- Hi, thanks for joining us for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Animals like your vegetable garden as much as you do.

Today we're going to be installing an electric fence to keep them out.

That's just ahead on The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer) Production funding for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South is provided by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Welcome to The Family Plot.

I'm Chris Cooper, and joining me today is Mr. D. Mr. D is a retired UT Extension agent.

All right, Mr. D. - We're gonna build a fence.

- We're building a fence.

- We're gonna build a fence.

- This is gonna be interesting.

[Chris laughs] - Yeah.

A target critter that we're trying to keep out of this little spot right here is rabbits, and raccoons, and deer, hopefully.

- And deer, okay.

Hopefully, all right.

- And system we're using is one that I have had success with over the years at Agricenter International.

- Okay.

- Which is very, there's extreme heavy amount of deer pressure, raccoon pressure, and rabbit pressure out there because you cannot hunt.

You can't send your 12-year-old with a 20 gauge out there.

[Chris laughs] - Can't do it, huh?

- It's illegal, it's in the city limits of Memphis, and they do not allow hunting.

So, and it's worked.

It's worked for me.

You know, sometimes I wonder why or how, but it works.

So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna build an electric fence.

We've already stepped off the area, and we have it marked with these clips.

- Okay.

- It's 20 feet wide, 30 feet long.

So, it's a fairly small area.

This is just for demonstration purposes, folks.

We're not really gonna plant a garden here.

If you have a vegetable spot in your yard, simply go around the area that you want to protect.

- That's right.

- It doesn't, no rocket science involved.

Just make sure you have enough wire to get around there, three times.

- You gonna need that.

Three times.

- Three times, right.

So, the first thing you do, the first thing I do is I will set my corner posts first.

And then I will stretch my first strand of wire, my bottom strand.

And I use that bottom strand as a guide to know where I'm gonna put my line posts.

That way my line posts are straight.

You want your fence to look pretty.

- Okay, you want it to be pretty.

- That's right.

- All right.

[Chris laughs] - So, let's start with these corner posts.

- Okay, which one you want to start with?

- Start with this one right here.

And we need that heavy hammer over there.

A post driver is a good idea.

We don't have a post driver with us today, so we will use this heavy hammer.

[hammering] Now, if I have an intern working with me.

[Chris laughs] I will say, okay, is it straight?

I have one there and one there.

And, okay.

"Is it straight?"

- Is it straight?

[both laughing] [hammering] - Oh, it's getting straight.

[hammering] How far are you trying to go?

- I want to get a couple of inches of the fin in the ground and that will help stabilize the post.

[hammering] I've got each of these posts has a fin on it.

I think that's good enough.

[Chris laughs] I think that's good enough.

Okay.

- Is it my turn?

- It's your turn.

- All right.

[hammering] - I think that'll work.

I think that'll do it.

- Got it.

- My turn.

[hammering] - Can you move it to your left a little bit?

Just a little bit.

- We should have done a competition to this and timed it.

[Chris laughs] [hammering] [hammering] I think that's good.

I think that'll work.

- That'll do it, okay.

- You notice we were very careful when we started at making sure these posts were turned in one particular direction.

When we put the clips on, we want the clips to be on the, for the corner posts, we want the clips to be on the inside of the post.

And the clips fit between these notches on the post.

And so I'm gonna put the first one on right here.

So you put the short side first.

- Short side first.

[clip clicking] - Okay, now I'm gonna slide it down.

I got that.

I'm all the way down.

And I'm gonna want this wire about four to six inches off of the ground.

So when I get it down at the right, it's going to to the last notch here.

Pull it on around.

[clip clicking] Slap it into place.

So that's the height that we're gonna have our bottom wire.

We do the same.

We can go ahead and put these clips on all four of these posts.

Just the bottom clip is all I'm gonna put on right now.

[clip clicking] - So you said the short side?

- Short side first.

Take it down to where I want it.

Right about there.

[clip clicking] Just hit that and it's got it.

You don't have to have a very heavy gauge wire.

This is a 17 gauge.

It's important for it to be galvanized to make it weather-resistant, and you just want it to carry electricity.

- Okay.

- And be easy on yourself.

[Chris laughs] Screwdriver is just to- - Look at that.

- Make the application a little easier.

- Ah.

Yeah, I think you've done this a time or two.

- Okay, all I'm gonna do with this now is I'm gonna connect this.

This is probably one of the few times I'll actually be doing much wiring, but I'm gonna go through this clip and I'm just gonna... - Oh.

- Just wire it.

- Yeah.

- Because it's your first connection.

Okay?

- Okay.

Now, I guess we wanna make sure it's tight, right?

- Now I'm used to having a much bigger and heavier spool than this.

