Spring Pruning, 2022

 I am virtually always late when it comes to pruning.  Every November I think that I'll plan ahead and get it done early, and every March I wonder where the dormant season went.  Some things are still dormant as of early April, but they won't be for long.  Better late than never, in any case...

This year I also need to pull out some of the fence circles I put around trees when they were first planted.  The trees had outgrown them, were growing through the fencing in some instances, and old enough to stand on their own. That's not to say that there won't be problems from the deer, but it should be relatively minor damage at this point rather than lethal.

This was not necessarily an easy task, but had to be completed before the trees leafed out.  I found that in some cases, the wire had to be clipped to free the branches, and some roots had grown over the bottom fence wire (no tree roots, fortunately--mostly grass, and in one case, privet). This points to one of the problems with the fencing: it discourages maintenance activities inside the wire.  Speaking of privet, this was growing inside the fence circle next to my Enterprise apple:

Once the fencing was out, the t-posts had to be removed.  Several years ago I got a t-post puller, and had seldom used it.

If you don't have one of these and you have to pull t-posts, get one.  I've pulled them up by hand and this is vastly easier, quicker, and doesn't tear up the ground as much.  The price from Tractor Supply is up from when I got mine, but it still isn't bad at under $55.  It's awkward to use in close quarters but does work well, even if it has to be short-stroked.

I was even later with pruning most of the muscadines.  Some of them leaked sap profusely after pruning, but hopefully they'll be fine as in years past.

Repairing Electrified Netting

 As I have mentioned last time, one of the measures I have gone to for predator deterrence is electrified netting.  The netting is very easy to set up and move around and generally works well.  It does have some limitations, however.  One is that it's relatively fragile.

Several times I have found a section of netting down on the ground.  Cameras have never been positioned the right way to show me what happened, but I have assumed it was a deer that got caught on the top of the fence coming in or going out, and in its effort to free itself, it pulled up some of the posts. A coyote might be another possibility, or a bobcat--all of them are present to some degree.  I haven't seen hogs or bears, although a bear wouldn't be completely out of the question.

The most recent time this happened, it was very obviously a deer:

The hoof marks in the dirt show where it flailed around a bit trying to get out.  Another first for this time around is that the netting was actually damaged.  A couple of non-conductive vertical strands were broken, and two horizontal conductive ones were, as well.

Premier1 includes a little repair kit with each roll of netting; it has small rolls of each type of cord in the net, along with a few brass crimpers to put around the repair knots to help ensure a conductive bond.  The number were too limited for serious repairs, so I got a package of fifty 14-8 copper crimp sleeves.  They have a flared end that enabled them to slide over the square knots I tied to join the replacement pieces to the broken ends of the existing netting.

Then a quick squeeze with a pair of pliers and the repair was done:

The end result isn't particularly pretty--it's obvious there was damage--but it is again fully functional. That's all that matters.

Eulogy for a Pear Tree (Deer, Take III)

Earlier, I mentioned that deer can be a problem, but that there were ways to limit or prevent the damage they do to trees that I have tried that work.  Although it has limitations as trees grow, a circle of welded wire or field fencing--or even chicken wire--seems to be effective.  After complaining to myself about the hassle and expense involved, I eventually decided to give it a try and
have adopted it as the method of choice for every young fruit tree I've planted...except for one.

That one is dead now.

Last spring, I got three pear trees.  I had been thinking about pears for a long time, but had shied away from them because of the plum curculio issues (which also plague apples and peaches, as previous posts had noted).  I didn't really want more high-maintenance trees. Eventually I decided to give them a try.  I have multiple apples and peaches already, so spraying three more trees with Surround won't be all that much extra work.

So I got three trees--two container, one bare root--and planted them.  I got them in the ground very late in the season for Georgia; it was early May.  I ran out of welded wire fencing after circling the two container pear trees, but the next time I was out where I had planted them, I took along a four-foot roll of chicken wire.  I dropped the roll next to the bare-root tree, but "didn't have time" that day to pound in the t-posts and fence it in.  Ditto the next time, and the next... eventually I stopped thinking about it, although every time I mowed, I had to move the chicken wire roll (still laying next to the pear tree) and I'd think, "I need to make time to do that."  In the meantime, I saw no indication whatsoever of deer damage, so was telling myself that maybe pear trees weren't an attractive target.

