Every year around the first of June, we put bird netting around the blueberry bushes. We can always tell when there are crops near maturity in the food forest just by watching the way birds are flying around our property. Birds love blueberries. We learned that we should have bird netting up protecting our harvest years ago when we first started to have ripe blueberries. Birds are sneaky. They seem to always know when blueberries are sweet and ready for harvest, then they beat us to the harvest. We learned long ago that no bird netting around the blueberry bushes = no blueberries for the humans.
This year we are taking a risk. We are too busy and lazy to put up the bird netting. Currently, we are constructing a guest cottage just outside of our fenced-in food forest. There have been lots of vehicles and workers in and out of our property just on the other side of the blueberry bushes. Birds have been flying all around the food forest and resting on the fences. I can tell they are eager to dive in and steal some of the delicious blue jewels. However, I think all the construction noises and people are scaring them this year. Not wanting to push our luck. We decided to harvest a few days early this year.
If you are interested in reading how to tell when blueberries are ripe, I did a post last year on that. You can read it here: Tips for Growing Blueberries Successfully.
Since we are harvesting a few days early this year and blueberries do not get more ripe after they are harvested, so our blueberries are not as candy sweet as last year. They are sweet but with a bit of tartness. They still taste better than the store bought ones, I have to say. We drink several fruit smoothies daily, so we will be putting our daily harvest into them to enjoy.
My husband and I love to play around with our homegrown food from the food forest. Can't harvest blueberries without having a little fun at the same time. Oh No! My husband was eating so many blueberries while he was harvesting, it rotted his front teeth out. I should have warned him that this would happen when he decided to eat his harvest instead of sharing them with me.
We just picked all the blueberries that are plump and have turned blue yesterday evening. When I walked through the food forest this afternoon, I noticed equal amount of blueberries were hanging on the bushes waiting for us to pick. I guess we will have to pick another container this evening to beat the birds to the harvest.
Happy Harvesting!
All photos come from my food forest
Congratulations on a fantastic win. Best of luck in the rest of the tournament.
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Risk seems to have paid off in this case!
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It
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Wow, look at all the berries on those bushes! I can't wait for ours to be producing. I put in three bushes this year, but still think I can fit two or three more. One of our bushes had a cluster of berries, but I pruned them off when I planted so the bush could focus on rooting this first year.
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Good idea on pruning the first cluster of fruit off to establish the roots. I read a home orchard book on growing blueberries not too long ago. In the book, it talks about how important it is to take care of your blueberry plants from the very beginning. They don't recover from neglect as well as other plants.
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I am so glad you wrote this. We planted a number of blueberry bushes this year. I know it will be a few years before they are producing but I never thought about birds and netting. Our grapes are stunning but I've given up on them entirely because it is too hard to net them and the birds have become accustomed to their yearly feast. Beautiful photos - enjoy the harvest!
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Birds and netting are things I never considered when I started planting on our property. We have a fig tree that's on steroids. Every year when the figs are ready, the birds will beat us to the ripe figs. When the tree was still small, we could put bird netting around it easily and stop the thieves, but now the tree is huge and not even scare tape can scare them away. They are accustomed to their yearly feast as you mentioned. I have totally given up on protecting the fig harvest. We will enjoy whatever we can get and that's still plenty for us.
I do think about the birds when I plant new crops now. Bird netting is such a pain to deal with sometimes. I always somehow find myself tangled up in it.
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