So usually sometimes you have to have two people.

I don't need two people for this.

Just reel it off.

[spool spinning] Now I'm going to use the clip.

So you can see by staying on the inside of these posts, if something knocks the wire off, it will go toward the center and it won't hit one of the posts to cause it to short out.

- Same thing here, right?

- Mm-hmm.

Just use the clip.

- Use the clip, okay.

- I'm gonna put a little pressure on this to make it semi tight.

- Okay.

- And I'm gonna just go ahead and I need to put the second clip on before I raise it up.

And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna put our line post in right now.

- Okay.

- So the line posts need to be about, in my opinion, about 10 feet apart.

So this is 20 feet wide, 30 feet long.

That means we need one right in the middle.

- Right in the middle?

- Right here.

Is that right in the middle?

- Come this way just a little bit.

Oh yeah, I think that's good.

- That right?

Okay, I'm gonna put it- Now I want the wire outside the post.

So I'm going to go ahead and I'm gonna pull this, touch the wire, then I'm gonna push it in the ground at an angle.

It's, I don't know, 75, 80 degree angle?

I didn't do very good in geometry.

[Chris laughs] But just lean it out.

- Oh man.

- And for some reason, that seems to help.

And I'm gonna go all the way down in.

[Chris laughs] And then I'm gonna take this little wire and I'm gonna hook it in that clip right there.

- Oh, just that easy, okay.

- So that supports that.

Okay, 10 feet.

About right here?

- Yeah.

Look at that.

- And now I'm going to do the same thing, ten-foot intervals all the way around.

And we'll be in pretty good shape.

Okay.

So our next wire is gonna be on this clip right here.

So that's how I just determine where to put my next clip.

And I can always, if it's wrong, I can move it.

There's nothing about this that is permanent that you can't move.

Now this is where you have to be kinda careful because you do not want the wire to come in contact with this metal post.

If it does, it will ground the system out and it won't work.

I'm gonna hook it on the clip.

I'm gonna take it underneath, come all the way around, and I'm gonna bring it straight up to this next clip.

Again, I wanna make sure this wire does not- I don't want there to be any chance that this wire can come in contact with this post.

So I'm just gonna come up to this next clip.

I'm gonna go through here one time.

My trusty screwdriver.

And probably before I do this, I'm gonna lay this down.

I'm gonna go ahead and put the clips, One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, above the seventh, on the eighth run on all four of these.

Six, seven.

- All right, that's it.

- About right here.

[clip clicking] [clip clicking] - There you go.

- Well, now we're ready to put our next wire in.

[spool spinning] We decided low, didn't we?

- Yeah, you wanted to go low, right.

- Let's see, that's gonna bring it up a little bit right there.

Don't go crazy when you make these connections to the post because you would rather something go in there and knock the wire off, and all you've gotta do is clip it back up there, than have it tightened so securely or double-wrapped and triple-wrapped and everything so that it tears everything up.

'Cause things will happen.

You know, you may have the neighbor's dog or something like that.

So this way it's very easy to hook it back up and you're back in business a lot quicker.

- All right.

- So we gotta do the same thing here that we did on the lower one.

Let's go ahead and put those clips in.

So I think one, two, three, and then on the fourth one.

Gonna do about right.

- All right, I'll watch you.

[clip clicking] - Okay.

[clip clicking] - Here we go.

[clip clicking] Hey.

[clip clicking] - Now we stretch our final strand.

I wanna do the same thing I did here.

With some slack.

I want it pretty taut, but not taut enough to pull these clips off.

I'm gonna go under so that it will catch on that clip.

Like that.

- Ah, there you go.

- And here again.

[wire rattling] - Ah, look it there.

- Okay.

- All right.

[spool spinning] This is going up to the top, right?

- Mm-hmm.

- Top floor.

All right.

- And this is the one, hopefully, that will keep the deer out.

Bottom one for rabbits.

- Rabbits.

- Middle one for raccoons.

- Raccoons.

- So you can have sweet corn out here.

[Chris laughs] - Last one for the deer.

- Last one for the deer.

- All right.

[spool spinning] All right, let's see how you gonna tie it off.

- Okay.

First I'm gonna hand you that.

- Yeah.

- And I'm gonna cut off some extra, pull that out a little bit more.

- A little bit more?

[spool spinning] - Okay, that's good.

- Good, okay.

[wire snips] There it goes.

- So I'm going to kind of go around this last clip a little bit.

And I'm gonna come over, and I'm gonna go around this wire.

Do the same thing down here.

Just, I wanna make really good certain that these three wires have a good connection.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- All right.

- Now we are ready to put our ground rod in the ground.

- Okay, over here?

- All of the, every electric fence needs one or more ground rods.

