# The Olly Buckle plant protector.



## Olly Buckle (May 31, 2010)

This started out protecting strawberries from blackbirds, but I have also found it very effective against the pigeons that go for my broccoli and cabbages. 

  The basic design is a pole hung on a string that revolves in the wind but it has been refined and developed over the years. Start by building two supports with a beam between them for the pole to hang on. 

   I usually use a “wigwam” of three, six foot, bamboos each end and a 2.4 meter piece of batten between them because it is about the right length for my beds and lightweight but reasonably strong, especially if stood on edge. The essentials are that the ends should be stable enough and the beam strong enough to support the pole if the wind gets up.

  In order to make the pole revolve I use tin foil take away containers facing in opposite directions on each end of the pole. These have the added advantage of being shiny and reflecting light as they move round, birds don’t like that. When I first started out I would fasten these on with gaffer tape, but I have since found that it is far more effective to use a staple gun. I position the take away container so that the flange and the side of it butt onto two sides of the piece of batten I use for a pole. I used to use a bamboo but abandoned that when I started using staples, it requires at least four of them well spaced to prevent the foil from tearing. Sandwiching the foil between the beam and a piece of plastic cut from the body of the milk bottle is a refinement that also helps prevent this.

  The first problem that I encountered was that the string would twist itself into a knot as the beam revolved continually in the same direction, At first I thought it might unwind when the wind dropped, but this is not the reality. To counter this I cut a short section from the tubular handle of a plastic milk bottle and pierced it with a hot barbecue skewer. I then fed a piece of string in through each side and drew them out through the open end of the tube, put a large knot in each and pulled them back in again, one piece attaches to the beam, the other to the pole and the tube in the centre acts as a swivel. This works much better with the heavier batten pole than it did with the lightweight bamboo.

   When setting up the pole you can either attach the string dead centre, put on the tin foil containers and then balance it out by attaching weights or attach the containers and then find the centre of balance and attach the string there. Either way ensure that the pole has plenty of clearance to revolve without hitting obstacles and remember it may be longer one end if you worked by the centre of balance. It also pays to keep the strings relatively short, partly because the pole does not sway so much, partly because by the time the supporting bamboos are splayed your beam will only be about five feet from the ground, the pole and containers will take up about nine inches of that, allow another eighteen inches for the strings and swivel and that leaves a little under three foot for your crop to grow in.

  When attaching the strings to the beam and pole I find it pays to make a large knot in the string and then attach it with the staple gun, this stops it slipping away from the centre. The longer the pole the more leverage, 2metre poles revolve in the lightest of airs. If units are positioned next to each other it is possible to adjust things so that the container on one side occasionally strikes the pole on the other when they coincide, this makes a very good bird scaring noise, but is a bit superfluous.


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## The Backward OX (May 31, 2010)

Mate someone will have to redesign the planet or the time zones or something. You’ve posted just as I’m toddling off to bye-byes. Now that mightn’t be so bad except for my crook back and I’m so drugged up on diclofenac and magnesium and paracetamol and temazepam and etc that if I attempt to comment here I’ll prolly come across like the town drunk.

Okay, I’ve had a read and I think I’m still sufficiently lucid to say just this:

A picture is worth a thousand words. Here’s my downunda bird-scarer


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## Olly Buckle (May 31, 2010)

True, but it is good practice to describe something in words, it makes you think about the order of things and how to lay it out.
 Those CD's can be useful, my neighbour hangs them in his apple tree, but on the ground they only cover a small area, a six foot pole revolving covers an eight foot circle, they also produce flashes in bright sunlight that don't just annoy the birds.
 And there is a copyright notice on that picture.


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## garza (May 31, 2010)

My system requires no complex engineering, is 100 percent proof against birds, provides the right level of light for my latitude, and effectively doubles the size of my garden.

I roof with chicken wire and plant indeterminate crops such as Malabar spinach. The birds can't get to ground level in the garden, the spinach cuts the light by about 50 percent - a satisfactory level, especially for very young plants - and I have a big crop of spinach overhead. 

Almost any indeterminate crop can be used, including many varieties of beans, but I'm a big spinach eater so the overhead garden is productive as well as protective. Marygold surrounds the garden and that, combined with a weekly spraying of soapy water - pure soap, no perfumes - keeps everything relatively pest free. I also use EM-5 which is certified organic.


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## Olly Buckle (May 31, 2010)

Cutting light is not a priority in England, there are always plenty of places for things like cabbage and lettuce that don't mind a bit of shade and never quite enough full sun for things like strawberries and french beans. I love indeterminate crops, but our growing season is fairly short.


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## garza (May 31, 2010)

We are lucky in being able to grow almost anything year-round. Water can be a problem in the height of the dry season, but the increased use of drip irrigation and covered structures is blurring the growing seasons for most vegetables.

The only people in Belize who grow strawberries are the Mennonites. The rest of us are smart enough to know you can't grow strawberries in the tropics, so we don't try. Some day the Mennonites will find out that you can't grow strawberries in the tropics and they'll stop growing them too.


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## Linton Robinson (May 31, 2010)

Awww,  I thought this was about protecting some cool kind  of plant, like a power plant or nuclear plant or Robert Plant or something.


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## Olly Buckle (May 31, 2010)

What makes you think that this sort of plant is uncool. No plants equals no food, no oxygen, no cannabis, no psylocybin. Need I go on?


