This year we moved a lot of our raspberries, some to a row of raised beds at the lower part of what we call the berry room, and the rest of the black raspberries that were still in 22 gallon tubs to the top of the hill in the berry room. The golden and red raspberries, blackberries, loganberries, and currants were moved to the new garden area by the fruit trees. This left the blueberries where they were. This was mainly because 6 of the blueberry plants are in a raised bed. Three of them are still in the 22 gallon tubs, and we could have moved them, but decided to keep all of the blueberries together. Well, except for the 2 in the greenhouse.
One of the biggest problems we face with our berries is the birds. They like berries. Really like berries. With our black raspberries, it’s not as big of a deal, because we have a lot of them. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 plants. And that is the ones we are intentionally growing, feeding, and pruning. They are very prolific. They grow very tall and bend over, and when the tip touches the ground, it roots and develops into a new plant. They can be hard to get rid of in areas you don’t want them. The blueberries, on the other hand, are a different problem. We don’t have as many of them, and they do not yet produce as many berries as the raspberries do.
The weather this year has been very hard on them. The early heat and then cool down has hampered them greatly, and we want to protect all of the remaining berries we have.
Several years ago, we built a frame out of PVC that we could drape bird netting over. This helped immensely, but getting in it was a pain, and once inside, it was hard to move around, as there wasn’t much room between the berry plants and the netting.
After seeing how our greenhouses and sawmill canopies are made, and using the conduit fittings for the greenhouse shelves, I decided to make a frame, similar to a gothic arch greenhouse. I’ll be making it out of standard 3/4″ EMT conduit. The arch part would be a small radius than normal gothic arch greenhouses, 6″, since I was going to be using a conduit bender to bend the pieces.
The first step was to bend the conduit. I’m making this frame 18′ long by 8′ wide, with 3′ spacing between the poles. I’ll need 14 pieces of conduit for the poles, and 2 for the ridge pole. Measuring 5′ from the end which will be the top and bending to 45 degrees so that the full 5′ before the bend is on the top angle, and putting 2 together at the peak will give the 8′ width.
I’m anchoring these to the ground with 30″ rebar stakes. I cut these and marked them at 1 foot, this will be how far they will be pounded into the ground, leaving 18″ for the conduit to slide over.
I measured where I wanted this to start, and drove the stake into the ground.
The conduit stood up pretty straight when slid over the stakes.
I squared up the line for the stakes and drove them every 3 feet on the sides. As you can see, the ground here is far from level, with about a 2 1/2 foot drop over 18′. I used a string around all of the stakes/conduit to mark a level line.
I then measured to the ground and cut a stub of conduit, and connected these to the bottoms of the poles with standard EMT couplers.
Once they were all standing, it was time to install the ridge pole. Since the tops of the poles were 9′ – 11′ up, and over the middle of the blueberries, this would be a little tricky.
I’m using these Cross Pipe Connectors for connecting the poles to the ridge.
To give an extra set of hands for holding up one end of the ridge pole while up on the ladder, we used these T Pipe connectors and a piece of PVC to hold up one end.
Here’s the first piece of ridge pole.
I lifted one end up and climbed the ladder, while Marisa held the other end with the PVC. On the ladder, I was able to get one of the connectors and poles together and tightened.
The 6″ netting that’s over all of this area was put in to protect the chickens from hawks. That is a real threat here, since just in the tree line you can see here, there is a nest where a pair of red-tailed hawks raise their young every year. We have lost birds to the hawks, and this has allowed the chickens to roam the garden relatively safely. Here’s one that I named Buster Buster. We had a Rouen drake named Buster. Had.
The rest of the bows were connected to the ridge pole. There are 2 pieces of ridge pole, connected with a coupler.
Here is the frame over the blueberries. I will attach some lateral purlins to sturdy the whole thing up, but for now, the immediate need is to get bird netting over it to protect those berries.
One of the hardest parts of this install was getting this netting over the structure. This stuff snagged on EVERYTHING. Our big Little Giant ladder got caught on every little thing you can imagine, and several that you wouldn’t imagine. It snagged on the little screw heads on the connectors. It snagged on my hat.
Eventually we got it over the whole thing. So far it seems to keep things out. Chickens, birds, huskies. Hopefully we can protect the remaining berries this year.
