One of the most persistent problems facing gardeners is birds eating tomato plants. Information technology doesn't thing how big or pocket-size your tomato patch is. Once the tomatoes turn from dark-green to red, birds dive in and feast on the ripe crop with greed and abandon. It is both frustrating and demoralizing to run into all your hard work growing tomatoes go up in fume. And knowing the wily birds, it's non always like shooting fish in a barrel to harvest your tomatoes before they have the lion's share of your harvest.

Birds Eating Tomato Plants

It'due south true that tomatoes are good in your kitchen for everything from salads to a variety of delicious summer dishes. Which is all the more reason you lot should protect your tomatoes from the ruthless attacks of birds. So how would you go near doing that? Read on to observe out the unlike ways you lot tin continue birds off your lycopersicon esculentum plants.

Bird Damage to Love apple Plants

Before we get to the part where yous resort to smart tactics to scare off birds or steer them away from your tomato patch, let's examine the impairment birds often inflict on lycopersicon esculentum plants and how it's different from other lycopersicon esculentum predators. When birds such equally pigeons assail a ripe love apple, they apply their slim beaks to break the skin and get to the fleshy parts of the fruit.

This is usually dissimilar from how a rat or a squirrel will feast on the crop. Animals would chew at the pare and get out teeth marks behind. Determining the culprit will assistance you take the all-time course of action to protect the ingather. The methods you'll use to deter rabbits or rats from eating your lycopersicon esculentum plants are different from those designed for birds.

Moreover, some birds, such as pigeons, will not merely eat your ripe tomatoes, they'll also intermission downwardly the stems and vines of the love apple to employ the pieces in building their nests. Talk about a destructive behavior of epic proportions.

If you lot come across only tiny holes in the skin of the ripe tomato, and so you know that birds are targeting your tomatoes and won't rest until they've damaged the last one. And then what can y'all do almost information technology?

How to Protect your Tomato Plants from Birds

Have y'all ever asked yourself, why birds would go after your tomato plants? Information technology's non a personal vendetta and birds of all varieties have naught against you or your garden. They are just hungry and when they meet food, they only become for information technology. Birds and wildlife, in general, have no respect for personal holding. And so how will that information help you fend off your tomato plant patch?

It'southward elementary. If the birds are hungry, and then if you gave them food, most probable they'll exit your tomatoes lonely.

Based on this, we tin split up the ways you can protect your love apple plants from birds into the following.

  • Distraction Tactics: Offer the birds food and h2o in a strategic location away from the veggie garden as a fashion of lark.
  • Scare Measures: Birds are easily spooked by anything that looks unfamiliar or out of place. Go along them off your garden and they won't carp the tomato plants.
  • Mechanical Methods: Make information technology hard for the birds to admission or get to the tomato plant plants past installing barriers such as cages or netting.

The method or combination of tactics you resort to depends on the severity of the harm to your ingather and how persistent the birds are in their attempts to deprive you of your delicious tomatoes. The more aggressive the predators, the more desperate your defensive measures. At the end of the day, you're not trying to harm the birds. You're simply protecting your veggie patch.

Physical Barriers effectually Love apple Plants

Unlike other pests and diseases that prey on tomatoes, birds are a relatively easy predator to fend off. You tin utilize cages, netting, or cloches to keep them off your tomato plants.

Cages

Cages are effective not just against birds, but other predators such as rats, possums, and rabbits. The simply problem with cages is that they don't piece of work with all types of tomatoes. Determinate tomatoes are limited in size and will abound well underneath the cage. Only indeterminate tomatoes will crawl out of the cage or worse, the muzzle would stunt its growth and prevent its flowering.

When you choose a muzzle to work every bit a defense mechanism against birds, make sure the spaces between the bars or ribs of the cage are narrow enough not to let the small heads or tiny beaks of the birds within. At the same time, the muzzle should allow air circulation and sunlight and non bandage a big shadow on the plants.

Netting

You can use a netting either in combination with a muzzle or on its own. Drape a suitable netting over a large cage to keep birds away without depriving the love apple plants of the dominicus and fresh air. Even so, sometimes, nettings tin be a more than effective physical barrier especially if you're growing indeterminate love apple varieties.

