Tree cages

Enter “The Octagon Of Fruit” lol. Excellent job building these to keep the critters out. Nice looking yard and tree placement.

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Nice work, but I think you should electrifi it with 230 volt A/C.

:rofl:

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Oh! A new form of recreation! Wait for a crow to land on it and turn on the juice by remote control joystick.

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The black wire mesh fades away at a distance, much more appealing than galvanized. It’s always interesting to see how your garden has matured.

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These are super! Ours are similar - but not anywhere near as pretty!

We used those heavy T poles - and my husband had to get on a ladder to hammer them in! Then we ‘wrapped’ them with a combination of chicken wire and the black heavy ‘net’ you use. Trouble is - it’s so hard to get close to the tree to work with it . . . We keep having to move the poles out and modify the cages as the trees grow. PAIN in the butt!

If I used your system - the bottoms would allow animal entrance. Our surface is the unlevel orchard ‘floor’. We can anchor the bottoms with landscape staples.

It’s so much work. But, if we don’t do ‘something’ . . . between animals and birds - we will get no fruit.

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I had the advantage of trying chicken wire decades ago at another location, finding it unworkable for making window cutouts.

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Good observation, I guess that’s why it appealed to me versus the uncoated. Perhaps giving the boards a coat of dull black paint would be an additional improvement.

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Are they mourning the absence of fruit?

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They will be!

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4/27. Two days ago I began assembling the walls. First I took a single panel and positioned it on the north side where one of its struts would line up with the overhead position of the center board of the top. I steadied it there with a diagonal board, having attached a foot of clothes line rope at both ends. I then used bailing wire to attach a tie-down to it.

Next I fetched a second panel and after a bit of a struggle attached it to the first with short pieces of rope. Afterwards I added another diagonal prop, wired the panel to a tie-down and then stapled the two panels together at the junction with the temporary rope.

And so I worked my way around the tree to the left and right to where the panels met – in fact overlapped by about a foot. Being rather tired, I lashed them together for another day’s work.

Continuing yesterday, I snipped off all but 2" of the overlap and went about making the final attachment. The angle the walls met was awkward, a little too acute so I used a pair of plyers to bend the unattached piece about every 4" to a matching angle. I was then able to staple the connection together without much of a struggle.

With the walls in secure I put three boards east-west across the top to assist with positioning the top. I then moved the ladder to the center of the north side and place the top vertically between the ladder and the north wall. With myself about 2/3 the way up the ladder I was able to hoist the top up and let it fall north to south across the east-west boards, guiding the center board in the process. Somehow it managed to end up with no adjustments needed. Afterwards I pulled the temporary slats out from under the top.

Today I finished the job by trimming the perimeter of the top with wire cutters and making a few attachments. :slight_smile:

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Great design, though I’m wondering if there’s an easier way to put up the frame first. Like attaching galvanized angles spaced around the paver circle with bolts similar to what you did with the tie-downs, and then attach the wood boards to them to form a frame first. The mesh panels can be loosely tie to each other and just wrap around the wooden frame like a teepee.
image

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Here’s last year’s cage around the Jiro Persimmon. Today I performed a little maintenance and trimmed the top for aesthetics :slightly_smiling_face:.

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5/9. Katy Apricot.

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5/17. Flavor Grenade Pluot

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Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

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Chipmunks can get through your 1" mesh. Don’t you have chipmunk problems? I do. They climb up and chew through the stem so the bagged fruit drops to the ground where they eat it.

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@Vlad
No chipmunks, just an infrequent brown squirrel with black stripe. For your situation 1/2" mesh is necessary.

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Cot-N-Candy aprium, under gray marine-layer.

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This week I’m removing selected strips of mesh on our Prunus to enable pruning. Later in the Spring I intend to remount them as framed doors. Here’s the task I have ahead:

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What plant is in the first photo?Some of them really outgrow their shelters.

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