permaculture

[dwoodard@becon.org]

> 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]