Powered by Red: Day 16 – Deer in the orchard >:(

Ok for my powered by red post I must say that I am eating more than my share of tart cherries. I have tested all the recipes this month and I am drinking my cherry juice every day.

Deer have been an increasing problem again the last few years. The real threat is to the young trees. The deer eat the buds in winter and then eat the new growing shoots in late May/early June when the tree is doing most of it’s growing. As a tree grows there are hormones in the growing tip that regulate how much branching will occur and what form future buds will take, either blossoms or vegatative(branches). When a deer eats the growing tip in June it throws the whole tree out of whack. The branch might have lots of small shoots or all vegetative buds and no flower buds for the following year. This sets back the process since we will come trim away the affected branches but then we are a year behind. If it happens 2 or 3 years in a row then the tree will remain very small and not fill it’s allotted space leaving us with fewer lbs of fruit per tree and per acre.

We spread turkey manure last fall and the smell drove the deer away until just recently now they are going straight to the young apple trees and browsing. So, we have taken notice of this new deer fence that is somewhat effective but it is inexpensive and not very intrusive from a viewing the farm standpoint. We string 2 electric fence wires about 20 inches apart on one set of posts, and a few feet away we string a single wire on a new set of posts so that it is parallel with the other wires and a few feet out. This apparently creates a problem for the deer since they do not like to cross the two sets of wire. We like it because we were able to string it around the small apple trees and not the whole farm, and when the growth slows down in late June we can take it down. It just went on line last week and so far several deer have crossed it anyway but hopefully they will get shocked enough to quit coming back.