I am pulling literally thousands of pine sprouts every day now- as well as the acorns the squirrels dig little holes for, but the squirrels haven't been as bad in the raised beds. Deer eat more veggies than you do, and they will happily top your peppers and grab your almost ripe tomatoes just before they are ready. The science of tomatoes is that they are vines. 'Indeterminate' tomatoes in a good year could be a 25' long vine. Determinates grow to a determined ht and that is about all you get. Order yourself a catalog from 'Totally Tomatoes' and enjoy the lore they add into their catalog... Wet years we may do a 'Florida fencing' on tomatoes, but dry years we let them trail the ground and the plant roots itself searching for moisture as it goes. Let me tell you how hard it is to mow around a ground vine, or weed the area, grrrr.
A for instance on tree roots, we removed a water feature at our front porch (drew too many snakes with short humans around) and then I filled in the area with our sandy loam, and horse manure a wheelbarrow of each at a time. We then installed a french drain to carry away those 4" an hour rains we get - then we layed slabs of rock to step on. Some of the rocks have come unseated and rock. Lo and behold, we looked to see why and there is a 6" root pushing up beside the french drain. 4 yrs. I pulled up the concrete bed, pulled up the metal fabric, and cut the roots out of the fabric-2" roots and I do chase them down in the bed and snip and cut them constantly. I would not be surprised to find our entire yard has roots not 6" below the surface of the whole yard.
By the way, I have read but not tested a Youtube story of a gentleman who uses 30mm clear fish line around his garden as if it were fencing. We do know a deer will jump what it can see, but if it can't see what it can feel, it won't jump it. Just for one of these days. I have to switch to my cellfone for last year pix, chuckl, so will return shortly to edit this post.