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## Linton Robinson (May 31, 2010)

Well, no.  But then I don't think you needed to do that much, frankly.


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## The Backward OX (Jun 1, 2010)

garza said:


> The only people in Belize who grow strawberries are the Mennonites. The rest of us are smart enough to know you can't grow strawberries in the tropics, so we don't try. Some day the Mennonites will find out that you can't grow strawberries in the tropics and they'll stop growing them too.


You can so too grow strawberries in the tropics.
http://www.cairnsunlimited.com/shaylee.htm


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## The Backward OX (Jun 1, 2010)

Olly Buckle said:


> And there is a copyright notice on that picture.


Ta da! And with the magic of the internet, it's gone.


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## Olly Buckle (Jun 1, 2010)

Now that's a good way to use an AOL disc


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## garza (Jun 1, 2010)

The Backward Ox - I'd like to see that tunnel cover being installed, and I'd like to get an up-close look at the equipment needed. That looks like good technology. I'm going to do some research on that. 

I'll show that site to an agronomist friend of mine, the head of research at Central Farm. Maybe he can write to the Shaylee people and explain why strawberries can't be grown in the tropics. 

What I'm wondering, though, is how cold the Atherton Tablelands get in the winter. Is it cold enough to cold-stress the strawberries? While some of the Mennonites do grow strawberries, the fruit is small and so is the yield. 

The Mennonites also grow a few apples, which everyone knows you can't grow in a place like Belize. They have a strange way of researching that sort of thing. They buy imported fruits and vegetables in the supermarket and plant the seed. Most of it dosen't grow but some of it does. Of that which grows, most of it will not reproduce, but some of it dose. Apparently every generation of hybrid varieties produces a few mutant specimens that are throwbacks to open pollinated ancestors that will reproduce and are more adaptable.


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## Linton Robinson (Jun 1, 2010)

Apples are weird.  Grown from seeds (instead of cutting) they just go off in any direction.  Johnny Appleseed is not a hero to a lot of horticultuists because he spread the country with a jillion wacky phenotypes.

The idea of something not breeding true from seed is pretty strange, to me.


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## Olly Buckle (Jun 2, 2010)

Think of it like this lin, seeds are the product of sexual reproduction, each parent carries genes in pairs but donates only one of the pair to the offspring, so for each gene it has a pair selected randomly from four possibilities, these may be two dominant genes, two sub dominant or a dominant and a subdominant, each chromosome carries hundreds of gene pairs. The only way the seed could breed true to the parent is if both parents carried identical genes in every pair so they both donated the same gene in each case, it might happen partially if you crossed a parent with itself for several generations, but even the offspring of thoroughbreds have enough unique features to identify as individuals and most apple varieties are the progeny of a single sport, like the one Mr Cox found in his garden, that have not been deliberately bred at all.
 What is more curious is the case of the Golden Delicious which has been reproduced a-sexually by cuttings. This should pass exactly the same genotype on to the offspring but random mutation and the seperation of French and English populations over a long period have resulted in two different apples, one is much greener than the other.


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## Linton Robinson (Jun 2, 2010)

Thanks for the lecture, Mr. Science.  I was actually at seventh grade that day.

Many things bear true from seeds.  Some don't.

Apples don't at, basically, a really more basic level than most, say, perennials.


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## Olly Buckle (Jun 3, 2010)

I see what you mean, seed of things like lettuce, vegetables and flower seed do mostly come true to the illustration on the packet, but most seedsmen take a fair amount of care to avoid cross pollination, not so easy with a tree and no point if you propagate vegetatively. Plants that are nearer the wild genome would also tend to breed true as there will not be a lot of variation there, but people have been selecting apple trees since forever.
  The way I come across is probably the way I am, inclined to deliver myself like a lecture, you are welcome to ignore it if it peeves you.


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## Linton Robinson (Jun 3, 2010)

Read up on that a little and you might change your mind.   "The Botany of Desire" is a fantastic book, and the apple chapter sheds a lot of light on this.


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## Reese (Jun 6, 2010)

Dude, no one cares. It's boring. I don't care what string you attach to what. Bring some life into what your to say. As the reader, you need to trill me.


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## garza (Jun 6, 2010)

Then why are you reading a thread about gardening? If you are a gerdener, then you will find the discussion of interest. Both Lin and Olly hae raised some good points.


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## Olly Buckle (Jun 8, 2010)

Oh dear, being in this thread does not seem good for the health, both on a 24 hour ban, when you come back:-

Lin, thanks for the book ref, the title sounds good, the Author's name, Michael Pollan, makes me wonder how much people are directed in their career by their name, I had a consultant at Moorfields eye hospital called Prof, Lightman once.

Reese:- Like I said to Ox it was partly an exercise to describe something. It is very good practise for writing, it makes you think about the form and structure of what you are saying and has led me on into a whole story in the past, sorry the subject matter didn't appeal to you but different strokes for different folks.


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## garza (Jun 8, 2010)

Olly - Personally I found your plant protector article informative and well written.


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## Olly Buckle (Jun 10, 2010)

Thanks for the support garza, Reese may find it a boring subject but when I look at what magazines there are out there those on gardening are well up in the top sellers. Not a subject for 'trills' maybe but it does generate some considerable interest.


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## Reese (Jun 12, 2010)

"it makes you think about the form and structure of what you are saying and has led me on into a whole story in the past,"

I see your point. It is a very good exercise. I can appreciate that. Dismiss the words I wrote before.


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