The case of the missing cherries...

[dave45]

For the last couple of weeks I've been watching my young cherry tree (about 2m tall) produce its crop... late last week I had a nice handful of beauties and scoffed them. One or two were shrivelling but most were looking good at various stages of ripeness. I had wrapped plastic netting around the tree branches... some holes but a bird would have to be pretty clever to get in and out.

Yesterday there were around 50 cherries nearly ripe. Today 2.

No half-eaten ones, nothing on the ground below.... 40-odd cherries vanished,

Are birds really that smart? what else could it be?

[Millymollymandy]

Interesting! Squirrels? In my experience birds that try to sneak fruit tend to get caught up in bird netting though thankfully this year I haven't found any caught up in the strawb netting. It might be that you have a clever bird or the neighbours' kids getting over the fence??? Anyway - sorry what a disappointment.

[Clara]

got to be birds...i've got a 30 foot tree, produces around 200kgs I reckon, the first year we were year I lost the whole lot in one morning!

anyhow i found last year that cds strung in the lower branches works miracles - i think the sun bouncing off them startles them.

[Zaf]

I'll go with birds too, Ive got a 'patio' cherry tree and was late putting a net over it this year, Ive lost about 3/4 of the fruit

[Derry]

same happened to us last year, one day we had a tree full of fruit and the next morn it was all gone =[

this year we've put netting across/over/around the tree, and it seems to be doing the trick thus far =]

[oldfella]

[quote="Derry"]same happened to us last year, one day we had a tree full of fruit and the next morn it was all gone =[

This happens to me ever year, but my neighbour has at least ten trees and the birds don't touch his.

[Millymollymandy]

Strangely some years the birds will have the cherries overnight or like last year, not bother with them - although there are often the odd peck mark in them. We don't have many cherries this year.

[dave45]

Update - I found an extra one yellow cherry left hiding under a leaf. So - the upshot is: how best to net the tree? wrappiing plastic netting around it freehand clearly doesn't work... any better techniques?


meanwhile my morello cherries (similarly netted) are dropping off rather than ripening :-(

[Derry]

to net ours, we got 4 long canes and put them upright at each 'corner', so imagine a big square on the ground and put a cane at each corner. then we put shorter canes from one to the other across the top, so we actually made the square, held in places with bits of wire and twine, and then wrapped it in netting... i actually think its pond netting or something

ill take a picture of it later and upload it =]

[MuddyWitch]

If not birds (my best guess too) then you could have lost your cherries to a mouse!

MW

[Millymollymandy]

Whilst I was picking strawbs I kept hearing thumping noises and it was cherries falling off the tree - they're not ripe yet. Never noticed a June drop like that before!

[Millymollymandy]

It must be squirrels if you have bird netting up. I've been watching our naughty red squirrel going up our cherry tree repeatedly, he sits there eating them in front of us. My husband even saw him chasing a magpie off!

[SarahJane]

I had that problem last year, one minute a tree full of beautiful cherries, next time I looked, there wasnt one to be found! I thought that maybe it was birds, but surely there would have been evidence on the ground?

This year my cherry tree is poorly again with black aphids and I didnt notice until too late, so the fruit is very sparce and most of it is dropping before it is fully ripened.