How do you keep birds from eating your red on-the-vine tomatoes? We have never had a vine ripened tomato that wasn’t gutted by birds. (We’ve tried scarecrows and pie pans. Useless, both of 'em.)
^hey Liberal…what kind of birds are eating the tomatoes? I’ve never had any bird problems. Would bird feeders in another area help?
I’ve never had a problem with birds. Maybe all the goddammed deer that keep eating my Brandywines while they’re still green are scaring them away.
When I was a kid tomatoes were safe to can in a boiling water bath because of the low pH. It’s the kind of factoid I’ve learned not to trust, but I’ve heard that modern tomatoes, bred for sweetness, have a higher pH and need pressure canning. It may just be that people are more careful than when I was young and life was cheap.
We keep the deer away from the tomatoes by feeding the deer. Unfortunately, that involves buying 100 pounds of shelled corn every week.
The sure-fire way to do this is to put nets or chicken wire around the tomato vines.
Someone suggested bird feeders. If you do that, they’d have to be far away from the house/garden (like, in the neighbor’s yards). My wife feeds birds and squirrels and they assume that our tomatoes and strawberries are for them as well.
Seems like it may end up attracting even more birds than currently visit.
Yeah, I had problems with squirrels, and less so with birds, eating my produce before I got to it. After a few years of fighting them, I capitulated. Then, for my own entertainment and also our cats’ I started putting up ears of corn and lots of birdseed, and discovered that I got to keep my produce in return.
Squirrels are like people: tasty food vs. crappy food? Tasty wins. Easy to reach vs. requires some work? Easy wins.
Corn and peanuts are both tasty and easy to get, so they don’t bother chewing up half-ripened tomatoes any more. 