I have two blueberry bushes on the patio. Unless we put net all over them, the birds get them these days. And if we net them, hummingbirds and bees can't fertilizing the blooms.

12 years ago I planted 6 Serviceberry trees just for the birds. But the birds really don't make much use of the berries. A big disappointment for me.

I finally gave up growing tomatoes as the squirrels would pick them while they were still green, take one bite and leave them all over my driveway. Far easier to buy "home-grown" ones at a local produce store.

I didn't have trouble with the birds getting my raspberries on the two small plants I had, but I did have trouble with my dogs nibbling away on them. I have to say that seeing a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel on his little high legs, daintily eating a raspberry was pretty cute, but it meant I got none!

I have a friend whose dogs love cucumbers and harvests them all summer.

I've got several serviceberries, mostly they produce little fruit, except for two named clones, 'Prince Charles' and 'Princess Diana'. These small trees are loaded with fruit most years, but most years the fruit is infected with cedar-apple rust, and inedible for both man and beast. In rare years when the fruit is rust free, it is better than the best blueberry, if I can get to it before the birds.

We have two apple trees and a pear tree. I don't care either way if the birds eat them. There's no way we could eat them all.

Cedar Waxwings, usually a group of eight or more, swarm my service berry trees and shrub in the garden. The Robin gets so angry because that is HIS territory and he sits in the lilac bushes ready to fly in and chase off the Cedar Waxwings. So pretty.

Dawn that is one smart dog, how clever of her!

Uh oh, service berries are subject to cedar apple rust? I've got only one mature tree and it happens to be a cedar. I guess my four little service berries will just have to figure it out...

We had a dog who loved tomatoes. He would mouth gently a tomato he could reach on the vine. If it wasn't ripe, he would check out another and another until he found a ripe one. When he found a ripe one, he would pull it off and take it away to enjoy. I wish I had a video like Dawninca captured.

Dawn, that is an amazing video! Yes how sweet is she and intelligent. Notice how she grabs the branch and tries tugging in different directions.

I'm glad you all enjoyed the video. Thank you for your kind words. On the days I really miss her, I sit down and watch it and for a few moments feel like she is with me again.

schoolhouse, she also would pull a branch as far back as she could bend it and then let it go. Sort of like a sling shot. Many times that would loosen up some fruit and it would go flying in all directions. There is one spot (near the end of the video, I think) where she does that.

Dawn I loved the video. Your sweet girl was bound and determined to get her apple. Thank You for sharing your special video.

I have raspberry bushes, quite a few but never manage to get many. As I've mentioned I live in the woodlands so the birds are plenty. I have two pear trees that are still young but do produce. Pears must be the favorite fruit for deer as they have gotton more the past few years than I do. We could have a huge garden but had to stop a few years ago since the wildlife gets it all. They do leave the pumpkins alone which is good as the pumpkin garden is the boys. They enjoy growning their own and each hoping for the biggest. They also do fancy gourds and dry them out and paint them. This year they are doing them in Christmas colors. The gourds are also left alone. I do wish we could do tomatoes though. But like Anglo I just buy the homegrown. I drive up the mountain about 20 minutes away and buy from the Amish. .they have beautiful produce and so cheap its unreal. Last year I could buy a bushel of tomatoes for 3.50. Around here that's almost free. And their corn is wonderful and 2 $ a dozen. I try to get up their about once a week and buy what's ready at the time. We eat tons of salads in the summer and thankfully the boys love salads. Yum now I can't wait until the produce is ready.

No fruit trees or berries we have planted, but we have a wild persimmon tree that is now quite large in our far backyard (we live in the country). It is a magnet for the deer in the fall. Of course the deer, raccoons and possum are attracted to many things in the garden, which we fenced off years ago. It didn’t stop anything from climbing the fence and munching on tomatoes. We use a trap to stop most of them. I just stopped growing anything like melons, because it wasn’t worth the aggravation.

Dawn, that video is so cute! Norar, we had a friend with a setter that ate the tender cucumbers growing on their fence too. Anything on the outside of the fence was hers.

Before they died out, we had a few mulberry trees along our property line. The birds ate a small amount of the fruit, but for the most part, the fruits ripened and the next strong wind gust, usually during a rain, would cause fruit drop. Laying on the ground in a few days, the fruit ferments. Robins, being ground feeders, go nuts for the fermented fruit on the ground. One morning as i went to my car to go to work, I saw a robin staggering around too drunk to fly very well. When I startled him, he tried to fly and crashed into a bush and stumbled to the ground. It was comical, yet sad.

Dawn -- Your beautiful dog is unforgettable, even by those who never met her, I'm sure!

Grandpa's border collie would go to the edge of the corn field, pull out a corn stalk and drag it to where we were sitting. He would then husk an ear, and nibble the corn off. And I laugh when I see people in the grocery store struggle to husk an ear of corn!

I am in the suburbs, and I quit trying to grow tomatoes. The squirrels and I agree when they are vine ripe, but the squirrels get there first and take a bite out of each tomato!

When planting a tree shrub or flowers I usually try to pick one that bares fruit or rather berries for birds/butterflies /bees.

I planted some flowering crabs and service berry five years ago or more but one bad winter when the snow fell early (in MN) and stayed deep all winter the rabbits chewed up trunks of three of my trees. I now put chicken wire are all susceptible trees every winter. I nursed them along, healing almost full circumference chewed up trunks. By all info I've read none should have survived damage. One was slowly dying and I thought it grew back one spring, it had some new shoots from the ground! So a few years of trimming and shaping it to a tree we had fruit last year. To my surprise crab apples!!!! Must have been grafted to a heartier root stock of a crab.

Now I guess I need to figure out what to do with it. My grandmother had one, never sprayed it for worms but made apple butter with the somewhat wormy fruit.

We have two peach trees, an apricot tree, a plum tree and several blackberry bushes. The blackberries produce lots and lots, plenty for us and the birds/other animals and to give some away. But it has been 3 years since we've had any of the other fruit. The trees start out full of baby fruit, then little by little it disappears. I don't begrudge the animals, but I do wish they'd leave some for us.

Yes I saw that Dawn - very clever girl!

I've increased the height of my fence to keep deer out, and use old gazebo frames and netting to keep the bird and raccoons off the blueberries and fruit trees. I need to rig something smaller for the bush cherries this year -- probably will buy some PVC pipe to make a frame.

Two years ago, before I increased the fence height, I was anxiously awaiting my first crop of apples to ripen. I had bagged the apples to avoid worms, so I wouldn't have to spray. Well, one morning I looked out the window and realized all the apples were gone! except they weren't quite -- the ground was covered with the still-bagged apples, each with a bite mark. Deer had pulled them all off the trees but spit them out because of the plastic baggies.

I don't have any fruit trees here....altho there used to be an ancient pear tree here when we bought the place, about 25 years ago. The raccoons ate them....fine with me. They were Keifers, good mostly for canning and I don't can. There are some volunteer pear trees that came up in fence lines, and they produce fruit fingertip size and birds eat them. There are some pecan trees here....raccoons and hogs eat them.

A mulberry tree came up and is huge now, and birds love them.

I don't care at all what the animals and birds eat.

I let a mulberry volunteer grow too, until it was huge and became a thug to surrounding trees. It produced so much fruit that the ground would be purple underneath and I had to mow through it. yuck. However, the birds like marilyn says loved the berries and the coons too. I remember baby coons climbing way out onto thin branches to get at them and this was during the day as I sat not too far away. Purple mush and coon poo all around.

Plus true to the tree's nature, it's limbs and branches drooped to the ground. It killed a cherry tree I had had for years. Finally I had it taken down. I was sad.