To some degree that may be true.  What caused the death of my young pear tree was a buck rubbing against it--as the picture shows.  He broke off the entire top of the tree and scraped off most of the bark.  You can see how he pushed it around by the hole worn in the ground at the base.

While it might be possible to salvage this by cutting it just above the graft, I'm going to start over.  I have a few months to decide if I want to add another pear tree or do something else.

Deer, Take II

Earlier I described a few ways I tried to keep deer out of my garden last year.  They were mostly unsuccessful.  One that was partly successful was a motion-activated sprinkler.  I set it to maximum sensitivity and it would fire a five-second blast of water when triggered.  It seemed to limit the damage, but there was one major problem: the hose bib in the back of the house is right next to the master bedroom.  I could hear the water start and stop for each five-second blast; it woke me up at night.  A couple of times it would fire twice in a couple of minutes; I'd get up and go outside to look; I'd see deer.  However, multiple alerts every night was not really going to work for me.   I only used it for a couple of weeks (if that) then gave up for the year.

So far, this year I am having success with a higher fence.  The original fence was four-foot chicken wire, with one foot bent horizontal as a deterrent to digging under the fence.  That is now buried under grass and thatch.  It works pretty well against rabbits, but doesn't deter deer.

So I drove in some more seven-foot t-posts (in addition to the ones from last year that I strung the twine on) and added another three-foot band of chicken wire.  I stitched it to the bottom section with the remants of the twine, plus some new line.

It's ugly.  It's not at all straight, symmetric, or anything else.  But it's working ok, so I'm not unhappy with it.  So far the only thing I've had to deal with is voles / mice (or whatever they are); they went after my green beans hard when they first started to climb the trellis.  Some Tomcat bait took care of them in short order; the bait was gnawed on; the bean damage stopped; and I smelled something rotting out there about a week after placing the bait.

For the gate I drove two posts and fashioned hooks out of nine-gauge wire I have for a future kiwi trellis.  I lashed the hooks to the posts with 16-gauge wire, then hung a section of welded wire fencing that is about four feet high and six feet long (I hung it sideways).  That's also ugly, but also working.

These pictures show the garden before anything was growing there.  Now it's more populated, with okra, cucumbers, Kentucky Wonder green beans on one of the trellises, tomato plants, some late-planted Blue Clarage, and lots o' weeds.  So far, other than the vole issue with the green beans, most has been well.  Stink bugs like the green beans and tomatoes, and Japanese beetles have been seen on the green beans and okra.  Those problems are manageable.  Deer that clear-cut the okra in one night are not.

Preserving Tomatoes

I grow mostly indeterminate tomatoes.  The darker ones, like Black Prince and Cherokee Purple, are my favorites.  A couple of years I grew Frankenstein Black and liked them very much.  At any rate, some years my tomato harvest is a bust.  Deer will eat the plants but don't seem to go for them very often, and stink bugs can be found on them but do not seem to do too much damage.  Even in good years the best I get a slow, steady level of production that is very drawn out over a period of weeks.  I pick them as they ripen (or a little before, then let them ripen indoors).

I do two things with tomatoes (well, three, counting tomato sandwiches).  One is dehydrate them, the other is can them following the NCHFP's recipe for crushed tomatoes.  I then use the tomatoes for a sort of spaghetti sauce that ends up being somewhat runny and very chunky once I add the onions. It's not like Prego, but I still like it. Normally I don't grow paste tomatoes (though I did like the Amish Paste ones I raised one year), so the end product is pretty watery (see below).

Canning requires peeling the tomatoes, which I'm definitely not a fan of (I also hate peeling peaches).  So it's not my first choice, and I find that when I can them, it takes me a while to use them.  I'll use them, but slowly. And, btw, I wouldn't characterize the peeling process as "slip[ping]  off [the] skins."

I haven't done them for a few years, and the last time I did I failed to note the raw amount I needed for the canner load I processed.  So the NCHFP guidelines are probably as good as any.  This can require stocking them in the refrigerator for a few days to build up enough supply to make canning worthwhile.  I'm not going to go through all that work for two or three pints.  I've heard that some don't like refrigerating tomatoes, but it has worked out okay for me.

