Fruit cage - fad or functional?

[Jungle Jane]

My point is that's fine as long as other people don't think like you and also focus on growing fruit for themselves at the expense of local wildlife. If you do that and also like/enjoy wildlife then you're being a freeloader, who enjoys the benefits of the commons without contributing to their upkeep, because apart from gardens what else is there in the middle of urban areas? If you want local wildlife I think you should give it some leeway to be an active part of your garden.

I'm not saying never protect anything. If there's one crop that has massive problems then feel free. I just think you shouldn't turn your entire garden into fort knox unless you're the kind of person who would happily shoot the animals you're excluding.

This seems a bit extreme comparing someone who protects their new cherry trees to someone who would happily shoot animals? You're not killing an animal if you protect a few brand new fruit trees,that weren't there before. If you've never had a cherry tree before neither have the generations of birds that live there,if you suddenly got a cherry tree & protected it for yourself birds would still survive how they always have with the many bird feeders & foraging with everything else,bird decline isn't happening because someone protects a new fruit tree

[Alchemilla]

Thank you all for sharing your perspective. It has been really useful to read your experiences.

As fruit crop loss seems to vary, I think I will go without fruit cages for now and see how that pans out. As I plan to grow my fruit next to my fence, I suppose I could always put hooks in the fence and supporting posts in front of the shrub, if I felt netting was needed at a later point.

I can understands Chrisdb' point of view that in urban areas where bird populations depend on garden fruit, if you enjoy having frugivorous birds in the neighbourhood it seems short-sighted to keep them from eating any fruit in your garden. I don't think I live in such an area (Yet? What is it with this country and building houses???). But it does resonate: When our neighbours moved in, they chopped all the mature trees on their property down. We used to enjoy watching all the birds come to our feeder, especially the adorable long-tailed tits. Now they are all gone...
I don't think that means we ought to share every crop plant with the local wildlife - just that we maybe ought to make dedicated space for wildlife in our gardens and countryside.

In any case, I was planning on planting a rowan and crab apple in front of the house. And a hip-bearing rambling rose. I am happy for the birds to eat most of those.

[SusieG]

So wise chrisdb, not a fruit grower myself (yet!!..). Hate sharing my hard work with slugs ...
To go out and see everything eaten away is soul destroying, but I see it as a challenge. Growing a sacrificial crop for said slugs helps.
Love birds and wouldn't mind sharing fruits with them, as long as they're not too greedy!!!!!!

[Bigmallly]

Love birds and wouldn't mind sharing fruits with them, as long as they're not too greedy!!!!!!

Unfortunately they don't know the meaning of the word "Share"

[cptncrackoff]

I net my strawberries and raspberries after losing a whole years fruit on both..
I didn't buy the plants, work the ground, build the beds, weed them, prune them,water them.. Just for the birds to eat the entire crop!
And that's what they did, every last fruit.

Those fruits are mine!

The birds are welcome to the slugs and caterpillars.. I don't want those!

[chrisdb]

I can understands Chrisdb' point of view that in urban areas where bird populations depend on garden fruit, if you enjoy having frugivorous birds in the neighbourhood it seems short-sighted to keep them from eating any fruit in your garden. I don't think I live in such an area (Yet? What is it with this country and building houses???). But it does resonate: When our neighbours moved in, they chopped all the mature trees on their property down. We used to enjoy watching all the birds come to our feeder, especially the adorable long-tailed tits. Now they are all gone...
I don't think that means we ought to share every crop plant with the local wildlife - just that we maybe ought to make dedicated space for wildlife in our gardens and countryside.

In any case, I was planning on planting a rowan and crab apple in front of the house. And a hip-bearing rambling rose. I am happy for the birds to eat most of those.

Sounds good to me. Sorry to everyone if I made the case a bit too strongly, it's just something I feel quite strongly about. Things aren't great for wildlife in this country, and excessive order and overkill solutions are mostly to blame. I have no problems with some targetted netting, or even targetted pesticides, it's just blanket application of 'neat' solutions as a rule that gets to me.

The very first house I lived in was in a 70s build housing estate on the edge of Nottingham. I could literally drive and see fields in 5 minutes. Despite that, the entire estate was an almost wildlife free zone. Plot sizes were small, an people did what they tend to do with small gardens: pave them or install decking. On my entire road, I was almost the only one whose front and back postage stamp gardens were green. The odd house that did have green had a monoculture short mown lawn with nothing for anything that couldn't subsist on a diet of 100% grass. I, on the other hand, filled my front garden with fruiting shrubs and perennials like birds foot trefoil, comfrey, salad burnet, wild marjoram, alpine strawberries, .... it looked like a wild mess compared to the nice flat lawns, but I used to get butterflies outside my front window for weeks in the summer when the rest of the street was just as barren as usual.

I never did have much of an impact on the bird population in that first house though. I didn't net the fruit, but thee ws also an extreme shortage of good trees for habitat nearby, and the 'trees' there were tended to be environmental deadzones like leylandii.

Having lived in a place that was somehow so environmentally dead despite being next to the countryside, I always try to do my bit and not have knee-jerk reactions. I leave aphids on plants unless there's a real reason for concern to support ladybirds, and I only try to protect crops if it's absolutely essential. I almost never use pesticides or slug pellets unless I think the plant I'm protecting might die otherwise, because I don't want the collateral damage from indescriminate poison application. Basically, my primary management method is frequent targetted checking and limited intervention by hand.

