Whelp…after all the excitement and promise of cherries last week, it looks like I was worried about the wrong pest. This is what has happened over the past few days…
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| Do you see the two almost ripe cherries? Now, do you see the devoured cherry above them? |
Yep…all our beautiful, ripe cherries have been devoured, making a few nice meals for the local birds. Ugh! I think we’ve gotten a total of…oh…6 or 8 cherries. They beat us to the ripe ones every day before we can get home from work and harvest them!
So, with all the strawberries doing so well I was not about to see the same thing happen to them!
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| The rhubarb and strawberries before last weekends rhubarb harvest. |
As of Monday they were officially covered with bird netting…
And as of yesterday, we had our first (albeit tiny) strawberry harvest! Oh man, they were absolutely delicious!!!
Take that stinkin’ birds!
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| This pretty little guy landed on the fence right above the strawberries right before I put down the bird netting. Talk about perfect timing!!! |
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Awww…that’s rotten! Protecting big things like trees can be a bit challenging, and I wish there were something less maddening (but still practical) to work with than bird netting. A few months ago I cobbled together a “cage” for my three wine barrels out back after some critter or other decimated my summer squash plants that were growing beautifully and were just about to set fruit in the middle of winter.
Good that you at least got to taste them before the feathered bandits made off with the rest of your harvest 🙂 Unfortunately last year our neighbors stole ALL SIX of my moro blood oranges (the first fruit my little 3-year-old tree had ever set!!) BEFORE THEY WERE EVEN RIPE, so I didn’t even get to taste a single one of them…aaaarrrrggghhhh…..
+1 re Liz’s comment above about wildlife!
Yeah…trees are definitely a challenge! We didn’t even think about covering it up! Ah well…we’ll know better next time!
Sorry to hear about your blood oranges! SO frustrating! We had someone steal a huge sunflower last year…they just reached over our 6 foot fence and tore the head right off! Who does that?! People are pretty hilarious, aren’t they?
yes the birds are real stinkers, especially around here. And I put out lots of water for them, so they can’t be thirsty! I only have one peice of bird net, will have to buy a couple more to keep the peaches, plums and apples from getting too pecked at.
You mentioned growing mushrooms once, which types did you grow?
Yes, the bird netting does wonders (at least so far it has)! we’ll have to protect our other fruit trees as they get closer to ripening!
Mushrooms…yes! We grew Button Mushrooms in a box! They were so incredibly delicious!!!
I’ve seen that same bird hanging around these parts!
Ha! Chase him away!!! 😉
Ohhh we have strawberries growing & I never thought of the birds getting to them before me. We have a TON of robins living in the trees above the strawberries too :-/ I may have to get some of the bird netting!
Oh yes, definitely get some netting! It’s so nice to see the strawberries ripening up and NOT being eaten immediately by the birds 😉
Sorry about the cherry massacre. As Liz so wisely put above, ‘wildlife is lovely BUT…’
Here’s to a bumper crop next year (now that you know you can do it!) and here’s to more strawberries than you’ll know what to do with!
Thanks, 1st Man! That whole wildlife thing just might be the greatest Catch 22 there is!
Oh no! Hoping for a better crop next year if you can net them earlier. We have a lot of birds here and I’m sure we’ll need to to do some netting when our fruit trees start producing. At least you saved the strawberries!
Yeah…we’ll definitely plan better next year. We’re planning on protecting the apricot tree here shortly as well. Losing more fruit is not an option…we just love it too much! I am incredibly hopeful for a bountiful strawberry harvest though 🙂
Your poor tomatoes, how sad! It’s a jungle out there…
I would have cried about the cherries. Glad you got some strawberries though. Wildlife is lovely BUT….
Ugh…yeah…it’s pretty heartbreaking. A good strawberry harvest just *might* be able to make up for it, though…at least partially!