Fence Needed?

[AlbertaDan]

Around the veggie garden i want to build I'm wondering if I need a fence to keep out the critters. Or if a fence would be a waste of money. The place is in Newfoundland. The animals i have to deal with are rabbits, voles, rats and moose. And Moose are a rare sighting in our neck of the woods. Too many houses nearby. No deer to worry about.

 

[Mousefield]

We have a fence around the veggie garden, the bottom 2 ft has chicken wire to keep out the rabbits. You state you have rabbits, they WILL like your veggie garden.

 

[Treemonkey1000]

You would have to bury the fence below ground level a bit to maybe deter the rabbits. Voles and Rats can get through that stuff pretty easy. Your best bet is put up some big nest boxes for hawks and owls. After that a BB gun. Moose you might want to put some big square mesh fence with flags on the post to make them more visisble.
PS: Don't use the BB gun on the moose it ticks them off

 

[deputy11]

Do you have raccoons in your neck of the woods?

 

[Ranger Rick]

If you put a fence around the garden you will keep the animals out before they find out how good the food is that you are growing. If you try to do it after they have started eating the garden they will work harder to find a way to get to all of that good food.

 

[forgeblast]

Yes you will need a fence, the voles (a problem we have too) will eat everything.
the way i will redo my fence is to put hardware cloth on the bottom, burried about a foot into the ground. (living in pa i know how bad rocks can be, but this step is important).
then i would use landscape timbers currently 1.97 apiece backfilled with gravel for the posts and use chicken wire on the rest. this will keep out the deer. as for the other critters a couple strands of electric fencing will help along the top.
i use a 6 volt zabra fence that i hooked up a little solar panel so the battery charges.

 

[dodge85rc]

Get a male dog and a cuple of cats.

I live in between a field that usually has corn or soybeans and thousands of solid acres of woods. For the last 5 years I have had a fairly large garden and have yet to have any problems with the local critters. Many times we can watch the deer out our back window walk through our backyard, right next to our garden and out into the field. Having a few stratigicly placed posts around the garden that the dog will pee/mark on. That will keep most of the critters out right there. Anything else the cat will take care of.

 

[AlbertaDan]

Deputy..we don't have any raccons in our area. They aren't natural here. There are a few cats that make their rounds around our place though. I'm thinking they will help keep the mice and voles down. Rabbits are about the same size as the cats so some chicken wire may be needed around the base of the fence, and buried a little.

 

[forgeblast]

I have tried molemax this year to see how it keeps the voles down, i was also going to try to use plantskydd. I just finished a crp planting (see rural living) and the tree tubes are used mostly to keep the voles away. I alreay kicked out a buch just walking the property.

 

[Haoleguy]

Last year I made a perimeter fence on a rural land plot that was 45ft x 30ft to keep out deer, woodchucks, rabbits, & voles. Sounds like you do not need as high of fence(7ft) that I put in. Mine was chicken wire fence on bottom and livestock wire fence on top. Two suggestions I have, which seemed to work for us, are keep a clean perimeter with no hiding places and, secondly, take the bottom fence down 6in and out at a right angle 6-12in. The first suggestion is that animals do not like to be out in the open and the second one frustrates them to death when they can't dig down next to the fence.....Gary