Strawberries are delicious, juicy, and nutritious. Why wouldn’t you want to grow them in your garden? However, you’re not the only one who goes crazy for strawberries. Nothing is more frustrating than losing those precious berries to birds and pests who have stolen your harvest. Luckily, there are several simple, inexpensive and humane ways to defend your garden and protect your strawberry plants from birds.
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What Is Eating My Strawberries?
Unfortunately, humans aren’t the only ones who love juicy strawberries. According to Plantophile, there are a host of animals that eat strawberries, including:
- Birds (robins, sparrows, starlings and crows, etc.)
- Mammals (dogs, deer, squirrels, rabbits, moles)
- Insects (snails and slugs, strawberry bud weevils, sap beetles, etc.)
BUT the most common culprit are birds. And that is where we are going to focus on – ways to protect our precious strawberry plants from birds!
14 Ways to Protect Strawberry Plants from Birds
Fortunately, you have several options to defend your strawberry plants from birds. These 14 methods are divided into these 3 categories:
- Physical Barriers
- Scare Tactics/Decoys
- Hospitality
Quick Things to Note
Before we dive into these 3 categories, I want to point out a few things:
- All methods are successful in protecting your strawberry plants BUT some are proven to be more effective.
- These strategies can also be used other berry bushes – blueberries, raspberry, etc..
- Birds eat insects that can also harm your garden. sometimes more damage than the birds. Consider a balanced approach in defending your garden and allow some animals in to enjoy the benefits.
- For reader’s ease, I’ve added products with Amazon links. I have not personally tried all of them, but placed based on favorable reviews. If you try one of these products, I’d love to hear your experience!
Physical Barriers
Of the 3 different categories to protect strawberry plants from birds, physical barriers tend to be the most effective in keeping out animals. However, it can be the most expensive option.
1. Netting
Simply drape netting over your berry bushes and plants to prevent pests from getting at them. How quick is that? Simple yet effective.
However, placing netting directly on the strawberry plants poses a few challenges. First, the strawberries on the outer edges of the plant will still be accessible to the birds, so you’ll still have some losses. Second, the plants gets caught up in the netting so when you go to harvest the berries, you will find yourself frustratingly fighting with the netting.
2. Cages
A better solution (in my opinion) is built a support system to hold the netting up and over the strawberry plants. There’s a few ways to DIY your own cage. For inspiration check out these cages at One Creative Mommy and Our Stoney Acres. Here’s ours…
A cage can be as simple as holding up netting using stakes driven into the ground, or creating a PVC frame to keep the netting up and away from the plants.
If you don’t want to go the frugal DIY cage route, there are some gorgeous options – pop-up tents, row cover frames.
Scare Tactics
Decoys and scare tactics are a fun group of shiny, noisy, moveable objects that startle and frighten off birds. Birds believe there is a potential predator near your strawberry plants and stay away.
Several of these scare tactics bring a fun design element into your garden. However, birds and pests are smart animals and quickly catch on that these objects won’t actually hurt them. So you must be vigilant about moving them around the garden to keep animals on their toes. Otherwise these aren’t overly effective strategies to defend your garden.
3. Plastic Owls
For a more “furrier” decoy option, consider placing a plastic owl above your berry bushes in an obvious location. I haven’t tried this tactic, but if I did, I’d want one with a moving head and light-up eyes. One that would scare my kids AND the animals!
Unfortunately, like other scare tactic, these owl decoys need to be moved at frequent intervals. So be mindful of moving them on a weekly basis. This job might be a good family chore. Pass this task around your children to increase their responsibility and lighten your workload, plus inspire a future generation of gardeners.
4. Terror Eyes Balloon
Before I wrote this post, admittedly I have never heard of terror eyes balloon. And after seeing one of these online I completely understand how this would work to protect strawberry plants. Forget the birds, I’m scared of the terror eyes balloon! ?
This decoy is a large, inflatable vinyl 3-D balloon painted with bright colors and “fierce” features to mimic natural predators like falcons. It’s lightweight so it moves easily in the wind, adding to the scare factor.
Once inflated, install terror eyes balloon overlooking your berry bushes. Birds who happen to stop in your garden will get a fright thinking this terror eyes balloon is a predator about to swoop down and gobble them up.
Apparently NASA uses terror eyes balloon to keep birds from the space shuttle launch areas. (older video below). If they work at NASA, these decoys should work in our gardens too, right?
5. Foil Tape
Moving on to a “shiny is scary” idea. Attaching strips of foil tape or Mylar flash tape to your strawberry plants may frighten animals away.
