Sometimes the Best Solutions are the Redneck Ones - Fixing the Strawberries

I purchased some bird netting from Amazon for around $11, and I was in a hurry to get it up as more and more strawberries were starting to turn. Last year the birds feasted and I starved, so this year I was determined it was going to be different.

The first step was to move the strawberries from the ground to containers. They've been on the move since that, bugging out whenever the front lines shifted (read: blue jays started hanging around).

Next step was to get them covered. I figured I could drape the netting over them, but I still didn't want the birds getting under the netting or being able to reach the fruit through it. It took a few days to come up with a solution. Wire coat hangars. I'm telling you - those things are useful for just about everything.

Strawberry plants covered with bird netting. You can see the wire coat hangars in between the plants. I alternated the direction they were hung so that they would keep the netting off the leaves.

Ripening strawberries