North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Stephen Sadler" <Docshiva@Docshiva.org>]

Was it you who posted before about having snared critters in the netting?
Now it looks like the snarings just happened near ground level.  I had
wondered - I hadn't had that problem, but I had only netted over the top,
not clear down to the ground.  

That angry bird seems to have thought you planted the berries just for him.
One year, my first year for a new strawberry bed, the bed produced just one
berry.  It would have been silly to have netted it, but I checked it early
every morning, looking forward eating it when ripe.  Even one sweet berry
fresh off the plant is a treat.  But a blue jay also checked on it about the
same time every day, also waiting... in the end, he beat me by a few
minutes...  I'm convinced birds would garden, if they could just figure out
how to use the tools.

Stephen 


-----Original Message-----
From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of list@ginda.us
Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2006 3:42 AM
To: ec_pasour@ncsu.edu; North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Bird netting


I have a row of "half high" blueberries.  I used to just throw bird  
netting over them, but I snared too many chipmunks and junkos.  I  
felt bad about the dead creatures, and didn't enjoy removing them  
from the netting.  Also, I needed fencing not only during fruiting,  
but also over the winter, when the bunnies find the buds tasty.

I now have 2 feet of chicken wire to keep out the rabbits.  Outside  
that, I have one foot of hardware cloth because the small birds and  
chipmunks can squeeze through chicken wire - this keeps them from  
doing so at ground level.  The posts that all that fencing is  
attached to are about as tall as the blueberries.  (In my case, 3-4  
feet)  When the plants have berries, I drape ordinary cheap bird  
netting over the top, overlapping a bit with the fencing, but not  
reaching the ground.  This does a fine job of excluding birds, and I  
haven't snared anything since I started using this system.  As you  
can probably guess, this system developed bit-by-bit, and I'm sure  
other systems would work just as well.

Funny story:  The day I put out the netting this year a bird watched  
me closely.  As soon as I was done, it flew along the the entire row,  
resting on a fence post every 2-3 feet, examining the netting, and  
calling out angrily.  I guess I was not the only one keeping an eye  
on the ripening crop.

Ginda
g/