Dehydrating is another matter.  It's easy to process the tomatoes in small batches as they come in.  Then I just cut the tops off, cut them into 4-8 radial slices, and thrown them in the dehydrator.  They dry down quickly, in 24-48 hours (at 135 degrees; using a cooler temp would extend the time).

Dehydrating them is a little problematic for other reasons: I eat them too fast.  I like the end result very much and down them as snack food.  I think they could be rehydrated, put on pizza, or otherwise used in recipes, but so far I've just eaten them about as fast as I produce them (that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much).

My tomatoes usually stop producing in August or so, then start blooming and producing again with the cooler temperatures of late summer and early fall.  I always have green tomatoes on the vine at the time of the first frost.  There's a recipe for pickled green tomatoes that looks appealing but that I have never made.  I usually try to ripen them, then end up tossing them when that doesn't happen.  Maybe this year...

Blackberries

This is blackberry season.  I have some named thornless cultivar bushes that have never really taken off (Navajos and Ouachitas).  Their berries are decent, but I planted them on a bank that I think had been very compacted... I remember when I first planted them it was like cutting clay for making pots.  So they haven't spread out into the 30' long thicket along the bank that I envisaged.  They put out one or two canes per year, and my harvest has remained small.  Interestingly, the deer seem to leave them alone.  I don't seem to have any predation when the berries ripen.  I do occasionally find stink bugs on them, and biting into a stink bug-fouled berry is not a good experience. :-(

Wild blackberries, in my experience, are a chancy thing.  Some produce very good berries, I've learned.  The ones in the photo at right are growing right along the road not far from my house.  I've been picking a few each day for a couple of weeks; nobody else seems interested in them.  The berries are varied in size but some are reasonably large.  They're sweet with a bit of a bitter aftertaste.  Ones growing in a corner of my garden--I let them go last year to see how they would turn out--aren't so good.  Ditto a small collection of canes that sprouted up near the corner of my garage last year.  This year they are producing berries that are small and mostly bitter.

I'm thinking I'd like to get cuttings off of some of the roadside canes.  There are plenty of first-year canes available.  As you probably know, blackberries are biennial--this year's new sprouts produce flowers and berries next year, then they shut down.  So if one sprouts somewhere, it takes over a year to find out if it'll be any good.

And the thorns...I've been stuck multiple times in the last couple of weeks.  Tonight I was pulling berries from another thicket on my property along the woods and a six-foot first-year cane snagged on the back of my shirt.  That was not so good.  I couldn't see it and couldn't get it off me for a minute.  I think I damaged it in the process, alas--that collection of bushes is also producing berries worth eating.

What do I do with them?  So far I just eat them fresh.  I tried canning some store-bought ones one year in syrup, and that was okay but not great.  I don't like dehydrating them.  In my limited repertoire, that leaves freezing or making preserves as the remaining alternatives.  So far I haven't done either.

Protecting Young Trees from Deer

This is certainly not my idea, but works well: a circle of welded wire fencing, with one to three t-posts, will keep deer away from young trees.  As noted in my other post on deer, most protective measures have strengths and weaknesses, except for failures, which only have weaknesses.  The balance on this one is pretty decent: it helps.

The first time I saw this in action was at the Shiloh battlefield.  One of the sites there is the Peach Orchard, where Confederates attacked a Union line, finally breaking through.  At the time I was there, the field had just been planted with new peach trees.  Apparently there are deer at Shiloh.

I decided to try this myself, because I had planted a couple of things the deer had ravaged when young.  It was pretty depressing when I thought about the expense and hassle involved in planting new trees using this as a barrier.  I didn't protect the two peaches and apricot when I first planted them; for a couple of years the deer pressure was pretty light. Ditto the blueberry bushes--the deer very seldom bother them, even when they have a ripe crop.  With trees, however, all that I have planted in the last few years have gone into a circle of welded wire (or, in a few cases, some chicken wire).  Usually I use five-foot welded wire, but I have also used five-foot chicken wire and four-foot welded wire (this latter seems too short, except for very young trees).  I originally used three t-posts but now use two.  Some have suggested one would work, but the extra post seems to improve the stability and rigidity of the system.

