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by at_a_remove
2059 days ago
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Couple of questions on behalf of some friends who are dabbling with produce on their property: 1) I have heard about how tremendously troublesome deer are, but have also heard good things about the "impossible to purchase in quantities less than a ton" Dippel's Oil ... has that worked at all for you? 2) So the rodents are burrowing under the raised beds and up to get to the roots? I didn't realize they would go that far down. How far down are the "walls" of the raised beds? |
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Our raised beds contain about 15 inches of soil. The rodents burrow up from the bottom. You can't see them, but there are tunnels all through there. I've thought about putting hardware cloth on the bottom, but again I'm back to how much do I want to spent in order to make growing produce even more expensive.
One other thing I forgot to mention is that you need to be proficient with a gun. A .17 or .410 is adequate. Racoons, are my nemesis. If they get in a coop, they will kill a crap top of chickens and only eat the heads off of them. We free range our chickens and have several small coops they go into at night which we close up. I'm a light sleeper and can hear the racoons drop down on the roofs from the trees. We need the trees and bushes to protect the chickens from the hawks and eagles. Owls are another more minor problem as are the coyotes. Foxes as well. Having good dogs helps a lot.
Also, for the love of god avoid Guinea fowl. They have the survival instincts of a brick. They are also very loud. We bought 30 as an experiment and sold them off to a chef as soon as we could. There were only 12 left at that point.