Sharing Abundance
Often, new fruit tree owners fear marauding magpies, pillaging pack rats, or devastating ducks. Well, maybe not the ducks. The solution? Warfare! Nets, traps, fake owls, snakes, oh my! Some, like these painted rocks that confuse strawberry snatchers, are wonderful deterrents and should be used. But, many times people choose to net their trees.
Sharing Abundance: Please don't net your fruit trees!
Notice anything about this plum tree? No net!
A free range plum awaits its fate: pecked by beaks or picked by digits.
When you net a fruit tree, you are inevitably going to damage some portion of the tree either installing or removing it. You'll catch and snare unsuspecting little birds (I've freed a few on clients' trees). And, when done, you send the useless tangle of plastic and broken branches to the dump.
How about Sharing Abundance?
At our house, we're fortunate to have mature plums, peaches and citrus trees. We also border wildlife habitat so the domestic feasting pressures are...