One should be sufficient with this one.

The ground rod, I always put it fairly close to the fence, kind of out of the way 'cause I'm mowing around it and all that.

But just put it right here.

Usually put it outside the fence in case if these get loose, they won't come against the ground rod.

Even though it does need to be grounded on it.

Doesn't make any difference which the end is up.

- I was just gonna ask you that, yeah.

So it doesn't matter.

- Nu-uh.

- Okay.

- Needs to be in the ground pretty deep.

- Oh, wow, okay.

[hammering] - Deeper than the posts.

[hammering] This is not an easy step, but it is very, very important step.

It's one that's required.

You have to have a ground rod to complete the circuit.

And for safety's reason, this is a very, very important part of the job to get that in the ground.

[hammering] [hammering] - Okay.

Now, this nifty little piece of equipment, this is how we attach the wire to the ground rod.

- Yeah, look at that.

- Okay.

So I'm gonna take it down and get it away from the label.

Snug it up.

It's pretty tight.

It needs to be pretty tight.

So we're ready to install the charger.

- Okay.

- You can pick up the charger, the wire, the posts, clips, everything at your local farm supply store.

They're around everywhere.

This one is an AC, alternating current, a charger that plugs directly into, you know, an electrical wire somewhere.

- Yeah.

- Or electrical plug.

You can see the prongs here.

At Agricenter, or a lot of farmers don't have electricity close by and they have to use solar-powered chargers.

And you can get solar powered chargers.

If you do, they fit right on top of this T post.

They'll fit right on top of it.

And you always orient them facing the south.

And that comes with the directions.

But this one, we're close to electrical power, so we're able to use this.

It's a lot cheaper if you can go this route.

[Chris laughs] So what I've gotta do is I'm going to cut a piece of wire.

There are two connectors on here.

One says to a ground, one says to the fence.

So I'm going to cut a piece of wire, put it on here, connect it to the fence.

Then I'm going to, on this side, put another wire on this and connect it to that ground rod.

- All right.

- And we'll be ready to plug it up and start shocking rabbits.

[Chris laughs] - Shocking rabbits, all right.

- Let me go ahead and put a couple of wires on here.

- Okay, you got it?

- That's probably good enough on that.

- That good enough?

Okay.

- This terminal says to the fence, so I loosened this wing nut, so I've got some room, and I'm gonna take this wire and I'm gonna wrap it a couple of times around the nut.

Trying to pull it kinda snug.

Like so.

And pull that down there.

There are a couple of channels down here at the bottom of this, and I'm going to try to, as I tighten this wing nut, direct this wire into these channels that are down here.

- Did you get it?

- How about that?

- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- See the channel?

- Yeah, you got it.

- I'm gonna go ahead and put the other, the ground wire on here.

So let's cut us off another piece of wire.

Rather it be too long than a little too short.

- All right, got it.

- Okay, I'm gonna do the same thing with this.

I'm gonna loosen the wing nut, get it out about a quarter of an inch or more.

We'll wrap it around a couple of times.

Find those channels and spin the wing nut back in.

- All right.

- Okay.

- All right.

- So this is to the fence, this to the ground.

- Okay.

- So this is this side, okay?

Ideally, we would go ahead, we would have this wherever we're gonna have it mounted to our electrical power.

Make sure your connection is pretty good.

Okay, this, I'm gonna bend it like so, make me kind of a loop there.

Gonna stick it in.

- Ah.

Yeah, straight through.

- Find a screwdriver.

Hook it up.

Okay?

- Okay.

- You're about to get fenced in, dude.

- Gonna get fenced in.

[laughing] - So I'm the deer inside the fence, okay.

- Voila.

When you do this at home, you're gonna have this plugged into the wall somewhere.

Ah.

So folks, that is an electric fence.

- That is an electric fence, how bout that?

Pretty cool, man, pretty cool.

- If the Lord's willing and the creek doesn't rise, it'll keep rabbits, raccoons, and deer out.

[Chris laughs] - It'll keep it out?

All right, Mr. D. I think you've done this a time or two.

- I have, I have.

- Yeah, we appreciate that so much.

- A lot larger areas than this.

- A lot larger areas than that, all right.

- Not with as good help as you.

- Oh man, I appreciate that.

I appreciate that.

Now I gotta figure out how to get outta here, right?

[Chris laughs] - Luckily it's not hot.

So you can still get out.

- We're good.

Thank you much, Mr. D. We appreciate it.

- Most welcome.

- All right.

[upbeat country music] We planted this garden about two weeks ago.

As you can see, everything looks good.

We still have daffodils here.

And as you can see from the brown foliage, the daffodils are actually starting to die back.

That means that those nutrients have been pulled back into the bulb.

