I spent Christmas with the in-laws in Central California and took a trip to my Brother-In-Laws’s cabin in the Sierra foothills. At the entrance to a valley we noticed a small vineyard, stopped to look around, and met the owner…a really nice guy who retired to the area some years ago. He’d planted seven acres of Syrah, Viognier, and Zinfandel in 2008 but when we discussed how it was going he explained he was having major problems with Starlings.
In 2010 he’d used netting but his canopy was not well developed and the birds were able to push the netting inwards to get at the grapes and he lost 2/3 of his crop. He was going to put netting out this year but decided not to when he realised that his canopy was developing mostly on the East side of his rows, and he would have the same problem with the birds being able to get to the grapes thru the netting. His rows run North/South but there is a persistent Westerly wind in the valley that causes the canopy to grow to the East. So he tried alternatives such as stuffed birds of prey mounted on posts, recorded hawk calls, etc but none of them worked and he lost all his crop.
The owner seems to be learning by trial and error as there are no wine growing resources in the area for him to to pull from, so I was hoping you might be able to share some tricks of the trade, I promised to send him a link to this thread. Some of the questions that came up include:
His wire support posts do not have any cross members, so is there a way to install the netting effectively without him having to run more support wires on the West side of his rows? If additional crossmembers are absolutely necessary, how many and at what height?
Are some brands of netting more effective than others?
How do you get the netting off the vines after use so that it can easily be reused next year?
Please chip in with any and all advice, I’m sure other growers must have run into this same problem. TIA
Birds are a significant problem to many of the small vineyards in the eastern US. Alice Wise of Cornell Extension Office of Suffolk County has studied bird netting over a number of years. I have attached one of her studies as a pdf. If I recall correctly she has found small opening side netting to be the most effective. The better brands survive well through 365 day/yr outdoors which means you can roll them up when not in use. The smaller openings also seem to decrease hail and bee/wasp damage. If you have specific questions Alice would probably be happy to answer them…Gary
Oops my pdf is too large let me look for the url and I’ll add it back to this message…Gary
Peter - PM me and I’ll send you Alice Wise’s study as a pdf…Gary
Use the soft nets that come in a bag, usually green, not the ones that are stiff and on a large roll, usually black. Take empty one gallon plant containers and put them upside down on the over head sprinklers. This will give he nets some height. We use twist ties to tie our nets under the cordon wire about every 10’. We do not hedge our vines.
I just net the fruit zone. 3.5’ width of the black plastic mesh attached to the drip line and the catch wire about a foot above the cordon. If it’s pulled tight (end post to end post), it tends to bow out and away from the fruit zone. When I used the softer white woven mesh, it seemed to drape a bit closer to the fruit. I don’t take the net in and out of the vineyard. I feel like it’s easier on the netting and way more labor efficient to just leave it tied to the drip line throughout the year. I’m on year 5 with the current net, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how it has held up.
Based on your description, it sound like he has a VSP trellis. To keep birds away from the fruit, you need to keep the net away. If the net is wide enough (17 ft not 14 ft) for a 6’ top wire, you can drape the foot out away from the wire and keep the nets away from fruit. If needed weights (picking lugs/buckets) can be placed on the nets and they can be stretched to keep distance.
worst case, he can tie the upwind side to the wires on the next row upwind…
S
Gary, thanks for sending me the study, I’ve forwarded it to the vineyard owner and suggested he join the forum to ask more specific questions.
Steve, good info but no overhead sprinklers in this vineyard.
Stewart, do you find that using the side netting method is as effective as over the row netting?
Sheldon, yes keeping the net away from the fruit is key here, apparently Starlings have long beaks and are very agressive. I’m not sure how the side netting method ensures the netting is far enough away from the fruit.
I do. I think it’s way more crucial to do a thorough job of closing up the bottom than the top. When I went to banding, I worried that birds would have access to the fruit zone through the top, but they seem unwilling to fly downward through the shoots to get there. They seem perfectly willing to hop upward through any gaps in the netting. The cheap black plastic netting will tend to close together below the fruit zone at the drip wire on its own when you pull it tight length-wise. I still go ahead and attach both sides together at the drip wire at 2 or 3 vine intervals with a tape gun, but that operation suffices for several years. When I pull the netting up to cover the fruit zone each year, it’s just a matter of attaching at the catch wire every 6 or 7 vines. “Removal” the night before harvest is just a matter of detaching from the catch wire and bunching and tying back around the drip wire.
Peter,
" I’m not sure how the side netting method ensures the netting is far enough away from the fruit."
If the netting is against the fruit, and the birds can hang on the net, they will eat through it.
if the netting is 6" away from fruit (at bottom of canopy) then birds can’t reach through.
Obviously the net needs to be closed to prevent birds getting under it