Hi everyone.  Earlier this summer I promised to send pictures of our anti-deer fence around the vegetable garden.  I am also sending a picture of our winter garden.  The garden doubles as the nursery for our fig cuttings and newest trees.

The Anti-Deer Fence: Deer are a MAJOR problem in our area.  They will practically fight you for the groceries on the way in from the car, so without a deer fence your garden vegetables don't stand a chance.  This is a 50 x 40 foot fence (2000 square foot garden).  It costs a total of $700 (all supplies plus shipping/delivery), it required very little skill (since I have very little this was good), and it's the best thing I ever made.  The deer haven't gotten one bite since this was installed, and our garden is now super productive.  The fence is constructed in this way:

Corner Posts: Untreated (we never use any chemicals of any kind) 12 foot cedar posts buried 4 feet down and surrounded by cement (8 feet above ground).  The in-between support posts are black metal (ordered on internet).

Fence: Roll of 7.5 foot tall chicken wire coated with black pvc (ordered on internet) tied on with black ties.

Gate: Built from cedar also; used leftover fence and added hinges and lock. 

I will explain the garden method in a follow up post (out of space).

John
North Georgia Piedmont
Zone 7b

Sorry, the picture files were too big.  I had to crop them down to fit.  Here is the garden fence.

Winter Garden: We garden year round here, even though the temperatures commonly fall below freezing at night November-March and we get a fair amount of snow and ice.

Our garden system works like this:

1) High quality soil = healthy productive garden (add as much compost and organic matter as you can get every year)
2) Bare soil = Poor soil and lots of weeds: We rotatile fall and spring, but then the ground is always covered with either crops or heavy straw mulch.  We have almost no weeds, water less, and crops grow great.  All the mulch is tilled in to improve soil quality so it does triple duty (mulch; soil improvement; feed plants).  The paths are wood chips (so the kids know where to walk and don't walk on beds and compact soil)
3) When freezing weather comes I cover the crops with heavy plastic sheeting at night held down on the corners with cement blocks.
4) The support hoops are made from a roll of wire and connected/strengthened with a line of bailing twine tied along the top.

It stands up to several inches of snow pretty good, and we harvest cool weather crops through to Spring.  Last year we got over a foot of snow one day, so I did go out and sweep that off a couple times so it would not get to heavy.  Heavy snow areas might try pvc pipe or something heavier (stronger but bulkier to store and more expensive).

And all of this gives me something to do till fig season starts in the Spring!  ;-)

It's actually very easy, low cost, low maintenance, and super productive of tasty organic produce all winter.

Best wishes.

John
North Georgia Piedmont
Zone 7b

Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

My pleasure Goldie.

With the exception of the last few decades, people have always grown their own food.

And as Mahatma Ghandi said: If we forget how to garden, we forget who we are.

Our goal here is to find ways to live better, be healthier, happier, and do all of this for less money and with the least time and effort possible.  A garden is a great way to do that.  We have vegetables that are better than any you can buy at any price, just picked fresh, all organic, and practically for free.  And working in the garden is great exercise and good for relaxing.

And we have fresh vegetables now year round.  It's easier to do here in Zone 7, but Eliot Coleman (his book is Four Season Gardening; or something like that) is growing vegetables year round in Maine, Zone 5, with no heaters.

Hope some of this is helpful to those of you who are trying to live more independently and save money.

Best wishes to all.

John

Hi John,
thats wonderful setup. I like the chicken wire (good stuff) years ago i had that plastic fencing stuff and the rabbits ate many holes right thru it. 

 1 question for you please.
Did it lay nice for you or you somehow stretch the wire to make that nice?

John--Congratulations on a beautiful, functional set-up! Those are healthy-looking plants. My wife and I are not nearly so successful with our vegetable-growing, but it's still great fun.

Hi Martin and Ken.

I had a plastic mesh fence before I put up the pvc coated chicken wire one.

And then one morning I woke up to find a big deer shaped hole in it.

Apparently the deer had gotten under it to get it, but then couldn't get out, freaked out, and ran right through it!

The black pvc coated chicken wire fencing came in a big roll.  I unrolled it on the grass to straighten it out a little, but it didn't require any stretching.

And Ken, the real secret to vegetable gardening is organic matter in the soil.  We started with rock hard red Georgia clay, but after several years of adding all the organic matter we could find (leaves; straw; wood chips; ashes; peat moss; egg shells; etc.) it's starting to look much more like the good black Indiana soil we grew up with near Fort Wayne.  You can really tell the soil is good when you can smell the earthiness.  Lots of mushrooms and earthworms are a good sign too.

