I know its not even spring yet and yet I'm already thinking of the growing season yet to come. Nothing wrong with that. Really! I wonder if I should at least plant a tomato seed in a small pot and at least have one plant a head of schedule? Normally I don't have to do that since for what ever reason the seedlings usually come out on their own during the winter months in the pots I have stored little spider plants planted in little pots with compost soil. This time around there was none. Hence the thought.
Anyways A few seasons ago I took a few pics of how I managed to protect our green/yellow seedless grapes. We used to place a net on the whole vine but as you know that's a bit labor intensive and when you sometimes remove the net, it knocks over some of the grapes. Plus for some of the birds, the net is no problem to circumvent. Looking at you starlings! So I came up with some solutions using and recycling used water bottles, old, used and sometimes fragments of cheaply packaged aluminum foil. Yes that annoying stuff from some dollar store or the no name house brand where and when you get close to the end of the roll they annoyingly don't tear properly and leave you with useless slivers of what's suppose to be sheets to wrap things with. But you really have no choice these days with everything so expensive. Plus I had an old collection of discarded CD's to use too. In case you're thinking it, no I am not a hoarder. I have a junk box for those odds and ends. I at least try to be tidy and use things creatively instead of throwing things away and it ends up in some land fill. So yeah, here we go. Some pics of how I use those things to selectively protect the best bunches of grapes or at least hopefully deter squirrels long enough for us to at least enjoy fully ripe grapes. Yeah apparently squirrels love eating grapes too. 😒 And apparently so do the local insect population. sigh.... You can also use cheep dollar store panty hose or some small netting that comes with your produce to cover up the bottom of the bottle so they can't get in. But the day I took the pics I never bothered to. Oh yeah I guess I also used pie plates as well. More squirrel deterrents.
Here we have some pics of how my bottle protectors look like covering and protecting the selected bunches of grapes. Its a pretty long vine that stretches from our very small garden near the shed that wraps around the garage, the side of the house where a fire place chimney is and around our outdoor doves cages. Since then, some of the vine has died back because of its age. We had to clip it severely and hopefully it might possibly come back to its former glory?
I cut just the bottom of the bottle. I use to cut it much shorter but I found that if you keep its original length, it makes it more harder for birds to reach into the bottle and eat the grapes. I then cut a line all the way down the length of the bottle so I can envelope and place the bunch in there. At the mouth of the bottle I make sure I cut a "V" on the lips so that I can really open up those bottles and let the bunch be enveloped so that it doesn't cut the stem at the top. I find that if you damage the stem even with just a scratch, this can make the bunch go bad fast and the bunch will not have a chance to ripen.
Notice I don't need to cover up all the grapes. Just the ones you really like. Let the animals be distracted with the inferior bunches.
Here's a close up of one of the bottles. You can see I cut the bottom off and cut length wise on the side so that the bunch can sit inside but still be able to hang off the bunch. I also placed some foil and a pie plate to make it annoying and distracting for squirrels. I also placed some foil on the vines that lead to the saved bunches for the same reason. To keep the squirrels from biting the vines that hold the bunches in order for them to get to the bunches. You can see where you can place a small fine netting material to keep out the bugs. Again I was too lazy that day to do so.
More pics of protected grapes. You can also use this technique for protecting selected fruit on fruit trees such as peaches, nectarines, apricots if you have a small tree and probably pears too if you have them. I don't so I wouldn't know. You just have to place the bottles on carefully for obvious reasons so that you don't accidentally knock the fruit off.
Close up of how I place the aluminum foil and the pie plates on the stem. Again, make sure you don't scratch or cut though the stem for obvious reasons.
I've also used a similar technique for protecting sunflowers from squirrels. I place a pie plate shield on the underside of the flower. I then place the same type of cut bottle onto the stem leading up to the flower followed up with foil. Usually this does the trick of protection unless the plant is too close to another plant or thing that the squirrel can use as a jumping point. Make sure there are none of those and you get to have seeds for eating and sharing with your wild bird friends. But fyI only place those just before the plant goes to seed or the bees and butterflies won't have a chance to enjoy them. They really don't like shiny things such as pie plates and plastic bottles. Also plus, if you still wanna share with squirrels, you can always plant a few extra plants just for them and let the little greedy buggers go to town. Believe me they will go to town and actually steal the whole head from plants thus ruining them for other animals. But its up to you.
Till next time......