Simply tie strips of Mylar or foil tape to the bushes, let them shine in the sun and flutter in the breeze. Animals don’t like the shine and are nervous around the tape’s movement and clattering sounds.
6. CDs or Aluminum Pie Plates
A slightly more DIY approach than foil tape is hanging CDs or aluminum pie plates. Tie some string through some old CDs (admit it, you don’t need those Michael Jackson CDs anymore….) or make a hole in the pie plate and hang it on a post near your berry bushes.
Similar to the foil tape, CDs and pie plates move in the wind and reflect light in different directions. These shiny noisemakers will offput birds and pests from feasting on your berry bushes.
7. Decoy Berries
This is a very creative way to ward off critters from your berry bushes. One gardener decided to paint rocks to look like strawberries and placed in her garden before her real strawberries ripened. When the predators went for a snack and started pecking at the stones, they got a huge surprise! It confused them so that they didn’t return when the real strawberries were ripe for the picking.
Luke at MIGardener has a great YouTube tutorial to create your own decoy strawberries
8. Garden Spinners
Shiny pinwheels reflect light and create movement and noise, a trifecta of scare tactics that will make birds and pests think twice about approaching your berries. Cost of garden spinners can run the gamut – from frugal dollar store to ones specifically designed for scaring pests.
Place pinwheels around your garden so they will easily capture the wind. If they are placed in garden nooks, they won’t spin and do their job!
9. Wind Chimes
Noise, noise, with a side of noise from wind chimes will deter birds and pests from your strawberries. Windchimes placed in your garden not only adds a whimsy note, but also provides sounds and movement that deter animals from approaching your berry bushes.
Windchimes can run the gamut on cost, but they don’t have to be expensive to be effective. Recruit your kids with DIY wind chime kits or use things around the house. Personally, I love these DIY ideas from HomeBNC and The Garden Glove.
10. Scarecrows
Time to get click your heels 3 times and get your Wizard of Oz on.
If you’re super organized (not me) and think ahead (again, not me), pick up a scarecrow during the fall in your local garden supply store. Or you can easily just make your own scarecrow, maybe even a coupld of smaller ones to place throughout a berry patch. What I especially like about the scarecrow idea is that they add a bit of fun and quirkiness to your garden.
Unfortunately, birds and pests will eventually figure out that your scarecrow isn’t a danger and their confidence to pick over your berries will return. To keep the birds guessing, move the scarecrow to a new position in your garden every week. A few tips:
- Ensure it is lightweight to easily move
- Add a tie or accessories that will flutter in the breeze for extra scare
- Change the scarecrow’s outfit or accessories to keep birds on their toes.
11. Pets
It might be time for Rover to also work for his/her rent. If you have a dog or outdoor cat, let them roam outside to announce their presence. Since your pet isn’t outside all the time, I view this strategy to as a supplemental way to protect your strawberry plants.
And be prepared for the consequences. Our beloved dog Dulce – all 90 pounds of her – once jumped up and caught a bird mid-air while near our garden. It was a grisly scene I’d rather not describe….
Hospitality
This last group is probably the most humane way to protect your blueberries. ASDF less effective
Instead of battling nature, it allows you to coexist peacefully with animals visiting your yard. However, these tactics, if done incorrectly, could actually exacerbate the problem and bring even MORE animals to you garden.
12. Decoy Food
Dial up the hospitality and setup a decoy food base away from your berry bushes. Encourage the birds and small critters to feast elsewhere than your strawberries. Hang up bird feeders. Set up a feeding station with sunflower seeds and peanuts.
The concept here? If you give them their own food, maybe they will leave yours alone.
A note of warning though. You might attract even more critters to your yard. Your garden may turn into the neighborhood midnight buffet, with your berries are dessert. So proceed with caution.
13. Overplant
This method to protect strawberry plants from birds embraces the tagline – “if you can’t beat them, then join them”. In other words, you accept that pests will get at your berries and merely plant more than you need. They get some, you get some, and everyone moves on.
While this is a very humane way to deal with pests in your berries, I struggle a bit with it. I foresee underestimating how much the birds and pests will eat. My garden will host a bunch of overweight animals, and I’ll end up empty handed with nothing to harvest.
14. Birdbath
Research shows that when birds and small pests attack berry bushes, they might not actually be hungry. Instead, they might just be thirsty. And the high-water content in berries quench that thirst.
Placing a birdbath in your yard might shift the animals’ focus away from your berries and to their true desire – water. But as mentioned in the previous two ways, you might end up just attracting more animals to your yard – and right to your berries.
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