A few months ago, I was discussing blueberries with my dad. I was explaining that last year, we did not get any of our own blueberries because our guinea fowl ate them all before they turned ripe. It was very disappointing. My dad explained that my great grandmother used to have the same problem with wild birds. He suggested a fence. This is something that we'd been going back and forth on. The blueberries are in our front yard and being a woman, I do have a desire for the front yard to look somewhat presentable and more welded wire was not in my vision.
Dad told me that the fence didn't have to be there all the time, only when there were berries on the bushes. He explained that my great grandmother (whom I'm named after, by the way) used to keep a fence around her blueberries all year long to keep the deer out. Then, when the bushes started putting on berries, she would take down the fence and place it over top of the bushes to protect them from the birds. We thought this was an interesting concept and so when the bushes put on berries this year, we put cages around the bushes. The cages will be removed when we have harvested the berries.
We picked about a quarter pint off of them today.
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Your picture looks exactly like my sister's square foot garden. She is trying to protect her tomatoes instead of blueberries. If you can keep the birds, deer and insects off of the plants home grown taste the best. We have a wonderful Farmer's Market too. Happy berry picking.
ReplyDeleteYes, we have these around our tomatos but we had cut holes in the sides to reach in and discovered that our guineas are eating the tomatos through the holes :( The blueberry cages do not have the holes though.
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