A netting is flexible enough to wrap around a whole lycopersicon esculentum constitute without posing any risk on the plant'south growth or interfering with the flowering or fruit productivity. Merely while this method might keep some birds from your ripe tomatoes, it might not be effective confronting pigeons seeking to plough your love apple plants into a heap of stale nest-edifice blocks.

Experts recommend that y'all use nettings along with other back up. That way the netting volition not come in contact with the tomato plant or allow birds to come inside striking distance of the coveted red globes.

Cloches

Cloches are more versatile and effective than nets. A cloche is a comprehend that protects young plants against cold weather or pests. Most ofttimes yous'd employ a cloche with a sapling to go along the soil warm until the weather improves. Merely you can also repurpose cloches to serve as a barrier betwixt birds and tomato plants.

  • Wire Cloches: Yous can brand a wire cloche from a rabbit wire. It usually has two pieces. The get-go forms a cylinder shape effectually the plant while the 2d slice covers the top of the cylinder. Yous can adjust the cloche to accommodate the growth of the lycopersicon esculentum plant and prevent predators from getting to the tomatoes.
  • Plastic Bottle Cloches: More commonly used to protect seeds and saplings against the cold weather and predators, a plastic bottle cloche allows the sunlight in merely doesn't do the aforementioned for the air. Equally a result, you lot should only utilise plastic cloches sparingly and avoid using them in hot zones. One time the plant outgrows the cloche, you'll accept to remove it.

Distracting Birds

If physical barriers are not getting the task done and birds notwithstanding find a manner to get to the tomato plants, then you might have to distract them with a bribe. The bribe here is either food or h2o, or both.

Water

Most of the time, birds will nosh on your ripe tomatoes because they're thirsty. This is often the case in the hot summertime months where water is deficient. Identify a bowl full of h2o in a prominent identify for the birds to see. Make sure the water bowl is as far away equally you can from the tomato patch.

Keep filling the bowl with water and soon the birds will cease visiting your tomato garden to sample the ripe fruits.

Food

Ripe tomatoes not only quench the birds' thirst only too offer a tasty and nutritious meal. So lure the hungry birds away from your tomatoes with a bird feeder. Once more, you lot should brand the bird feeder visible and easy to access for the birds. Replenish it with sunflower seeds to keep the birds off the tomato plants.

The simply drawback to this tactic is that the bird feeder might describe more than birds to your garden than you hoped for. Merely it's a minor price to pay in club to go on your tomato plants prophylactic.

Scare Tactics

Sometimes none of the above strategies will work against the hungry birds. Neither concrete barriers nor distractions will sway the persistent birds. In that example, you'll have to keep the offensive and do your best to continue the birds from your garden.

Scarecrows

A tried and test method that has been used for thousands of years in fields and farms the earth over. The idea is to fool the birds into thinking a human being is continuing guard in the garden at all times. Y'all tin can utilise a pair of sticks to make the body in the shape of a cross. Then dress up your stick homo convincingly. Fill a purse with cotton or rags, depict a confront on information technology and stick it at the meridian. Use an former shirt and trousers to complete the disguise. And don't forget about the lid.

Hanging Objects

When all else fails, you can nonetheless resort to flashy objects and wind chimes to spook the birds. Yous could use more than one device for dramatic furnishings. Most often the birds won't end to have some other look.

  • Wind Chimes: While non scary on their own, the unexpected presence of a current of air chime that makes a weird sound in the garden will deter the birds from going near the tomato plants. Place a few wind chimes in strategic spots around the veggie patch for best results.
  • Flashy Objects: To create the desired visual effect that goes with the wind chimes, tie a few CDs to a stick and let them sway freely in the wind. Whenever the CDs catch the dominicus, they will flash out warnings to any intruders on the wing.
  • Reflectors: If you have an old bike or some used vehicle reflectors lying around, why not hang them in the garden to scare away the birds? Keep in listen, that moving reflectors are more than effective than stock-still ones. So tie them to a string and dangle it from the roof. No bird will come near your garden again.