Lloyd Godman St Andrews Light Garden

This is the Organic orchard Lloyd is establishing at St Andrews, Vic, Australia

The first trees in the orchard were planted in the winter of 2005 - It has been incredibly difficult to establish the trees during the worst drought on record - with 2005, 2006 and 2007 very hot and dry - Also some of the trees were eaten nearly to the ground by starving wallabies -

With temperatures up to 45C some trees have found it very difficult to cope - but we have continued to water the trees and nurture them.

The ultimate way to stop deer and other animals damaging your fruit trees.

At St Andrews we have a whole gamut of animals that attacked the new orchard. Kangaroos, Wallabies, possums, rabbits, wombats and more recently deer. Initially I began by surrounding each tree with wire mesh, but something was still eating the leaves and breaking off branches. Wallabies seemed to be the culprit. After a huge hail storm there was a lot of discarded acrylic roof sheet and I managed to get enough to surround all the trees. This seemed to work for a while, and did keep the possums and rabbits out, orange and lemon trees had the tips eaten, plums, almonds, apricots, hazel nuts and peaches were also favorite targets.

My frustration turned to real anger when I made 32 grafts and all but 2 were broken off and eaten. The damage was as high as 2m and I was convinced there was something else. There was; I disturbed a deer. These creatures can stand on their hind legs and reach up over 2m. Without question it was the deer that was the real problem.

The final level of defense was to surround the entire orchard with a solar powered 2m high electric fence that gives a 8,500V pulse. I have had a couple of accidental boots myself and it sure works.

The fence has 5 strands, alternating live, earth, live, earth, live. There are three high gates which are not live. This has worked extremely well and I have observed NO animals in the orchard since the installation, just birds and bees.