Protect Your Seedlings from Birds

Photo courtesy of Est Bleu2007 at Flickr.com.

While electric fencing and water sprayers offer effective ways to fend off four-footed garden raiders, birds have the advantage of wings and can easily get over any uncovered enclosure. Crows and their relatives tend to be especially smart, and sometimes the standard aversion techniques used to keep them away — scarecrows, flapping cloth, and the like — simply aren’t effective. They’re especially damaging to corn seedlings, because they’re intelligent enough to realize that if they pull them out of the ground, there’s a tasty kernel at the end.

Here’s a simple way to beat the birds. Just purchase a roll of small-mesh plastic netting, small metal hoops, and metal stakes at your agricultural supply store. Space out the hoops along the length of the corn row at 12- to 18-inch intervals, and arrange the netting over the hoops. You should end up with a structure that looks like a miniature mesh greenhouse 8-10 inches high at its peak. Be sure the netting rows are wide enough that the birds can’t get at the seedlings from the sides, and stake down the edges of the netting firmly. By the time the seedlings are tall enough to reach the top of the netting, they’ll be too well established for the birds to pull up easily. At that point, you can remove the netting, stakes, and hoops, and put them away until next time.

Photo courtesy of Linda N. at Flickr.com.