No deer please - and the best place for my greenhouse..enhouse...

At the moment I have 2 square beds but am looking to extend with another 2 raised beds. What would be the most effective way of keeping out rabbits/deer? Would the large cages be better or ordinary picket fencing? I also want to have a greenhouse. The land is facing north east.  

Regards

Amanda Dunn 

Many thanks for your recent enquiry regarding the best way of keeping rabbits and deer from your vegetable plot, and apologies for not replying sooner – unfortunately I’ve been nursing a broken ankle as you may have read in our Kitchen Garden update section.

But back to your query! The very best way to ensure you are growing in a rabbit and deer free environment is to cover your beds and plot with a fruit cage. Our Heavy Duty Steel or Aluminium Fruit Cages are designed and manufactured by us here in the UK and come complete with anti-bird netting on the roof and heavy-duty extruded polyethylene side netting, which can be reinforced with galvanised wire to prevent rabbits munching through. Alternatively, you could elect to enclose the veg growing area with this wire alone, but if deer are a specific problem then you would also require our 50mm square mesh anti-deer netting. Both the rabbit wire and deer netting will need to be secured with posts, which we do not supply. You might also wish to consider one of our steel vegetable cages, available in freestanding or permanent style, to cover the area. These structures are lower in height than the fruit cages (1.2m against the 2m growing height of the fruit cage) and again, these structures can be covered with rabbit wire to help prevent unwanted incursions.

With regard to your greenhouse, we would advise you to contact a specialist greenhouse company for advice on siting and the many structures available. As we do not stock or manufacture these products, we are not best placed to offer advice but we are aware that where possible, it is desirable to locate a greenhouse with the ridge running from east to west, as this will allow light to hit the structure throughout the day.

Hopefully this information is of some help and you can view the products mentioned above on this website - just type the product code into the search facility at the top of the page and away you go!

Martin