A large square of netting folded around ripening mulberries, with a long bit of tie-wire threaded through it to hold it together is all we need to protect our crop.

Ah, the things we do to ensure a harvest… When I spoke about our upcoming mulberry crop two weeks ago, it looked like it was going to be really bountiful.

However, I’d forgotten about the birds. They happily started pecking at the fruits even before they were halfway ripe, so we lost a lot of fruits over the first week and a half.

Once I realized what they were doing – after observing a mother-baby pair of mynahs feeding, and a few bulbuls swooping in and out – I put up some protection around the last two bunches of mulberries.

This was what we got in a day’s harvest (minus the pair I ate while plucking them… hee hee):

Our harvest yesterday – not too shoddy!

It was a decent little haul, considering that we only used to get two or three at a time in the past. In fact, we got slightly more than that two days ago! So I’m rather pleased with this season’s mulberry harvest.

The birds should be more pleased, because they got at least three times the amount of fruits!

Well, I’ve got a few cuttings beginning to take root, and hope to have more mulberry plants growing in the garden so that we can begin to harvest a more decent amount of fruits while still sharing with the birds. After all, the birds have lost a lot of food sources over the years, and they’re welcome visitors here. Yes, really.

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