hilltopper
5 year old buck +
A little background: My farm and the surrounding area have had high deer densities since the 1960's. If you look at the landscape carefully, you realize what a profound affect that has had on the vegetation. I basically have two shrub varieties - alder and winterberry (Ilex)- that are very unpalatable for deer. Everything else has disappeared.
I would like to plant more shrub species, but they require protection. I was thinking of creating "thickets" by making larger exclosures. Yesterday I planted some elderberry cuttings with high bush cranberry and snowberry transplants I dug up from near the house. I used two cattle panels and a little fencing to create a 16 X 8 exclosure. I would like to create exclosures in numerous places and plant a wide variety of shrubs. The deer could browse what grows out of the exclosure, but the plants could grow well and produce fruits/seeds. The exclosures would produce islands of seed source, some forage for deer, and perhaps help pollinators and smaller birds. I think exclosures for individual shrubs are likely to be browsed too heavily to be of much use.
My question is this: What would be the most cost effective and least labor intensive method for creating exclosure and what size would be best. The cattle panels are pretty simple. Two t-posts can hold up each side. But that means one 16 X 8 exclosure would cost about $78 (3 panels and 4 posts)- less if I do the short ends in old wire. I made 8 plantings in that exclosure- probably too close together but they probably won't all survive. It will be easy to enter the exclosure from the end if I need to replant, spray, prune or fertilize.
Has anyone made a giant circle with welded wire- say a 12' diameter circle with four t-posts. I'm estimating that would cost about $40 with 40 feet of welded wire. Would that hold up?
Ideas? My idea is to create and spray the exclosures this year. And then plant shrubs next spring. I'd start with maybe 10 exclosures as the first experiment.
I would like to plant more shrub species, but they require protection. I was thinking of creating "thickets" by making larger exclosures. Yesterday I planted some elderberry cuttings with high bush cranberry and snowberry transplants I dug up from near the house. I used two cattle panels and a little fencing to create a 16 X 8 exclosure. I would like to create exclosures in numerous places and plant a wide variety of shrubs. The deer could browse what grows out of the exclosure, but the plants could grow well and produce fruits/seeds. The exclosures would produce islands of seed source, some forage for deer, and perhaps help pollinators and smaller birds. I think exclosures for individual shrubs are likely to be browsed too heavily to be of much use.
My question is this: What would be the most cost effective and least labor intensive method for creating exclosure and what size would be best. The cattle panels are pretty simple. Two t-posts can hold up each side. But that means one 16 X 8 exclosure would cost about $78 (3 panels and 4 posts)- less if I do the short ends in old wire. I made 8 plantings in that exclosure- probably too close together but they probably won't all survive. It will be easy to enter the exclosure from the end if I need to replant, spray, prune or fertilize.
Has anyone made a giant circle with welded wire- say a 12' diameter circle with four t-posts. I'm estimating that would cost about $40 with 40 feet of welded wire. Would that hold up?
Ideas? My idea is to create and spray the exclosures this year. And then plant shrubs next spring. I'd start with maybe 10 exclosures as the first experiment.
