Author Topic: Squirrels eating my pears  (Read 2707 times)

Digeroo

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Squirrels eating my pears
« on: April 23, 2019, 16:50:21 »
I thought they were being stolen but finally caught the squirrel red handed with a pear in its mouth.  So this year the fruit will need protection.  The little critter know exactly when the fruit is ripe. Has anyone any thoughts on how to protect please.
Plastic netting they simply chew or get round.  They do not seem to be able to get round plastic bottles but I cannot work out how to bottle up each individual pear.  Fleece they simply make a hole.  And wire netting they use as a climbing frame and dig underneath.  It would have to be quite big to cover the whole tree though it is still quite small.

Vinlander

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Re: Squirrels eating my pears
« Reply #1 on: April 28, 2019, 12:31:48 »
You're lucky your squirrels are smart enough. Mine used to pick every apricot when it was green, take a bite (often just teeth marks because they were so under-ripe) and throw every single one away as inedible.

Moron squirrels - destroyed the entire crop for both of us - how stupid is that? After the second year of growing an apricot just for it's brief blossom I decided that natural selection should have its say (it says the penalty for stupidity is death).

Also you are lucky they are choosing pears - one of the very, very, very few fruit that ripens well off the tree - which is the main reason I grow six types of plums (and twenty types of apples - I hate a soft apple), but shop pears are actually edible - so I only keep the one pear I inherited because I'm not that short of space (and it would be a lot of digging).

Cheers.

PS. If you net the tree for squirrels the wasps will get them. If you stop those the mice will get them, and if you stop the mice the ants will get them. Better to pick them slightly under-ripe, wrap and keep them in a cool drawer - so playing to the pears' strengths.
« Last Edit: April 28, 2019, 12:35:27 by Vinlander »
With a microholding you always get too much or bugger-all. (I'm fed up calling it an allotment garden - it just encourages the tidy-police).

The simple/complex split is more & more important: Simple fertilisers Poor, complex ones Good. Simple (old) poisons predictable, others (new) the opposite.

galina

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Re: Squirrels eating my pears
« Reply #2 on: April 29, 2019, 09:23:55 »
What a pain.  However, if they are only attacking the fully ripe ones Digeroo, then perhaps you could harvest underripe.  Pears do ripen nicely off the tree.  :wave:

Digeroo

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Re: Squirrels eating my pears
« Reply #3 on: May 02, 2019, 16:01:50 »
Many thanks I will pick them sooner.

I seem to have a super intelligent squirrel.  Though iys attempts  to climb a very small tree are very amusing and it fell off in the end with the pear still in its mouth.  I had hoped it might drop the pear but no, it clung on and shinned up a field maple and sat there eating it.  Seemed to know I could not reach it.

 

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