In the past, our strawberries have been plagued with visits from critters. I really could not blame them! Strawberries are very good eating. I don't mind sharing but when several robins take up residence in the patch and always find the largest berries to peck at, I don't feel generous!Saturday, Ed put netting over our berries. It only took a few minutes and I was so pleased with the results. Maybe some of you are in the same predicament, and would like to do something similar.
Ed bought a roll of black flexible water pipe from Lowes. He cut it in lengths long enough to make a large hoop over both strawberry rows. He pounded rebar into the ground and slid the pipe over the end.
Also at Lowes, we found some netting. The bird netting was in a large square. To cover our strawberries, we would have had to buy several pieces. The deer netting appeared to be similar but was in a long skinny length. (7 x 100 feet) We cut the piece in half, lined up the pieces and tied them together with string every couple feet. It then was the perfect size to cover the full length of both strawberry rows. We weighted the edges down with rocks.A simple project but hopefully will allow us to harvest many more berries! And the supplies should be reusable for years!
For more information on growing strawberries, read what I wrote here.
Do you have fruit trees that you net? I am going to have to get some netting for my trees; the birds are on the apricots and figs, and by next year my trees should be a good size and yield a better crop of fruit. I would love to see how you combined the netting over the trees if you have any.
ReplyDeleteI like your row covers!
We don't have any fruit trees, so I have no experience with that! We just planted some blueberries. They are very small but if they grow, we may need to have some sort of bird netting for them as well. Let us know if you come up with a good idea! Gina
ReplyDeleteI saw the blog it is a nice site to visit netting bird, it was a lot of fun reading the blog. In fact, netting bird is an interesting destination i.e. covered by many websites. In fact
ReplyDeleteWe bought bird netting too, I had a couple of small tomatoes ruined by birdie beaks. Early on there were a couple of nice peppers and a few Juliet (grape) tomatoes - but the hail set back or killed many plants so might not get any Black Krim tomatoes. I’ve thrown old basil seed around and still had it come up. Don't give up yet ;-]