Tips to protect fruit trees from birds and bugs

If you grow fruit, whether you're picking it off the tree to eat fresh, or using to bake or preserve — you intend that fruit to be for human consumption. However, the birds and bugs in your yard and garden may think otherwise. Follow these tips and your fruit will still be there when you go looking for it.

If you grow productive fruit trees and enjoy making fruit pies for friends and neighbours, don't throw away those aluminum pie plates! Use them to scare away blackbirds, starlings and other fruit-loving birds. Here's how.

1. Poke a hole in the rim of each plate and thread a 60-centimetre (two-foot) piece of dental floss or string through the hole. Triple-knot it tightly.
2. Hang a couple of plates on the branches of each fruit tree — and that's it. Shiny reflective objects swinging in the wind are more effective bird repellents than stationary plastic owls and scarecrows.

You don't always have to buy netting at the garden centre to protect ripening cherries and other tree fruit from birds. Just buy two or three spools of black thread.

1. Stand beside the tree, grab the loose end of the thread and toss the spool over the tree to a helper. (If you're thinking this activity would be great for kids, you're right.)
2. Continue tossing the spool back and forth until it is empty. The invisible thread won't seal birds off from the tree, but once they hit it a time or two they'll look for their ripe fruit lunch in a different bird cafeteria.

Ants won't be able to climb your fruit trees and have their way with ripe fruit if you wrap the trunks with one of these sticky materials:

• Contact paper, folded in half with the sticky side out
• Two-sided transparent tape, wrapped around the trunk in a 7.5-centimetre (three-inch) deep band
• Sheets of newspaper secured with masking tape and spritzed with an adhesive insect spray
• A cardboard sleeve taped shut and smeared with petroleum jelly

You might love birds, but you don't want them eating the fruit off your trees. These easy tips will keep them away without harming them — and keep ants away, too.