Netting Blueberries is for the Birds

New cage around blueberry patch #2

Home gardeners raising blueberries face a built-in problem: unless you protect your shrubs from the birds in bearing season, there’s just no point to growing them!

Blueberries have been my favorite crop since our “olden days,” back in our city garden. With a few bushes here and there, John and I would circle each one with 1-inch poultry fencing, then toss a net on top and call it good.

Unfortunately, we discovered that simple strategy would never cut it at our rural acreage! Not when you’re surrounded by woodlands teeming with hungry, country-smart songbirds. 

And if you’re trying to produce enough berries to freeze for winter eating—with maybe 10 or 15 shrubs—the casual approach to fencing, in my experience, especially doesn’t work.

John and I have two blueberry patches, one with nine shrubs and a second with eight. And the Foothills birds have proved to be relentless about getting at the berries. 

The thing is, netting is a royal pain. It’s time consuming—it takes John and me at least a couple of hours to net one cage, and at least two more hours to take it down after bearing season. With two blueberry areas, that’s over eight hours. And it’s painstaking work to tie down the nets, making sure there are NO gaps or openings.

After many years of experimenting with various fencing/netting designs, trying to protect far larger swathes of ground than we ever had to in the city, John and I were growing more frustrated.

Now robins love blueberries—but it’s actually pretty easy to protect the berries from this bird. They’re one of the larger songbirds, and can’t worm their way into small openings. Finches are another matter—they're fond of berries too, and they will zoom right through 1-inch poultry fencing. So you have to cover the fencing with nets.

Towhees are still another matter: they’re the most inventive and ingenious berry thieves. They are fearless about working their way into netted spaces via the tiniest opening or loose netting.

And there’s another excellent reason to do the best job you can with netting. Sadly, we’ve had more birds caught in loose nets than we care to count. Towhees, those mischievous and full-of-personality birds, are the ones that most often get caught in the nets and die. 

It’s the most forlorn summertime task, to cut precious birds out of a tangled net and bury them.

While birds are one thing, rodents are another. They can easily get through the poultry fencing or under it. We’ve had season after season dealing with chipmunks eating or damaging hundreds of berries. Mice too—and worse, they chew at the roots at the shrub’s crown.

And after trying to get by with poultry fencing and nets, John and I finally realized our higgledy-piggledy fencing/netting would have to go.

About five years ago, John came up with a new plan: a “cage” for blueberries made from ½-inch hardware cloth. Because blueberries can reach up to six to eight feet in height or more, you wouldn’t want to cover the top with any fencing materials. Instead, before the berries begin to ripen, drape netting over the top, making it as taut as possible. 

1st cage John built with netting in place

After he constructed a hardware cloth cage for our older and more productive shrubs, we discovered this method topped with netting has proved to be the most failsafe protection—and also keeps chipmunk incursions down to a minimum.

We always meant to get around to creating a cage for our second patch. Especially after some critter—a raccoon? (Though we’ve never seen one around here.) Or a baby bear? Whatever it was, one night this animal just climbed right on top of our sagging, wobbly netting and tore a gigantic hole in it.

Judging from the damage, it looked the animal just fell smack on top of the shrub. It broke several of the main boughs, and hundreds of smashed berries littered the ground.

Well, no one, and I mean no one messes with my favorite Chandler shrub!

Although a full plate of pressing chores, family commitments and out-and-out procrastination kept us from this project for two or three years, John—with a little help from yours truly—started construction this summer.

We hit a couple of snags—John tried to remove a stump in the patch. It turned out to be cedar, and was as solid as a rock. Then, when we were all set to hand the top row of fence, we discovered we did not have that extra roll of hardware cloth that I thought we had. John had to make a trip to the city and buy more. But we finally finished this second cage yesterday. 

Costs:

Caging your berries is not a cheap date: at 14’ x 24’, and 6’ in height, our second berry patch required a quantity of 3-foot hardware cloth. Which in this inflationary summer cost $250 for 50’. Plus tax.

Doing the math: a 76’ rectangle, with a top and bottom row = 152 feet to enclose the patch. 

Another view of the 2nd patch

We didn’t have to buy all new hardware cloth; this second patch was already partially fenced with this material. In prior years, the cost of hardware cloth was about $140/50 feet. So we sure would have saved money if we’d done this project sooner.

But when you think about it, this fencing will (eventually) pay for itself. Last summer, even with the June heat dome that fried about 25% of our berries, John and I were still able to feast on our homegrown, organic berries all through the bearing season—about 6 weeks. And I ended up freezing about 50 lbs.

If you’re buying local organic blueberries at the store, at around $5/lb, well, there’s $250 right there!

Besides, as I like to say, you can’t put a price on good health. Or succulent blueberries straight from your garden!