Garden surrounded with chicken wire,deer etc. bean plants growing through "roof", can I prune them and how will it affect the plants? I am also a first year gardener, as if you couldn't tell. Thank you, [admin removed email]

Welcome to NGA, @Highflyer

You can prune the vines, or just let them keep growing and the deer will probably prune them for you. Keep your beans harvested as they get to a nice size for eating and they should keep producing for a long time. If you want to save some of your own seeds to plant next year, leave the beans on a couple of the vines and they will eventually mature and dry out, then you can harvest the pods and shell out the dry bean seeds. Happy gardening!

why not wait and see how much the deer prune? They'll respond the same if it is you or the deer.

Yeah... cutting on the vines really takes a toll on them... If the deer don't find them, and you haven't chopped them... Much better off all the way around.

Or... enclose a wider area in deer fencing.

I find that running the fencing along the woodland edge or among the shrubbery plantings is better than across open areas...

You need a 10 foot fence when running across an open mowed area, vs a 5 foot fence when run through the thicket... And... 10 ft may still get jumped!

Kinda surprised at how often someone around here puts up a deer fence and then "maintains" fence by spraying foliage with roundup...

That just isn't going to work!

Edit:
Re: chicken wire...

In my experience... not the best garden fencing... doesn't take very long to degrade to where they just walk through it like it isn't there...

I like the welded wire...



(pic from home depot website)