Garden Tips and Tricks – How to Protect Your Strawberries From Birds

This afternoon I walked out the back door to pick a few strawberries for dessert, and discovered a robin happily pecking at my berries.  What a stinker!  In recent years I have had to deal with chipmunks trying to steal my berries, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bird in my berry patch before.  Hmm.

Maybe they were there all along and I never noticed.  Who knows.

The thing is, I can’t just shoo them away.  Nope.  This year I am going for poundage, and if I’m going to reach my goal of growing 2,000 pound of food, I’m going to have to defend my crop one way or another.

So this time I chose bird netting.

Bird Netting is

• Highly effective
• Keeps birds and other small critters out of the fruit
• Not an eye sore like flash tape or hanging cds
• Can be taken down at the end of the season and reused the following year

To have the netting be effective,  you’ll need to give it a little support so it’s just not laying on top of the plant foliage.  You can do this by using wood stakes at either end of the row and draping the netting over the berries.  Be sure and anchor the bottom of the netting with rocks or something of the like. The main goal is to keep those pesky birds reaching the berries and to keep them from getting caught under the netting.

Unless of course your hoping to catch a bird for a nice pot of stew.

Let’s hope this will be the last of the berry thieves, and in another day or two there will be a few more strawberries to pick.

Need some bird netting to protect your fruits and veggies?  Amazon sells it in various sizes HERE or you can probably find it in your local hardware store.