Re- evaluating bagging fruit

They are a good looking fruit Tippy. I don’t see how a decent bird could resist them.

Bill,
Speak of the devil. I took bags off my nectarines around 3 pm today. By 6 pm, this happened.

I picked all the nects this evening.

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@mamuang, have you tried to cover your fruit tree with bird netting when the fruits are red? I found it very effective against birds.

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Only strawberries and cherries. All my other fruit are usually protected by bags.

This exposing of nectarines was a rare occasion.

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I looked up my records from last year - I had one Mericrest then, too. Picked it August 10 - too early.

So it’ll have to hide in its net for another week or so.

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European Hornets are chewing their way into my Zip Lock bags!

Some also just fly into the bottom corner drain holes. They figured out the back door to the fruit, now are eating my pears.

It never ends, does it?

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Hornets sound like a bad one. Glad they haven’t found mine.

Hambone,
Can’t believe those nasty hornets found your fruit.

Do you think this kind of bag would offer better protection? It is made of stiffer nylon.

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If the fruits are low enough to access, you may use the paper stapler to close the corner drain holes or any broken parts of the bags. That is the reason I use larger size bags for bigger fruits.

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I may have some of those in my cabinet that holds 19 different kinds of bags. LOL. Will also try the stapler maneuver. Like a chess match isn’t it???

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I lost my entire crop of peaches, as well as the entire apple crop to varmits, epecially squirrels. They were all bagged with an assortment of bags from polyethylene mesh, to aluminum screen bags, to stainless steel 220 mesh bags. All were ripped down (hundreds?) and either ripped open or mashed between sharp teeth.
I have beat fruit pests and disease but not squirrels. I am thru with defense as an approach.
I think I need to move to offense. Traps, electric fencing etc.

.

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And even a simulation of molded plastic shells in black and clear and white. All ripped down.

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Wow, some of you really have it bad. I have three strands of electric wire around my mature fruit tree area. The lowest strand is about 3 inches off the ground. Even though squirrels are thick in the area, I haven’t had much trouble so far. One year when we were out of town for a few days, I unplugged the fence and something not only cleaned out a heavily-laden pear tree, but also broke the top half the tree off. I have a squirrelinator I’ve never used ready just in case. The birds clean out any grapes I get, but they seldom amount to much, anyway.

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I only installed one strand about 4-6" high prior to the fruit ripening. I also have a large population of gray squirrels but they haven’t bothered my fruit and the night invaders (raccoons/opossums) have not done any damage. This is wonderful compared to my heavy damage I had last year. I have become a big fan of the electric fence.

Patrick
Are you sure the damage was done solely by squirrels? I wonder if night invaders were a factor, too.

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Same here! Usually, I find them on the ground into the windfalls, but this year there aren’t windfalls, as the squirrels steal them off the tree, so the hornets have joined in.

Maybe they’ll sting the squirrels

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mamuang sure, probably some raccoons, possums etc at night as well.

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I have found night raiders like raccoons and opossums have caused more damage and they were the ones biting through those meshed bags.

Squirrels have not been able to bite through my window screen bags but I am sure raccoons definitely can.

By the way, one of my watermelons split due to heavy rain. The next day, some animals took several big chunks out of it. I suspect a fox. No animals around here ate like that.

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Do rat traps work on squirrels? I know from experience they do not work on opossums.

How big are the rat traps?

I have a Havaheart trap for squirrels, a big one and a small one.

The small one, squirrelscan flip it over and escape.
Big one may not trigger small/young squirrels.