I think cucumbers are always better off growing up a fence or trellis and off the ground.

That is a great picture Kim, with the grill in the middle of a sea of flowers.

Natalie, since you have to pot up your daylilies anyway in order to movce them maybe you can leave them in the pots and put your veggies in the fenced in area. Then you can make new beds during the summer for your daylilies. Maybe the dogs will keep the deer away!

Rita, I'm not potting them up to move them because it would take up half of the moving truck. My other problem with doing that is that I plan on moving as many of them as I can before we actually move up there ourselves. So, they need to be in the ground. I don't know anyone up there, and they'd need to be watered often if they are in pots. And, they would still need to be in a fenced in area. The deer and bunnies aren't going to care if they are in pots or in the ground if they are looking for a snack! Luckily the area gets a good amount of rain this time of year, but the only place they'll be safe is in the fenced-in garden area. It's okay though since it's only temporary. I can always grow tomatoes in a large planter if I need to. I'm not sure if deer eat them or not, but it would be easy to put a small fence around a planter if I had to.

Deer will definately eat your tomato plants if they can.

I don't do this now, but I want to in the future (that does seem to be the gist of a lot lately!). I have helped my mother introduce some edibles into her flower beds and she was quite happy about it. She's trying to convince my father to get rid of the lawn (what little they have left) and use it as a vegetable garden. My argument that corn is just another kind of grass did not get very far.

Hmmm I am not sure that deer will eat tomatoes. Deer come up on my brothers farm yard and drink from the bird bath but they have never said that they eat the tomatoes and they have plenty of them growing in their veggie garden. When we grew up on that same farm my parents always had lots of tomatoes I remember helping can lots of them evey year. I wonder if deer don't like the taste of them or if we were just lucky.

Rita, with you and your tomato crazies, I doubt you'd notice if a deer had munched on them since you had so many! I have lived where there are deer, and had gardens in all of those places, but luckily the gardens were always fenced in. My Dad has a big problem with deer at his house, but I don't think they ate the tomatoes. I'll have to ask him about that. Betty, maybe they do eat them, but only if there is nothing else that they like? I don't like the smell of the plants, so maybe that turns them away? I have no idea, but it looks like I'll eventually find out if I have to plant the tomatoes in planters!

No deer here and that is very fortunate!

Are you sure Rita? I have a (bit of a loony) aunt who lives in Huntington and has multiple times tried to convince me there is wildlife including bears in the area!

There are no bears on Long Island. However there are plenty of deer more out east in Suffolk county. But not here in Nassau county.

Rita, you forgot about Bigfoot. They like tomatoes. If you go outside and hear a noise, you'll know for sure it's Bigfoot!

I have interplanted veggies with my flowers a time or two on a very limited basis - I plan to mix them up quite a bit this year, so I'll have to send photos if it works out. I hope several of you will post photos as your gardens grow so we can take a peek.

Oh yes, Bigfoot must have eatten some of my tomatoes last summer.

Seriously, next episode they are going to Connecticut to find Bigfoots. I mean really. I am supposed to believe there are Bigfoots in Connecticut.

At our northern property we have had deer eat tomatoes. The neighbor struggles with them constantly eating his tomatoes. He thought he would deter them by planting the tomatoes real close to the house but that didn't work either.

I'm beginning to think that deer eating tomatoes may be regional. I hope they don't like them in Idaho! But, I may rather have them eat some tomatoes than some daylilies!

Just keep the deer and rabits out of your fenced in area. Then slowely expand that fenced in area. You have so much room there. If you always see deer in your yard behind that fenced area I wonder if it might help if you planted a meadow with a deer mix. That is a batch of seeds of plants that deer love to eat. I am thinking give them food and they would leave the garden plants alone. There are places you can find on line that sell this sort of mix. Hunting preserves use it to bring in the deer by having deer attracking meadows.

Rita, Mark has already been looking into that because there were deer everywhere when we were up there. I do love watching them, and would love to keep them around, but putting up a 6 to 8 foot tall fence around all of those acres isn't going to be something affordable. We'll just do what we can, and will expand the fence over time.

Now to find that meadow that you mentioned...

Natalie, just type "game food plot mixes deer" into your search engine and all sorts of places that sell the premade seed mixes come up.

Here is a very interesting article from a site selling deer food plot mixes. --

http://www.plantbiologic.com/t...

Rita, I think Mark found a local place up in Idaho that sells it so that we don't have to order any. I'm in charge of plants. He's in charge of the deer staying out of them. Works for me!

That site has a lot of interesting information. You don't have to buy anything there, maybe just read up and learn about food plots and how to plant and manage them.