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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Rats and birds: was cats, was: Re: Gardeners can slow climate change

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  • From: dwoodard@becon.org
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Rats and birds: was cats, was: Re: Gardeners can slow climate change
  • Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:22:14 -0400 (EDT)

From what I have read (no personal experience); steel or concrete or
ferrocement bins, or bins lined with hardware cloth are needed to fend off rats. I have encountered statements that concrete has to be made with broken glass aggregate or they will gnaw through it; I expect that hardware cloth would do the job.

I have had experience with house mice getting through a 3/8 inch diameter round opening (into an open bottle of corn oil when I forgot to put the top back on). However friends have had success with 1/2 inch hardware cloth around fruit trees for protection against meadow voles.

Regarding birds pecking fruit: I have encountered statements that birds
often (presumably not always) do this mainly to get water, and that
drinking facilities for birds (not too vulnerable to predators) sharply reduce the incidence of pecking.

Maybe hawk perches and nesting platforms would help.

In this fruit growing area (Niagara Peninsula) I sometimes see shimmering aluminum foil hung from lines, or balloons with huge eyes "painted" on them. "Bangers," gas operated noisemakes which imitate gunfire are the standard method for large commercial growers. I'm told that they need to be backed up by shotgun patrols. In general birds are nervous of strange
things but will eventually adapt to almost anything unless the ultimate threat is followed through.

I have read several claims that fruit trees such as mulberries are useful
to attract birds away from other fruit trees which are more valuable and/or harder to produce a useful crop from.

The eastern native red mulberry (Morus rubra) might be good, although it's hard to get pure specimens. There are a number of cultivated mulberries
bred in North America of varying mixtures of Morus rubra and Morus alba
(asian mulberry, naturalized in many areas); Illinois everbearing is probably the best known. Morus nigra, popular for fruit in Iran, Afghanistan and thereabouts, is rather cold-tender; suits perhaps milder areas of Zone 7 and south. Where fairly cold-tender (e.g. Loring)
commercial peach cultivars can't be grown without trouble
I wouldn't try it; and be careful even where they can in their more northern range. The North American Fruit Explorers
http://www.nafex.org
should have a mulberry interest group.

Black cherry (prunus serotina) might be a useful decoy tree although it may take some years to come into bearing. One of the local Amelanchier species might do. I have been warned that chokecherry is a bad host of black knot, a fungus disease devastating to cherries and plums in some areas - like here.

Birds are very rough on peaches around here. The pecked spots soon rot.
However sometimes ants will clear out most of the rot. For *home*
growers, if you can preserve the fruit *immediately* after it is picked
these small spots might not be too much of a problem. It might even be worthwhile to foster your orchard ant population.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario


On Sat, 24 Jun 2006, Lisa in Oregon wrote:

What's a better permaculture way to deal with rats eating the chicken
feed? Or stored food - winter squash, potatoes, grain in the future?
Nothing like checking on your stored squashes and finding out that the
rats have found it.

Come to think of that, I love birds in the abstract, but half the
apples in our little orchard already have peck marks on them; those
dark grey birds, maybe the red wing blackbirds too.

Lisa in Ashland Oregon

[snip]




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