Not a Salad Buffet!

I have not written about my fear of my beautiful garden getting bulldozed to shreds by the wildlife. But, if you ask me about my garden I will talk non-stop about it. Yes, in the country (especially way back in the woods) the wildlife tend to think of a man-made garden as their salad buffet. I watched my Grandfather spend hours and hours each year trying to ward off the birds, deer, varmints, etc. from our food supply commonly known as the garden. He would create and build a homemade electric fence every year. He would string up bars of Ivory and Dial soap and hang them from the tree limbs along the perimeter. He would string up metal pie pans and hang those from the perimeter tree limbs. He would even go so far to have my Grandmother bring home the hair clippings from the beauty shop each day so he could spread it out along the perimeter of the garden. Well, we definitely do not want to feed the wildlife from our buffet so I have been calling on two different fence installers trying to get pricing from them for a permanent 6 or 8 ft. high farm fence. This exercise has far exceeded my patience supply so I am at a loss at this point. What we do know is that both installers are booked up for at least 4-5 weeks so no matter what, I have to do something at least temporarily to get us over the hump to a permanent fence. So I made another call and trip to the local feed store and looked into a product they are selling to the other local farmers in town... And I purchased. And then we installed it around the perimeter of our food supply this evening.



It is a very simple installation. First, I help Hubby cut long 3+ ft long stakes out of scrap 2x4's and then we hammered then all along the perimeter of the garden. Next, we string up the ribbon that comes in the kit about 3 feet off the ground.



Then, you mix up the concentrated liquid deterrent that comes in the kit with water and spray onto the ribbon all along its sides all the way around the perimeter.



And voila, you have your wildlife prevention fence! Let's just hope it works.



And finally, I put out my 12-14 bars of Irish Spring soap bars around the edges of the raised beds. This will hopefully keep the birds out.



It's hard to tell from the picture since it's so grainy, but we left tonight in the moon light... Very pretty!