Picket fence and a new garden plan

This year the garden was devastated by rabbits. Within a 48 hour period they wiped out our brussels, spinach, carrots, broccoli, swiss chard, pole beans and snap peas – leaving only our garlic, arugula (no idea why), and onions. The rabbit population has been inexplicably high this year, we are unsure if it is just a boom year for rabbit reproduction or if our local fox family has passed away – either way, they ate everything.

So, we decided to rework our garden to better protect it from rabbits and other pests. We consolidated the 5 raised beds into 3 taller beds, with the hope that getting them a little further off the ground will keep away a few of the pests. We also realized our soil isn’t so great, so by having deeper beds we will have more rich soil and compost and hopefully get some better growth. Surrounding the new beds, and half of our currant bushes, is a new picket fence. It also abuts our old chicken coop, which we are planning on using to store garden tools.  The local lumber yard had really heavy cedar picket, so we bought 100 feet of fence and have been putting it in for the last 3 weekends. We opted for cedar over treated lumber as we didn’t like the idea of a lot of chemically impregnated wood leaching into our soil.

The fence is now up, and next we will be backing it with a metal mesh fence, buried a foot in the ground, to keep the rabbits at bay. We built two gates, both wide enough to fit our wheelbarrow so we can easily bring dirt into the garden as well as move things through to the other parts of the plateau that are not surrounded by fence.