Much to my surprise, my husband decided to build me a new garden on the other side of the fence (in the barnyard) where the fence on that property makes a corner. (He really wants sweet potatoes.) He used the fence and added posts and then he used leftover Hardie board to make the raised bed. Then he filled in with topsoil that we are storing up in the barnyard and he mixed in some planting mix. We mulched it and planted sweet potato slips.
He built this garden to try to give the sweet potatoes some protection from the deer who absolutely LOVE sweet potato leaves. They have been eating the leaves as fast as the vines can grow them. My husband vowed to make a deer proof enclosure for the sweet potatoes. I picked up green plastic chicken fencing and he took over from there.
I had stuck a bunch of garden stakes in the gaps in the fence, but we are pretty sure that the deer were jumping into the fenced area, so we had to maintain protection on the sides, but also make the enclosure much taller. My husband added extensions to all of the fence posts and we stapled chicken fencing from the top of the existing fence to the top of the new posts. Then he mounted one of the gates on the posts that he had installed. Then he added some horizontal boards to the short open end of the bed and we wove the garden stakes in between them to make them sturdier. We were both concerned that the final product would look AWFUL, but it’s not too bad. I mean it’s not attractive, but it’s okay. My husband is bound and determined to have a sweet potato harvest this year, so he was happy to do it even though it was oppressively hot here last weekend.
So I guess we’ll see how we did. I don’t think that the deer can jump this–it about 7′ tall.
Cathy At Home on the River 