[veggiechicken]

Sounds good to me. Sorry to everyone if I made the case a bit too strongly, it's just something I feel quite strongly about. Things aren't great for wildlife in this country, and excessive order and overkill solutions are mostly to blame. I have no problems with some targetted netting, or even targetted pesticides, it's just blanket application of 'neat' solutions as a rule that gets to me.

You did come over too strongly and I'm upset by your assumption that I exclude wildlife from my garden. Please read my post again #12.
For your information I have a half acre garden, most of which is turned over to fruit trees and bushes and wild areas. There is absolutely no way I would cover it all with netting. I don't use pesticides and there is a very healthy bird population here.
So please, stop tarring everyone with the same brush. We don't all go round shooting and poisoning wildlife because its "kinder" than starving them.

[chrisdb]

It wasn't my intention to imply that you did exclude wildlife. I tried to caveat what I was saying: I specifically mentioned urban areas and non-targetted controls as the problem more than once. If you net 5% of a half-acre garden in the middle of a nature reserve, it's clearly different to covering 90% of your garden in the middle of a concrete jungle. I expect that the latter is the more common case on here, since the majority of people don't have large gardens or live in rural areas. The average garden is supposedly about 90 m2, which is 0.023 acres.

In any case, no offense was meant and I apologise if I upset you.

[sparrow100]

My parents have never covered their fruit. Mum grows apples, quinces, currants, goosegogs and morello cherries in her garden. The birds take some, but generally there is enough for all and I get a call to come pick when most are ripe. Her house is a 70s build, but is on the edge of a country park with ample food for wildlife.

I grow currants, goosegogs, strawberries, tayberries, quinces and raspberries on a suburban allotment. If I don't net the first 3 I don't get any - pigeons & other birds, foxes, mice take them all. Perhaps they've learned that our site is a good food source. I go up each day partly to check the netting's securely fastened - nothing so distressing as rescuing an injured bird or worse, removing a dead one. The nets only stay up as long as the fruit is being protected, and I do leave some for the local wildlife - even though I grow fruit for my consumption, I like the idea.

More odd to me is that my raspberries are untouched.

[Alchemilla]

That is really interesting, mudandgluts. My grandfather's farm was in a rural village with plenty of green space / gardens. I wonder if in those areas something other than fruit (habitat, predators, competition) limits the bird populations as well as there being much more fruit available, so it is possible to "saturate" them with fruit which leaves lots for us humans.

The pigeons which eat people's fruits - are they feral pigeons or wood pigeons? (Or even collared doves??)

[sparrow100]

On my site the pigeons are a selection of all three, though predominantly wood pigeons.

[Alison]

It wasn't my intention to imply that you did exclude wildlife. I tried to caveat what I was saying: I specifically mentioned urban areas and non-targetted controls as the problem more than once. If you net 5% of a half-acre garden in the middle of a nature reserve, it's clearly different to covering 90% of your garden in the middle of a concrete jungle. I expect that the latter is the more common case on here, since the majority of people don't have large gardens or live in rural areas. The average garden is supposedly about 90 m2, which is 0.023 acres.

In any case, no offense was meant and I apologise if I upset you.

I hope it's a communication thing as despite apologising for coming over strong you appear to immediately say that you suspect most people on this site cover 90% if their gardens and live in a concrete jungle. This may be true of some but I've seen very little evidence that this is remotely widespread either on this forum or where I live. Looking out my front window now I can see several front gardens and common hedgerows. Whilst people have driveways for their vehicles they also have plenty of wildlife friendly plants.

[Alison]

On my site the pigeons are a selection of all three, though predominantly wood pigeons.

Same on mine although I've noticed that when I first got my plot there were a lot less than there are now.

[Root66]

Built a 'fruit cage' for this season, simple wooden batons to support some cheap netting. I'll only put the nets up when the fruits are appearing as not to hamper pollination. I heard from my fellow plot holders that it is necessary as we are surrounded by trees, fields and some water, that there are plenty of types of birds that will help themselves. Digging over the plot last week meant that some birds were treating themselves to the grubs and my worm friends, so we are living in harmony

[Scarlet]

My point is that's fine as long as other people don't think like you and also focus on growing fruit for themselves at the expense of local wildlife.
..... I just think you shouldn't turn your entire garden into fort knox unless you're the kind of person who would happily shoot the animals you're excluding.

Hmmm, I grow fruit for myself and my family. It's not at the expense of local wildlife! I grow in my garden and I'm also very keen on wildlife. I plant bushes and shrubs to attract the wildlife, I leave plenty of areas untouched for hedgehogs etc, bushes are left unpruned for birds to nest, I have about 15 bird boxes dotted about the garden. I won't use any chemicals on my veg area, garden/ or garden paths at the expense of my time and hardwork... but at the same time I would like some of my hard work to feed my kids, we are entitled to my gooseberries. I have a walnut tree, it's huge...some years the tree is stripped bare.

Netting my fruit and veg isn't turning my garden into Fort Knox - it's a way of ensuring that birds/animals eat the things we can't or we havn't got a surplus of, there's plenty of other stuff available to them that not on the vegetable plot.

Strawberries would be all gone without protection, gooseberries can be decimated by sawfly, you need to grow twice as many raspberries as you need if they aren't netted, my redcurrants and blackcurrants would be stripped bare if they were left uncovered.