Here's a picture of the first trees I used this tactic with, shortly after I planted them (two apples).  Those original posts were short u-posts; I've since standardized to t-posts since they're more versatile.  Nothing inside the wire has been bitten, but as the plants grow and stick branches through the wire, they tend to get nipped off.

That's the greatest problem with this approach: The trees eventually outgrow their enclosure.  At some point they have to be able to stand on their own without protection; in the background you can see the two peach trees and the apricot--all completely open to deer (who eat the ends of branches and help themselves to peaches in season, as well).  But for relatively young trees that are increasing in size, it's nice to keep the protection around them awhile longer.  So you have to either get more wire, moving the circle out, or do something else.

Another drawback:  it's hard to do things inside the circles.  I have adapted an approach of hooking the circle shut at the top and bottom, which is secure enough against the deer but which still allows relatively easy access, but it's still a hassle.  This is one of the disadvantages identified by Lee Reich, who mentions this approach as a deer defense in one of his books.

This can also be done without too much trouble for temporary protection.  I have a lilac bush that blooms faithfully every year (it's a traditional lilac, Syringa vulgaris, not a Miss Kim, or S. patula, which is more commonly recommended for the South [though I have a couple of those, too].  One year some miscreant deer browsed through the yard just as the purple buds on my lilac were set to open, and snipped off all of them in one night.  This was when the bush was relatively small, so there were only a few, but once was enough.  In subsequent years, I've thrown a quick five-foot-high chickenwire barrier around it just before the buds are visible, and take it down after bloom (in this case, I still use three posts because the chicken wire is relatively flexible and the bush is getting fairly large).  This is in my side yard and visible from the street, so it's not necessarily the most attractive for the neighbors, but it does protect the plant.  As you can see, the grass grows up inside the circle, but this one is temporary, so not a big deal.  I just cut it back once I pull the fencing.  It's only up for a month or less.  I pull out and re-drive the t-posts every year.  I have been doing this for three or four years at this point.

So that's one thing to do to defeat deer.  My welded wire doesn't do such a good job against rabbits--I have seen them sitting inside the fence rings on rare occasion--but they haven't caused much or any damage.  You can use hunks of septic tank drain piping to protect the trunks, and I have a few trees that I have done that with.  But this approach will work for white tails.

Update:  If you have deer pressure and decide you need to do this, do it.  Don't forget that deer damage trees in other ways, too. Even trees that may not be first choice for browsing can be taken out in one night (at least in the fall when bucks are rubbing the velvet off their antlers).

Deer

Deer are a problem.  For the upcoming 2015-2016 hunting season, the limit will be 12, which indicates how ubiquitous they are.  Few hunters fill their deer harvest, and some of the mountain counties have fairly severe restrictions.  Even so--they're plentiful.  They are definitely copious in my neighborhood.  Over the years I have lived here, there has been less deer pressure some years than there is currently.  I've used a variety of deer mitigation strategies, each of which has weaknesses, and most of which have strengths.  Some have been complete flops.

This is the biggest failure.  It's a little hard to see in the picture, but this is my annual garden.  There's an area that is fenced with three-foot-high chicken wire (to deter rabbits, which it does fairly successfully). The chicken wire is held up by the now-oxidized pale green posts.  For a few years, I had no deer trouble, even though three feet is obviously too short to be a deer barrier.  Then last summer they turned rapacious on me, stripping my okra and cucumbers (which were ascending the welded wire trellises) in one night.  So I got some mylar bird tape and mason twine, pounded in some seven-foot t-posts, and strung the pink lines you see.  I hung mylar streamers from the twine, and thought that might deter the deer.

As you can see, the deer soon realized there was an area they could slither through and still get to the salad bar.  It worked for maybe a week.  When I saw where they were entering, I strung more lines of twine to create a better barrier, but it did not work.   They left the corn alone for the most part, and didn't hit the tomatoes too hard, but everything else was a complete write-off.

The mylar tape is marketed to deter birds, and it might have done a good job of that--I put some in the tops of my blueberry bushes and had less bird action there.  But the deer weren't fooled or impressed.

Later in the summer they crashed through the twine, breaking some strands.  So they had no respect for it whatsoever.  You can also see what they thought of my barrier and my trail camera in this photo:

I've tried other things to deter deer that have been more successful.  More on those later.