I finally had the most successful strawberry season of my gardening life this year. I’ve always had trouble, usually from birds, but squirrels and pill bugs come into play, too. The moment a strawberry would turn red, it would disappear. I was about to call it and just accept the fact that I will be buying roadside strawberries forever and ever, but then it occurred to me that I have always just tried one method at a time to fight off the pests. They work for a little bit, and then fizzle out. BUT… What if I did several methods at once? Why hasn’t this occurred to me sooner? What am I even doing with my life?!
So I did. I tried three different approaches all together, and I have to say, it seems to have done the trick over an entire season. I will definitely be repeating this each year, and hopefully enjoying my own strawberries for many seasons to come. Here are the methods I used for my triple threat, and who knows, maybe next year I’ll find a fourth to add to the list. If you’re having trouble with your berries getting chomped on, give these a try and I hope they work for you, too!
Rock Decoys
Pinwheels
Beer Traps
ROCK DECOYS:
Painting rocks to look like strawberries. Put them out before your berries form, when they first start to flower. The birds peck them, decide they don’t like hard, cold berries, and then leave your real berries alone once they come along. My daughter and I had so much fun doing this together! They don’t have to look exactly like strawberries, just grab some small rocks in a variety of sizes and paint them red/pink. We put dots on them with sharpie, but those just washed off. After being out in the sun all day, they’re going to fade and get dirty, and anything pink or red looks like a berry from a few feet away anyway.
PINWHEELS:
Pinwheels are great for all kinds of pests, not just birds. They work well because they aren’t steadily moving all the time, the breeze makes them randomly start spinning, and pests don’t like unexpected movement. It startles them, and they scatter.
Honestly, I would suggest sticking pinwheels all over your garden, and move them around occasionally to keep things different. I nailed one up on my fence to deter squirrels and that has helped, too!
BEER TRAPS:
These traps are great for slugs, but also pill bugs! I don’t usually find slugs on my berries like some people do, but pill bugs will eat their way up into the bottom of my strawberries which is super frustrating.
I found that when I put my beer traps out for slugs, they also catch a lot of pill bugs, so voila! I definitely added traps to my strawberry defenses and they are doing their part. If you aren’t sure how to make a beer trap, I have a detailed post about it HERE.
So that’s that! After using these methods separately in previous years and getting just a short period of success, I found that combining all three into a triple threat defense was just too much for the pests to keep up with, and I had a much more successful season. I literally annoyed the pests so much that I won the strawberry battle.
What other methods have you used to protect your strawberries? Please leave it in the comments, I want to hear what has worked for you, too!
Happy gardening! 🌱🍓
Kate