Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - [NAFEX] earwigs; blueberries and deer

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Louisa Rogoff Thompson <louisathompson@erols.com>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] earwigs; blueberries and deer
  • Date: Thu, 06 May 2004 22:34:02 -0400

In Maryland, I used to find earwigs inside my bell peppers. They had obviously eaten their way in, and had defecated all over the inside of the pepper. So I'm not an earwig fan.

I have a friend who does research (library research) on the food preferences of deer. She says blueberry bushes are "deer candy" - i.e. preferred browse. Nonetheless, there are a lot of blueberry bushes left in the wild, probably because they grow on soil so acidic that nothing else will grow there, i.e. there's no competition. Since they produce new canes each year, browsing is probably no more harmful than winter pruning of old canes. Still, if you want to insure a harvest, you'll have to fence them.

My own experience has been that if there are fruit-eating birds around (especially mockingbirds and catbirds), you actually have to construct a hardware cloth cage over each bush while it's in fruit, unless it is a variety that ripens late, after the nestlings have fledged. Squirrels and other mammals also love blueberry fruit.

Louisa Thompson
Gettysburg, PA.





  • [NAFEX] earwigs; blueberries and deer, Louisa Rogoff Thompson, 05/06/2004

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page