This gardening technique involving small, painted stones has the potential to make a significant difference.
Paint red pebbles in the summer and put them in the garden: the reason for this is a real eye-opener
A sweet-tasting, popular fruit packed with nutrients, the strawberry is praised by the U.K.’s Royal Horticultural Society as “easy and rewarding to grow” at home. However, several pests can cause serious damage to your strawberry patch before you get the chance to enjoy the fruits of your back-garden labor.
Notably, birds are a well-known menace. The “foliage, fruit, root and stem of strawberry plants” appeal to several species of the animal, writes the agricultural researcher Muhammad Sarwar in his book Recent Studies on Strawberries.
Sarwar adds that the level of harm birds can do to your crops varies from “a mere annoyance to eradicat[ing the] whole strawberry plant”.
However, he offers up a potential solution.
How can I keep birds away from my strawberry patch?
According to Sarwar, you can protect your strawberry patch by gathering up a number of small stones and painting them red, to make them look like the fruit.
Before your real strawberries begin to appear, sprinkle the stones in the area where you are growing the produce, to fool the birds into pecking at the fake strawberries.
“Of course the birds will be attracted, after a while get tired of pecking the rocks and leave the strawberries alone,” he explains.
The ‘painted stones’ technique also has plenty of advocates among strawberry growers on social media.
Birds will quickly “get frustrated”
On YouTube, the popular DIY-advice channel Keeping It Riel with Marilyn & Steve notes that the method is likewise effective against animals such as squirrels and chipmunks.
Both they and birds “will only try to eat [the pebbles] a few times before they get frustrated” and avoid that area in your garden, the YouTubers said.
On Facebook, the Farmers’ Way account posted a photo of a strawberry patch sprinkled with red pebbles, explaining that the stones had apparently served to keep birds at bay: “Everyone laughed at me for painting rocks to look like strawberries, but […] no crows.”
Another Facebook content creator, the gardening enthusiast Nikki Adams, has shared a video of herself painting and positioning the pretend strawberries. “These worked pretty good last year,” Adams said.
“Rocks deployed again this year”
On the Reddit discussion forum “r/gardening”, meanwhile, several users have also reported that the trick has proved successful.
“My kid put those in our strawberry patch last year,” wrote one Redditer. “The birds seemed to leave the real berries alone.” Another user said: “It worked for the birds, not so much for my dog though.”
While it is true that some contributors said the ‘painted stones’ method had not proved effective - and pointed to protective netting as an alternative - one Redditer championed the technique as the savior not only of strawberries, but also other plants.
“Year before, we didn’t hardly have any tomatoes because the birds would peck them all,” the user said. “Last year I don’t think we lost a single vegetable to birds. Rocks are currently deployed again this year.”
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