So what we gonna do here is we are gonna clean it up a little bit by just pulling them out.

[foliage rustling] Looks like a lot of this has died back.

So I'll go ahead and pull that out.

Look at that.

A lot of this is still green, so it's not quite ready yet.

So we'll come back maybe in a few weeks and check on it.

But in the meantime, we'll just keep pulling up the dead foliage.

And again, this just signals to me that those nutrients have been moved back into the bulb.

Yeah, so let the energy, the nutrients go back to the bulb so it can have enough stored energy to grow next year.

[upbeat country music] All right, Mr. D. You ready?

- I am.

- It's our Q&A segment.

These are some great questions.

Here's our first viewer email.

"Can I use neem oil on my newly planted squash plants?"

And this is Cheryl.

So what do you think about that one?

- I think, why not?

[Chris laughing] Yeah, I don't think it's a problem.

- If you want to do that, but you know, I would scout your squash plants, because they probably are gonna have squash bugs.

You know, at some point, flip the leaves over, you'll see those eggs.

When those eggs hatch, you'll have those little nymphs.

Neem oil will do an excellent job controlling those nymphs.

But you gotta scout.

Gotta flip the leaves over.

- You gotta get good coverage.

- Gotta get good coverage.

- If you just put it on top, and they're on the bottom... - They're on the bottom, yeah, that's right.

But yeah, if you just want to use it, yeah, read and follow the label on that, of course.

- Use it right.

But she's asking it as if we're afraid the oil will hurt the plant, and the neem oil is not gonna hurt the plant.

- Neem oil will be fine, as long as you don't spray above 85 degrees.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

[laughs] You know, you might get phytotoxicity at that point.

No, but that'll be on the label.

Just read and follow the label.

- Yeah, follow the label.

- Yeah.

But you know, outside of that, should be fine.

- Yeah.

- But I will say, scout for those squash bugs 'cause I'm sure they'll be there at some point.

- Oh yeah, no doubt.

- So there you have it, Ms. Cheryl.

Thank you much for the question.

Here's our next viewer email.

All right, Mr. D, we're gonna have to go through this one pretty good, right?

"So, my neighbor lost a cedar tree "and I now have a truckload of chips in my yard, "which might have been a mistake.

"I'm attempting to turn a half acre of grass "into fruit trees and gardens.

"Should I get rid of fresh cedar chips "since I read it is not good "for beneficial insects and pollinators?

"This isn't mulch, but clean cut chips.

Thanks for your advice."

And this is Jan. - I think people would probably pay good money for that.

- You think so?

[laughs] - I do.

- Okay.

- You know, I don't think it's gonna hurt you at all.

I mean, you talk about it not good for beneficial insects and pollinators.

They're not gonna be where the the pollination is going on.

They might be beneficial for getting rid of the bad insects.

You know, some of the bad insects.

- Right, right.

- And you know, it might repel some spiders and...

Which are beneficial too, but anything that, because I know cedar's a natural- - Yes.

- You know, clothes moths.

Think that's why we have cedar robes and cedar chests because it repels those kind of things.

But I don't think it's gonna be a problem out there in the landscape.

I think it's gonna do more good than harm.

You know?

- So would you use it as a mulch?

You know, she said this isn't mulch.

I mean, I know some people that use it as mulch.

- I probably would.

That means that tells me it's gonna last longer, you know than a regular mulch.

- Right, it's gonna take a little while to break down.

- So, I would not be afraid to use it as mulch.

- Okay.

- Personally.

What about you?

- I don't think it's a problem, either.

You know, it may rob the soil right there at the top of nitrogen, temporarily.

- Nitrogen.

Take longer to break it down.

- Yeah, 'cause it takes longer to break it down.

It's temporarily, right?

But in the long run, I think it'll be fine.

I do.

So that's probably what I'd do with it.

- Yeah.

- You know, you have that much, you know, I would probably use it.

- I think you're gonna like it.

I think it's gonna last longer, and- - It will.

- And you know, I just don't think it's gonna be a problem.

- No, it will definitely last longer.

Yeah, like I said, it will rob, of course, you know, that area of some nitrogen just temporarily.

But over time, I think it'll be fine.

- Yeah.

- I think it'll be fine.

And it looks good, too.

You know, it looks good.

So Ms. Jana, yeah, we think it's gonna be okay.

All right, so we thank you for that question.

All right, Mr. D, fun as always, appreciate it, man.

- Good deal.

- All right.

- It was fun.

- Okay.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is familyplot@wkno.org, and the mailing address is Family Plot, 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee, 38016.

Or you can go online to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

If you want to learn more about different garden fence options to keep out the critters, head on over to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

Be sure to join us next week for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]