Raised bed gardening is an easy way utilize small areas for gardening and you don't have to bend so far down to weed

 

Very nice!

 

Thanks....
Also we have bunnies and dear aroud...do we need to fence it in
What do the two like to eat. Been there a week and so far no nibbles on the toms or cayenne.

 

Deer and rabbit will eat everything in your garden while it's young ,if it was mine I'd fence it lay landmines put in a tower with armed guards . Just kidding about the guards .
I live in the country and have all my life when the garden goes in the fight begins to keep it ,we use an electric fence for the deer and 4 foot rabbit fence .
If ya take the rabbit fence down at the end of the growing season ya can use again and again.
Same with the electric fence .

JMHO

 

For me I like having the deer and rabits around because I eat them. So I just give them a more desireable target by sowing deer corn and some cabbage. It keeps them quite occupied and they usualy dont fool with my garden. Aslo my two shepherds love rabbits. They love to hunt. I am convinced that if they never ate anything but rabbits and goats again they would be satisfied.

YOu could also look into some plants that keep deer away. Like yarrow, foxglove, english lavender, thyme, morning glory, russian sage.

For warding off rabbits I have heard that bone meal works, cat/dog/human hair tied up aling the garden perimiter, cat poo, and some others.

 

For warding off rabbits I have heard that bone meal works, cat/dog/human hair tied up aling the garden perimiter, cat poo, and some others.

Deer used to wipe out my garden until last year when I tried human hair. I got a sack of hair from the salon and it absolutely works. Not so much as a nibble the rest of the summer. This isn't something I read about & am passing on... it works for sure.

Our home/survival retreat is in the woods so we really don't have many rabbits to worry about...

 

You can find a lot of fire ant deterents by googling "natural fire ant deterents". Pages came up!
I also garden with raised beds, your look very nice! Wish I was able to plant now, but I have another month left to go.:thumb:

 

Thanks so much you all for the advice.

 

Nice looking garden.

 

I just read an article in Mother Earth News yesterday about beautyberry callicarpa americana as a deterrent for biting bugs, and it said that, as well as mosquitos and ticks, fire ants were also repelled by essential oil distilled from beautyberry leaves. It should grow well in your area...it is native to southeastern woods.

 

Those are some nice beds.

 

Your garden is great!

Hey Greg, that is a very nice garden! How long did it take for you to construct it? In the future I plan on create a vast garden but first I must start small. (I am in the process of creating a container garden then I will work my way up.)

 

PS how do we keep the fire ants away?

God Bless
Greg

Best way to deal with them is to disturb the beds and hope they move the neighbors yard :

 

Mint: apparently, and I don't know this for myself, they don't like mint. I found this on another US site... another thing to do, and it sounds psycho (in a rambo kind of way) is sprinkle dry grits around. Dey eat de grits, go for a drink of water, and den... Dey explodes, dey does.

Pow! Zap! Kablooie!

 

6) 2" x 12" x 8' lumber = $42
45 bags of top soil $90
6 tomatoe cages $12
4 hours work and it was done, thats with two of us constructing it and planting

Going to get some mint to keep the ants away and put a ring of grits mixed with cayenne pepper all the way around.
Next weekend were doing a 4 foot lattice fence around it and and electric wire fence.
Anyone have any ideas on how to do the elec fence.


Thanks for all the props and great ideas.
Will post more pics as the construction continues and the veggies pop

 

you could have saved 50 bucks by buying a truckload of topsoil from a aggregate/soil vedor. They even have garden blends with compost mixed in usually 20.00 per yard. I used 2 yards with 2 6x10 and 2 6x6 raised beds.
BTW those are nice beds and I look forward to seeing what they look like once your completely done.

 

Thank you for sharing. Very nice.

 

Can't help much with electric fence really, we have tape rather than wire, as it is visible and easy to roll back up, a little moveable power kit that works off DD batteries or can be hooked up to a car battery (the dd batteries last about a month, but cost a fair bit as you need 4. I would recommend the car battery if you were going to do the portable way, perhaps with a solar pvu charger hooked up as well? I have not yet been able to source any rechargeable dd batteries.

You can get a kind of netting that can be elctrified but it costs more. Also i dont' know if you want a permanent installation, but even running one tape around the top of the fence you are about to build, attached to separators screwed to the fence itself, might work for you, and depending on whether you need it protected all year or just at a certain time would probably indicate what sort of power source. only thing I would really recommend is to make sure you use tape as opposed to wire so that the animals who come by can see it and be better deterred.

 

Congratulations, everything LOOKS great!! Nice job! Do yourself a favor & start a compost pile NOW!!! If you just used topsoil with nothing else added, you definitely want to get some organic material into it as soon as possible.

 

Compost?????

Great suggestions all.
A few more questions.
Why compost as opposed to miricle grow. Had planned to use Miricle grow.
Never had a compost pile. What do you put in it specifically?
Wont rotting food attract critters and such?
How long before compost is ready to spread on the ground?
Do you spread a layer on the garden? How deep?
Was going to put some hay down to keep the plants and veggies off the ground and the soil moist. Is this necessary and do I put hay on top of the compost or what?
I did get about 30 night crawlers and burried them evenly in each plot.

You all seem to know so much about this and I appreciate all the hints and tips / suggestions

PS...Garden and small plants survived the severe weather and tornadoe sirens.
A few in neighboring counties had some BAD storms and tornadoes.
Everyone be safe this year and take cover.

 

Best thing for rabbits and deer is a late nighter and a supressed .22

 

Use boiling water on the ants. Boil some water and dump it on the ant hill. My Grandma did this and it works great. Put several pots on them and listen to the little screams..lol

 

Use boiling water on the ants (albeit, mine aren't fire ants...). Boil some water and dump it on the ant hill. My Grandma did this and it works great. Put several pots on them and listen to the little screams..lol

I've found the boiling water to be very effective. Note that it will kill the grass in the immediate vicinity too (so you'll end up with a 'spot'). Also I've noticed that the hills may be later re-occupied. I think next time I will also then dig the hill up and then just reseed the area with grass.

 

We have 16 raddish plants that sprung up over night...wooohooo and some chives.
Will post some pics this weekend when we finish the other box for mounds of cucumbers and put up the fence.
greg

 

couldnt wait

 

Now we have small toms and the spinach and rads are moving.
Will keep updating as the days and week unfold.

Getting back taxes this week and will be buying more food preps, ammo, sleeping bags and good hiking boots for the mrs, and kids.

Scary about this flu thing!!!!!

 

ants

I dont really know how to keep fire ants away, but we used to pour boiling kettles of water down the ones in our yard to get rid of them in texas. Not very nice, but it worked. good luck with your garden.

-I think there is some kind of new hormone disrupter for ants that they use as a spray that works well for fire ants but I dont know much about it.

 

Great ideas - just want you to know (in case you don't already) - mint is invasive. I do have a few different kinds of mint and love having it, but grow it in containers to control it. I've also read that you can sink larger containers (like clay pots) into the ground several inches or so to control their invasiveness. But since you have raised beds, you might even make a few small boxes for your mint - say 18 x 18 inches - or, of course, whatever size you want.

We don't have fire ants here, but we DO have SLUGS. SO disgusting. But we put a few inches of gravel (on top of weed block cloth) between our raised beds (no weeds, no mowing paths) and the slugs no longer bother the garden + it looks nice and trim. Now, it's mostly the birds. Hubby made a frame of chicken wire to put over our strawberries, but I have found that placing a few realistic looking rubber snakes around the garden also deters birds well. Kinda scares my friends sometimes when they first see 'em tho, so let them know they're there.