Electric Garden Fence

The electric fence surrounding our gardening just didn't seem to be working up to snuff the other day. There was abundant evidence that an armadillo had made several unauthorized tilling forays into the garden, and Jo said she'd watched a coon enter and leave the garden through the electric fence, barely giving a glance back over his shoulder upon exiting -- like maybe he'd felt a little tingle but certainly didn't get zapped. When I touched the little fence tester doodad to the wires, the light flashed as it should, but the pulse of light was weak.

I decided that the tall grass under the fence might be draining off too much of the juice. Even though our grass is growing slowly these days, it had still gotten tall enough to reach the bottom fence wire, especially on the west end of the garden. So...... I dragged out my trusty Weedeater and trimmed the grass under the fence all the way around. While trimming on the back side of the garden, I also discovered that a metal pepper cage had rolled up against the electric fence.

When I finished trimming, I again tested the fence. This time I was getting a bright flash of light and even an audible click whenever the fence cycled on. That ought to be enough juice to zap any raccoon. I'm not really certain what effect the electric fence will have on an armadillo unless he touches his nose to the wire. Trimming the grass may have helped, but I suspect that removing the wire cage accounted for the majority of the improvement.

Electric Garden Fence

Sunday, 8/26/07

Electric Fence: I discovered the electric fence around our garden off this morning. I briefly looked around to see if I could spot a problem. The only thing I discovered was that the ground fault adapter into which the fence charger is plugged had tripped. When I reset the breaker the fence worked fine. Later, Jo told me that our electricity had been off for about 30 seconds earlier in the morning. That kind of surge usually causes the ground fault to trip so I reckon that was the problem.

Corn: Jo picked our first ears of corn late this afternoon. About 15 minutes later we were eating it. Delicious!!! Between poor germination and the cottontails, I really wasn't sure if we were going to get any corn this year. I still doubt that we'll get enough to put any in the freezer, but we can certainly enjoy what we've got while we've got it.

Weather: Up to 96º today, a full ten degrees warmer than yesterday. Summer refuses to make way for early fall.

Sunday, 8/26/07

Tuesday, 6/26/07

Rain...

Thundershowers around off and on all day. We received a light shower early this morning and some heavier rainfall a little before noon. It looked as if another shower was heading our way during the late afternoon, but it went around. All totaled, we only received .4" of rain. More rain is in our forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, an 80% chance, they say. We'll see.

Garden...

Electric Fence: I used the Weedeater to trim the grass under the electric fence so that it wouldn't touch the bottom wire and ground out the fence. When I trim under the electric fence, I really scalp the vegetation down to bare ground, hoping that it will give up and not grow back. No such luck, though. Were I to accidentally scalp another spot in the yard that badly, the grass/weeds would surely die, but not under that bottom wire. It always grows back.

Corn: The third planting Jo did toward the end of last week is sprouting well. However, the cottontails have been thick in the garden and we figured those tender, young shoots didn't stand much of a chance of not becoming rabbit food. But...... Jo came up with an idea. We had a few welded wire hoops that weren't in use elsewhere. There were two problems with using those hoops on the corn, though. For one thing, we didn't have enough to cover the two corn beds. Also, the mess on those hoops is 2" X 4". A rabbit can get through a hole that big with no problems.

Jo's idea was to use the welded wire tunnels that we had for support and then stretch chicken wire along the length of the beds. We also had 1" mess chicken wire cut to the length of the beds on hand because that's what I use to cover the beds after I get them heavily mulched in the fall. We have to use the chicken wire to keep the armadillos from tilling in the newly applied mulch.

So we installed the welded wire tunnels and rolled the chicken wire out over the top of them. It looks as if this system ought to keep the rabbits out of the corn. If it doesn't work, I'll always think it should have.

This is a temporary installation that will only stay on long enough for the corn to get a little bit of height. Still, I hate having covering the corn with wire. Weeding, mulching, bed edging or even mowing up close to the bed is impossible with the wire in place. If you need to do any of those chores, you need to add about 45 minutes to your time allotted to the project just to get the wire off and then re-installed.

I'll bet the mythical Farmer Brown didn't have so much trouble getting a few ears of sweet corn. Of course, Farmer Brown probably had at least a couple of outside dogs and/or shot every rabbit he saw.

Squash: We had a nice squash vine growing out of the compost pile so I decided leave it and let it grow.



Leaving the squash plant to grow is a mistake. I know I'll regret that decision. The plant will continue growing and growing, taking up more and more space. Soon we won't even be able to get to our compost pile. But this squash plant was so much farther along than what we've recently planted in the garden, I just couldn't bring myself to do away with it.

Tuesday, 6/26/07