Damn the deer!!

My area has a big white-tailed deer problem. No joke. When I was a girl, we rarely saw a deer. Now you can't avoid them. I've had as many as seventeen in a group grazing in my front yard. I think DNR needs to schedule a cull because these animals are starving and inbreeding. It's evident in the shrinking size of the animals. 

It takes some serious counter-measures to thwart these creatures. Last spring I got eight strawberry plants from a local nursery and last fall a deer ate them to the ground. I covered the bed for the winter with leaves anyway. Plants are amazing and this spring I found at least thirty runners under the leaves. They've been transplanted into a second Greenstalk. The original eight plants are also doing well. I won't get much of a strawberry harvest this June, but I'll get a few to nibble on while I'm in the garden area. 

I've read that deer have very poor depth perception. To take advantage of that, I'm placing electric fence poles and T-posts outside the barricades. I also ordered a new 10x12 greenhouse and I plan to situate the frame from the old greenhouse as a barrier. My garden will be smaller this year since I'm on my own, but even if it was huge, I don't want to feed the deer.

I lost countless daylilies to the deer over the years. I had them in strips along the edge of the yard and they are all gone now. It's the same for the hosta. The deer even come up to the front porch and eat the rosebushes. 

The deer are a major problem. I may need to learn to cook venison. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, white-tailed deer, strawberries, Greenstalk, gardening, venison, rural living, country lifestyle, counter-measures, a writer's life