We have 2 small persimmon trees, but every year we end up with at most 1-2 ripe fruits because various bugs, birds, squirrels, and who knows what else eat every fruit before it can mature. Any ideas on how to keep our fruit safe?
Persimmons - how to deter birds?
- Thread starter PepperWhisperer
- Start date
Poison?
they must be really good persimmons. maybe try with some netting? you said the trees are small. For my mom's tree (in LA) it's birds that take out the most, and netting ought to work.
Pick the fruit before ripe and then ripen in a brown bag
Cheese cloth? 22. shorts.....
A friend of mine here grows really high end mangos (ratol & alphonso) and the birds wait to bounce on every single one. Years back he made individual metal screen bags that he carefully places around every single one, you talk about time consuming and tedious job … But it works great for him and now he doesn’t loose one.
I've heard hanging reflective material, like strips of thick tinsel, in the tree limbs causes light flashes that scare birds off. I had a friend who did this on his fig trees in Southern California. Dunno how well or how long it works. I'd think smarter birds, like crows, wouldn't be fooled for long, but maybe the less intelligent smaller ones wouldn't figure it out.
We have a lot of blackbirds around here, and they are attracted to shiny things. I don't know if they are the ones stealing fruit, but hanging tinsel in my tree would just make it into a big blackbird disco buffet.
I actually hate persimmons, but my wife and mother in law both tell me these are good ones. The tree is only about 8-9' tall so I can net the whole thing. Not sure exactly what to cover it with though. Is there a specialty product I might find at a nursery or just look for something at the hardware store?
I used to have a big Oak tree that hung out over my driveway that birds loved to hang out in and every morning I'd be cleaning a lot of bird poo off of my truck. A friend suggested that I get a bunch of the cheap, think dollar store, plastic toy snakes and chuck them up in among the branches. spent $5.00 for 10 of them and chucked 3 up into the branches. No more birds. when one got blown out of the tree just chuck it back up or if it was faded really bad throw a new one up.
Perfect solution, cheap and easy Plus, non-hazardous to the environment
Perfect solution, cheap and easy Plus, non-hazardous to the environment
I bought a roll of "bird netting" at Home Depot to cover my chicken run (to discourage hawks, while the birds were small). It was inexpensive and easy to use, and it was intended to cover fruit trees.
One guy had a problem with crows destroying his apples. He shot one of the crows and hung it from the end of a tall pvc pipe sticking out of the ground where the crows would see it the next morning they flew in to the orchard. They circled the dead crow from above for awhile, then left without landing.