North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["E.C. Pasour" <pasour@ncsu.edu>]

No, my post was about the strongest type of netting. Birds sometimes 
pick holes through the netting I have. Any thoughts? BTW, I think you 
gave me some pointers last year re drying fruit. I bought a WalMart 
dehydrator this year and dried a couple of gallons of blueberries. They 
are now in the freezer and I'll try them later.
E.C. Pasour, Jr.

Stephen Sadler wrote:

> 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/
>
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