Installation of Inexpensive Garden Fencing

By Mark J. Donovan

Every year as I plant my garden, I wrestle with the idea of replacing my old garden fencing or living another year with it. Due to the voracious appetites of wood chucks I am forced to have some fencing around the garden. And due to the tenacity of these not so little creatures I need to install the fence approximately 6 inches into the ground to prevent them from digging under it.

This year I decided it was time to invest in a new fence, but being a fiscally conservative type of person I did not want to spend a great deal of money on it. Heck, why should I spend $100 or more on fencing if I am only going to save $50 dollars on fresh vegetable purchases, if I am lucky.

As a result, I have decided to try this year a plastic type of garden fencing that is 36 inches tall. In addition, instead of using wooden tomato stakes for the posts I decided to use green, four foot high metal stakes that I picked up from the local home improvement store.

The installation was a breeze. All I did was pound the stakes around the perimeter of the garden and then attached the plastic garden fencing to the stakes. The stakes come with little tabs that can be bent to hold the fence in place, however I found 4 inch plastic tie wraps did a better job.

In addition, I elected not to bury the fence this time. Instead, I chose to have the fence sit only 30” high and then folded the bottom of the fence outwards from the garden. My hope is that the wide fence tab that this creates, will make it nearly impossible for the woodchucks to attempt to dig or crawl under.

The beauty of this type of fencing, versus the metal garden fencing material is that I can easily take it down at the end of the gardening season and roll it up nicely. You cannot do this with the metal fencing.

So we will see how the garden works out this year and I will report my findings in the fall.

Stay tuned………..