A bit of a fruit salad from the orchard is looking promising this year, promising enough that we have had to give some thought to how we ensure the fruit salad is for us and not for the birds. At the moment I love the flock of black cockatoos that announce their imminent arrival with their distinctive cries and wheel their way overhead most days. I know I will love them less if they decide to stop off on my fruit trees and take off with the year's cherry crop as has happened to a neighbour...while they were watching from their deck...having recently discussed if the cherries were ready for picking yet. I guess they were. Not that my cherries are actually fruiting this year but I'm sure I would feel the same regardless of fruit variety. Too much worm castings, bokashi juice, chook manure, mulch, water, rabbit fences and companion planting have gone into these babies!!
The peaches & nectarines are dotted only with a few fruit each, so I have used some orange bags and pegs to protect each fruit individually.
One of the apricots and both of the plums are much more laden, too much for me to want to individually bag the fruit, even after thinning the fruit to 7-10cm apart (Pulling unripened fruit off the trees did just about kill me but I read somewhere it was good for the tree, better for the size and quality of the remaining fruit and reduces the likelihood of biennial fruit bearing). So for these trees we made a temporary structure using four star pickets, lengths of poly pipe arched over the top and nets draped over. Constructing them was quick and stress-free.
The raspberries, blackberries and KNNN espaliered apples and pears have had a wire stretched at the very top of their support structures that we can throw a long net over each row...and the blueberries...actually I totally forgot about them, they are still so small I haven't even considered how to protect their future fruit. I'll leave that one to next Summer.
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