We live in the city and right behind a grocery store. We don't have deer around us but when we moved in we figured we'd at least see birds and squirrels. Nope. This fall will be three years here and interestingly this winter is the first year we started seeing animals around our place. Since we moved in we've been doing anything outside completely natural or organic or whatever, no pesticides, no fertilizers, etc. I remember when we first moved in if we dug a hole in the ground we wouldn't even see worms or we might see one. Now when we dig there's tons of worms. Birds come to our yard now and there's a squirrel that hangs around our front and back yard. There's also a crow who recently took to pretty much living in our yard. We had a streak of warm weather with no rain (like a week of no rain with 70 degree weather, for this area that's almost like turning into a desert!) and I noticed one day that after I'd water the peony tree and the lavender that this crow would come over and drink water from the black plastic that I've got the area covered with so that the grass doesn't grow back around the tree and the lavender right now. I rinsed off the plastic for him and refilled it with fresh water. He seemed extremely thristy, I think he was having trouble finding water in the neighborhood. Which to me was just weird but I realize that animals around here probably aren't really that used to it not raining for over a week this type of the year. So every day I made sure that he had water and then another crow showed up but that one left once it started raining again. This one still stays in the yard, he'll leave for a bit and then come back. As far as I can tell he's never gone for more than an hour. It's kind of strange. He doesn't bother our veggie plants or anything either. I've taken to calling him Jon Snow. Haha.
It's been interesting seeing how our yard is changing since we started putting in the fruit trees, berry bushes and the veggie beds for annual plants. I'm curious to see what it's like in another year when the bushes and the trees are a bit bigger and we've got more stuff planted. We're going to put in three more veggie boxes this fall and I want to plant more permanent food giving bushes and trees and other plants too.
As for what we have in right now.
For perrenials we've got two cherry trees, fig tree, peach tree, blackberry bush, five blueberry bushes, three hazelnut bushes, asparagus, strawberries and lavender.
For annuals we've got sugar snap peas, broccoli, red peppers, ancho peppers, egg plants, cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, roma tomatoes, some other bigger kind of tomato, patty pan squash, cucumber, zucchini, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, cauliflower, spinach, kale, tat tsoi, romaine lettuce, swiss chard, garlic, cinderella pumpkins, watermelon, scarlett runner beans, Cherokee trail of tears beans, purple podded pole beans, blue potatoes and German butterball potatoes. I've also got some annual plants tucked into all the beds (of course the squashes, watermelon and beans are not in the veggie beds), marigolds, nasturtiums, petunias, and snap dragons. For color and to hopefully keep some unwanted insects away.
I was a bit worried about the potatoes rotting since we get so much rain but we did them in barrels so that we can layer the dirt and hopefully get bigger yields. We drilled holes in the bottom underneath but also around the sides at the bottom we drilled some holes. So far it seems to be working well. The plants are thriving and any time I check the soil after it's rained quite a bit it's never retaining a ton of water or anything.