Dealing with garden pests...
One of the pain in the butt parts about having a garden is dealing with the never-ending onslaught of nasty things that want to
eat said garden, before you ever get a chance to! In our garden, it's a constant battle of human ingenuity over canny critter persistence. The main problem areas are, of course, the prized fruit trees, which seem to be that particular favourites of birds and evil parasitic bugs.
The best way we've found to protect our trees against birds (which can clean out the emerging fruit on an apple tree or berry bush within days) is netting. Netting is a royal pain to put up, because it just tangles so easily, but we have found it to be very effective in keeping bird damage to a minimum. For things like bushes we just strategically drape the nets around the bush using stakes to keep the nets from tangling into the new leaf growth. We also just drape nets in a tent-like formation over our espaliered apple trees.
Last year, we also did the draping thing with our Northstar Cherry tree, but that once little sappling grew alot and we had to come up with a new plan for this year. After a couple of somewhat disastrous attempts, we ended up making a set of wooden frames that we stapled plastic netting to. We then assembled the frames into an upright cage and drapped a sheet of un-framed netting over the top. So far the cage is holding up great, which is good 'cause we've got a nice crop of cherries coming up this year!
One of the pain in the butt parts about having a garden is dealing with the never-ending onslaught of nasty things that want to eat said garden, before you ever get a chance to! In our garden, it's a constant battle of human ingenuity over canny critter persistence. The main problem areas are, of course, the prized fruit trees, which seem to be that particular favourites of birds and evil parasitic bugs.
The best way we've found to protect our trees against birds (which can clean out the emerging fruit on an apple tree or berry bush within days) is netting. Netting is a royal pain to put up, because it just tangles so easily, but we have found it to be very effective in keeping bird damage to a minimum. For things like bushes we just strategically drape the nets around the bush using stakes to keep the nets from tangling into the new leaf growth. We also just drape nets in a tent-like formation over our espaliered apple trees.
Last year, we also did the draping thing with our Northstar Cherry tree, but that once little sappling grew alot and we had to come up with a new plan for this year. After a couple of somewhat disastrous attempts, we ended up making a set of wooden frames that we stapled plastic netting to. We then assembled the frames into an upright cage and drapped a sheet of un-framed netting over the top. So far the cage is holding up great, which is good 'cause we've got a nice crop of cherries coming up this year!
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