Hope you are well my friends.

Best wishes.

John

John, that's my goal; to raise as much of our own food as possible.  I've got Elliot's book.   He's one of my favorite gardeners, ever since I first saw him on "Gardening Naturally" some 15 years ago.

My young son and I would love to implement his ideas.  The task of building rolling greenhouses on my sloping and uneven land are too challenging for me.   I'm trying to get to where I can implement his ideas in other ways. 

I've got to get my greenhouse going.  It's been on the back burner for years, and I'm simply not going to wait any longer.    I do a lot of juicing, or at least I would, if it were not so expensive.   The veggies and fruits cost me 5 dollars a day.   If I could grow a head of romaine and a head of celery a day, I'd save 20 dollars a week, right there.

I have a lot of fruits going on here.   Many of them I'm starting over on, as some personal things in my life interfered with the goals, but the thing that's hard about them is freezer space.    Canning all that fruit means you end up with a lot of sugar in cooked fruit.  

I actually spent many hours researching building a human powered walk-in freezer. 

Go ahead, laugh.  LOL   Everyone else does.  :oP    But if somehow you could create a system that, with an hour of pedaling, which most of us could use anyway, or by hitching up one of my useless horses to for a couple of hours a day, you could keep foods frozen --- I be overjoyed.

Anyhow, I appreciated your self-sufficiency ideas on here.    I'm glad I don't have trouble with deer.   There are plenty around here, but they steer clear of my land, probably due to the neighbor's hound dog puppy mill.   The smell of dog is quite prevalent to deer, I'm sure.    My son and I have a large garden, but are able to keep it completely open and easily accessible. 

We have only hand tools, and poor, red clay soil.   Our first garden here - very difficult.  It took a half hour to dig and build one squash hill.   One neighbor took pity on us and tilled a garden plot at the bottom of the hill with some better soil.   For a while we were depending on trying to find people who could help us til if they found the time, but it was hard waiting on others, and last year the neighbor lost his tiller access.

So we nearly killed ourselves double digging 14 raised beds, each 40 by 4 feet.   By the time we were finished, we were too tired to garden much, but the beds were built, and now we are investing in straw for continuous mulch.   I hope that the soil with eventually improve as we continue to mulch through the years.

But I am pursuing winter gardening now.   I'm thinking greenhouse with covered beds inside for winter crops, as well as using it to get started on our own seedlings for the garden.

And I'm sure this post is too long.   Sorry.  LOL

Valerie

Hi Valerie.  I enjoyed reading every word of your post, thank you.

And your goals are very admirable.  Further, you are way ahead of the curve historically.  A lot of people don't realize it yet, but soon, they will be doing what you are doing too.  Throughout human history, people have grown there own food not just because it's the only way to get top quality produce, and a great way to get regular exercise (why pay for an expensive membership to a sweaty, germ-filled gym when you can get free exercise in your own open aired backyard?), but they grew their own food because it was necessary economically.

Have you thought about a root cellar?  It's not a freezer, but it's a free mega sized refrigerator.  I have tested and you can keep cabbages and root crop for months refrigerated.  And drying fruit is a good way to save fruit.  Figs are an excellent backyard food crop, they dry easily and taste great.

Point is, where there is a will there is a way.

Keep your beds thoroughly mulched and composted (we don't use any land animal products, i.e., manure, but that's a personal choice; we only use plant based compost) and the earthworms will help with the tilling as your soil gets better and better each year.

We started with rock hard red clay too.  And coming from a place in Northern Indiana where we grew our gardens in old black soil peat moss bogs, the red clay here was pretty discouraging at first.  Keep adding the organic matter though, and every year it does get better and much easier to work.  Also, be sure you are practicing intensive gardening methods to grow more food in less area (which also means less work and expense).

Keep us posted on your progress friend.

Best wishes.

John

Yes, I've thought many times about a root cellar.   I don't know that it would be especially beneficial yet, as I have not been producing many root crops or long-term storage crops.   We only just got in our first fruit trees last spring.   I will be likely pursuing building one in the next few years.   It won't be fun digging through red clay and rock, but like you, I'm a "where there's a will there's a way" kind of person.

I grew up on a farm/ranch where we raised most of our own food; veggies, fruit, dairy, beef, pork, eggs, chickens....   Learning to raise animals and garden here was almost like having to learn all over again.  Very different climate and conditions, prove to give many different problems.  I've lost many crops and animals due to the learning curve.    I was a bit discouraged by the soil, like you. 

