I have a nice cherry tree in my garden, it has very tasty cherries every year but... not for long. Every year thousand of birds eat them all. I erected a dud but this has no effect at all. Are there any reliable l ways to protect the cherries? Thank you.
To protect my fruit from birds, I hang unwanted compact discs (CDs). I drill a small hole very near the edge of a disc and hang it kite twine from the tree or from nearby trees.
Eventually, the birds will become used to the sunlight flashing from the discs. Thus, I do not hang them until about two weeks before the fruit is ripe.
Cover with netting.
D
That will accomplish exactly zero... the larger birds that will eat cherries, like crow/jays, will pay CDs no mind. I hang CDs in my windows to deter birds from trying to fly through but it's only about
50% effective. To protect fruit from birds only netting works fairly well... larger birds will still snatch fruit through the netting.
Other posters recommend netting. Seems to me you'd end up with a lot of birds caught in the netting.
My mom used cheesecloth, a very loosely woven fabric.
We had good cherry pies that year.
one year for the grape vine i used very fine mesh/netting (2mm holes) which worked well for the few days it was needed. also used that same mesh for strawberries to keep the hail from doing damage.
songbird
You don't usually get trapped birds. This is the system used commercially including vineyards, without netting there would be no grape harvest round here. If you don't enclose the tree(s) fully you might get one or two birds that get underneath and then insist on flying upwards and so cannot get out but normally you can enclose it and avoid this. Even so it takes 5 minutes to free them.
D
White bird netting. Not black because birds have more difficulty seeing it and can get caught in it. white netting works well and we'v used the same netting year after year on our trees. This year we covered a pear, 3 apples, a plum and fig with it. We ahrvested bumper crops from all of the netted trees and no fruit at all from the trees that we didn't bother to net. It's a bit of a pain to put on or get off as it needs the careful use of soft headeed broom and ladders, but if you want fruit, that is what you have to do.
"That year"?
We've been using netting on fruit trees for multiple years and it works well so long as the netting is white in colour.
You know this same happening with me...and i am really fade up for this.
I've had a bird get around the netting and trapped inside but not tangled up in it.
OTOH I've found snakes hopelessly tangled in the netting when they tried to crawl under it. If I had not freed them they would have died. Fortunately no poison snakes around here and one of the black snakes was about five feet long.
Many thanks to everyone replied. So it is white netting then. But is there a simple way of applying it on an 8 meter tall tree without a helicopter?
How do you plan to harvest the cherries up at 8M? Use the same technique to get the netting up there.
Otherwise, only net the parts of the tree that you can reach.
One would think by the same method by which you harvest cherries 8 meters up. LOL
Commercial orchard growers prune/train trees to a height/configuration so that they can easily harvest fruit from an orchard ladder.
After several attempts to fit the netting I can say with certainty that netting is not an option, the tree is too high. Are there any other reliable options?
I just leave mine unprotected. Each year the birds start eating them before they are ripe, but the trees produce enough that the birds eat all they want, and there are more than enough left for us. I keep thinking it would be nice if I could train the birds to eat the high hanging fruit that I can't reach, and leave the low hanging fruit for me.
Net the part of the tree you can reach. You might use clothespins.
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