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That was the easy one
We have two strawberry beds. Both are currently full of flowers, and berries are starting to form, which means that they'll be ready before we know it, and we have to take measures to ensure that it's we, and not various unauthorized birds and beasts, that get to eat them.
The upper[1], older bed's border is defined basically by the resumption of grass (or, on the west side, rocks). A couple of makeshift wooden brackets at each end support pieces of old galvanized pipe that run the length of the bed, over which we have traditionally draped nylon netting weighed down at the edges withg rocks. When we created the other bed, we built a frame of landscape timbers, and put together a kind of arch-shaped frame of copper pipe that rests on the wooden frame, overwhich we drape netting weighed down at the edges (in this case on top of the timber frame) with rocks.
Well, most of the time this works pretty well, but it's not really secure, and a couple of times (including last year) something -- we suspect squirrels -- has managed to get under the netting and devour the entire crop at its peak. So we decided it was time to do something better.
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jwg is the engineer around here (that Harvard/MIT thing), so he started coming up with ideas involving replacing the pipe frame with something that hinged, so we could just attach the netting to the frame and fold it over to get at the plants when necessary; but the more we thought about this the more problems there seemed to be. So we sat down in front of the strawberry plants and sought inspiration, getting through several halfbaked ideas until jwg had an inspiration: make the equivalent of a huge rubber band that goes all around the timber frame, and tuck the edges of the netting under it. This, it turned out, could be accomplished with a sufficient length of rope and a bungee cord. The pipe frame didn't fit perfectly as it extended a little over the sides of the timber frame, so each end piece had to be shortened a couple of inches, which wasn't hard; we weren't absolutely sure the piece of netting we had been using was big enough, but it turned out that it was. By "sewing" the edges of the netting along the rope (i.e., weaving a piece of string in and out of the netting at intervals), we came up with something that could be easily removed for access by undoing the bungee cord and lifting the rope of at one end (or on one side). We built this and gave it a test run today, and it's really easy to remove and replace. So unless the squirrels can figure out how to unhook the rope from the cord, the lower bed is safe.
(It occurs to me that some pictures would probably really help here.)
The only problem is that this method won't work at all
for the upper bed, since there's no frame to wrap the rope around. As of this moment, we have no idea what we're going to do about that. and we have probably less than two weeks to figure it out (and implement whatever we come up with).
[1] As in, farther up the hill.
The upper[1], older bed's border is defined basically by the resumption of grass (or, on the west side, rocks). A couple of makeshift wooden brackets at each end support pieces of old galvanized pipe that run the length of the bed, over which we have traditionally draped nylon netting weighed down at the edges withg rocks. When we created the other bed, we built a frame of landscape timbers, and put together a kind of arch-shaped frame of copper pipe that rests on the wooden frame, overwhich we drape netting weighed down at the edges (in this case on top of the timber frame) with rocks.
Well, most of the time this works pretty well, but it's not really secure, and a couple of times (including last year) something -- we suspect squirrels -- has managed to get under the netting and devour the entire crop at its peak. So we decided it was time to do something better.
jwg is the engineer around here (that Harvard/MIT thing), so he started coming up with ideas involving replacing the pipe frame with something that hinged, so we could just attach the netting to the frame and fold it over to get at the plants when necessary; but the more we thought about this the more problems there seemed to be. So we sat down in front of the strawberry plants and sought inspiration, getting through several halfbaked ideas until jwg had an inspiration: make the equivalent of a huge rubber band that goes all around the timber frame, and tuck the edges of the netting under it. This, it turned out, could be accomplished with a sufficient length of rope and a bungee cord. The pipe frame didn't fit perfectly as it extended a little over the sides of the timber frame, so each end piece had to be shortened a couple of inches, which wasn't hard; we weren't absolutely sure the piece of netting we had been using was big enough, but it turned out that it was. By "sewing" the edges of the netting along the rope (i.e., weaving a piece of string in and out of the netting at intervals), we came up with something that could be easily removed for access by undoing the bungee cord and lifting the rope of at one end (or on one side). We built this and gave it a test run today, and it's really easy to remove and replace. So unless the squirrels can figure out how to unhook the rope from the cord, the lower bed is safe.(It occurs to me that some pictures would probably really help here.)
The only problem is that this method won't work at all
for the upper bed, since there's no frame to wrap the rope around. As of this moment, we have no idea what we're going to do about that. and we have probably less than two weeks to figure it out (and implement whatever we come up with).
[1] As in, farther up the hill.