Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Post Hole Digging

Now I know how to use one of these, and getting that necessary deer-proof fencing up around Garden Nbr. 02 at the Happy Valley Community Gardens is well underway.
Finding deer droppings, nibbled blueberry bushes and deer tracks in their raised beds, the gardeners in the plots just behind mine put hoop frames covered with netting up around several of their garden beds to keep the damage done by deer to a minimum. The fence around their garden is barely three feet high and doesn't seem to stop the deer. The tumbling down fence that came with my new garden wasn't much higher, and with many of its short posts barely still standing, was in serious need of replacing. Hoping to share my harvest with friends and neighbors rather than deer, my solution was to put up a higher fence.
After several days of heavy rains, the ground was fairly soft, so using my post-hole digger to plant ten foot posts as deeply into the ground as I could was not too difficult. Once my new posts were securely in the ground, using a milk crate to stand on, I draped the fish net rescued from the harbor dumpster over the posts and called it a fence.
Meanwhile, those backup heirloom tomatoes had taken a beating from the recent heavy rains and winds, so a fellow gardener traded me a sheet of plastic for some of Dad's hen and chick starts. After pounding stakes into the corners of their bed, I secured the plastic around it in hopes of protecting the plants a little more from our wild weather of late.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for commenting!