Netting for everbearing strawberries

[squeezyjohn]

OK - here's the deal.  My previous strawberry bed was very productive but a combination of mice and birds stopped me getting any decent harvest of ripe fruit even when netted.  It's location was very slug prone too and I lost lots of bits of strawberries to them too.  This year I did away with the bed of Elsanta and I invested in a load of Mara des Bois everbearing strawberries and decided to build the strawberry bed equivalent of Fort Knox to keep out pests!

So the raised bed is constructed such that there is 5mm galvanised mesh underneath the soil to stop pesky rodents from burrowing in and it's frame comes up well above soil level to about 3 feet to deter them from climbing in - that also has mesh around the outside.  At present it is open to the elements at the top, and I had one very early fruit beginning to go red all by itself this morning ... and this evening it had gone completely!  So something is definitely coming in and taking them!

Obviously I will need to net the top as well ... but as they're everbearing I don't want to exclude any pollinators at all that might stop the berries forming properly.  What kind of netting will I need that will stop a mouse (apparently can squeeze through holes 10mm square) but allow a bee through?  Do strawberries even need pollinating or am I just imagining that?

Any advice would be gratefully received as I'd love to be able to harvest something!

[squeezyjohn]

[ancellsfarmer]

Add a Little Nipper to your armoury. The last thing it does is nips.

[Paulines7]

It's blackbirds that mainly eat my strawberries.  According to this website, 17mm square netting will keep out the birds but let the bees in.  http://www.garden-netting.co.uk/acatalog/Fruit-Cage-Netting.html

I don't have a problem with mice as I have a structure that is three feet above the ground. I also have two cats that keep the numbers down.  You may have to put down some traps for the mice but I would see how it goes with just keeping the birds off first. 

[squeezyjohn]

Well, I seem to have been successful in keeping the mice, birds and slugs at bay from eating my eagerly anticipated first crop of Mara des Bois strawberries.  They are housed in a kind of Fort Knox raised bed and the fruit are just turning red now!

And they're being eaten 

... by ants

[Crystalmoon]

Hi Squeezyjohn on my new allotment I'm not allowed to plant strawberries in the ground so I have them in large pots tubs etc at least a foot or more off the ground with copper tape round them & I plan to put them under a gazebo frame that will be netted when the fruits are starting to ripen so I thought I had them sorted....reading your post I realise the ants have already started to explore my strawberries as on Tuesday when weeding the pots I noticed a lot of ant activity in the areas surrounding the strawberries...sigh! It had never crossed my mind that ants would steal the fruit. We seem to have had an explosion of very small ants here in Kent, ant hills on every possible grassy verge etc so there is a huge army of them especially on the allotment site. Up until now I have just been moving them on from raised beds etc by disturbing the surfaces. Really hope they haven't decided to make their homes in my strawberry pots.
Do you think if I put ant powder under each pot/tub it will sort out the problem? I really don't like killing them but also don't want to sacrifice my fruit. The pots/tubs are on membrane on a permanent path that I don't ever plan to cultivate so in theory the toxins won't get near anything I want to eat if I put it under the pots & do it on a still day. I don't think the strawberry roots will go down deep enough to draw up the powder. I'm planning to put straw under the fruits this weekend in each pot/tub as we have yet more insane wet weather forecast for next week  What do you think? Thanks Jane

[Vinlander]

The safest (not necessarily the most legal) and most effective ant killer is borax - it is a very, very mild poison/disinfectant and not cumulative (used on babies bottoms for hundreds of years with no ill effects). Individual ants are not harmed but the food chain in a nest concentrates it in the queen, who dies.

Boron is an essential trace element - caulis can suffer voids without it.

Lawrence D.Hills recommended 1:1 mix of borax and icing sugar because the ants can't separate the grains. The website below recommends a 5% mix in jam (you could use any sweet syrupy gel). Obviously you need a bait point that is immune to rain but lets the ants in - just a question of finding a suitable lid and a larger size yoghurt/coleslaw pot to cover it, with a stone on top against the wind.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Getting-Rid-of-Ants-or-How-to-Kill-an-Ant-Invasi/step2/Preparing-the-Poison/

Cheers.

[squeezyjohn]

I don't know what the solution is really.  The ants have set up camp across the whole bed it seems - but I can't work out where they've got their nest yet.

I think the least contaminating thing we can do is to use ant bait traps. Or a mixture of borax and honey/syrup in a home made trap.

[squeezyjohn]

I just remembered that I have some diatomaceous earth somewhere and may well try that before using anything poisonous.  I know that it can be effective against ants, killing them by causing them to dehydrate when they get it on them.

[cudsey]

I have got 3 raised strawberry beds they are about 30 ins high on my allotment and I also noticed there were lots of ants in them not sure if they eat strawberries or not, they seem to be everywhere this year maybe it was the mild damp winter

[squeezyjohn]

They're definitely eating all mine!  They tunnel in just as the fruit begins to ripen and there's 5 or 6 inside each strawberry mining away at it.

