What's happening today 2020

I’m about to endure the same as you Kev. 6 of my 7 cherries got blossoms. last year they dropped. i don’t think so this year. romeo is covered! where did you guys buy the netting and how big do i need? my trees are only 5-6ft but I’m sure they’ll get much larger. never had to net anything but i want to keep my cherries!

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I sure wish you luck, Steve. Nothing is worse than waiting for years on the trees to produce fruit, then you see it setting fruit and watch it start to ripen, only to see it all get destroyed and/or removed by birds. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone- its one of the most frustrating things I’ve experienced with growing fruit- and we all know that is saying a LOT! haha

But if yours are 6 feet and under, you should be able to protect them pretty well. I get my nets from a place that @mrsg47 told me about, its called American Netting.

Here are the ones I use, and they work well on smaller bushes like you have. Its when your bushes or trees get to be 9 feet and up that it gets extremely hard to manage. Good luck, my friend!

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thanks Kevin. ill try and keep my bushes on the small side. i also planted 3 mulberries which will eventually be so fruitful they may leave my cherries alone. damned sparrows have figured out my honeyberries are tasty so I’m going to have to cover them also very soon. we aren’t the only ones that relish nice sweet fruit unfortunitly!

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City man, when all the tree huggers and all the bird feeders (note the big aisle of bird seeds at Wallyworld)
get their way, we may all starve if we can’t import food from south America or somewhere!

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I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but my cherries are about 20 feet from my large mulberry tree and it doesn’t help at all. If anything, the two trees together just draw in more birds. And at my place cherries are preferred to mulberries. So don’t get your hopes up that mulberries will help! :frowning:

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OK, I gave it a second try today and had better luck. Here are 2 of my cherry trees that I’ve netted. SURELY this will keep birds out…but I won’t bet on it!

First is Juliet. Its only about 7 feet tall and I used netting I got at Lowes that comes on rolls.

This second one is a Montmorency Cherry and I used a very large net from American Netting. That latter is 8 ft tall so you can tell my tree is probably about 16 feet tall and very wide…too big for sure. I’ll be trimming it hard for next year.

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I used to use that kind of netting, what a pain!! It snags like crazy. The method I now use is to sew polyester fabric mesh, about 1/32" holes in it, into a bag large enough to cover the tree. My trees are much smaller than yours though. It only takes about five minutes per tree to install, using some long poles. The other problem I had was crop ruination from fruit flies. They would go through the large mesh and lay their eggs in every cherry! Each cherry, when opened, would be an icky brown color with a little white worm inside. Those days are gone now.

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Rich, are you in a humid or dry climate? Thanks.

I am in a semi arid climate. Dry in the Summer.

I figured so. I don’t think that would work in a humid climate. Too bad. Looks effective.

Interesting. This is the very reason I don’t grow cherries here. The fruit fly pressure is unbelievable and you have to spray so close to harvest that I just can’t bring myself to do it. Your system sounds like the answer.

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The only time I spray is during dormant season, dormant oil on the cherry trees. This reduces aphids on the foliage.

If anyone in the East tries this, let us know how it works for you.

They are so good in fact, I bought six of the smaller sizes and they should arrive in France within the month.

The green netting lakes a huge difference. The black netting catches birds and you lose fruit while trying to remove it !

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where did you get that fabric Richard?

Auburn(Bill)uses mosquito nets for his Blueberries,so I bought one to try later for my Carmine Jewel.bb
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005E18MEG?ref=ppx_pt2_dt_b_prod_image

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Remember the difference between Nettings and Netting for that company

Was pruning my non-bearing trees. Found one (1) nectarine and two (2) apricots. Knocked off one apricot.

Also found a moldy cluster in my cherry tree. Time to deploy the Indar

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Looked harder, found LOTS of brown rot in cherries.

Never had that before