David Hare-Scott wrote:

Tom N wrote:
Interestingly, possums don't seem to eat nectarine blossums (we get
a great crop of them - no spray - just buggerising around with nets
to keep out possums, birds, rats and bats).


They were lifting the net to get to my stone fruits even with bricks
every metre along the bottom.

I hold my net down with garden stakes with bricks on them.

You might find that if you built a fence around the bottom with
welded wire mesh (like chookwire but stiffer) that it would keep them
out (at least until they discovered they could climb it). Wouldn't
work for my place as they aren't on the ground to start with.

I'm told possums don't like climbing wobbly wire mesh fences so if
you build a fence that tips over a bit when they climb it, you might
keep them out.

I have 40 trees all up so this is too hard, I am making more wire pegs
for next year to peg down the bottom

The pest problem just gets worse in my experience. When we first
planted fruit trees, we had no problems with insects or animals or
birds.

Apart from the fruit trees planted in the ground, I also have berries
bushes and an apple in pots. I have made a wire cage to keep out the
assorted buggers. Works well. Bit expensive for 40 trees though.

Was once at a farm where they had an old orange orchard and a problem
with sulphur crested cockatoos destroying the fruit just for the seeds.
The cockies could recognise someone with a rifle and would stay out of
range, but would ignore people without a rifle.

Our possums would just jump onto the net from another tree and then
lie on it like a hammock. They'd stick their paw through and eat
nectarines through the net. But with a net there they don't eat much
and they choose ripe fruit by smell I suppose and they eat the whole
fruit. Other pests take a bite to see if it is ripe and rarely eat
all of the fruit so in the end they damage a lot more fruit than
possums do.

Bats are farely easy to keep out with nets as they are fairly clumbsy
unless flying.

Yes but wait til one gets tangled in the net, you will find getting
them out quite entertaining unless you use the shovel anesthetic
method (I don't). For vegetarians they have a very fine set of teeth
and are not shy about using them. Some are disease carriers too.

When were down to the last ten nectarines on the tree, a brush-tailed
possum got inside the net somehow and was trapped there until the next
day. It charged around flinging itself into the net when we went out to
allow it out. Got a bit tangled at one point but I can imagine a bat
being worse.

We have a rat or two which is too smart for rat traps or poisons. It
gnaws a hole in the net. The birds (particularly introduced
thrushes) patrol around the net looking for holes and will find any
little hole to get through.

I buy ratsak in 3kg boxes and put it out all round the buildings in
the warmer weather. I will coexist with them out in the garden but
they are just too destructive in the house or shed.

This rat we have is purely a garden rat. Too smart for ratsak or traps
or the wax poison blocks. It used to get into the compost bin until we
buried the edge of it down 15cm (it is one of those commercial plastic
bins with no bottom).

We did have a rat or two in the garage at one point and it ate a whole
packet of snail bait (the one with the bitter additive to deter children
and pets). The rat ate half one the packet one night and I saw the half
empty packet and thought the culprit would be dead and wouldn't come
back, and the next night it came back and ate the rest!

I reckon a lot of wild animals like foxes and rats and probably feral
cats live on pet food and scraps given to pets outside. I occasionally
see foxes around here and I am sure they patrol back yards for food
scraps.

The garage rat used to bring in lamb chop bones and nectarines and I was
cleaning out secluded parts of the garage and the carport behind some
boxes and other stuff, and I found dozens and dozens of nectarine stones
and chop bones. The nectarines were from our tree but the chop bones
must have come from someone else's yard.