[Garden] paths, deer

[gcmichal at envmail.uwaterloo.ca]

I'm concerned about the paths.

1.I did a quick survey a few days ago.  Using uniform steps, I paced 6  
transects at regular intervals across the garden and counted the  
number of times I was stepping in garden plots and the number of times  
I was stepping on paths.  Then I added my numbers for each and  
calculated the percentage of the total area for each.  85 paces landed  
in garden plot and and 45 on paths. The paths accounted for 34.6% of  
the area! Let's be conservative and reduce that to 30% - that is still  
huge, and moreover it is growing.

2. Each time wood chips are added to the paths, the paths get wider  
and wider. I measured the path widths in 22 places and the average  
width is 91 cm (narrowest, 40 cm, widest 150 cm).  That's getting  
close to bike path width.

2. The wood chips and wood trash don't stop our main enemy, the  
bindweed.  If we didn't have bindweed, it would be a different story.  
But the paths and their edges are  a reservoir for bindweed and  
actually make it harder to eradicate it, which is something we have to  
do.  When I weed, I spend a lot of time raking the wood chips off  
stretches of the paths (I heap it up on the adjoining path stretches)  
and then going for the bindweed roots, and then raking the chips back  
on the paths.  The bindweed keeps growing up through the wood chips.   
This actually often takes more time than weeding  the garden patches.  
The carpet pieces, on the other hand, are pretty effective.  They  
block the bindweed trying to come up underneath, and are easy to roll  
back for weeding, and then replace. Until we get rid of the bindweed,  
I would actually prefer that we don't have wood chips on the paths.  
Sure the chips look nice, but they just cause a lot of work, first  
carting them over, then laying them down, and then contending  
endlessly with the weeds they are protecting as well as other problems.

4.  The wood chips are traveling into the garden patches and getting  
mixed into the soil. Take a look at how much has got into some of the  
plots. Last year I tried thinning some arugula and lettuce by digging  
up some of the crowded young plants to transplant to a vacant row, as  
I have commonly done in other gardens.  Unfortunately, the presence of  
sticks and chips in the soil broke off the roots of the seedlings when  
I tried to lift them, or uprooted neighbouring plants that I intended  
to leave in place.  Wood chips also deplete soil nitrogen.

Therefore, I recommend:

1.  Stop adding wood chips to paths. Even get rid of them.  Rake it  
all over to a couple of storage piles and save it for later when the  
bindweed is gone.

2.  Get rid of some of the short paths that run along the widths of  
the plots.  That would reduce the area wasted on paths and increase  
the area that is actually gardened, and solve a portion of the  
bindweed problem at the same time. It would still leave all parts of  
the plots close to a path.

3.  use carpet for weed suppression.

As for deer.  They will be an occasional problem - it's happened once  
so far, in 3 years.  I've visited gardens on Vancouver Island where  
deer are a problem and the only effective remedy is to have high  
fences around the gardens or keep a noisy dog in the yard at night.   
There are lots of weird folk remedies suggested such as hanging bars  
of smelly soap from branches, or constructing defense perimeters of  
human hair, or even pouring blood here and there.  Yuk.

Jason, you've said you are buying deer-repellent plants.  What are  
they?  How much space will they take up to be effective, and what  
proof is there that they are effective?  That can be a downside of  
"companion planting".  I once looked at how many calendula plants  
would have to be planted to protect a certain vegetable from pests and  
it turned out to take up 25% of the garden area. Add that sort of  
figure to the area taken up by paths, and we might be heading towards  
50% of foregone gardening space.

- Greg