I don’t know how I missed this thread until now. I did something similar a year ago with my small, stand alone nectarine tree (about 5’ tall). I put a cheap wire fence around the tree and put bird netting (the damaged one with too many holes) all around the fence with an idea that squirrels and groundhogs probably would hate having their feet entangled in the net. It seemed to work.
I am unable to use your (or my) method with other trees for two reasons:
all my trees start branches too low (3-4 ‘ from the ground). Squirrels alone can jump up the trees easily
My trees are planted close to one another and near the border that have many tall trees. There are too many jump off points.
I am a firm believer in your method. I can only speak for myself, but I am very pleased with the results of the netting and chain lock. Thank you thank you
I wasn’t planning on blocking squirrels yet. Too busy dealing with the new to me invasion of deer. Now dealing with squirrels will be added to task list. .
Yes one silver lining of having to raise all my trees to get above the deer is they all now have long stretches of trunk. Before that any kind of baffle would not work.
I’m getting a ton of squirrel pressure now so it’s definitely a good stress test. There is a stand of apples I had not done yet and I saw a half-chewed apple from there on the ground. I just protected that stand. There is one nectarine they took a few fruits from and I think I just had too sloppy of a netting job on it and a non-fruiting apricot next to it. I’m pretty sure that a massive puffy blob of bird netting is impenetrable to them and I’m slowly learning how to get there. I hope I’m faster than with the deer fencing, it took me far too many years to get that totally right.
.. Off to order more bird netting, my ten-year supply is finally gone. One good thing is how cheap this stuff is.
squirrels were eating several apples a day in this granny smith i hadnt cleaned up and turned my hot wire on at that time cleaned out from under the tree and turned the hot wire on decided I would put some netting on the tree also. Apple loss has stopped. Cant say for sure if net is helping - I didnt lose much fruit last year with just the hot wire
I have other trees that are five feet to first limb and use plastic tree trunk protectors and havent lost but a very little fruit - mostly to birds I think
You’ve got a real snarl pit of netting there, can’t see how any squirrel could run that gauntlet.
One of my nectarine trees I saw a squirrel on, it was sitting on a flat spot where I had put the netting. This makes me think that the netting needs to be mainly on vertical trunks, they have to grab it to get up. On a flat surface they can just gently walk over it. Here is a picture after I put more netting on:
You can’t easily see the flat spot but it’s going away on the right trunk. With this extra netting added I haven’t seen any more squirrels on the tree or any fewer fruits.
My guess is if I had OK netting on from the beginning I would have been OK, but I had left access open from a nearby tree and they got on it and then got addicted to the nectarines. Once an animal is getting their food high they get much more persistent and harder to deter. If they have never gotten any of the fruits they don’t really know what they are missing so even a small barrier will deter them. I’ve also noticed this with birds, if you put the bird scares up after the cherries are red and the birds are eating them forget it they won’t work.
So next year I’m going to be more pro-active on getting a good barrier up. Fortunately adding more netting seems like it will deter even a committed squirrel.
Another update on the squirrels: I have a pair that are very determined to get at my fruit. They are spending all day working on it, I can sit on my porch and watch them at work. It’s very useful since I am learning by watching them.
They got into my Purple Heart plum, I had wrapped the trunk but its right on the edge of the orchard and there is a big tree next to it that they were jumping on to the plum from. I had wrapped this neighboring tree but there is in turn an even bigger tree next to it etc etc .. it’s too hard to wrap an entire forest of tall trees. I removed all the direct branches to the plum but they could still jump from higher branches. So I decided to just put a net in the way, I draped some netting over that side of the top of the plum tree and that finally stopped them. Here is a picture:
You can see the big tree behind it. They got most of the plums but there are still some left. I may get my pole pruners and remove even more of the bigger tree so it’s a truly painful jump for them.
On the plus side it’s pretty clear they have learned to stay off the trunk wrap areas. They will hop on a wrapped tree from the ground and start up, but then stop right before the wrapping. I have also not seen them attempt to bridge any of the vertical wrapping. And the trees they were getting in to before that I re-wrapped are not losing any more fruit. I lost about half of my nectarines before I caught on but I have not lost any nectarines for over a week now.
