North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Louisa Rogoff Thompson <louisathompson@erols.com>]

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.