A Vegetable Garden and the Need for Fishing Line

Last year, our garden attempts had two big problems. One, the bed we used did not get enough sun and so, the harvest suffered. And two, the tomato plants were eaten by deer. When I say that, I don't mean that the deer ate the fruit off of the plants. No, I mean they ate the whole plant, stems and leaves and all.

There are thick, marshy woods behind our house and they aren't quite expansive and rural enough for hunting. The deer have fairly free reign. Thus, the big fix for this year is designating a sunny section of the backyard for a new, dedicated vegetable garden and finding the appropriate way to fence it to protect the harvest from deer.

At first, we had plans for a wooden fence with a wire mesh blocking any spacing, but the expense of a fence like that was just to great this year, with all the work to the house that needs done before the baby comes. Then, the husband decided to take the posts to the old tall (and now useless and falling down) fence out back and use those as posts to a deer netting fence. He dug out one fence post hole before that idea got tossed. You see, within a few feet, he hit water. Apparently, setting fence posts becomes all sorts of complicated when there is a marshy woodland area behind your house, as it means your water table may be a tad higher than you might think.

Then, the husband discovered a youtube video that described one man's method for garden fencing that keeps the deer out. It, essentially, entails using tall metal garden posts every so-many feet. Then, wrap 30-gauge clear fishing line around the perimeter every two feet. The fishing line is strong enough at that gauge that the deer won't break it if they run into it, but is small enough that it's invisible to the deer. They can't see it so they won't try jumping it and tend to give it a wide berth (or so the video claims).

We got the posts and line up and the plants in this past weekend and as far as I'm concerned, the fishing line is pretty well invisible unless you are really looking for it. In an hour or so time period, the ten-year-old must have ran into it a good five times. I hit my head on the lower rungs a couple times while planting the tomatoes.

As far as the deer are concerned, so far no plant damage.

Thus, the garden is planted. Two hills each of butternut and scallop summer squash, four hills of zucchini, two rows of root vegetables (beets, parsnips, daikon radish, and carrots), one row of half cucumer and half edamame, two rows of lettuce, one row of assorted bell peppers, one row of broccoli, one row of kohlrabi and okra, one row of eggplant, two rows of tomatoes, and one row of tomatillos (with a few stray tomato plants at the end).

We are hoping the fence holds and that the high water table works to our advantage in the plant-growing department. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Yellow Transparent Apples

The deer crisis in my backyard has already been recorded on this blog. As it stands, the tomato plants are nibbled to almost nothing (two tiny green tomatoes cling yet to life and my hope is that they grow large enough for at least one batch of baked fried green tomatoes this summer). The apple tree, though it fruited, awoke one morning naked, all her apples born away in the night.

The tree was a gift from my mother-in-law, because transparent yellow apples just happen to be my husbands favorite. They also just so happen to be a fairly hard apple to come across. They also get snatched up rather quickly in locales in which they exist, not including being purloined by deer in the night.

He was so excited at the prospect of turning his very own apples into pie, but it was not meant to be this year. To buck himself up, while last in Michigan, he stopped at the orchard near his Mom's place and bought a peck of his very favorite apples.

Last week, we turned those whole apples into pie-sized slices with the help of an apple-coring kitchen gadget I bought with a Williams Sonoma gift card I got at my wedding shower. If you do not own said kitchen gadget, you should probably run out and grab one. It does in seconds what takes me minutes to accomplish.

The husband and I approached the apple slicing as an assembly line. He did the peeling and I did the slice/coring. Due to the one-side-fits-all nature of the corer, though, some flesh often got left behind on the core, so I started cutting it off for the husband and I to sample while we worked.

All I have to say is: wow. I may have a new favorite apple. Yellow Transparents are a hint sweet with an overlay of tart for a not-sour-in-a-Grannysmith way sour that just tastes delicious. It's supposed to be the ideal baking apple, and I'm here to tell you, it's a pretty darn good apple to eat raw too.

After all the apples were cored and sliced, we put them in freezer bags in 2-and-a-half cup increments. Then, in the freezer they went, and there they will stay until we decide to make pie. We then spent an hour deciding which pie recipe to use, his mom's or my mom's, both of us siding with our own maternal creator. This is not a debate that will ever end fruitfully, so to speak. He'll probably win out, though, mostly because he'll probably be the one who bakes the pie.

And as we all know: the one who bakes the pie, selects the recipe.

A Garden of My Very Own: Backyard Invasion

I made a discovery a few weeks ago in my backyard. The tanged mess you see below is what I have decided is properly wild grapes.

Often wild grapes don't produce fruit, so intent on producing more plant instead. This plant, however, has some fruit. Whether or not it will be worth keeping or not is to be determined.

This mess overtaking the edge of the woods by the second driveway, though, has no fruit and is generally just highly invasive and thus, destructive. It's death is, while not yet planned by exact date, imminent.

Then there's this fun three-leaved vine growing into the back  corner of our yard off an otherwise lovely tree. We have purchased poison ivy killing spray and hopefully, can get rid of it before we all end up covered in rashes.

In the meantime, the deer are being just as invasive as the vines. They ate all but three of the apples from our tree, forcing the husband to pick them prematurely if he was going to get any apples at all. They also have now feasted on the tomato plants so much that I'm not sure they will be able to produce anything before summer's end. It's a shame.

Next year, I guess we'll invest in chicken wire fence. And then electrify it...