About three weeks ago, I meandered out to the garden. Everything was going super well. I was happy and excited because I didn’t know if anything would grow this year and we had all of this lush produce.
But I realized something. Something was eating my vegetables.
Now it wasn’t everything. It was just a little nibble here on the peas, a little crunch there on the swiss chard, a few pulled up beets, but definitely not something I wanted to continue.
And every day for a couple of days I would come out and there’d be a little bit more munched up and that’s when I realized that a deer was eating my garden.
Electric Netting to Keep Deer Out of the Garden
Now, to say I was not pleased would be an understatement, and I decided something needed to be done ASAP. But what’s a girl to do?
I mean, you see deer fences and they’re like six feet tall and sturdy with mesh spacing. And I was like I don’t have time to put up something crazy like that, so that’s when I decided to just surround it with my Premier One electric poultry netting and see if that would keep them out.
And guess what! A nice hot spark on that thing and it keeps deer out of the garden.
Now, the problem was I needed the poultry netting for the turkeys come this week and yesterday I moved the turkeys outside.
But the garden was yet again uncovered, so that’s when I decided to buy more Premier One netting.
So that’s what I’m going to be doing today. I’m going to be setting up my Premier One 48 inch PermaNet around the garden.
It’s super easy. Super simple to set it up and I’ll take you through the whole process of opening the brand new box and rolling the brand new netting and connecting it to our new solar energizer. So let’s get started.
How to Choose Which Color to Buy
All right, here we have our boxes. Here we have the net. I ended up getting a PermaNet.
You can see I got it in the green and black. I’ve never gotten a green and black before. We decided to go with the green versus the white because it’s going around the garden.
And I just wanted it to have a little bit more of a blend in feel instead of a popping white.
I really do like the white with livestock because of the visibility.
The green, as you will see, once you put it up, it blends into the background pretty well, which is good for the garden. Not so great when you want your animals to see it, respect it and stay away from it.
I still think the green will be fine for the deer because they’re going to come up to it, try to get at those garden goodies and get a nice sharp shock. So yeah, here we go with the PermaNet.
I’m just going to open up this bag and I’ll show you how they package it. It comes really nice, neat and organized, but you definitely want to unroll it in a specific way.
As with poultry netting, pig netting, garden netting, any type of electrified netting like this, if you follow the steps and directions, it’s really, really easy to use. But if you don’t, you can get yourself into a tangled mess very quickly.
So let’s walk through opening this up. We’ll get it set up and we’ll go from there. Now, one last quick note about the PermaNet. The PermaNet is different than your average poultry netting or garden netting in that it has thicker posts.
It’s not designed to be moved as much, so it’s going to be a little harder to install and a little bit heavier.
In fact, they recommend installing this with two people. Now, I don’t think it’s going to be a problem for me, but we will see. I may struggle getting it in the ground, but I think if I just treat it like a normal net, we should be fine.
But the PermaNet is heavier, longer spikes and harder to get in.
Other than that, it is very similar to all of the other nets, and the installation process is going to be exactly the same.
Okay, I’ve got the plastic off now, so we have three of these black threads here and that’s holding it all together. You can see here we have a clip.
These are the two ends of the fences that are clipped together right now. And then we also have the cardboard guard.
I’m going to keep the ties on for now, but I am going to go ahead and disconnect the clip and take off the cardboard. The cardboard guard you can just throw it away.
But a note about these black cords, do not throw away these cords because they come in handy for securing the fence together or for securing the fence to a pole or object.
How to Set up the Electric Netting
Okay, so I’m walking to the garden now and I’m just going to take a peek at the area that I want to enclose.
Before you put up the fence, it’s really important to know where you want it to go around and also to make sure the ground is ready.
You can see around the garden it’s been mowed. You don’t want to install this in really tall, lush grass or brush because that’s going to short out your fence.
Just like any electric fencing, if it has a lot of resistance with high weed pressure, you’re going to get less of a shock.
So this is a nice mowed and we’re just going to be enclosing this whole garden area. I have three rolls of this netting and I’m going to set up one of them first and then we’ll get the other set up and get this thing charged.
Now that we’re by the area that I want to enclose, I am going to go ahead and untie those black cords that are holding this together.
And once you get all the cords untied, you can see that it’s able to unravel. Now, this is where things can go south very quickly if you are not careful.
Holding the Electric Netting
So I’m going to transition it. Going south already, try to keep it in a nice, neat bundle.
I’m going to transition it into my arms like so, so that now it’s just sitting in my arms. You want it to be pretty balanced so that you can take one hand off.
I’m going to see which one is the top. So here is our top pull with our net and drop it down where the first one is going to go.
And then I’m just going to walk backwards and throw the posts down as they come.
Do not throw a post down too early or otherwise you could end up with some tangling. All right. So I’m just going to walk around the garden and throw these down.
Pushing the Poles into the Ground
Putting the poles in the ground is really straightforward. These have a double spike base, so you are able to step them into the ground.
If your ground is hard, it can be a little bit more difficult, but then you just walk around the whole netting and you do the same thing.
Now the key is you want the base to be as tight as possible, so you want to make sure that you pull it tight.
I like to use my foot to sort of kick the post over before I set it in the ground. That way it stays nice and taut.
Now that we have all of the fences up, we need to attach them together.
Connecting Two or More Fences Together
So whenever you have two fence posts that come together, you are going to need to take the two tail ends and clip them together.
Just slide the two plates together, and that will connect the electricity from one fence to another.
You also notice I happened to connect two ends together that did not have the black rope. I can take some of the black rope cord from one of the other ends. And the post really only needs one black cord to tie firmly.
Or you can use baling twine so that works too. Okay I’m all done installing the electric netting. You can see it looks very nice. It goes around the whole garden.
Setting up the Solar Energizer from Premier One
Now I’m going to get my energizer set up now. I have a solar energizer from Premier One so let’s unbox it.
I’m gonna open up the directions but I’m going to be opening up the unit. See these little claws you can see inside here we have a battery and you can see it has a sticker.
We have to remove that label and then attach that wire so that the battery’s all hooked up.
We’re going to replace the bolts here with the included lovely knobs. And the same thing on the other side.
Now the angle that you set the solar panel at depends on what time of year it is and where you’re located.
Setting your Angle for the Solar Energizer
So for summer in the northern hemisphere, it recommends about the 43 degree angle. It has preset angle markers here and that’s why we put in these knobs so that we can slide it to the 43 mark just like that.
There’s also these little foam things that they recommend putting inside the energizer, so let’s put those in too.
And the last thing before we go outside, we’re going to hook up the wonderful little connectors to the energizer box and let’s take it outside.
Connecting the Energizer Box to the Fence
We’re going to put in the ground stake. The black ground clip here is going to clip to the stake underneath here.
That metal stake that we just put in, that’s what that connects to. This red clip is going to clip to the fence. Here we have the set up.
Now, I might move the energizer depending on where I think the best spot is with regard to the sun.
Right now, it’s in the shade, but it has to be somewhere along this fence line. So we’re going with this spot for now. Super easy. We’re just going to turn it on. There’s a button down here. You can hear that clicking.
I don’t like to hear too much of a pop. It means something might be grounding out somewhere, so I’m just going to walk the fence and see.
All right, let’s test the voltage. We’re getting 7000 volts or more because that’s all that the fence tester reads so that is it. My garden is protected.
Yay! Okay, so hopefully no more deer. Hopefully they won’t just decide to jump because they’re definitely capable of jumping that high. But if they get shocked first, I don’t think they’re going to be coming back anytime soon.
All right. We’ll see you next time.
