WANTED: Good ways to discourage birds

General Fruit Growing
21

HA! Fooled 'em.

22

The one cherry tree must be at least 12 feet tall ā€¦ I thought I was buying a dwarf but thatā€™s another ugly nursery story.
I forget where I bought all the netting Iā€™ve tried but itā€™s been at various online nurseries.

23

I can see using it for peaches but they donā€™t seem to bother my peaches ā€¦ I know Iā€™ll regret saying that.
Before I built the chicken wire cages for the grapes I used netting on them and it was incredible getting the netting off them with the tendrils and all.

24

Iā€™ll have to look into that kind.

25

Thatā€™s the first good use for a mulberry Iā€™ve seen.

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26

Please excuse the questions but itā€™s your own fault ā€¦ how many years after planting before they start to bear, how much space should be allocated, how big do they get, how far away should they be planted from the protected trees, does one tree do the trick, will there be tons of purple bird droppings all over the place, etc.
Iā€™m pretty annoying, I know.

27

I agree. Thatā€™s a good solution.
I made a wooden and chicken wire cage for the blueberries and grapes.
My blue berry cage has a removable top but itā€™s unwieldy.
I like your solution better.

28

I had never even heard of tulle but checked and it looks promising ā€¦ and cheap. Thanks, Sven.

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29

UH OH ā€¦ you just took a mulberry tree out of contention.

30

Now THAT is a good looking structure. So neat inside and out. My compliments, seriously.

31

I only cover my cherries, and its usually only for a few weeks (not all summer). doesnt seem to get too much growing through it durring that time period

32

I agree the easiest netting to use, it still tangles, but itā€™s easier to untangle.

Dwarf cherries grow to 12 feet tall.

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33

I will be netting my trees this year primarily because of cicadas. I donā€™t have much fruit to protect at this point.

34

Has anybody ever tried using 30% shade cloth as netting? i know Alan has recommended it before

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35

Thatā€™s what Iā€™m going to try on an Asian Pear.I bought 50 feet of it for enclosing another structure and am going to use the excess for the tree.
The last two years,Crows,I think,get the fruit at about 1/4 size,even when stapled in plastic baggies. Brady

36

A selective defense I used was small blue synthetic net bags with a draw string. The dollar store sold them 3/1$. They were the perfect size to go over my grape bunches, and stopped crows who couldnā€™t get their beaks in.
A paper bag over the grapes stopped all bugs.
Something to consider for some crops.
Edit: this was very fast and cheap for me. The specially designed paper bags were about 4cents each, and the blue mesh ones 33cents can be reused. Setting up a full net containment field would be much more difficult and expensive. I did it for my blueberries and wonā€™t do it again.

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37

Well this one sure did and itā€™s not stopping.
I need to get some orchard pruning done on these things.

38

The problem with tulle on trees much larger than saplings is the narrow width of the fabric. Iā€™ve never seen it in 9ā€™ widths.

39

My Gisela 5 is easily a 12 foot tree and that is after butchering it every summer. I net.

A hawk breeding program might workā€¦

Robins are my cherries worst enemy. Even with bird netting, they look for every weakness in that thing. The positive of Robins is that the damn things are almost tame and whenever i find a bad one/or one with brown rot i toss it over by the bird and it quickly gulps it upā€¦compost!

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40

LOL! [quote=ā€œwarmwxrules, post:39, topic:5657ā€]
Robins are my cherries worst enemy
[/quote]

Man I agree! I netted by blueberries, and the robins walked around them for 2 days looking to get in. At last gave up!

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