Saving Our Strawberries!
Hello ECU Students and Staff members!
As you all know, we have a garden in the back of our school. In that garden, we are planting strawberries, cucumbers, beets, and other yummy fruits and vegetables! The plants have grown rapidly in the past weeks.
A problem has occurred in our garden, birds have been eating our strawberries!
This problem has been getting worse. Our strawberries need help!
On Saturday, April 20, the teachers presented us with the problem and some materials, and we worked together to figure out a way to save our strawberries!
We all decided to research "how to protect plants (strawberries) from birds."
We found many suggestions and decided that since we have netting, we will make a big tent shaped net to protect the birds from getting into the plants.
We measured our Wooly Wall, and we realized we needed 20 feet of netting. So, we measured our netting, and cut it at 20 feet.
As we were cutting, we pulled as tightly as possible, making it easier for our Saturday School volunteers (Ms. Hopkins, Ms. Burrows, Ms. Jones) to cut through the netting. The netting was cut wonderfully, and is now 20 feet long. We began planning what to do. We suggested and agreed on many ideas, and ultimately decided to use zip ties and long metal stakes to hold down the net.
We zip tied the netting to the Wooly Wall, and used about two zip ties on each small section. We placed down the stakes, going through the net and fencing, and we starting forming the tent. We carefully measured the stakes then placed them down on the ground over the netting. We began zip tying the stakes to the ground to the netting. We had three stakes on the ground to make sure the netting doesn't fly out of place and allow the birds to eat the strawberries. We tested to see if we could easily open and close the tent by pushing the stakes back with the netting and it worked. Now the birds won't get into our delicious strawberries, and we are saved! Now, that is a great Saturday Saving our Strawberries.