I’ve been getting birds in some of the looser wrapped ones like your 2nd pic up. I also had the same problem with squirrels using nearby things to launch from. That cheap e-bay netting is so grabby that I’m surprised no squirrels have been caught up in it. I need to break out my lifetime supply and wrap some more. It does appear to be mostly working if applied right (seems like more is better).
Gee I never have had a bird stuck in it on the trunks. On the blueberries it was horrible so I know it can get bad. Maybe my birds figured out to stay away.
By the time I got outside the bird had freed itself and it has been almost a week and my first crop of peaches had been taken one by one until I used your method. I also wasn’t able to get them into a trap but now am doing so and no more trapped birds either. The monofilament seems to have solved both problems… so far.
It is still early in my pear season, so there’s still plenty of time for things to go terribly wrong and raccoons to take all my pears again. However, I’ve had the game camera on this tree and nothing came close to it except some crows on the ground they didn’t get in the tree. I just installed one of those motion detector alarm with dog barking and a shotgun blast so should be interesting . By the way, it is loud about 130 decimals on the highest setting a regular blast is about 150 so not too far off
I think I have to eat some humble pie here, I let the squirrels get into some trees due to sloppy netting on some of my trunks and once they tasted the forbidden fruits they became more willing to run the gauntlet. It did work for a long time on some very tempting trees but I didn’t have consistent enough netting at the start.
So I’m going to start up on the traps again. I am hoping that I can trap out the squirrels that have become bold about the netting and the new ones that come in will be more reluctant. I really made a mistake not having great protection up from the start of the season. A lesson for next year.
I’ve had a similar thing happen with the birds and deer, it takes me too many seasons to figure out a particular control strategy. It took me a long time to figure out the deer fencing needed bird netting on top and ground staples in the ground to keep them from pulling it up or eating through the holes. I’m doing good this year on the deer, but they still managed to get through a few things.
I’m not giving up on it so quick. I think it just needs to be applied correctly. That stuff is horrible the way it grabs and sticks to everything. No way they could get through a ball of it without getting stuck. I’m going to try bunching it up in more of a thick ring type setup. I’ve got plenty, can’t hurt to try. Also, I noticed that yours was tight to the trees. I did mine very loose and dangly with several wraps so they had no choice but to touch it without a hard backing.
I was driving through a neighborhood in NOVA the other day and noticed a peach tree that someone had employed the net technique. Made me wonder if they were a forum member.
Good! I’m not giving up either, this is just one more round in the battle. It’s clearly a big deterrent but it will take awhile to figure out the best approach.
The only good news now is my Rubinette I under-thinned and the squirrels are all over it getting it better thinned, and the tree I can see from my chair in the living room so I’ve been picking them off one by one with my pellet gun. Keep on thinning, guys
My baffes have worked consistently for me for about 30 years in scores of orchards- even when the animals are starving- what varies is how high squirrels are willng or able to jump at any given site. The highest I’ve experienced was about 6.5’, but commonly not more than 5’. Once I’ve established that there aren’t any surprises as long as I baffle from the ground up and keep the baffles slick with a greace and oil mixture. It is not as much a pain in the A as losing crops customers have paid me a great deal of money to harvest. They also pay for the baffles, but by now, my man can set them up in about 10 minutes per. Takes me a little longer. I usually prune while he baffles- I never really get sick of pruning.
If the squirrels are physically able to beat your baffles, they will likely master the method. However, yours worked well for me this season, or seemed to. I explained that earlier and I got the first peaches from that tree today- a few peaches is so much better than none. I doubt I would have had any harvest without that or my own type.
I had a cheap gun and it was not accurate, I had to re-align the scope every time I pulled it out. It eventually broke and I decided to buy a better gun. Here is the one I have now:
This thing is scary good. I had thought my shooting skills were in decline with my old gun but this thing I don’t miss with. Since I started shooting yesterday I bagged three squirrels, one shot for each. I also trapped four of them.
There is probably a cheaper gun which is also accurate, but after suffering with the cheap one for fifteen years I decided to not go down that road.