I have an Excalibur dehydrator.   It ran pretty much non-stop last year.    It's hard to get excited about dried berries and such, though.   Good for muffins, but the smoothies leave something to be desired.  LOL  

It's a great journey.  I am continually grateful for the gift of the land God has given me.  But we are very busy and very tired.  

I agree.    Life may get very difficult in our lifetimes.   I want to get past this learning curve as quickly as possible.   Then I can not only provide for myself and those around me, but I can hopefully be of help to others who will have to learn suddenly. 

Hi Valerie.  We don't have a root cellar either (yet) for the same reason.  With three boys and neighbors, there's not that much left.  If I had a great crop of potatoes or sweet potatoes though, I would try a mini-root cellar (a metal trash can root cellar buried in a flood free highly shaded area).  I already have a new trash can, now I'm just waiting on the bumber root crop!  ;-)

I'm not one for dooms-day thinking, and I am very hopeful about the future.

But a look at the past, and the fantasy-like living of the last few decades of "easy credit" says that a garden is in everyone's future.  And that is a very good and positive thing.  Home gardening is good for everyone except the factory farm growers/sellers.

Locally, I'm on a mission to be the "Johnny Apple Seed" for figs, as figs are a perfect backyard fruit for everyone.  Some adults are convinced they don't like figs (without even trying them usually) but every kid that tries them loves them.

So every kid in our neighborhood is getting free figs and a free tree if they want one.

We build a better future one person at a time, starting with ourselves.

Best wishes.

John

I grew up listening to my dad talk about the great depression and it's always made me err on the side of caution when it comes to planning for the future - even though everyone who knows me will tell you I'm one of the most cheerful and happy people you would ever meet.    So they are not, gladly, mutually exclusive. 

Letsee... you are in Georgia, so even a little warmer climate than here.   There are not too many root cellars in this area.   Oh - I was looking into different ideas for that and I ran across old cargo containers. 

You know, you can purchase used cargo containers for a couple of thousand dollars.  People are doing INCREDIBLE things with them, including root cellars, and homes as well.   They come in several different sizes.   They are built to stack, fully loaded, so the structures are really sturdy.  

ValerieEden, I admire your hard work and goals to not only be more self sufficient, but to be willing to share your knowledge. Keep us posted.

Many of us had the "seed" planted when we were young.
In my case my influence was my Grandmother who we would visit on Sundays in Chicago. She grew many different plants including a large inground fig tree.
She would take me in her garden all the while talking in Italian to me which i did not understand. Her pantry shelves alway had mason jars filled.
We would drive home with brown bags of greens and ants crawling out of the them and Dad was never pleased about it.
He also looked crossed when she tried to serve him dandelion salad we had picked a time or 2 with her homemade sausage.
The conversations at table would get heated as my older brother would sometimes tell me.
Family all gone now but memories always there of those times.
In short because of her i grow things today and enjoy them .
Even still use Olive oil today on mosquito bites thanks to her.

Hi Martin.  My family were immigrants too (Eastern Europe), and gardening and self-sufficiency were just the way they lived.  And even when they didn't have much, they always had plenty of healthy home-grown food for everyone, fresh from the garden or canned, and nothing ever went to waste:

"Use it up - Wear it out - Make it do!"

They lived a good and happy life with far less than people have today, and they felt blessed to have it.

Hope you are well my friend.

John

p.s.  There is nothing that couldn't be fixed or cured with olive oil, baking soda, vinegar, bailing twine, or duct tape!  ;-)

I just read an article about a woman in Minnesota who built a passive solar greenhouse for winter food production.  It uses a buried bed of stone and gravel with vent pipes running through it.  Warm air from daytime heating of the greenhouse is pumped down through the stone during the day (a solar powered fan) and then the stone bed radiates heat through the night.  She has a back-up propane heater if temperatures drop below 40 inside the greenhouse overnight, but she said she is heating for less that $50 a year (so very little extra heat is used; even in Minnesota), and harvesting all year from the greenhouse.

Hi John
50.00 to keep temps above 40 is impressive in my book for Minnesota !
That lady may now have insulating cover for her greenhouse also now as parts of Minnesota last night received 4 to 8 inches of snow and it was still coming down in area's as of late last night.

Hey, do you have a link for the article about the MN lady?  I'd love to read it.

Hi Valerie.  I'm not at home right now, but I will get you a link as soon as I can.  I think it was in GRIT but I will let you know for sure.

In the meantime, here is a useful link from Eliot Coleman on greenhouses:

http://www.fourseasonfarm.com/resources/index.html#greenhouses

Best wishes.

John