strawberry garden location

17 years ago

Right now our strawberries are in our fenced vegetable garden. Because we have a lot of birds we put a pvc frame that I tied bird netting to over the raised strawberry beds. It's an okay solution but not ideal because the bird netting sticks to everything including the mulch and I'm constantly tripping over it. So, my husband and I decided that we should create a strawberry garden with screen or net walls and roof, tall enough to walk in, kind of like an aviary only we want to keep the birds out! We plan on moving our blueberry bushes there too so we have half a chance of getting some. It's an ambitious project, but while I love to encourage the birds because they do such a great job keeping the insect population down, I don't like sharing my berries with them!

My question: we are trying to mark out a spot to build this garden. We are in a fairly wooded area and the garden area does get some shade. How much full sun do both strawberries and blueberries need? And does this sound like a crazy idea?

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Comments (3)

sfallen2002
17 years ago
It sounds no worse than the scheme to completely wire in a plot of sweet corn to keep the coons out. You will get to keep some of your fruit this way!

I doubt you'll impact the sun-worthiness of the proposed plot if you wire it in. The plants will do well in a range of conditions. I suggest you put in a good door system that will not require unwrapping and wrapping to get in and out. Maybe chicken wire the bottom foot or so to keep the baby bunnies out.

Good luck!
mudflapper
17 years ago
Sounds like a great idea! I also have been thinking of something along those lines. I think that as long as you get 1/2 day of sun you should be fine... but the more sun strawberries get! the better.
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pieheart
Original Author
17 years ago
Thanks for the responses! We plan on putting a gate on the garden like we did for our veggies. We have a serious deer problem so the veggie garden fence is 7 feet high. And we are on bedrock/shale so sinking a fence in the ground to keep out bunnies, groundhogs, etc. is too much work for us (plus we'd need to rent some major equipment), so we've found that taking chicken wire and making an "L" shape with 12-18 inches along the ground keeps out these guys. Then the plan is to put paving stones over the chicken wire to keep it in place and keep it out of the way of the lawnmower. We haven't done that last bit yet, but it's in the plan. I'm sure we'll extend the idea with the new garden.

After thinking about this last night I realized that we would not be able to use bird netting for the roof, it's too fragile and will sag with the weight of the fall leaves. I was thinking about using hardware cloth---that doesn't rust, does it?

I've been sitting in my kitchen this morning watching the birds in my back yard. We have so many varieties right now, mostly bug eaters. My town isn't spraying for gypsy moths this year so all the mockingbirds, woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, bluebirds, robins, etc are truly welcome. They just aren't welcome to my berries, which most of them would be more than happy to have. They can eat their dessert in my property, we have 50+ foot tall black cherry trees, hollies, wineberries, etc, shouldn't that be enough for them?