Many of my fellow gardeners and myself have had problems with people taking fruit off our trees. One of them had his Redhaven picked clean when he left his house for a few hours. They must have used ladders, and had to scale a four foot fence. I get drive-by samplers, who jump out of their vehicles to grab some goodies. Short of getting a Rotweiller Guard Dog, wonder what can be done about stopping or discouraging these predators.
Sherwin Dubren
Wow!!!! That's bold. I'd make a cute little wooden sign that said "Thou shalt not steal" and put it up LOL. Colleen Zone 5 CT
Ropel on a couple of fruit - make sure you know which ones :-))
Electric fence.
Surveillance cameras.
Post a notice that the area is protected by surveillance cameras.
You don't mention your climate but here I could plant a border of Agave americana (Century Plant)
From the nut-case end of the spectrum: Some gun shops sell decals showing the front view of a revolver and the words "Never mind the dog - Beware the owner". Buy a few, have them laminated for $1.25 at Staples, and tack them to the trees. Might work, might not. Might work better if you found one of the noise making devices some grape growers use to scare away birds. They sound like a shotgun blast, and they're VERY realistic. The first time I heard one, I hit the dirt. They're usually on timers, but I'd bet you could rig up some sort of motion sensor arrangement. Call a farm supply store.
I would try one the those motion-activated sprays intended to discourage deer. Few casual thieves would want to get soaked for a piece of fruit.
Part of the problem may be that many don't see 'sampling' as stealing. You have so many -- you won't miss "just a few," and it's far too much trouble to stop and ask. If the poster's tree(s) is/are near the road, it may be impossible to stop without physical barriers.
For the full-scale thieves mentioned, alarms or sprays triggered by motion dectectors might help. Real or fake cameras, too. My camera (box) sign would say: "Don't bother looking for a wire. This is wireless equipment and it IS real." :-)
Many people feel free to just dig up plants and cart them off also, assuming that no one really owns that "abandoned lot" or road-side ditch.
Some random things this thread made me remember:
1) I planted plum trees by the road with the expectation that kids walking to school in the morning & others afoot would pick much that's in arm's reach, & I think that's fine. They're for the neighborhood. 2) A friend who was convinced someone in the neighborhood came into her yard & picked ALL the cherries off a tree, leaving not one, put up a sign with an unhappy/angry message, hoping the thief would read about the owner's feelings. But I don't think there is really any doubt that birds got them. 3) Once when I was test-driving a car I was about to buy, its rumpled owner in the passesnger seat, he suddenly called excitedly for me to pull over to the curb. He jumped out of the car & began gathering up rusty apples that had fallen from two small trees. He did not pick from branches, took only what had fallen. He jumped back in the car & a little embarrassed by his own actions explained that the apples had been going to waste, & he'd been eating them for both lunch & dinners. The degree of his rumpledness & the emergency need to sell the car became more obvious. 4) As a child, many neighborhood kids were afraid of Mr Lambert who lived reclusively in a small unpainted house in the middle of an orchard of mixed fruit trees. He was actually a kind & lonely man, but I'll forgo telling a dozen Mr. Lambert stories & skip to the end, when it took a couple weeks before anyone even noticed he hadn't been out in his gardens for a couple weeks, & sent someone to find the body. In decades to follow, after his abandoned property went wild & his house fell down into a heap of rubble, the fruit trees continued to produce every year. As an adult I used to drive out to his place seasonally to harvest apples, pears, & cherries of sundry kinds, with no one's permission. After about twenty-five years of free harvests, I went out there one last time & saw that in the one intervening year since my last journey, the woodsy orchard had vanished without even one tree left, & a dozen ugly prefab houses were arranged around a cul de sac. I wonder often if I'm the last person on earth who remembers Mr. Lambert.-paghat the ratgirl
Along the same vein, my co-worker posted signs on his propert that say "No Trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again."
I need to author something similar to keep dog owners away. I think I'll start a new thread and we'll have a little contest. :-)
You could add "and I now have your license pate number"
Shell
There are always exceptions and exceptionable people. Personally I grew up on Air Force bases and the only place I was ever able to participate in filching fruit was in Crete where a farmer had his grape vines close to the fence at the base perimiter. When he saw what was going on he just pruned the vines back where small arms couldn't reach them through the chain link.
We did have a neighbor in Colorado who got very upset when the local kids ate all the fruit off the wild cherry bush by her front door. She was going to make either a pie of jam, I can't remember which. The houses on base all had either lilac or wild cherry bushes by the front doors and crabapple trees in the yards. The cherries were all pit :)
Shell
I have a bunch of wild paw paw trees. They don't set fruit very well, but last year had an impressive crop. I watched them, waiting for them to ripen. Someone here asked for some seeds and I assured them I would be able to send them. I went out to check on the harvest and not a single paw paw could be found. I'm sure that they were eaten by the wildlife. This year I haven't seen a single piece of fruit.
IF they're on your property, uninvited, they're trespassing. Ask the nearest police patrol to keep an eye out. zemedelec
So this morning Bush for the first time said the anti-Kerry ads should stop. Almost across the board the morning-paper editorials (hundreds can be accessed via Google News search) are assuming Bush called for the ads to be pulled because of pressures from Democrats & even from moderate Republicans. But I doubt that. He just knows as much damage is done as can be done, & to continue would reflect incredasingly against Bush rather than Kerry. People who want to believe lies (or at least repeat them as though they believed it) will repeat them forever. So it's time, on cue, for Bush to pretend to a higher moral road than yesterday.
To those who want to continue to spread lies about Kerry's war record, the important feature of Bush's belated call to stop the attack-ads is that he never said the anti-Kerry ads contained anything untrue, & Bush's faux high road really calls for an end to all ads done by so-called "outside" groups categorized as 527 groups. He's not calling for the ads to be factual, & it's facts about his own record he would like to forestall.
This is why Senator McCain has asked one more time that Bush specifically condemn the content of the ads. Merely saying it's time to pull all 527 political ads just doesn't cut it. But what can you expect from a cokehead mofo.
I've read about thirty morning articles & if I were to pick one to pass on, this one from ABC News is worth perusing for brevity but completeness:
Yes, in addition, Bush wants all 527 adds pulled. The comparison of the Swift Boat Liars for Bush to Moveon.com is laughable. It not only looks like Bush used the Liars as a front group to do his dirty work, but maybe to have legitimate adds pulled. He knows that he can be outspent by the Anti-Bush folks and there is a lot of truthful information out there that can hurt him.
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Same here. There isn't a walnut, buckeye, or paw paw to be found with all the wildlife helping themselves. What I find perplexing is that my neighbors have a crab apple that produces fruit the size of cherries. They stay on the tree all year and finally drop in the spring. Nothing eats them. The berries on my vibernum hardly show mature color before they are stripped. The finches devour the seeds from the sunflowers and cone flowers. Other birds eat the dogwood berries. It's a regular buffet around here but I enjoy watching.
well if you was squirrel would you eat hard bitter little spits of crab apple or nice big juicy paw paw... LOL. Ingrid
"Vox Humana" wrote: What I find perplexing is that my neighbors
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I would think that in the depths of winter when there was no choice that some creature would eat the crab apples.
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