually, on my grandparents' farm my grandpa used to only use wooden fence posts. They'd drive the truck down the field stand in the back and pound the wooden posts in with a sledge hammer. My dad was very happy when he switched to T posts LOL

That wouldn't happen around here in south Alabama, you'd bust the post up before you got it sledge hammered into the ground!!! Where are you located? Must be some soft ground...??? Wooden fence posts around here are usually 3-4 inches in diameter. ???

But, I'm glad to hear your not pounding them in!!!! ;)

They cut or buy posts and then split them into 4 pieces to get multiple pieces. They cut them manually with a chainsaw to be pointed. They didn't have to drive them too deeply this way, making it much easier. The sledge hammer was a special sledge hammer with a real big, fat head. My father claims it was a 25lb sledge hammer head if that helps. They'd just drive down the to-be fence line in the truck, stand up in the back and hammer them in. They also sometimes used a tractor bucket to press them into the ground.

We live in the Ozarks, extremely rocky soil. It's so rocky that to put the pole barn in, my great grandparents had to blow holes with dynamite. Where they located their house was a few inches of topsoil on sheet rock. Not quite extreme here in northwest Arkansas.

If they hit a rock below the post they would have to sometimes move the posts until they found the sweet spot.

As the old fellow said..."wudeverittakes". <grin>