[Crystalmoon]

Hi squeezyjohn I've never heard of the diatomaceous earth? As my strawberries are in pots/tubs could I use this method? I did buy ant powder yesterday but as we are forecast terrible rain again for nearly every day for a week I don't think the powder will work. I was considering making the borax mixture & putting it in a sealed plastic box that I drill a small hole in but again I am not sure if this will survive the torrential rain we are forecast.
I plan to put straw on the surface of the soil today as I fear they will rot anyway with the terrible amounts of very heavy rain we are getting. Does anyone know if the straw will just encourage the ants more????
Jane

[Crystalmoon]

Just googled the diatomaceous earth & realise I can add it to my pots/tubs but am unsure where to buy it? Does any one know of any store that sells it rather than having to order on line? I go on holiday in a weeks time so would really like to be able to buy some asap. What quantity do you have to use for it to be effective? just a sprinkling or a proper layer on top of the soil? It looks like expensive stuff! Thanks Jane

[Tee Gee]

The pots/tubs are on membrane

I would not mind betting that this might be the root of your problem, you may have unknowingly created a haven under the membrane for all manner of rodents and insect life.

But this is only a guess based on what you have described.

[Vinlander]

The pots/tubs are on membrane

I would not mind betting that this might be the root of your problem, you may have unknowingly created a haven under the membrane for all manner of rodents and insect life.

But this is only a guess based on what you have described.

I suppose rodents might like moving under membrane for protection - though they seem to prefer dry areas for their nests - that's the the main reason I'm trying to wean myself off using black plastic (apart from the fact that the cheap stuff isn't as immune to UV as it used to be).

Ants definitely prefer very dry areas for their nests, and they only need a few score sq cm (a big stone is enough). They have no major reason to avoid being in the open. I'd be surprised if your membrane offers them anything special (apart from the presence of strawberries) - I've certainly never found nests under my outdoor membranes except where I've been stupid/lazy enough to use  stones or full bottles to hold it down (use staples instead).

I suppose if you use large tubs with holes round the edge then ants might like the dry area under the centre...

Cheers.

[Crystalmoon]

I did check under the membrane & it is actually damper than the bare soil & no sign of ants nests or rodents. I peg it down very tightly with camping metal pegs. The membrane is for my butternuts to trail over to save the fruits from wet soil damage. I did have lots of ants nests around the edges of my plot when I took it over & as I cut back the edges to tidy my plot it moved the ants on. They moved to raised beds but again as I cultivated the beds they moved...think the only things on my plot that I don't dig around in are the strawberry pots so they have made these their homes 
I gave in yesterday & put an icing sugar borax mix into plastic bottles near the strawberries in the hope that the Queen ants will die. Hate having to harm them but I don't want them destroying my strawberry crop. Will let everyone know if the borax works.
If my local council didn't have stupid rules about fruit not being planted in the soil I would have a proper strawberry bed & wouldn't be having this issue. Jane

[squeezyjohn]

Well - mine are in a fairly standard but protected raised bed and they're in there too ... I don't think you can blame yourself for ants ... they're everywhere.  The reason I've noticed them this year is probably because I've been successful in stopping all the other creatures getting to them first!

[Vinlander]

If my local council didn't have stupid rules about fruit not being planted in the soil I would have a proper strawberry bed & wouldn't be having this issue. Jane

I think that takes the biscuit for a really stupid rule (please correct me if I'm missing something).

It's not significantly harder to move a soft fruit bush in winter (even in my heavy clay) than to pick up the pot yours are in. The same thing goes for trees on proper dwarfing rootstocks...

However it's probably working in your favour when growing strawberries - they are a lot more trouble in the soil, and planting through a membrane can encourage vine weevil.

I suggest you consider the method favoured by PYO farms - using gro-bags on tables so the fruit hangs above the slugs, ants etc. and a net keeps everything else off (make that chicken wire if you have a grey squirrel problem). I'm planning a variant of this table system using chicken-wire hammocks between posts (or existing trees) - with greasebands and anti-rat cones on the cables.

Of course it makes sense to have a dripper system but you just need a raised butt to feed it. Last drought the council had seen sense and ceased to fulminate about filling this kind of system from a supervised hose.

Cheers.

[Crystalmoon]

Hi Vinlander, yep the rules for new plot holders are really stupid, such a difference to the old rules I had on my previous plot. I had to pull out 2 fruit trees when I took over the plot even though I didn't plant them. Jane

[squeezyjohn]

A quick check today and I finally found that the ants weren't the main culprits although they were all over the strawberries that had already been damaged.

It's slugs ... tiny baby white slugs that must have been almost invisible earlier on but are now getting bigger.  At least that's something I can control to some extent.  Some straw to raise the fruits away from dampness and a judicious application of slug pellets - at least they are enclosed in my fortress bed so that it's highly unlikely that any wildlife will eat the poisoned slugs.

[Crystalmoon]

Hi Squeezyjohn so glad you have found out who the real strawberry thieves are.

The borax icing sugar mix has reduced significantly in the plastic bottles I put down & when I moved the strawberry pots around yesterday there was a huge difference as there were only a couple of ants wandering around under the largest tubs & none under most of them whereas there had been a swarm of ants under every pot. Fingers crossed the borax will do its job & the ants will lose the queens.