Saving My Summer Garden With Roadside Bamboo

An almost-free attempt to outsmart the deer—and maybe get one tomato before summer ends.

The deer problem

Summer is coming to a close, and one of my biggest garden challenges this year has been keeping the deer from nibbling on our tomatoes, watermelon and peppers—not to mention my hollyhocks. (Don’t even get me started on how disappointing that was to discover.)

So I sprang into action.

I’m determined to eventually have the overflowing kitchen garden of my dreams, but right now I’m thinking about the deer problem in two parts.

Part 1: Can I salvage what’s left of this growing season?

At this point, my gardening ambitions have gone from beautiful, overflowing kitchen garden to please, can I just have one tomato?

I’d also love to extend the garden into fall and winter, which means I need to figure out how to protect whatever I plant next.

Part 2: How do I keep the deer out for good next year?

The answer to that one is pretty clear: a fence. That will be a much bigger project for another day.

For now, we’re dealing with Part 1: saving what I can from my cute little garden-destroying neighbors.

And I had an idea.

A little roadside solution

Down the road from my house is a huge patch of bamboo growing along the side of the highway. I figured no one would mind if I helped myself to a few stalks.

My plan was simple: use the bamboo to build a cage over my raised bed, then cover the whole thing with deer netting.

The best part? It was basically free.

So off I went to the side of the road with my clippers.

I’m sure my neighbors—and anyone driving by—wondered what the heck I was doing as I lovingly dragged seven enormous, bushy bamboo stalks down the road toward my house. All the while trying to convince myself that this is a totally normal thing to do.

Building the cage

I used seven lengths of bamboo, some string and deer netting I already had. Nothing fancy—and at this point in the growing season, I really didn’t want to spend a fortune trying to save a handful of tomatoes.

Once I got them home, I trimmed off all the branches until I was left with just the main stalks. I cut six of them down to about eight feet tall for my supports and left the seventh at about ten feet. That one would run along the top to form the peak of the cage.

I pushed a bamboo stake about eight inches into the ground at each corner of the raised bed, then added another stake in the middle of each long side.

From there, the little bamboo house started to take shape.

Then I used a small amount of string to pull the bamboo stakes toward each other creating an A frame effect and knotted them into place.

Then it was time for the netting. I roughly measured the length of my garden bed and added an extra foot or so to each end so there would be overlap at the ends. And I attached the netting at the top and only loosely at the bottom since I will need to lift this up to access and maintain the bed.

Did it work?

Hell yes, it worked.

It's only been a few days, but the tomatoes are growing back, my watermelon has new buds and—most exciting of all—I finally have tiny bell peppers coming in.

So I'm calling my roadside-bamboo experiment a success.

Is it the beautiful kitchen garden enclosure I ultimately want?

Absolutely not. That's next year's project.

But for now, it cost me almost nothing, took an afternoon, and might just get me a tomato before summer ends.

I'll take it.

Next up: Part 2: figuring out how to keep the deer out for good.